The shore has left you

Imagine a man who finds the secure life on land too boring. The sea calls to him, wild and vast. And to swim, using his own strength, stroke after stroke, that also entices him greatly, as he hasn’t done it in a long time.

So he swims out to sea.

He swims far out. A current catches him and drives him even further out. And because the current has caught him, he thinks to himself: »It must be right that I swim, otherwise I wouldn’t be helped like this!«

But after hours of euphoric swimming, the swimmer eventually does get tired.

»Now it would be good«, he tells himself, »to have some ground under my feet. A restaurant to stop at. Just a park bench to sit down and rest my bones.«

The swimmer looks around, but he can see little. A sudden feeling of cosmic abandonment seizes him.

»The shore«, the swimmer shouts in sudden anger, »has left me!«

In fact, the swimmer’s eyes have been greatly weakened by the many hours in saltwater, and his sense of direction is completely gone.

Unbeknownst to him, he has gotten caught in a whirlpool; in reality, he is much closer to the shore than he thinks, as the current has made him swim in a large circle.

All of this, however, the swimmer does not see or know. He concludes that the shore has left him. So he is furious at the shore.

»How can I trust the shore«, the swimmer grumbles to himself, »when it leaves me in such a way?«

The swimmer continues to paddle, but his arms are now really very tired.

»No, there is absolutely no shore! And what miserable souls believe in a shore«, the swimmer finally tells himself.

And with this bitter self-soothing, he drowns.

Ah, dear readers, you suspect it: It is a parable, a made-up story meant to make another truth palpable.

This parable came to my mind when I exchanged a few emails with a dear reader yesterday.

Summarizing the situation, that reader wrote: »God has probably left us.«

I replied: The question is, who left whom. Who, for whatever reason, decides to swim out into the open sea: Has the shore »left him«? (Yes, my emails are often short, unlike the essays.)

People cry that God has left us. But who has left whom?

When did your knees last taste the hard wood of the kneeler? When did you last chew on Jesus and say the Lord’s Prayer? Has it been longer than 7 days? Then don’t fool yourself into thinking it was God who left you.