Where is God? Part 1

Boy does that question get asked a lot. The question generally implies that God is gone, on vacation, not here, never existed, not doing the God job properly.  Wrestling with this dilemma will help us talk about our faith life and God's presence in it.

The 'absence' of God argument, at first glance, has two variations.  First: God is not here (wherever here is).  Second: the God we expect is not here. We have some very clear expectations about God.  Most of them have to do with righting wrongs and keeping people safe and eliminating tragedy from life.

Let's start with #2.  Regardless of our religious upbringing or active faith life, everyone has opinions about what God should do.  We carry around some kind of job description, a mental list of qualities that any God should have, like justice and mercy.   Justice and mercy are generally high on the list although I am suspicious that they are mostly high on our list.  That is, God owes us justice and mercy.  When tragedy strikes; when we get the wrong end of the stick....well, even when evil crashes into our lives, we cry out to God and demand justice.  Our disappointment in God is obvious.  We are less disappointed when God fails to bring about justice or mercy for others, especially those we don't know....the great unwashed masses.

Which leads us back to #1:  God is not here.  In fact, what we are saying is "I don't experience what I conceive of as God here, now."  Not 'experiencing God', if you'll pardon the pun, may be due to our lack of experience and certainly  is a world apart from "God is not here."  Often our expectations of how God acts eliminates our ability to see or hear God.  We are looking for only one possible response from God and it has to look or sound like 'this.'  When that doesn't happen, we conclude that God is absent.

People of faith approach this dilemma from the other end of the tunnel.  We expect God to be present and when we cannot see or hear God, we expect the problem is with us, not God.  Carl Jung had this Latin phrase engraved on his tombstone  Vocatus atque non vacatus, Deus aderit.  It continues to be both reassurance and reminder:  Bidden or not, God is present.