For those who need to hear it, let’s normalize the experience of God’s absence. It’s OK that you DON’T SEE Jesus as you deconstruct faith.
And that might be a good thing—in the long run.
You used to see Jesus everywhere, in everything…leading, working, guiding, providing.
But now Jesus is gone, absent, invisible, missing.
“Maybe he was never really there?” you wonder.
It is disorienting to need to walk away (first lesson). And it is discouraging to be honest about your emotions (second lesson). And it can cause despair that God is absent.
This is the third lesson we learn from “Deconstructing Faith on the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-34).
(Also, here is a short video about why deconstruction isn’t scary, that it is a natural process, but not a great destination.)
LESSON #3: It’s OK that you Don’t See Jesus
On the road to Emmaus, the two disciples couldn’t see Jesus when he walked up to them.
Literally, “their eyes were kept from recognizing Him” (Luke 24:16).
Why couldn’t they see Jesus?
I think there is a divine and human side to this.
From God’s side, maybe in God’s compassion, they were kept from seeing Jesus to
• Create more space for honesty inside the disciples.
• Allow for God to approach in a new way from the outside.
God knows that sometimes we need space to hear what is really going on inside of us. And God’s silence or invisibility is sometimes what is needed.
And sometimes God is creating space to approach in a new way, that our continual growth means mixing things up.
This happens not because God had withdrawn love, but because God’s love is so strong—drawing us into deeper maturity.
This is called the dark night of the soul.
From the human side, maybe we can’t see Jesus because we have attention blindness.
Because we are focused on certain future expectations based in past experiences, we are focused on our hopes and desires, we miss seeing Jesus.
Because of our trauma, disappointments, or misconceptions about Jesus, or the church, or theology, or heaven/hell, and LGBTQ+ we are kept from seeing Jesus.
Is this blaming the victim?
To point out our own attention blindness—that there is a human side to “not seeing God”—isn’t blaming anyone.
It is just to accept reality—the reality that our current experience is shaped by our past experiences and future expectations.
But our own “reality” doesn’t mean we have access to all of reality.
Our past experiences and future expectations help us see some things really clearly.
But these experiences and expectations also keep us from seeing other things—things that other people see that we miss.
And that’s OK.
It’s part of being human.
So, let’s normalize that we sometimes don’t see Jesus.
But Jesus is Still Near
This is the last thing to notice.
Jesus comes to these disciples on the road, after they had left. Jesus comes to them on their journey of deconstruction.
So, the truth is…
• Jesus is nearer to us in our deconstruction than we might think. Perhaps he has already joined you on the journey.
• And Jesus is near because he comes to us, he seeks us out, he finds us even when we might have given up the search.
And that’s good news, even if we can’t currently see Jesus.
[I’m going to spend the next two weeks drawing out short lessons from the Road to Emmaus about deconstructing faith. Pound the link to follow along, and to learn about “Deconstructing Faith Without Destroying it.”]