Presence…God has to be present in order to influence change. If God were not present – absent – our experience of life would be radically different.
Strangely, presence and absence can be equally difficult to recognize, as sensing what they feel like is also elusive. That makes this an even more difficult reflection.
We cannot always feel the presence of something or someone even when we know they are in close proximity, and predicting what their absence will feel like is nearly impossible. Describing presence and absence requires our awareness to begin with, and then acuity of perception that registers emotional and physical response to that presence or absence.
No one that I know of is constantly aware of God’s presence.
People whose spirituality seems credible to me, trust in God’s presence most of the time but have a sensation of that presence only occasionally – sometimes rarely. Conversely, many of those same people with a pervasive spiritual awareness also describe enduring periods of God’s
absence. Their trust in God allows them to frame such unholy moments as a spiritual tunnel or dark night of the soul, and they believe these experiences to be only momentary and utterly about the deadening of their own receptors rather the suspension of God’s presence.
If God left the scene completely, once and for all, what would life for humans be like? Would it be any different than it is now?
This is where I need to apologize to my friends and family who are atheists. The lens through which I experience life includes the ever-presence of God; I also assume that you experience the benefits of God’s presence without knowing it. So I apologize to atheists because knowing what I know, this may seem condescending or arrogant.
Truly, I do not mean I know something that you don’t, in the usual kind of Christian evangelical way. Rather, I mean it in the sense that radio waves, microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet, and gamma rays surround us without our routine awareness, and that God is present in the field around us as well. The presence of the holy, whether we live in awareness of it or not, influences our experience and alters our capacity for living. This is an experiential leap that changes the field of vision between believers and nonbelievers but it need not include any kind of moral or value judgment.
I mention that distinction because if we say God’s presence is influential and that God’s absence would alter life as we know it, then we have to accept that God’s presence also utterly influences the experience of everyone regardless of his or her personal awareness of God. Those who live life without an awareness of God nonetheless have their experience of life dramatically altered because of God’s presence. If this is true, it is also true that if God fled the scene then everyone’s experience of life would be radically changed – no one, and nothing, would be unaffected.
So what would happen if God left? Whether it was out of anger, frustration, or disinterest, what would change about life as we know it? (I not even certain that God can leave the scene, but that is another ineffable question).
What came to mind for me was J. K. Rowling’s description of “Dementors” in her Harry Potter series. I know it is a hazardous strategy to use an example from fantasy when describing a spiritual reality, but then those who view God and spirituality as fantasy have dismissed this already.
“Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them. Even Muggles (non-magical people) feel their presence, though they can’t see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself — soul-less and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life…You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you’ll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no . . . anything. There’s no chance at all of recovery. You’ll just — exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever . . . lost.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Life without the presence of God would, I predict but cannot prove, be an empty-feeling existence. I’m not sure whether we would still experience pleasure but I feel certain we would not experience joy.
The absence of God would remove unknown and unforeseen elements in the field around us that would remove warmth generated between people who not only love each other but also are devoted to one another. Like that sappy old movie, “It’s a wonderful life,” there is no way for us to know or predict all of the consequences to existence if the pervasive presence of God was suddenly removed.
We may not feel God at any given moment. We may not perceive the presence of God in the field around us. But I suspect that if God was truly absent we would be sunken, sullen creatures gnawing on scraps and clinging to existence with survival the only purpose and meaning. We all know supremely narcissistic people; now imagine if that were the only kind of people that existed? Perhaps that is the best image for what happens if God walks away.
Yes, the consequences of human evil are with us everywhere – probably no more so today than 
yesterday but current technology is inflating our awareness of it and the actual hazards of it. The presence of God does not take away death, mayhem, or human evil and yet the pervasive influence of God’s presence in our midst makes possible both hope and our step by step remediation of evil.
Reflecting on Nothing while hunting
“In a field/ I am the absence of field”, writes Poet Mark Strand in “Making Things Whole”. I thought about these lines all week as I stood in the Alabama woods. “The field” is quite literally what I am observing, in its every detail. I am very definitely part of the scene. I can see my camo-clad legs and booted feet, and am acutely aware of every twitch of nerves, sensation of heat or cold, and every decision to move, however slightly. In what sense am I “an absence?” I suppose it is the “I” that does the observing, the “platform” from which the field is observed and known as a field. I alone (as far as can be known) can detach myself from the scene, wander forward and backward in time, imagine this place as it will be when I have left it. I can turn inward and focus upon this “I”, but cannot get “behind” it to observe “it” because “it” is always where I am. Can it be called an “it” at all? I seem to be a “nothing”, a “no it”, perched on the edge of the field, immersed in the field, inhabiting the field, but not the field. “In the field/I am the absence of field.”
The no-thing that I seem to be is what connects me to the no-thing that I invoke and seek in the woods. “God” is the “I” that witnesses the field I inhabit, the field I am not. “Wherever I am/ I am the thing that is missing.” God is the missing “thing” in every field, every scene, the unobservable observer, receding before every effort to turn back and see, the ubiquitous absence, our companion in nothingness.
Either I have to do more hunting or you need to do less…but even so, I think I get it!