my god is a predator

He has come again, he thought with terror; he is all around me and beneath my feet and above my head….

Bowing his head, he waited. the air was mute, immobile; the light – apparently naive and harmless – played on the wall opposite him, and on the cane lathed ceiling. I won't open my mouth, he decided within himself. I won't breathe a word. Perhaps he will take pity on me and leave.

But as he made this decision, his lips parted and spoke. His voice full of grievance. "Why do you draw my blood? Why are you angry? How long are you going to pursue me?"

He stopped. Bent over, his mouth open, the hairs of his head standing on end and his eyes full of fear, he listened….

At first there was nothing; the air motionless, silent. But then, suddenly, someone above his head was pseaking to him. He cocked his ear and heard – heard, and shook his head violently, continually, as though saying No! No! No!

Finally he too opened his mouth. His voice no longer trembled. "I can't! I'm illiterate, an idler, afraid of everything. I love good food, wine, laughter. I want to marry, to have children…. Leave me alone!"

I went to college, I studied religion. I went to seminary to be a minister. I learned a lot, changed a lot, and found that I was not ready for that kind of life. I tried to be ordained and have a full time job in the "real world" just to complete that process. I failed. And I ran. I did what I desired to do without the specter of God looming above my head like a ghost. I ignored it. Escaped it. I fled it as if God was cordoned off in a place in the universe from which I could run. I denied God's existence, stop caring about God as much as possible, and decided to live my life ethically, but in the bliss of knowing God was finally dead.

I began talking with atheists. There I had to capitulate to atheism or defend my very weak and vulnerable faith. I found myself in the midst of people who believed that God is a mass delusion and that people who believe in God should be psychologically treated. God found me there stranded on an island of belief weakened by fear in the middle of a sea of atheists who could not understand why I continued to believe in God at all. I began to believe again not among believers, but through the voices of the most adamant non-believers I had ever encountered. I tried to kill God, but I forgot about the resurrection. I was indeed delusional, but from my disbelief.

Even though God plucked me from my own paradoxical delusion, I still tried to run. Finding escape in music, wine, books, my job, and all things that could keep God as an object to control, I began to feel more alienated from myself. God continued to pursue me knowing that at some point my running would exhaust me. The predator continued to pursue its prey.

When we do not allow ourselves to be absorbed in God's grace and deny our calling, God becomes something not full of hope and nourishment, but a predator that haunts us until we submit. My God is a predator, eager to tear into my flesh for disobedience and irrational fear. The only thing to save me from judgment is grace that transforms that judgment into love. This is a love that hurts. But it is not God who hurts me, it is only myself running from the one thing to complete my already very full life.

I don't want God to call me to do anything. I want to live my life and enjoy it as it is, without some pesky deity ruining what I have. But it is not God who is ruining what I have, it is only me every time I run and every time I try to hide in a selfish attempt to be something I am not. My God is a predator because that is the God I have made for myself. I am Augustine's restless heart. I am Kierkegaard's despair; a self that is not a self until it rests transparently in the power that established it. I am the hunted hopelessly running from the one thing to finish the work that was begun in me. I need to run toward my predator and allow it to kill me so that I may live again.

Just the other day (Mary) had fallen at (her brother-in-law the old rabbi's) feet and complained:

"You heal strangers but you do not want to heal my son."

The rabbi shook his head. "Mary, your boy isn't being tormented by a devil; it's not a devil, it's God – so what can I do?"

"Is there a cure?" the wretched mother asked.

"It's God I tell you. No there is no cure."

"Why does he torment him?"

The old exorcist sighed but did not answer.

"Why does he torment him?" the mother asked again.

"Because he loves him," the old rabbi replied.

May a wise rabbi offer me the wisdom to turn me to my predator that it may become my life giving healer and source of hope.

Quotes from Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ

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