Contrary to Existence

Bob Dylan said, “If you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying”. Which I’ve always taken as – life begins and life ends, and in between life is never really static . . . it’s always heading in one direction or the other. Begging the question – so how are you choosing to live your life? In many ways, life is on a continuum, between choices that lead to life, or those that lead to death. Between what is real and what is illusion. Between significance and meaninglessness. So even though you may arise every morning, going through the normal paces of your day — like it was no big deal . . . you’re also oscillating between existence and non-existence.

For an ongoing basis now, I have been preoccupied with an ontological meditation – especially when pondering the implications of my faith beliefs. Because when I choose to believe that God exists, I am actually making a very profound claim about the very nature of existence, itself. Thomas Aquinas describes God as ipsum esse subsistens (the act of being, itself) – his point being, that God doesn’t simply exist, among other things that exist, but rather, in his existence . . . all things exist (Acts 17:28). Now, let your mind consider for a moment, that in creation, God spoke us all out of non-existence.

St. Augustine said – “Since every creature is made ex nihilo (out of nothing), it carries with it a heritage of non-being . . . a shadow of nothingness that haunts every finite thing.” Therefore, to move towards God is to move towards existence, and to move away from God, is to move away from existence. At first blush this might strike you as an academic abstraction – but I can assure you, that it has a very profound presuppositional influence on how you understand everything. All that you believe to be good and meaningful, as well as, all that you believe to be bad and destructive.

Theologically, sin is largely framed as a legal matter of transgression – laws have been broken, so consequences must be meted out. But this strikes me as a reductive understanding of sin. Yes, sin can be seen as a legal matter, but when understood ontologically, it takes on a far more comprehensive dimension. Let me put it this way – if you run a stop sign you’ve broken a largely arbitrary law. Reasonable people might argue whether or not that stop sign should even be there — offering a logical and practical critique. So when sin is viewed as merely a legal concern, it quite often takes on this very same arbitrary legislative quality — as if God were simply being as arbitrary as a stop sign. Just giving us all hoops to jump through — for reasons that he alone understands?

But what if we relate to the law of God in the same way we relate to the law of gravity? Gravity is just a given reality within the universe — it’s just the way things exist . . . so its necessity isn’t really a topic of debate. Therefore, sin is better understood as all the things we do that are contrary to existence – the things that we do that dissembles and denounces existence . . . all of the things we foolishly assume have nothing to do with God.

Isaiah mocks the folly of those who create idols, and then turn around and worship the very things they’ve just created (Isaiah 2:8). The premise of these idol worshipers is that existence is just a given — therefore, worshiping what they, themselves, have created is just a roundabout way of convincing themselves that they’re the whole point of their own existence. This is the very path that leads us into the darkness of nihilo, away from the God who purposefully spoke us all into existence. To be in relationship with him is why we exist. This is why worshiping God is so essential – he is our ontological point of reference . . . as we are inescapably contingent upon his inscrutable existence.

Let me be a little of your breath
Moving over the face of the deep
I want to be a particle of your light
Flowing over the hills of morning

This is an updated post originally published on Still Chasing Light

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