Tomáš Halík

On Patience in Seeking

I am enchanted by the spiritual vision of Tomáš Halík. A priest, theologian, philosopher, and psychoanalyst, Halík first began his ministry and academic thinking about Christianity in the underground church during the ideological despotism of communism in Czechoslovakia in the last century. His bona fides with doubt, atheism, European modernity, and the rise of secularity (see also church decline) are unquestioned. What has enchanted me so about his work is that he is a deep intellect with much scholarly rigor but stylistically, his prose reads as clearly as someone like C.S. Lewis or even Chesterton. Yet more deeply than style is his content. Indeed, how can I not be intrigued by someone who says:

I agree with atheists on many things, often on almost everything— except for their belief that God doesn’t exist.

…With certain kinds of atheists I share a sense of God’s absence from the world. However, I regard their interpretation of this feeling as too hasty as an expression of impatience. I am also often oppress by God’s silence and sense of remoteness (From the Introduction of Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us).

How can you not be interested in that? I mean, Halík admits that he “gets” or understands, agrees even, with much that atheism asserts or at least feels. Simultaneously however, is his full-throated diagnosis that what separates people of un-belief from believers is an issue of patience. That, to me, sounds simple enough to be right, yet it calls us to read further to find out more fully what he means. And I intend to do that reflecting here. Over the next weeks, I will quote from, reflect on, and otherwise do my best to engage Halík’s ideas on faith, belief, doubt, atheism, and patience through the above quoted book, in particular. My purpose will be to exercise thinking in a Halík-ian sense, but more so to challenge my own thinking and better my own seeking as I too attempt to maintain faith in a world that appears to grow less believing all the time.

To begin this journey, I will quote Halík again from the introduction:

Hardly anything points toward God and calls as urgently for God as the experience of His absence. This experience is capable of leading some to “indict God” and eventually reject faith. There exist, however, particularly in the mystical tradition, many other interpretations of that absence, and other ways of coming to terms with it. Without the painful experience of a “world without God,” it is hard for us to grasp the meaning of religious seeking, as well as everything we want to say about “patience with God” and its three aspects—faith, hope, and love.

I’m convinced that a mature faith must incorporate those experiences that some call the “death of God” or —less dramatically—God’s silence, although it is necessary to subject such experiences to inner reflection, and also undergo and overcome them honestly, not in a superficial manner. I am not saying to atheists that they are wrong, but that they lack patience. I am saying to them that their truth is an incomplete truth.

Sometimes we forget that we are all seekers. Even for those who have been baptized, catechized, raised in the church, or those who have had dramatic conversion experiences, each in their own way is ever seeking God. For Halík, there is another assumption that many might overlook: everyone at one time or another will sense or feel or imagine that God is absent. While this is a painful experience, as evidence by how many reject God after such periods, they are also times that accelerate growth, for they produce in the seeker urgency, interest, sensitivity, and an ever watchfulness always on the lookout for God (James 4:8; Jer. 29:13; Matthew 6:33; Is 55:6).

What is the difference between a person who senses God’s absence and responds by leaving faith behind and another sensing the same absence yet responds by more ardent searching or perhaps more deeply become friends with the sense of absence through acceptance and embrace? For Halík it is patience. Perhaps it is as simple as that. Like most simple things, there is a complexity and subtlety that make the simplicity truthful or explanatory. Patience is nothing if not profound.

And in the mystical tradition that Halík briefly mentions there has been much ink spilled over the notions of divine absence (John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux) and the very raw experiences of saints in search for God who appears far off, quiet, and even the notion of abandonment. There’s also much work done on spiritual seeking and not knowing (The Cloud of Unknowing, De Docta Ignorantia “On Learned Ignorance,” and the examples of apophatic theology, etc.) or at least not knowing as though we can possess knowledge and fully explain things of God—indeed, there is much to be learned to accepting that God is beyond knowing, reason, experience, and so on. And as prevalent as these mystical approaches to God are throughout the great tradition, they do seem strange to many contemporary considerations of religious belief.

Contemporary religious belief is paired closely to propositional knowledge or truth claims. Further, it is the case, at least in much of American Christianity, that faith is made out to be equal to dogmatic confession more so than about holy living, communal celebration, or ecstatic worship. This is expressed when people are “de-fellowshiped” over differences in belief on doctrine or social issues rather than in examples of sin or misdeed. Simply, in some circles, if you do not say the “right” or accepted idea surrounding gay marriage, then you run the risk of being asked to leave, though you may not be asked to leave, and indeed you might even be forgiven if you are caught and appear repentant after having an extra-marital affair, etc. In this environment, Halík reminds us all that there is also a rich tradition in Christian faith that not only welcomes feelings of doubt, but also sees them as tools in one’s own journey of seeking—if you are patient enough to stay the course.

This all reminds me of a time I shared with my own spiritual director. I felt and had reported over the previous many months, that I have been undergoing a steady state of spiritual transformation and growth. I was grateful for sensing God’s presence in my life and I was even proud of my maturation. So, it was a shock, even to me, when he asked, “where have you noticed God recently,” and my answer to him was, “nowhere really.” I sat quietly. We sat quietly, together. And we made room for God to speak, or at least for my thoughts to flow. “I don’t know. I mean, I do not doubt God. I know God is around,” I said. “Maybe I even see a glimpse of God far away at times,” I imagined out loud. But then I continued, “I just don’t sense God with or even speaking to me.” I wondered if that sentiment was going to get me a scolding! Ah, you can take the boy out of the midwest but not the midwest out of the boy—we are always trying to be “good boys!” My director said, “that is ok, maybe the lesson is that you need to detach, or rather, maybe God is helping you to detach.”

I understood detaching from things like money, possessions, needing to be liked, and all that. But I could not quite square my mind with detaching from God. Isn’t God the one thing (person) you are to never let go of? But my soul friend continued, “you do not need to let go of God, you just need to learn to let go of your NEED to feel God at every moment. Do not let your feelings take the place of the ultimate in your mind…even your devotion can become an idol.”

The feeling of God’s absence can be a gift, if you are patient to stick with it. If you have that, it will lead you to deeper relationship with God. One way to be a person or remain a person of faith in an age of secularity, church decline, and many other options vying for your adoration is to remember that your feelings do not account for all of reality—at best they are data points. The best thing that data points do is help us make better and more informed choices. The choice I am trying to make whether I feel God’s radiance around me or not, is patience—and it in patience, even when touched by doubt, that I will develop a greater relationship with the divine! At least that is the lesson I am learning from my friend and the work of Tomáš Halík.