Finding God in a fast-changing, shallow world

The 21st century creation story tells us that God is present in every one of the trillions and trillions of decisions the universe is making in its ongoing evolution. How then, do we experience God in today’s world that reflects this dazzling movement?

In medieval Europe, the culture was explicitly Christian. God was as easy to “see” as were the great cathedrals, filled with statues, paintings and mosaics that imaged heaven. For all practical purposes, church and state were one. In the newly found universities, theologians probed the depths of theology. At wayside shrines, peasants knelt and prayed. God was indeed “visible” everywhere.

Then the upheaval of the Reformation turned Christians against one another. The Renaissance that followed turned people’s attention away from the supernatural and toward the natural world. Modern science then presented the world with a picture of the universe as a giant machine. Many scientists looked at the machine and saw God “out there” beyond the machine. The notion was born that the more we learned scientifically, the more we pushed God out beyond the universe. The more we knew, the less we had to believe. Finally, the Enlightenment elevated science and reason over faith.

Some of the leading founders of our country were Deistic Christians who were educated in Enlightenment ideas. They believed in an absent God who created the universe and then withdrew to heaven, leaving us down here, “under God” to run the world ourselves. Church and state were separated. While personal morality was deemed very important, politics and economics would run our government. The way to our American form of secular society was opened.

Slowly, God grew more and more “invisible” in American society. For example, do today’s schools and universities educate students in the sciences and arts, intellectually preparing them both for careers and for appreciating humanity and the transcendent? Or do they narrowly train students to be merely “productive members” of a society that is militantly run by self-serving politics and economics? Or athletics? Look at the moral and spiritual tragedy unfolding at Penn State.

Today’s education, politics, science, economics and art, for all their magnificent contributions, all help shape our culture in a way that makes it difficult for us to “see” and experience God. Even our home life has become an obstacle; how many parents say they’re so busy working or running their children around from one activity to another that they haven’t time to “see” or experience God?

In the last century, philosopher Martin Heidegger noted that if God exists, he is known to us by his absence. His insight is still so valid that if we want to see and experience God in today’s world — as we surely must in order to live fully meaningful lives, and also because we are spiritually responsible to elevate and correct today’s society and culture in the grace of Christ — we must first look not into the world but into ourselves.

Here in space/time nobody sees or experiences God directly. In the midst of today’s noisy, fast-changing, shallow, frenzied world, we can see and experience God by looking clearly and deeply into ourselves and asking ourselves who we really are and where we really are going.

Here is one way. Notice that we are constantly moving toward a horizon that we will never reach. We can say, “If I had so-and-so I would be happy,” but in our heart of hearts we know that is not true. No matter how much we have or how much we know and understand, we are always moving toward a better and deeper fulfillment of ourselves. We can be out of school for years but we are still learning. Our hearts are always open to new aspects and depths of love for our family, friends, country and the world. If we look deeply and honestly, we will see that though we are limited, we are yearning for reality, truth, happiness and love that have no end. In our deep-set urge to move forward, grow and evolve as we move toward that fascinating horizon that we never reach, we will “see” and experience God’s presence and overflowing love.

We will understand that our desire for a good life in today’s world can only be fulfilled within the intentions of an infinitely loving God, who is attracting and spiritually empowering us to evolve by helping make ourselves and today’s world more luminously human in the grace of his world-transforming Spirit. And we will see that the clearest sight of God we enjoy is the sight of Jesus Christ, whose 21st century, American expressions we are.

Anthony T. Massimini of Woolwich holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. He can be reached at massimini7@gmail.com