Living in Neutral

January/February 2009

It is one of the most common human experiences: a sense that God is absent, that nothing can save you from an ordeal or a desert time that stares you right in the face. Even Jesus experienced it, at least for a moment, on the cross when he cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Many events can land us in that desert, and we know—intellectually—that our sense of God’s absence is false. Scripture says repeatedly that God is always present. But that doesn’t stop our feelings of anxiety, abandonment, or fear. We feel what we feel. In the middle of these moments I turn to the sage advice of Quaker author Richard Foster.

“Learn that trust precedes faith,” he writes in Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home. “Faith is a little like putting your car into gear, and right now you cannot exercise faith, you cannot move forward. Do not berate yourself for this. But when you are unable to put your spiritual life into drive, do not put it into reverse; put it into neutral. Trust is how you put your spiritual life into neutral.”

I can live with that advice. If I can’t go forward, I can at least avoid going backward. That’s what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, facing a furnace of blazing fire, seem to be saying in this issue’s Bible study session. If God will deliver us, they say, so be it. If not, they nonetheless refuse to go backward and serve other gods (Daniel 3:17–18). They’re putting their spiritual life in neutral. Living in neutral does not mean, however, that we don’t tell God what we’re feeling. God knows anyway, so there’s no harm in being honest. Richard Foster suggests that we read the psalms that speak our own feelings during these times—the psalms of lament and the ones filled with anger and frustration. He calls the practice of reading these psalms the “prayer of complaint,” and I recommend you go ahead and complain to God. You won’t be the first or the last to do so!

Oddly enough, it is in the act of complaining, lamenting, being angry, or even just expressing doubt that we acknowledge God’s existence. We discover, once again, that God isn’t absent after all.

“If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us,” say the three in Daniel. “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” says Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. “If you are there, Lord, let me know,” we might pray in the midst of those times when we’re not sure of God’s presence. In praying this simple prayer we realize that the very act of praying acknowledges our trust in the presence of the One who loves us and who is never absent. As we pray, our spiritual life moves from neutral back into first gear.

Debra K. Farrington is a retreat leader and has written eight books of Christian spirituality. Her Web site is www.debrafarrington.com.

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