Life With/out God
A little over a year ago I finished reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, which I found to be quite profound and even moving. So much of what Bonhoeffer wrote in that prison cell during World War II seems perfectly relevant for today. And so much of what Bonhoeffer wrote resonates with my own struggle to forge a life of faith and faithfulness. Many passages caught my attention but I think the following portion has remained with me more than any other:
And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur (even if there were no God). And this is just what we do recognize – before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15.34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God.
The last line of this excerpt serves as the inspiration for this new blog. More and more I find that the great task before me is to continually discover how I might live my life with and without God. This life with/out God, in the sense Bonhoeffer so passionately expresses, is what I long for and desire.
But what exactly does this mean? And how does it transfer into how I live my life? These are the questions that have been on my mind for much of the past year. And as I’ve read such authors as Peter Rollins, John Caputo, Gordon Atkinson, Barry Taylor, and Chaim Potok, I keep returning to these questions, and this desire to live a passionate life with/out God.
I can understand if this concept of living a life with/out God is confusing and even offensive. I acknowledge this is not a common way to speak of a life of faith, but I feel my life has brought me here and now I must struggle to understand the meaning of what has happened, where I am, and how I can live in this place - how I might live a life of faith and faithfulness in this place. So, among many other less profound topics, this is what I hope to explore with this new blog. I hope a few of you might find it beneficial to join me and contribute to the discussion.
