Let God be God

I had an interesting discussion the other night. Among other things the group talked briefly about God and our relationship with God. Several of the people were struggling with their relationship with God and with their belief in God. We didn’t pursue the topic at any length. Our discussion was focused in other areas but from other discussions recently and personal experience it would seem this is a recurring topic for most of us at various times in our lives. For some of us (me!) the struggle seems to be more constant than recurring.

I feel like one particular period was an apex or watershed. I was in my late twenties, recently had dropped out of college for the second time and was working a manufacturing job; living alone, few acquaintances, no close friends. I had questioned the existence of God, tried to grasp the meaning of such an entity if it did exist, struggled to understand what the characteristics of this something could possibly be in the midst of my mostly dark impressions of life, humanity, perceived reality. I’ll spare you the details of the dark and bloody struggle but it was of epic Greek proportions … at least in my own mind.

In the end I simply decided God is. I came to realize that for me, the struggle was between my previously un-admitted but definite certainty that something more than me was and my inability to ‘fit’ that something into any structure of knowing, any pattern of logic, any consistent belief system. There was more than logic and perception, physical reality and the finitude of everything of which I was certain. But I could not fit that more into a systematic whole and make sense of it and my world understanding. And I gave up. I quit trying to define this more, and decided that I just had to let it be. I had to let God be God. Understanding it was not possible but some measure of peace could only be gained if I admitted that it was.

Since that time I’ve come back to an ongoing effort to try to understand, to know. That effort seems to see little pieces of light at times, most times is overwhelmed. But that effort is grounded in an unshakeable belief in ‘God is.’ In the Hebrew story God tells Moses ‘I am.’ Actually the Hebrew words could be translated. “I am that I am” or “I shall be that I am” or “I am that I shall be” or “I shall be that I shall be.” Timeless, constant, infinite, now and more. And yet Simple.

In these last few years, I have gained most by being still. I still delight in struggling to put it into words, I agonize at trying to understand, I obsess with how to fit the pieces together, I work at being me. But I return to being present, open, loving, cognizant of this Presence. With Augustine, ‘My heart is restless until I rest in thee.’ He didn’t say ‘Until I know thee.” The restlessness is good. It keeps us open before the infinite. Like Michael Himes says in “Doing the Truth in Love”, if ever we are totally at peace in this lifetime, if we are confident that we have found God then we may be most certain that we have found an idol, an imperfect and partial substitution for God.

God is. Let God be God.