Question: Why has God “disappeared” today?
Why has God “disappeared” from our modern society? Why has God been considered “irrelevant” to our human flourishing? Why has God been “kicked out” of having an influence on our culture?
Answer: It is our response to the “God-freedom problem.”
The “God-freedom problem” has deep roots that go all the way back to our 1st parents. After the diabolical suggestion of Satan of the original “God-freedom problem” in the Garden of Eden (see Gen 3:1-5), Adam and Eve thought that God’s prohibition to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil meant that God was somehow a rival to their freedom. After Adam and Eve abused their freedom and sinned against God, we can see that their act of “hiding” in the Garden was an attempt to make God “disappear” in their lives (see Gen 3:8).
Although every age has struggled with the “God-freedom problem” due to original sin, Bishop Barron notes some particular issues today that elevate this problem to the #1 issue of our time. What are these issues?
1st, due to the development of the metaphysics of univocity from Duns Scotus (1265-1308) and the spread of nominalism, we lost the notion of a metaphysics of participation, which formed the theoretical framework of the Thomistic model of the subordination of total causes. What does this mean? Rather than understand God as Being Itself and thus the 1st Cause of all positive reality found in ALL of our free acts in which we metaphysically participate as secondary causes, we view God as a being on the same causal dimension as us and thus in competition with our causal actions.
2nd, due to the development of voluntarism (Scotus again, in reaction against the presumed threat of naturalism), we made free will a sort of absolute, in which freedom is no longer the notable property of human action but rather the essential characteristic of the human person: “I am my freedom!” This restriction can be radical, as in Jean-Paul Sartre’s voluntarist atheism, in which the very existence of God must be denied as it is deemed incompatible with the affirmation of man’s freedom.
With these two powerful philosophical ideas radically shaping the “religion of the day,” that is, the particular set of beliefs and practices that our society today holds in order to provide a meaningful vision and narrative for life, some people have made God “disappear” by considering Him irrelevant (i.e. God is like a watchmaker who “wound up” the universe and is no longer involved & therefore no longer needed in society), while other people have made God “disappear” by considering Him a rival who needs to be forced out by popular vote (i.e. God is like a bully who set up all of these mean rules & commandments but now society has kicked out of having any more influence, as evidenced by “exclusive humanism“).
Q. Why has God “disappeared” in MY life?
Each of us needs the courage and vulnerability to ask this question and sit in silence to receive an answer. When I ask the question, “Why has God ‘disappeared’ in MY life?” two things come to mind…
1st: The comfort of Bad Habits.
To have God “appear” in my life, I need to overcome a bad habit of living without faith. Scripture tells us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). God gives us the gift of faith to use and develop into a habit that is meant to radically change the way we view the world. With that in mind, it is so easy to develop the bad habit of living without faith and failing to exercise all of those little acts of faith throughout the day… like pausing right now, even if it just for one second, to acknowledge God’s intimate and radical presence to my being… did you do it?
2nd: The fear of New Habits.
To have God appear in my life, I need to develop a new habit of living WITH faith. I need to continuously make acts of faith in what I hope for – God’s intimate presence, and be convicted of things not seen – God’s intimate presence. But like with any new habit, there is a fear of change. Will God take away something that I enjoy if I surrender my life totally to Him in every moment? Will God be a rival to what I think will make me happy? All of these questions arise in the silence of the heart in one form or another.
This is a start to the conversation. What about you?
Prodigal Catholic 
[…] Biblical Answer to the “god-freedom problem” that I discussed in the last post (go here for that) is the burning […]