Life, the Universe, and everything

A friend stayed the night at our house. The electricity was shut off at his place. We watched "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" which I'd borrowed from Matt. I enjoyed the book series in high school, twelve years ago. It was, I think, influential. The movie, however, we found mostly unamusing. The absurdity was all nonsense and occasional sacrilege. It presented accurately man's attempts to overthrow or negate God. The answer to "life, the universe, and everything?" Forty-two, of course.
The next morning, before heading out for church, my friend and I had an interesting conversation, the one I'd prayed for. We were discussing the practical origins of superstitions, which transitioned into the supernatural. While in a relationship with a girl who was Wiccan, he'd experienced some strange moments of extra-sensory perception, and even perceived something sinister in it. He thinks there is too much going on behind the scenes, so to speak, for there to be no spiritual power. He is not sure what that power would be like, and in the event that it were to include Supreme Being, that Being would seem to be uninvolved and distant, as in the deist's perspective of God. And so my friend is not atheist, but firmly agnostic. He views religion as a pleasant thought, a way to order our cosmos and create some meaning to our existence.
I remember when someone I love told me over the telephone that she could see in religion a calming, stabilizing effect through the familiarity of ritual and the comfort of mythology, which she may someday be ready to have in her life.
I think they are both very right about religion. Religion is the last thing I wish for anyone to find. At least in lostness and uncertainty people may still be able to recognize their own need for God's truth and mercy, to recognize the necessity for something more. But religion is so often the end of the search. In religion we are justified to ourselves and before men. We accept the answer to life, the universe and everything as it is dictated to us through the institution and are perhaps ushered complacently into hell surrounded by our little idols of Sunday morning familiarity.
My friend expects that he must choose between reality and happiness, and I understand completely that sentiment. The greatest impedance to my acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Savior was the nagging suspicion that perhaps I was being tricked. But what is the alternative? What have we to lose? What if, just what if, we can have both reality and happiness? What if the Son of God really did die to buy us complete freedom and peace, and what if He really did conquer death through resurrection?