Dealing with Divine Absence by Jason Koon

Dealing with Divine Absence

**Jason Koon**

Day 1 of 4: It’s Not Your Fault

(God) makes the sun rise on both good and bad people. And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong.
Matthew 5:45 (CEV)
If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling! I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would find out what he would answer me and consider what he would say to me. Would he vigorously oppose me? No, he would not press charges against me. There the upright can establish their innocence before him, and there I would be delivered forever from my judge. “But if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him. When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.
Job 23:3-9 (NIV)

I wish I had the courage of Job. Not his patience — his ability to face adversity (I hope I’ll never need that). I wish I had the courage to hold onto what I know to be true about myself despite how I sometimes feel.

As bad as chapters one and two were for Job – losing his family, his livestock, and his health – it just keeps going downhill. In verse 11, his three “friends” show up to “console” him with page after page of arduous speeches tying his suffering to some secret sin he must have been harboring, then badgering him to repent of whatever he had done to anger God.

You can’t blame them. In the ancient world that produced the book of Job, everything in your life resulted from either pleasing the gods or pissing them off. In this world, if you were living your best life now, it must have been because of your stellar moral character. If you were suffering, however, you must have deserved it.

For most people, deconstruction is part of growing up, but for me, it was a mid-life crisis. For twenty years, I was a conservative Southern Baptist Pastor. Then, one day, it just started happening. I remember 2016 — watching as, one-by-one, the Christians around me exchanged “love thy neighbor” and “welcome the stranger” for “build the wall” and “grab ‘em by the you-know-what.” And then the wheels began to fall off.

Soon it was the gay friend who became a Christian but didn’t magically stop being gay. Then it was the silliness of a 6000-year-old earth, and Noah forgetting to load the dinosaurs onto the ark, or Jonah penning his bestseller in the belly of a giant whale. Then, what do I do with antiquated gender norms and cultural hang-ups about sexuality? How do I deal with what Christians say about immigrants and race? Everything was crashing down like a Jenga tower.

But what do you do when you’re the pastor? I had been preaching about people like this for 20 years, warning about the dangers of this kind of thinking, and now I’m the one who can no longer buy the party line? I felt like I was losing my faith. Some weeks, I’d get up to preach on a Sunday morning and then spend the next six days wondering if I even still believed in God.

Deconstruction is an intensely lonely experience, and often, the isolation is mainly self-imposed. I didn’t have a chorus of condemning voices sitting in my living room like Job did. My voices were coming from inside my own head. Just trust and obey. Stop asking so many questions. How could you let yourself go this far? Are you even a Christian anymore?

Fortunately, I eventually found out I wasn’t alone. From former church members to old friends and new acquaintances, I learned that there are thousands — perhaps millions — of people just like me for whom the simplicity of the old, simple, Sunday School answers doesn’t land anymore.

I learned that my isolation had primarily been self-imposed – a product of the voices in my head. Sure, I’ve lost a few friends along the way, but as I distance myself from the voices in my head and begin to explore the new landscape of faith around me, I’m learning that the love of God runs far deeper than I ever imagined. I’m seeing that the Kingdom of God is far more expansive than I ever dreamed. God is still there. I’m still a Christian; my faith is just going to have to look different than it did before.

In what ways have voices from inside your own mind hindered you from pursuing faith?
What is one specific step you can take to replace old condemning voices with new life-affirming thoughts?

Almighty God, thank you for a faith that is more expansive than we could ever imagine and divine love that runs deeper than we’ve ever hoped. Help us to rest in the knowledge that there is space for us at your table.

Jason Koon (he/him)

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