WHEN FEELING DOWN AND OUT
The natural temptation is to try to get out of loneliness by plunging ourselves into busyness, distractions, amusements, and social life with the hope of fooling ourselves about our own despair. Part of that too is the tendency to see our emptiness and frustration as a sign that there isn’t any God. Emptiness and chaos can easily cause us to doubt.
But, says Rahner, in this kind of despair we are confusing the true God with the God of our own imaginings. The God of our imaginations, rightly, does not exist. But God is not as we imagine him to be, namely, “the God of earthly security, the God of salvation from life’s disappointments, the God of life insurance, the God who takes care so that children never cry and that justice marches upon the earth, the God who transforms earth’s laments, the God who doesn’t let human love end up in disappointment.” That God doesn’t exist.
Tough words, but true. When we break down, it’s not the real God we despair of, but only God as we imagined him. What we feel in emptiness is not the death of God but rather the space within which God can be born. What loneliness and despair deprive us of is not God, but our illusions about God. The finite, not the infinite, is what’s taken from us.
At the end of the day our task is to recognize that God is in the silence, the frustration, the loneliness, the emptiness. Our job is to become aware of this.
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