In the Spirit: Where is God? | Religion – The Daily News of Newburyport

Beginning with the time of the Enlightenment, we have become increasingly uncomfortable with a living God.

Fascinated by our discoveries of the laws of nature and the building up of the edifice of natural sciences, we have relegated God to the basement of ignorance and even bigotry.

We have decreed the world to be rational and deterministic, and we have placed ourselves in the position of masters of the universe. Some philosophers have declared God to be obsolete, and we proceeded to reorganize our society as a purely secular, humanistic endeavor.

And then, the cracks have started to show up: nihilism, communism, fascism, imperialism, consumerism, to name just a few, proved that rationality is not enough to combat the passions.

At the same time, modern physics has put a serious question mark on determinism as well as on the very idea that creation can exist objectively and independently of an observer. Evolutionism, despite the remarkable successes in our understanding of genetics, is also beginning to show its limitations in explaining the incredible complexity of even a single living cell.

Through all these cracks, we begin to discern, once more, the presence of a long-suffering, enormously patient God. A loving Father who does not abandon his children even when they stray away for centuries. A creator who does not merely seek the survival of the fittest, but has a place inhis heart for misfits as well.

We have no reason to be ashamed of such a Father, but rather should focus our lives on knowinghim and emulatinghis way of being.

He does not mind if we are curious and use our gift of reason to penetrate some of the mysteries of creation, as long as we do not forget to love one another and build up one another, rather than tearing each other apart in the struggle to impose our own viewpoint.

God is right here, near every one of us.

The real question is, how come we have allowed ourselves to be so ignorant in what should matter most, our very connection to eternal life. We have strayed long enough.

Its time to go home.

The Rev. Costin Popescu is pastor of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Newburyport.

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In the Spirit: Where is God? | Religion - The Daily News of Newburyport