Dad,
You say you’ve heard the God of love speak in a thousand voices. To me he spoke first through books and through the world. You always tell this story about how, when I was little, I once walked outside and said “thank you” to the sun for shining on me. I was too young then to remember that moment now, but I recognize it. I recognize the little boy in that story as essentially me—the persistent core of who I am, untouched by everything else that time can change.
Even before I realized it consciously, the world has always felt to me like it’s filled with conscious presence, with life. So when I read the Bible for the first time, I wouldn’t say I was persuaded exactly—my experience was, again, one of recognition. The character of Jesus who walks through the pages of the gospels, the character of God that suffuses the world of the Old Testament: I met this character and thought, that’s him. That’s the guy I was ultimately talking to when I thanked the sun for shining.
I think there are decent arguments for the existence of God. But I don’t think God wants to compel us to “accept” him—that word has always seemed to me like the wrong one. It’s drab and begrudging, as if God were the solution to a math problem we’ve been doing wrong. Instead I think he wants us to learn to recognize him, like an old friend. “It was you, all along.”
For that, not only does God have to be fully human: so do we. We need the full freedom to operate honestly, not just with our minds but with our hearts also. I think we all feel pressure nowadays to shut off various parts of ourselves. We pretend we have no doubts about our politics so that our opponents can’t take advantage of them. Or we pretend our religion fixes all our problems. I don’t think these routines are as convincing as we imagine—they don’t make our politics, or our religion, look any better, and they don’t make us any more alive.
So here’s my question for us. We are both aiming at a living relationship with God that doesn’t shut us off from any part of ourselves or from reality. We want a faith that does the opposite, that opens the channels and the floodgates of life. But how do you tell the difference? How do you know you’re thanking the guy that made the sun, instead of just falling for that old canard of worshipping the sun? How do you learn to recognize the living God?
Most importantly, can we do it with cigars? Nashville is bitterly cold right now, which makes indoor smoking the only option. Thankfully the indoor smoking places are also the ones with alcohol. See you there.
Spencer (known in the Klavan household, for reasons that have never been remotely clear to me, as “the Wigwam”)
Thank you for today's letter. I really resonated with your perspective on recognizing God.
You say, 'Instead I think he wants us to learn to recognize him, like an old friend. “It was you, all along.”'
I truly have had this experience in my life. More than once I have been pulled away from my close relationship from God and then find myself right back here in this moment again. In the arms of an old friend.
Spencer and Andrew,
First of all, I apologize for the damage I do to your grammar, as I am writing in a language that is not mine and, as you can see, it is not quite yours either.
Secondly, forgive me for writing and taking part in this conversation between father and son, but the familiarity with both of your ideas, from reading your books and listening to your podcasts, creates this false sense of closeness that takes a nosy like me to pry into an epistolary conversation that should just be read and savored.
That image of thanking the sun for shining is a beautiful way of recognizing what the italian poet Mario Luzi calls "the quiet strength of things" (la forza tranquilla delle cose). The God that speaks in a thousand voices speaks quietly though his creation, in the still small voice that Elijah heard.
Luzi's poem refers to the standing trees, the waters, the adventurous clouds there on the mountains. "The being glorifies itself, shines of finiteness. It is."
Contrary to the liberal protestant theology that rejects the possibility of the "analogia entis", I believe that analogia entis is all the human mind and the human heart ever do.
Again, sorry for the long intromission. Here's Luzi's great poem (It talks about summer, so it may be useful in the cold of Nashville):
Tutto compiutamente
si riempie
l'essere di essenza.
L'estate è ferma,
dal suo celeste occhio guarda
se stessa il suo splendore.
Si rapprende
in piena certitudine
la forza
tranquilla delle cose.
Stanno gli alberi,
le acque, le nuvole venture là sui monti.
L'essere si gloria
di sé, brilla di finitudine. È.