Absence and Presence

My friend Nicholas recently wrote a sermon entitled "Why Do We Preach?" and reached out to the FB community for perspectives on why people felt that preaching was necessary.  As per usual, I gave Nicholas a semi-snarky, semi-genuine response about a way for people to shield themselves against meaninglessness through a cloak of meaning.  This response, met with some humor by Nicholas, invariably led to a conversation about the nature of God.  Whereas I preach the absence of God (according to Nick, it's my "thing"), Nick espouse the idea of God's presence, which he defined as such: "I guess the best way to say this is that I believe that God is always available.  And God's Spirit is always reaching out to us."  I responded by asking, "but always tho??" 

This interaction stirred up a great many thoughts, but I mainly thought about the concepts of Divine Absence and Divine Presence.  I capitalize both because I believe that both experiences (if we can call them such) are equally profound.  They have a palpable, pervading quality to both of them.  For some, the experiences are synonymous with despair and ecstasy respectively.  Is God always present, available, and reaching out to us?  Or is God absent?  Is God dead?

"God is dead."  It is amazing how that is still a powerful statement for me, through all my shades of belief and unbelief.  In some ways I find it to be a liberating proclamation.  In other ways, it is a terrifying prospect.  I think many people, even ones who are not especially spiritual, find the statement uncomfortable and disturbing.  Many people would declare that statement to be categorically untrue.  God is omnipresent, always willing and able to reach out to us.

For me, I find that difficult to swallow.  As I perceive the Bible, it is replete with imagery of God's absence, abandonment, and distancing from humans.  The question for me is, can we embody faithfulness to God's absence in the same way we embody it for God's presence?  Can we find meaning in the Divine Absence, apart from the usual self-aggrandizing arguments that its for "our own good" to make "our faith grow stronger"?  In theology, there is the notion of epistemic distance.  It is the idea that God created human beings to be able to live without God's presence.  Thanks to epistemic distance, humans are able to live their lives as though God does not exist.  They do not need to believe in God or know the Divine Presence in order to live out their lives.  While there are some obvious pitfalls to this reasoning, it does provide a certain measure of comfort in that God is not on the hook for everything that happens or everything that we do.  Does this mean then that if God is Person, that God is an unreliable person akin to human beings? 

When I reflect on the Divine Absence, my thoughts often drift to Jesus on the cross: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"  I find that statement as powerful, if not more so, than "God is dead."  I think Christians like to skate over that statement, relegating it to a moment of weakness or a temporary expression of feeling abandoned.  But there is power in the sentiment.  There is Jesus, forsaken by God, abandoned by his followers, betrayed by his friend, sentenced by his people, and executed by his government.  It is a supreme moment of isolation and alienation.  Why rush to the resurrection?  Maybe human beings would be better off if they stayed right there and contemplated the fact that even God felt abandoned.

I believe that God is absent in many ways, perhaps even dead.  The resounding question is always, what do we do next?  I don't think it to be a cause for alarm or despair.  I see the Divine Absence as a Divine Abyss, a well of meaning in the midst of a meaningless reality.  We sometimes traverse the bottom of the well, fearfully and excitedly stumbling in the dark, tinkering with concepts, archetypes, ideals, and imagery in order to create a spark of meaning.  We cling to each other in the darkness for a shared sense of metaphysical comfort, commiseration, and hope.  We have hope because we have each other, and every abyss has an entrance- a way out.  The way out is not necessarily Divine Presence or a meaningful reality, but there is more than absence, there is also fullness.  I've never been much of a praying man.  I don't find much use for it and it never helped me feel truly connected to God.  Lately, I've begun to think that prayer is a way in which we commune with ourselves.  We listen to the missing parts of ourselves after projecting our thoughts and desires into the void.  Perhaps the response of the inner voice is the Divine Presence.  Perhaps it is our subconscious being poked awake.  Who's to say it's not both?  In short, I think the prayer of my life has always been, and always will be, "Lord I believe; help my unbelief!" 

Who Is This Jesus?

I would say that all of life is a spiritual journey, but I guess for me the past two years has been the most turbulent part of that journey so far (see previous blog post).  I think I've always carried a spiritual restlessness within me, one that has always shaped how I engage with matters of faith.  In my last semester of seminary, one of my seminary professors discouraged me from becoming a minister because he said that I have "a skeptic's heart."  He meant this as a compliment, and I received it as such.  Whenever I have read the Scriptures, I have always tended to approach them with the hermeneutics of suspicion.  I don't think that has changed much in the past few months, but recently I have become preoccupied with a question that often appears in the gospel-accounts: Who is this Jesus?  It is a question often asked by the scribes and Pharisees, questioning who is this Jesus to have the audacity to forgive sins.  I view the question in a different light.

Recently, I have come to question whether my spiritual quest has been wrong, or flawed so to speak.  I've been engaging with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in a roundabout manner.  As some would say, I've been going about this the wrong way.  What occurred to me is that I often view my spirituality in terms of "what" questions.  What do I think about God?  What do I think I know about God?  What is right?  What is truth (to get all Pilate-y)? 

While intellectually, these aren't bad questions, they should not dominate your faith journey.  Instead, I've been asking myself questions like "who is God?"  "How do I experience God?"  "Who is this Jesus to me?"  Before, whether I was fully aware of it or not, I engaged with the divine primarily on an intellectual level while disregarding or minimizing the emotional level.  If God is Person and Being, then one engages with God in a relationship.  There is a strong emotional component to every relationship.  Hence, one must relate to God on an emotional level.  It prevents your psyche from relegating God to a concept, or worse, an idol.

Now, there is some danger to the emotional component if that is the sole basis of your experience.  There are too many people out there "feeling" God and going on about how God makes them "feel" that it all seems very limiting and selfish.  I'm not great at relationships, but most of the successful marriages and LTRs I've witnessed have led me to conclude that one has to be pretty selfish if the only thing they care about in their relationship is how the other person makes them "feel."  However, there is some merit to being attuned to the emotional component of seeking the divine presence. 

For me, the spiritual struggle has been more of an intellectual pursuit rather than a relationship, which probably reflects some of my poor attitudes to relationships as well but that is another topic entirely.  I'm always seeking answers, desiring resolution and completeness.  Frustratingly, I've come to realize faith is not about answers, but about being and experience.  I don't like that at all.  I want control.  I want to know.

This desire to know is ingrained in me, but there is also this bevy of newfound questions that is culminating in one particular question: "who is this Jesus to me?"  In the past, Jesus has been many people to me: preacher, firebrand, apocalyptic nutjob, teacher, hippie lovefreak, desert weirdo, smug asshole, prophet, messiah, etc.  Now I'm asking myself who is Jesus to me?  Is he kind?  Do I trust him?  Can I talk to him?  What is even more important is do I have the courage to continually return to these questions and be renewed by them rather than giving into my instinct to have an answer.  Can I keep that question open?  Can I continually be open to it throughout my life?  Do I want to be?

Begrudgingly, I think the answer is yes.  I've always been drawn to fides mysterio, even if I'm in the throes of my worst episodes of rank skepticism, cynicism, and despair.  There is a well of meaning (or meaninglessness) that my soul is drawn to and I wish to keep going forward.  Do I have the courage to simply be in faith?  Love, pray, worship, doubt, struggle, teach, preach, live, and move in an existence of experiencing God rather than attempting to know things about God?  I don't know if there's an answer, but I hope there is an answer to one question: how can I live into that?

As you go forward in faith (or doubt, or skepticism, or disdain), perhaps use this Holy Week to revisit the perennial question of the gospel-message: who is this Jesus?