A mystic once asked, ‘Where is God?’ After a pause [mystics loved to pause before they responded to an essential life question], the mystic replied, ‘Where ever we let Him in.’ For as long as I can remember I have heard, and held, the question, ‘Where is God?’ It appears to me that the ‘mark of Cain’ has replaced the ‘mark of God’ upon our world. There has never been as much distress, dis-ease, dis-trust, pain, agony, and terror in the world as there is today. At no time in history has the earth been as soaked in blood as it is today. It appears as if so many of us have morphed into profane beings rather than sacred beings (some would say ‘mundane beings’ rather than ‘sacred beings’). Is God directing this play or is God indifferent to the play and the players?
It appears to me that as humans our major folly seems to lie in our shifting the response-ability for our plight from ‘we’ to ‘God.’ Rather than admit our own guilt – after all, we are both the play writers and the actors in this drama we call life – we seek, like Adam, to shift the blame to someone else.
For multiple generations we humans have been investing our lives with profanity and now we step back and wonder whose fault it is. It seems that we view God as someone we hired to prevent us from using our loaded guns; God is the parent who will protect us from ourselves. Having failed us, God now becomes the scapegoat; God becomes irrelevant – God was not the all protective Parent that we desired. Like angry children we stomp about crying, ‘It’s not our fault; we are not responsible; don’t blame us!’
We live in an age when most of us have been desensitized and so we have ceased to be shocked by the increasing breakdown in morality; our consciences have decayed as a result of our accepting the many forms of ‘violence’ that we continue to allow to wash over us – again and again. Where is God? Some say that God is silent. I think that we have chosen to silence God.
Oh, there is faith. But it is a faith in miracles of the past, an attachment to symbols and ceremonies. God becomes known via hearsay; God is a rumor fostered by dogmas and narrow beliefs. For eons, God’s voice cried out to us; God’s voice came to us in many guises. But we humans are clever. Look at how skillfully we imprisoned God in our ‘houses of worship’ and in our dogmas and in the illusion that ‘we have the only true way’ to God.
Consider the many ways we have distorted God to fit our desires. We can see that as we have engaged in this distortion God has withdrawn; God has gone into hiding. In seeking to honor our selves while demonizing the ‘other’ – thus missing the image of God residing in the other – and in seeking to glorify ourselves – we have driven God into hiding. Moreover, we have become the Golden Calf.
God chooses not to interfere with our choices nor does God choose to intervene in our conscience. As I recall, we humans were the first to hide from God and God came searching for us. God came for us. Then, out of our arrogance, we began to shut God out; we slammed the door on God. We betrayed our relationship with God, God withdrew leaving us to ourselves. I don’t believe God withdrew out of volition; God was expelled. We exiled God.
The mystics and the prophets do not speak of the ‘hidden’ God but of ‘hiding God.’ God’s hiding is a function; it is not God’s essence. It is when we humans break our Covenant with God that we drive God into hiding. God is not obscure; we have, in a real sense, hidden God from ourselves. God’s essence is not one of being hidden; God is a ‘hiding God, not a hidden God. God is waiting patiently for us to come and search; God is waiting to be invited into our lives. The direct effect of God hiding is the hardening of our heart and conscience (think about this idea while asking: ‘Who is my brother’ and ‘Who is my neighbor’).
Our task is to open the doors of our heart and soul to God; to welcome God into our very beings and to mend the Covenant that we have broken.
I remember playing hide-and-seek with my older brother (this was many years ago). I hid and waited patiently for my brother to come and find me. Time passed; more time passed and even more time passed. Finally I came out of hiding and found to my great dismay that my brother had simply left the house to be with his friend; he had not taken one step in order to seek me out. I remember running to my mother; eyes full of tears and complaining wildly.
God, too, says to me-you-us, ‘I hide, but there is no one to look for me!’ Will I choose to look for God’s hiding place today? Do I care, really, to search for God in my life, today? Do I choose to seek to find God residing within each person I meet along my way today? Do I choose to look deeply into the mirror and perhaps catch a glimpse of God hiding within my own soul? Do I dare to search for the hiding God? What are the consequences — intended and unintended — if I actually find God?
Searcher-Seeker 