The pressures of living in our society make us react to questions and problems more with bitterness, resentment, and even hatred. Far from being inspired, we seem to have forgotten about God. We are cynical about so much suffering in ourselves and in the world and we do not know how to integrate that with our spiritual aspirations. As in a love-hate relationship, feelings of deep disillusionment color our capacity to relate with the One we once accepted and tried to follow. We feel ambivalent and dissatisfied, wondering if God can really be trusted and if God really is a personal God who is “close to the brokenhearted.”
We aren’t questioning this with words, but our behavior betrays us. We say to a friend, “I will pray for you.” But we walk away without any sense of a commitment to pray because we have doubts about prayers being answered. We listen to sermons and homilies affirming the benefits of a life of communion with God, but somewhere deep down we really believe that it is action, not prayer, that will satisfy our needs. We may think prayer is good when there is nothing more important to do, but we have strong reservations and doubts about God’s effectiveness in our world, of God’s personal interest in us. We are no longer conscious of God-with-us.
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