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!"