(revised on Medium) On the house left behind by a travelling God (series: notes to myself)
The word ἀποδημῶν means “about to go on a journey”, and it is the same word used in another parable, when God goes away, again (Matthew 21:33-46). In both cases, he leaves the house for reasons that are not provided. Why does he have to go? Can he not stay? It seems that more pressing business calls him elsewhere. Something or someone is more important than us, who live in the house. An emergency? Or perhaps just a test? Maybe he just wants to see what the mice do when the cat is away. Whatever the motives, there is a journey, a time before and after his presence, and then the long time of his absence, that πολὺν χρόνον. And a house left behind.
God’s absence has consequences, as one should expect. God becomes a past memory, for those who were with him before he left, and a future expectation, for those who believe that he is coming back. The parable speaks of a prolonged (πολὺν is a lot of time) but not a permanent absence. And it cannot be that long because the people who saw him leaving are the same ones who welcome him back. But what if God were to come back much, much later? Not days, weeks, months, or even years, but decades later? What if his absence is sine die? What would happen to the people left behind?
A new generation may grow up knowing only the reports of those who knew him. The grandchildren of the servants, who inherited the house, may become doubtful. They never met him, never saw him, never spoke to him. And he is gone for such a long time. Maybe he never existed. Perhaps he is dead. Doubtful people, agnostics who live in this empty house, do not know what to think. We hear the reports, the stories, and the narratives, we understand the expectation, the tradition, the customs, and the rites. We know so many families now claiming that different Gods owned the house. But we have no memory of any of those owners, and met nobody with that memory. We are not witnesses and know no witnesses. God left so long ago that we doubt he ever was present in the house in the first place. He may be just an impostor, or an old story, which people kept embellishing for centuries and then millennia, invented to shed responsibility for their lives and the house. For if the place is not yours, you may be forgiven for the frequent oversights, even the systematic neglect. You may even think that God will take care of your planet. You may even kill in the name of the right owner of the house who one day will come back. If your life depends on someone else, who can give meaning to it or destroy it, that may feel quite comforting, especially if living in the house is tough and challenging, too uncertain without God's ownership and return, too difficult to manage and accept. A great owner who is coming back is the perfect excuse for a lazy life of postponements, delays, procrastinations, delegations, and deresponsabilisations.
Many believe he does not exist. Many others that they deserved to be abandoned. Some have faith in his return. Those more doubtful, the agnostics again, may decide that the best thing to do is to live as if God will never come back, as if he were only a nice story but never existed, and take care of the house and themselves, for there is nobody else who will, while still hoping against hope (the beauty of some English phrases) that they may be wrong. They assume the worst scenario, knowing that the best, God’s return, will take care of itself. Should God ever come back, he will find them caring for his house and their well-being.
All this may sound like Pascal’s wager, but it is not. Pascal wants to cheat God. His suggestion is to assume his return and borrow from that return whatever added value may be available, which is the semantic capital that gives meaning to your life. If God never comes back, if he never existed, that borrowing will have been interest-free, and you won’t have to repay what was never yours. But if he does, you will still have borrowed interest-free, but as long as you invested wisely, you will be able to repay him. This may be smart, but it does not seem a nice way to treat the master who left, assuming he actually left. Assuming his return, banking on it, taking his money, investing it well, and being ready to give the money back, should he ever show up again: no wonder Pascal thought it was a win-win. But it seems to me a bit dishonest. Using God and his return as a means, not an end, to have a meaningful life now whose meaning is not yours but merely borrowed, not created through hard work or real commitment, but thanks to a mere calculus of what would be the most convenient strategy. Pascal’s faith is like borrowing at no cost, having no intention to pay back unless one is asked. It may work logically. People have debated whether it does for a long time. But morally, I don’t like it. Much better to operate on the opposite assumption. If in doubt, as an agnostic (and rationally you should be in doubt), act as if God will never come back and will never reward your efforts. Act as if you were alone. Act morally and meaningfully in a gratuitous way. Take care of the empty house. Make your life meaningful, do not merely assume it is meaningful just because you think it’s more useful to bet that God may be coming back. If he has left forever or was never around in the first place, you will be the master of your life and the house. There are worse things on earth. But if, against all odds, he does return, if the house really is his, as you strongly doubt yet still cannot help hopping, you will be able to welcome him as a self-made man, with presents, sound investments, and your business in order. How much more praiseworthy to say “I did the right thing, even though I assumed you would never come back”, than “I assumed you would come back, that’s why I did the right thing”. The lesson about God’s absence is not that we should wait for God to come back, or cheat by borrowing divine meaning that is not ours, but that we should create our own semantic capital that will be enjoyable in itself and our gift, should God ever come back.
So, for an agnostic like me, a meaningful life must be, as much as possible, an entirely immanent, historical, and human creation, not based on faith, or the belief in some transcendent reward. I don’t want to borrow freely, knowing that I could be rewarded for cheating, but create my own semantic capital, and in case be rewarded for not cheating. Not because I know that God is not coming back, for I do not and cannot, but because I wish to have a present if he returns after all, even if I strongly doubt it.
Contrary to what Pascal suggests, I prefer to live as if God did not exist while hoping I might be wrong.
A dear friend once told me that people in Naples have a beautiful way of saying: when you visit someone, you must knock on the door with your feet. The explanation: because your hands are full of presents. That is how we should knock on the door of the kingdom of heaven, with our arms carrying a meaningful life, as a gift we neither stole nor borrowed surreptitiously, but created and accumulated by ourselves. Strongly doubting, and yet still hoping, that someone may open the door.
PS "Notes to myself" is available as a book on Amazon: ow.ly/sGyh50KfRra
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash
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