Our Abandonment By God
I decided to take a stab at the feeds today, and the first one I read was this one.. and it knocked me on my butt.
Now, while I am still often overwhelmed by the beauty and goodness of our world, I am also, or perhaps even more often, overwhelmed by the brokenness of our world. Now, while I am still waiting for God to come and save us, I have grown accustomed to the experience that, for many (perhaps even most of us), God never shows up. Now, I have seen things that are stronger than love — so while love can conquer all, it only rarely actually does so. More often, death prevails.
Mostly, then, I think we awaken to the brokenness in our world and in ourselves and discover that we are alone. We awaken to a world without God or, even if we continue to believe in God (as I do), we awaken to the realization that, when it comes to God, we have all been betrayed; we have all been abandoned. We are, all of us, Georgia Lee lost and dying in a lonely place, waiting for the God who never comes. Or who comes too late. we have all been betrayed, we have all been abandoned | On Journeying with Those in Exile
I will say that I don’t believe God will come save us. I think we are left with that purpose.. it is something I have held onto from my Judaism – the world is indeed broken, so are we, but we are the hands and feet of God and we must repair it. That doesn’t mean a lot in a moment of existential crisis but in the horror of this world I also find our freedom, and I take solace in that. When I first read of Sartre’s ideas and how people found them so bleak, I was astonished because knowing I was on my own, knowing that my life was the result of my choices, made me feel better.
Perhaps it is also why I have always loved Hesse’s Steppenwolf – I can endure so much because I can choose to.
And this, and faith, is a magnification of this – I do not think God will come save us from our particular sufferings, but perhaps God saves us in giving us an answer to our sufferings, banal as it might be at times. As empty an answer as it might be to some of the horrors that await in life, and as Daniel says on his blog – believing in God may not really be relevant to it at all, there are other ways to salvage our existence from this state – but it is the one for me.
I have experience of God and I can take solace in that relationship, even while I don’t believe that God will find me a job or heal me miraculously if I get cancer, it is this relationship that maintains me even while I suffer, and even while I see the broken world around me. In this relationship, I have the freedom to act and that freedom is precious, even as it is monstrous.
This post originally appeared on Gideon Addington’s Ground of Being blog.
Gideon,
That knocked-on-you-butt feeling that you experienced as you first read the feed, from which you quoted, is something that I have been experiencing with increasing regularity. It seems that many people share the sentiments of the person who made these comments.
In response to your reply to this person, however, I do have a few questions:
1. You say- “I will say that I don’t believe God will come save us.” In making this statement are you suggesting that God will not come to save us in the present by, as you say later in your post, finding us a job or healing us from cancer? or, are you suggesting that not only will God not save us in the present but neither will he save us and put things to rights in the future?
2. You also mention that you believe it is possible that “God saves us [by] giving us an answer to our sufferings.” What answer do you see God giving us? In what form does this answer come?
3. You mention, in your final paragraph, that you have “experience of God,” which, in turn, permits you to “take solace in that relationship.” I was curious as to whether you might be willing to explain this, in more depth.
Sure and thanks for the feedback!
1) I would say that we are not saved in the present. I’m referring, of course, to concrete salvation and not something in regards to our souls. I do not think God will swoop in and make things right for us. Perhaps in some eschatological sense there is a final justice, but that doesn’t concern me. I see it as our role to save ourselves, our role to help see and live in the Kingdom.
2) In this I mean we have purpose to our suffering in God. Our suffering is not in vain because it participates in a greater order and arises from the freedom we have from God. If we have an answer to ‘why we suffer,’ even if it is not complete, it helps us keep going. I would say this understanding is not a simple or easy thing but seems to be a common enough response from religious people that meditate upon this issue, pray, study the texts, etc. As Nietszsche said (via Viktor Frankl’s work on the holocaust) “He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.”
3. For me the ultimate ‘proof’ of God is in one’s experience of God. That is where we ultimately find God and where we develop a relationship with him/her/it. We may seek to understand this relationship in many ways, but as a relationship it is like others except infinite in grace and love – and is a place for us to take shelter, to find peace. The intimacy of God can be a source of solace and a signifier of meaning even in a universe that is struck by the absurd.
Gideon, thanks for the response. I would like to probe and dialogue about this a little bit further. You say,
What do you do with the person who has been miraculously healed of an illness or disease? What of the person who has miraculously, against all odds, found a job?
You also write,
I’m curious as to what you understand the “purpose to our suffering in God” to actually be. Is it some inkling that we are part of something that is greater than ourselves? Is it, for example, that through our suffering we are roused from our slumber, as C.S. Lewis suggested?
I would say that I’m not suggesting that God does not act in such ways, rather that we should not expect such things. For everyone who is miraculously healed of cancer, thousands still die and suffer. I grew up in a town with a mega-church/campus with a focus on the ‘prosperity gospel’ and these people attending, already below the poverty line, were told if they just gave to the church then everything would come back 10-fold! And of course… these people often lost their houses, couldn’t pay their electric bills, etc.. So my attitude may come from that to some extent.
I think we have to act as if we are alone, knowing that we are not.
As to the second point… I am not sure what purpose there is, except that there is hopefully a purpose. My own viewpoint is rather existential in this as I don’t think we can fathom it ourselves, from our perspective the world is absurd. I find purpose in what I discern as God’s purpose for me – that is “to do justice and love kindness.” I cannot know this to be the case, but I think it may be and so my and others sufferings serve a purpose in being both the ‘cost of doing business’ as well as what we must work to fix.