The God they buried
The secular age
A century and a half ago a philosopher famously announced that God was dead, and that we were the ones who had killed Him. He did not mean it as a boast so much as a diagnosis: Western culture had quietly stopped believing, and in doing so had hollowed out the faith that once held its whole world together, though it had not yet grasped what it had done. Whatever one makes of the claim, much of the modern world has gone on to live as if it were true. The air turned secular and disenchanted; faith was eased toward the margins, treated as a private hobby or a relic of a less knowing age. This is a vast and ambient disorientation, not a single shock but a slow change in the weather, until belief itself can feel quaint, like clinging to someone long buried. And yet the buried God keeps turning up. He proves remarkably difficult to keep in the ground. To the philosophers on the Areopagus, Paul said it plainly: God made us to seek Him, and He is not far from any one of us. Not far from the devout, and not far either from the secular age that filed His obituary and went on without Him.
“The fool has said in his heart, There is no God.”
— David — Psalm 14:1 (WEB)
“That they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”
This is Disorientation as a change in the very air, an age that presumes God's funeral is long over and goes about its business as though He were gone. The phase asks you not to match the age's certainty with your own anxiety, but to keep believing in the seemingly empty room, trusting that the God the culture buried is nearer to it than it knows.
You may be living out your faith inside a world, or a family, or a workplace where God is simply assumed to be gone, the question long since settled, your belief a leftover from a more credulous time. That ambient unbelief is its own kind of disorientation, quieter than a crisis but just as real, because it can make faith itself feel faintly embarrassing, like devotion to someone long buried. But notice what the long view shows. The God so often declared dead keeps making Himself known, in conversions no one predicted, in hungers the secular age cannot satisfy, in the persistent ache for meaning it cannot explain away.
The right response to a culture that has buried God is not scorn for the people who think He is gone; many are nearer to seeking than they know. The right response is to keep believing, and to remember Paul's astonishing claim. He is not far from you in the disenchanted air, nor from the skeptic beside you. The obituary was premature, and the buried God is closer to you than you may dare to think. The God it announced as dead is closer to that whole disenchanted world than it has any idea.
The Church now ministers in a largely secular age that presumes God's funeral happened long ago and goes about its business as though He were gone. For a Body once accorded cultural deference across the West, that slow change in the weather is deeply disorienting; belief itself can come to seem quaint. Yet the people of God have outlived every premature obituary of the faith. To the philosophers on the Areopagus Paul said God made us to seek Him and is not far from any one of us, near not only to the devout but to the very age that filed His obituary. Before a watching world certain it has moved on, the whole Church keeps pointing to the God who proves remarkably difficult to keep in the ground.
What cannot be shaken is the God who is not far from any one of us, however loudly the age declares Him gone. Every culture that has buried Him has been outlived by Him. He remains within reach of the very world that filed His obituary, near to the devout and the doubting alike.
- Where has the ambient unbelief around me made my own faith feel foolish or embarrassing?
- Do I meet the skeptics in my life with scorn, or with the conviction that God is nearer to them than they know?
- What hungers in the people around me might be a reaching out for the God they assume is gone?
Lord, I live in an age that assumes You are gone, and its certainty seeps into me. Yet You are not far from any one of us, near even to the world that buried You. Steady my faith in the seemingly empty room, and make me a sign of the God who keeps rising. Amen.