Exiling Oneself from God — Fifty Ways to Leave a Lover
[ Following in an excerpt for the work-in-progress The Skeptical Believer ]
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“I have been away from God for a large part of my life . . . . I had gone into exile of my free will.”
Wim Wenders
You Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Paul Simon “Fifty Ways to Leave a Lover”
Why would anyone who has ever known God choose to walk away?
That other verbs come to mind–wander away, edge away, work away, slink away, suffer away, sprint away—indicates that people take leave of faith in many different ways. There are, as the old song says, fifty ways to leave a lover.
Only a few people, a very few, leave faith at a clearly defined point. Fewer still leave God because they have reached the conclusion, after careful thought and testing, that God does not exist. Most people who have ever been part of the community of faith don’t so much consciously choose to leave faith as they live themselves away from faith.
By live themselves away from faith, I mean they simply make more and more life choices, tiny ones as well as big ones, that do not take God or the story of faith into account. These choices might range from whom do I marry, what do I value, what do I do when I’m in trouble, how do I raise my kids; to how should I vote, what should I buy, who do I want as friends; to what books or films or activities do I soak myself in, who do I admire, or what do I do on a Sunday morning?
Some people suffer themselves away from faith. Their life is simply too painful for them to hold that pain and the goodness of God in their head at the same time. Some move from faith because they surround themselves only with people who find faith irrelevant or pernicious. It takes more strength of mind to live at odds with views and values of our immediate companions than most of us possess.
And one of the great deadeners of faith is simply the busyness of life. So many demands fill up the foreground—school, friends, coming and going when one is young; careers, marriage, raising children, getting and spending when one is older–that God is pushed to the background. Or even into another world that we only visit occasionally, if at all. And these demands are good things—or at least necessary things—and few have the luxury of not paying them attention.
Faith dies by a thousand cuts more often than by a single fatal blow. In this it is like other forms of love. We can fall in love in an instant, including with Jesus. We are less likely to fall, precipitously, out of love. More often we edge away from love as we are distracted by other things. We do not say, “I choose no longer to be in love.” We don’t say anything. We rather innocently devote our attention to other things, and at some point realize, “I am no longer in love.” Maybe we are in love with something or someone else instead, but more often we are simply “out of love” and floating.
The Irish poet W.B. Yeats, in one of the most quoted passages of poetry from the last hundred years, is writing of the collapse of civilizations, but he could as readily be speaking of the movement away from faith:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Things fall apart,
The centre does not hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the earth
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed
And the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction;
While the worst are filled with passionate intensity.
The falcon is trained to hunt, flying in circles over the head of the falconer, responding to verbal commands or whistles or arm motions. But as it flies, the circles get wider and wider. The voice of the falconer is farther and farther away. Now I barely hear it. Now I don’t hear it all. Did I, the falcon, consciously choose to fly off from God, the Falconer? Or did I simply fly too far, further and further from the Falconer’s voice, until, perhaps without even noticing, I am flying on my own?
And am I now free, as the secularist would say, free from the stupid rules and narrow constraints of childish faith? Or am I merely without a center? Am I one of those who now “lack all conviction,” not believing anything in particular, playing it safe, going in whichever direction the wind is blowing? Is it enough for me now to be, as so many claim as an adequate goal in life, “a good person”?
Wenders, I think, has it right. God exiles no one. Many choose, one small choice at a time, to exile themselves. As the church bulletin board asked, “If God seems distant, who do you think has moved?”
Many of us never officially leave faith; we simply move to the edge—just inside faith, or just outside it—and take up residence there. We are neither fully in nor fully out. Like T.S. Eliot’s spiritual sleepers we live dormantly “under forgetful snow/ feeding a little life with dried tubers.”
But can I be “just outside” faith? Is faith like being pregnant—you are or you aren’t–or is it like being a sports fan—ranging from fanatical to indifferent, with at some point, known only to God, not being a fan at all? Some are fair weather fans and are back on the bandwagon when the team makes it to the championship game. With faith it’s often the reverse. We are foul-weather fans, becoming interested in God only when life turns stormy and he seems useful.
We are like the prodigal son. Give me my inheritance so I can live life the way I want to live it, away from the burdensome voice of the Falconer. Our life without a center falls apart—or perhaps simply declines into emptiness—and we wonder if we can come home. The answer, always, is “Yes.” We can come home. It has been pointed out that the story of The Prodigal Son is misnamed. It is not primarily a story about the son’s failure, but about the father’s welcoming forgiveness. It should be called the story of the Forgiving Father.
But returning home is a choice. It will not be forced upon us. Coerced faith is no faith at all. Some return home in one giant step, moved by the power of the Spirit to repent and commit again. Others will return as they left, one small step at a time, in a long journey of small acts of belief. And, of course, some will never return at all.
But whether in a moment or as part of a long journey, those who choose to return will find the forgiving father, not just waiting but scanning the horizon, eager to forgive, eager to kill the fatted calf, eager for a celebration.