The Light of His Presence

Why is it one sometimes senses God’s presence more palpably in a special environment?
People do differ on how they relate to God most powerfully. I recall a sermon series by pastor David Midwood on the various pathways to God. For some it is through prayer. For others it’s activity—doing a service for others in God’s name. Or it may be through music and the arts, and so forth.
Being one whose primary orientation to life is through ideas, I find awareness of God difficult. Often I envy those who seem close to God without any apparent effort—they breathe God in as easily as their lungs take in air.
But when I am in a close-knit believing community, as I have been the last few days, God seems to “be there” in an almost palpable way. For me, orientated to reality mostly by intellect, this is refreshing.
As Pascal and others have noted, it is hard to find God by using your head. Proving God exists simply gets you to another idea of God, not to God himself. God is not an idea, even though we humans all have some idea about him.
(Now before you tune me out, give me another few lines, please.)
As you likely know, I have been teaching philosophy for forty years. Philosophy tries to give an intellectual formulation to life—a worldview. A worldview is a set of ideas that makes sense by explaining what is real and what our place is in that reality. A good worldview provides a reasonable, though incomplete, understanding of the human condition enabling us to make sense out of our life experience.
Some can live successfully never thinking about the worldview that lies under their outlook on life, guiding them in their decisions. They just live. They don’t much think about living. That sounds appealing to me when ideas constantly whirl around in my head.
But in philosophy classes we have to bring all this to the surface so we can look at it and make adjustments. Sort of like the surgeon who pulls half your guts out to have a look and do repairs. Only he puts you under so you are not aware of what he is doing. Worldview repair requires you operate on yourself—consciously. Painful!
(Are you still with me? I know I’ve lost most of you by now. Ah well. C’est la vie.)
The biggest question humans ask has to do with God. If God is, that has got to be the ultimate reality that frames everything else. If God is not, then everything is on a different footing. So how do we know?
Many of my online students are skeptical of God’s existence because “no one can prove” God exists. The proof they are referring to usually is some kind of tangible proof, scientific proof. They would believe if they could see God. Absent that, God is just an idea we have imagined for some reason—a crutch in a scary world, a leftover from our ancestors’ superstition—that sort of thing.
(Now be patient. I will pull this all together, I promise. But you have to hang in there with the other 20% who are still pulling on the oars, 80% having clicked off to watch TV.)
To ask to see God is like asking to hear a color. It doesn’t make any sense to come at it that way.
God (if God exists) is not a physical thing (corporeal as philosophers would say). God is an incorporeal spiritual reality. He has no size or weight, for example, any more than the thoughts you are now thinking have size or weight. (Learning lots of new ideas does not make you gain weight, even though we speak of heavy thoughts.) So of course we cannot see God as we see the moon or “see” an atom.
God is known through spiritual awareness. This is tough for many of us who live in a materialist society. (Jings! As I wrote the last sentence the electricity went out here! Scared me, too. I felt for a second like the kid who kicked the light pole in New York City the same instant that the famed blackout of the entire northeast USA occurred back in 1970-something. “What have I done?” Thank God for laptops! And sunlight. Although we haven’t gotten God into our worldview yet.)
Where was I? Oh, yes.
God can only be experienced by spiritual apprehension, not sensory experience.
We know God as we know the mind and heart of another person. We cannot “see” another person, only their skin, so to speak. While the senses may be the medium through which we enter into their presence (words spoken, gestures seen), who they are cannot be a physical “thing.” (Here come the lights back on! Is Someone playing games with me? Cut it out!)
No one can see an idea. Even though ideas must be shared through some physical medium—perhaps bytes or marks on a page, the bytes and marks are not the idea. To ask to see the idea with your eyes as you see the marks of writing on this page is silly. Your eyes see the marks that make up the words but when you “see” what I mean (the ideas) it’s a different kind of seeing. A book has no mental content as such. The story is apprehended by your mind. You cannot see the story by peeking into the book’s pages. You have to grasp the story in a “spiritual” sense. “Romeo and Juliet” exist even though no one ever spoke with them physically.
Here’s what I am driving at.
God has made himself known to me here in north India in a fresh way. He is spirit—a person who exists in himself. And God exists also in those whom he indwells. Not all of God, of course, for God is infinite in his immensity, as theologians phrase it. But God is there in the hearts of those who love him, just as air exists in those who breathe.
(Those blasted lights just went out again. Aaaargh! I can no longer see my notes. But I can still “see” my train of thought.)
So if one wishes to experience God, he opens himself to God by spiritual means. Prayer/meditation is perhaps the standard avenue to God.
For me, however, I find I am in the real presence of God by visiting him in this community of his people. This theological college, hard by the foothills of the Himalayas, has some 300 souls concentrated in a compact five acres of land. All of them love God and are filled with the Holy Spirit of God. I am experiencing God through this high dosage 100-proof distillation of the life of Jesus in the hearts of his people here. The invisible Christ is mediated through the visible Body of Christ in this place. It is not the entire body of Christ, but it is Christ nonetheless, similar to my connection to all earth’s atmosphere through the tiny sample that I breathe.
In any healthy portion of the Christ-community the reality of God is experienced. God dwells in the hearts of his people, just as the ancient prophet observed millennia ago. But I say “healthy” because the body of Christ on earth is a work in progress and suffers spiritual maladies. Some of these are hardly noticeable to us, sort of like when we have the sniffles. Others are moribund, torn by deadly conflict that infects the community in question. In fact, some such congregations are pruned away in the end-amputated, if you will.
I know that this community of Christians at New Theological College, as every other Christian community, is not without impurities. It has members who are in process, who are more in doubt than indwelt. They hopefully are seeking. But they may not be there yet.
Notwithstanding, if my philosophy student wants to “see” God, go to a community like this one, where God’s Spirit is dwelling. Focus not on the imperfections or on those who are mostly still searching for a relationship with God. When you visit a church look at those who have walked a long time in the presence of God. Listen to their conversations one with another.
You will see and hear God’s presence, though not with perfect clarity. There will be static in the transmission. But you will experience God. You will see. You will hear. And through the medium of sight and sound you will become aware of God, who is seeking you out all the while. But you must be sincere, not cynical. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart—they shall see God.”
(The lights just switched on again as I was typing those last thoughts! Hmmm...)
So here I am in an empty house on a quiet Saturday, alone with God in a semi-monastic setting, set apart from the bustling world just a few miles downhill. It is a gender-blender monastery, because the sisters and brothers live in the same community. Many of the older ones are married and have children. All are walking in God.
It's a bit like the concentration of energy in a sports arena. Almost everyone is a fan of the team and the team spirit can be overwhelming. As we say, you can almost cut it with a knife.
It’s refreshing for person like me to “see” God’s presence so manifest here. I close my eyes and can sense the reality of God’s nearness.
Thus we taste and see that the Lord is good. Someday we shall see our Lord and God “face to face.” We shall know him fully even as we are fully known by him.
Meanwhile we treasure days like this when God is not behind the clouds of our often-stormy lives but shining brightly on us.