Finding Ourselves and Losing God

According to the Bible, we started out with no problems about God. When he made the first people, they understood what he had given them - paradise and unbridled access to him, the Ultimate One. Sure, we didn't know a lot of things, but humanity back then saw itself as free, fulfilled, happy.

Then along came the temptor, who gave them the notion that they were actually slaves who needed liberation. "Defy him," the temptor said. "You could be as powerful as he is." At least that's what the first couple of chapters of the Bible tell us, and I haven't seen a better explanation for why all of us feel like we've lost something, that we've become disconnected from ultimate reality.

Problem is that God wasn't amused by the rebellion. He passed judgment on the first humans, and cut us off. That seems pretty vindictive, if we understand it from our viewpoint, as rebels.

So now we're stuck with competing tensions - we want our independence, but we long to find God. Is this a contradiction?

Searching for God

I am exposed. The air is cold on my skin, and I am crying, more with the shock of my exit than out of any real pain. I am most aware of the harshness of it all, the angry light that I once knew only as a muted glow, the assorted noises of strangers piercing deep into my soul.

I am terrified, a child of darkness and warmth thrust into a place not of my choosing, an alien world that gives every appearance of wanting to attack me, hurt me, make me suffer.

I am alone. Though there are other people in the room, though they hold me close, I am not a part of them nor they of me. There was a time, in the world of darkness and warmth, when there was no separation, no fear, no loneliness. There was a time when I knew I was safe, and loved, and cared for.

But all of that is gone, and I am exposed, terrified, alone. For the rest of my life, I will search for what I have lost.

I am born.

And it will not be long before I begin to understand that separation from the womb, for all its trauma, is less significant than separation from God. If he is Creator, then the heart of my longing for connectedness has to be focused on the One to whom we are ultimately to be connected.

So why does he hide himself? Why the separation? Why the darkness that seems to shroud him, the questions about what he is up to, the suspicions that maybe he could have made things better for us?

I'm interested in exploring this as much as anyone. That's why I wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Meaning of Everything. I following posts, I want to dig further into what we know of God.