Loving Our Oh So Complicated Relationship with God
More from Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss—a book that has something underlineable (not a word until now) on every page. So I’ll just pick one underlining at random: “Lacking intensity in our lives, we say that we are distant from God and then seek to make that distance into an intense experience” (108-09). CS Lewis says something parallel when he talks about us treasuring the thing that keeps us from God because it is so familiar and comfortable. And I take my stab at exploring the phenomenon in The Skeptical Believer.
Wiman is investigating the common practice of intellectual, artsy folks to dramatize their lives and relationships, not least their relationship or lack of relationship with God. They know instinctively (and from reading many books) that the best drama requires emotional conflict, tragedy, failure, longing, and noble defeat. So when they think about themselves and God, they often think (and write and paint) in those terms. God is distant. God is absent. God is unknowable and all Mystery. God is on vacation. How sad for poor, sensitive, insightful me.
Wiman does a fair amount of this himself in his book, but at least he is honest about it. And I notice a streak of it in my own writing. I find myself joining the chorus of those who are willing to consider the distant possibility of a biblical-like transcendence (“G-O-D”—shh, don’t tell), but who will not, under any circumstances, admit that knowing this “ultimate ground of being” might be relatively straight forward and uncomplicated. If it’s uncomplicated, that leaves nothing for us complicated people to do. And we’re sure we have a big role to play in bringing this thing off. And what about the modern world? Really complicated!
Wiman rubs it in: “for the most part our dark nights of the soul are, in a way that is more pathetic than tragic, wishful thinking. God is not absent. He is everywhere in the world we are too dispirited to love.”
Sometimes I want to comfort the afflicted. At other times I want to kick myself and my fellow mournful doubters in the butt. Today is one of those days and Christian Wiman is a big help.