Running from the Void

A few Sundays back we had a guest speaker at our church named Pete Rollins. I enjoyed listening to him, though I cannot say I was truly amazed at anything he said. He did manage to name-drop several authors during his talk which allowed me to conjecture that he might have known what he was talking about. And, his talk did initiate a small debate about the nature of our desire for God. The gist was essentially that we have to seek God purely for himself, and that whatever ulterior motives we amend to this reason will ultimately keep us from God.

This maxim was offered in the context of a conversation on nihilism. Mr. Rollins point was that if we seek God as an escape from nihilism, we are really seeking to alleviate our fear and as such will miss God. He will not take it upon himself as a great honor to help ground our otherwise godless lives by infusing them with meaning. If we are seeking God to escape meaninglessness, our main focus is on meaning and not God.

This could apply to any number of things we expect God to do for us. God is not in the services industry though we often would like to assume he is. This lead to Rollins' idea that we should include nihilism as a part Lent. He said it partially joking, but myself and several others took it as the best idea he offered all night.

Later one friend objected that no one ever actually achieves such pure intentions in seeking God. We all have a muddled variety of intentions, and the idea that we can distill out the one's which are simply for God's own sake is too idealistic. Personally, I think it all comes back to the question of what kind of God do we believe in? I agree that perhaps a majority of people believe in God because he fulfills their needs in one way or another. Yet this is precisely what many philosophers have, for centuries now, critiqued as a human projection. If the God we profess conveniently happens to tie it all together for us and fill in all or our gaps of understanding, then is it not just as likely that we have invented him for this purpose as the idea that we were created with these needs already in place?

I think meaning is ultimately a function of the human psyche. We use meaning to give our lives a narrative and help us assign value to our experiences. I'm not convinced that meaning as such is a metaphysical reality somehow attached to our here and now. In short, I agree that God is often vital for us to find meaning in our lives, but I'm fairly confident that we create this meaning based on our experience of God; not the other way around. In other words, God does not have a single narrative which assigns us meaning when we gain a fleeting glimpse of it. Rather, we create meaning, and God is the great Other which mysteriously guides us as we fluidly determine our own narrative.

This is why the idea of acknowledging nihilism in church does not bother me. The experience of emptiness and nothingness ultimately reflects back on the human psyche, but not particularly on God. The experience of nullity is a valid experience that I do not believe can be escaped or avoided, but only transcended. Perhaps not for all of us, as my friend pointed out in his objections. There are plenty of people getting by just fine not worrying about such things. Yet, for myself and many others, running from nihilism only seems to testify to the fact that it is true.

I have found that if we are relying on God to be the source of meaning, we are expecting him to exist for the purpose of assuaging our fears and helping us find contentment. Certainly God can be a part of these human drives, but we should not expect him to fulfill them 'from the outside'. If we await some exterior gift of meaning we will ultimately be either disappointed or deluded as many a cult leader has been. Meaning is our responsibility, and as such, based on the frailty of human nature, the experience of nihilism is valid and common. Yet, hopefully it is something that we, as members of communities who persevere, can find grace to go through and surpass.

If meaning is actually a function of the human mind, then it would seem that all narratives are somehow cheapened, and that the values which structure our societies are potentially compromised. As one friend of mine commented, "Nihilism for Lent? It just wouldn't matter if we did or if we didn't." Yet, I find that just as many people who have never had a nihilistic thought in their lives and are fully convinced their own narrative is absolute still live in ways that make a mockery of their purported 'meaning'. There is certainly a level at which theists can live out a praxis of nihilism regardless of what they proclaim they believe. Just the same I think that many people who have declared the universe to be void of meaning are still drawn toward a sort of ethical action which "adds meaning to their lives". It's as though acting out meaningfully in some valid sense creates that which they thought was lost or nonexistent.

In any case, I don't think we can simply avoid the issue. Nihilism is one of several dead elephants polluting the air of our sanctuaries and worship services, and less and less people will find Christianity worthwhile until we do something about the stench. The logical first step would simply be to acknowledge it. The second might be to face our fear of it soberly and not expect God to immediately step in and palliate our discomfort.