On the divine

Job holds up his hands and says the problem of evil is not ours to solve, it is God’s alone. The young hear a cop-out and are right that it resolves nothing. The old would say it doesn’t have to, because the question was never on the register the young are hearing it on. Two people can argue the problem of evil forever without noticing that one of them is asking an intellectual question and the other is making a spiritual gesture, and no answer ever crosses between the two.

Why does God appear in only two forms across human history: as a person, or as nothing at all? Anthropomorphism or absence. Almost nobody worships something in between.

Classical Hebrew prophecy was not meant to come true. Jonah grieves because Nineveh survives. What if prophecy doesn’t predict the future, but names the moment when it can still be changed?

If attention is a form of prayer, what is being attended to when I give it to a forest? Theophany through other people is one claim. Whether nature counts is a different one, and I can’t settle it.

Paul never met Jesus. The men who did (James, Peter, John) opposed him, and his version won anyway. Either history is contingent, or that is what providence looks like from inside.

The same scene keeps recurring across the traditions: someone goes off alone and meets whatever was waiting there. Moses on Mount Sinai, Elijah on Mount Horeb, Jesus in the desert, Muhammad at Jabal al-Nour, the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. Either the encounter requires the solitude, or solitude is the only place we have ever been able to claim it happened.