The Cold Shock of Departure

Illustration by Paul Mathers

One of the accusations against classical theism is that an absolutely independent God offers no relationship with us. He is too Other, too remote. But I have found that otherness is a problem in our human relationships too.

Shayna was in the hospital unresponsive for five days. While my son Dylan waited for his girlfriend to wake up, I learned something painful about how separate Dylan is from me. He is other. His otherness became real to me at one moment in particular.

The medical team had given a report about the severity of Shayna’s injuries, saying there was nothing they could do for her. I arrived at the hospital soon after to find Dylan remaining alone in the ICU conference room, one of those sterile, gray places where countless people have heard grievous news. I joined him and we sat in silence for a long time.

A father protects his son. A father teaches, comforts, and encourages his son. But sitting there, I was helpless. I could not protect him from what had happened to his girlfriend. I didn’t know what was going on inside him. There was nothing encouraging to say. I would not be able to join him on the path of grieving that I sensed was ahead of him. His experiences were isolating him from me in profound ways. I could only sit there, unable to reach him.

Bridget and I did not raise our boys to be extensions of us.

We have always known that they are unique individuals with their own being. Our privilege of being their parents gave us intimacy with them. We have knowledge of them that no one else has. Yet, we didn’t let ourselves be tricked into thinking that we participated in their being somehow. I have observed parents captured by a fantasy of unity with their children, and the results are disastrous. That fantasy reduces to parental control.

Our method of parenting was to discover what God had put inside them and to nurture it according to their own way of being. Trying to dominate them, change their nature, or extort admission into their inner lives did not seem wise.

Relationship is not total unity. Relationship is a connection outside each of us. We bring our unique qualities to that connection. So, we do share relationship with our sons even though we don’t participate in their being. The relationship is objective, something that we respond to with subjective feelings but cannot control.

Even so, that moment in the conference room when Dylan was unreachable—when my inner life felt the chasm of experience that separated me from his inner life—was the cold shock of departure. It was not something that he did to me, or that I did to myself. It was reality.

When we speak of relationship with God, we sometimes have the same fantasy of unity that we have about human beings. We think that we share being, the whole inner space of feelings and thoughts, treating one person as an extension of another.

But our relationship with God is just as objective as our relationship with human beings. We share a connection with him. We do not share being.

Consider how infinite the differences are between our being and God’s.

He is dependent on nothing for life. We are completely dependent. He is simple, not composed of parts. We are complex, an intricate web of components. We are bound by time, while God is utterly apart from time. We are constrained by location in space, while he is infinitely immense. God is the Creator. We are creatures.

We are separate from God and cannot share his being. Even the attributes of his that we do share are limited and dependent. Our wisdom, knowledge, reason, and freedom all change over time, sometimes growing, sometimes diminishing. God’s own wisdom, knowledge, reason, and freedom are simply him. They do not change.

This reality can seem cold. But the truth of our shared space with God can give a profound comfort when we feel isolated. He reaches us with direct, immersive, clear communication.

My relationship with my sons grows through self-disclosure. Though we are distinct, we can close the distance by talking with each other and taking time to listen. Dylan revealed to me many of the things that were happening inside him while Shayna was in the hospital. But he did that when he was ready and in his way. When he did, our shared connection grew.

In the same way, God does not stay distant. He discloses his being to me in ways that I can understand, revealing his unchanging essence in my moments. For instance, the Holy Spirit takes parts of the Bible—sometimes whole passages—and lays it alongside my experience. He reveals himself in other ways: birdsong, the sound of water, the color of leaves and grass, or the touch of a loved one. Every created thing discloses his invisible qualities, though no created thing is his being itself.

God communicates himself to me through these things. I can see him at work in time, even though he is beyond time. 

One of the biggest barriers to knowing God is our lust for control over others.

Maybe we raise our children by extortion, trying to control their inner being through fear. Maybe we coerce friends and loved ones into mouthing the reassurances we want. Repeatedly. Maybe we pester, poke, and nag until a person “opens up.”

Our refusal to accept limits on how we relate to others is the very thing that incapacitates us in relating to God. We do not want him as he is because we cannot control him as he is. Instead, we make idols—fantasy gods that we are fully able to understand and manipulate.

Ultimately, our relationship with God is founded on his holiness, the truth that the creatures in his presence constantly cry out.

In Isaiah 6:3, they say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” The root idea of holiness is separation. God is infinitely separate from us in his being. Yet the entire created order—including every finite thing—is full of his glory.

In Revelation 4:8, the creatures say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” The infinitely separated God is not contained by time. Yet, we are in his throne room, where he discloses his nature in our moments.

The way we deepen our connection to him is by expressing adoration. We are worshipers.

Our illustrator is Paul Mathers. Head over to his Instagram @ticklemebrahms and check out his happy-making drawings!