Writing on The Gospel Coalition website, Kyle Strobel asks:
“Have you had the experience of feeling like your prayers simply bounced off the ceiling? Or your Scripture reading ceased to feel as meaningful as it once did? Have you looked back at seasons that felt like lush gardens of excitement, passion, and zeal for the things of God—but now feel more like you’re in the desert, spiritually barren, dry, and lifeless?
He goes on to offer this answer to the experience:
“You might be surprised to know that the doctrine of spiritual desertion was a standard teaching of Protestant spiritual theology for centuries. Spiritual desertion is God’s act to lead his people into experiencing his absence to awaken them to the truth of how sinful and broken they truly are.
Now, I’m a little wary of an article which claims to be recovering a lost but major reformed doctrine when the author only manages to provide two figures from Reformed history and none of the founding fathers of the tradition. Strobel offers us Wilhelmus à Brakel and Charles Hadden Spurgeon.
I believe it is fair to talk of God leading us through “desert” or “wilderness” experiences and that’s not unique to the Reformed tradition. Nor indeed am I convinced that it is that absent from today’s church. However, I’m a little troubled by the language used by Strobel, which I don’t think is where the weight is placed by those cited. Specifically, he says:
“Spiritual desertion is God’s act to lead his people into experiencing his absence to awaken them to the truth of how sinful and broken they truly are.”
Again, I think we can rightly talk about how the believer may experience times of dryness, times when communication between them and God seems distant. But, is that actually God deserting us? When the people of Israel were handed over to their enemies or sent into exile, that was not simply an act of discipline to teach, it was judgement. And the aim was to bring them swiftly to the place where they cried out to God.
The one point at which Jesus cries out a prayer of abandonment “my God why have you forsaken me” is the very point when our sin and the penalty for our sin is laid on him
However, a read of Exodus makes it clear that God is present with his people through the wilderness, even when they grumble and ask where God is, when they test him, when they complain of hunger even though they have livestock with them, still, God is there answering them. Even through the 40 years in the Wilderness, the Lord is present with his people and does not desert them.
I find Strobel’s argument Biblical unconvincing. I also find it somewhat unsatisfying doctrinally. It leaves us in a similar place to the myth of the shepherd breaking the legs of the wandering sheep with questions about the nature of God. It also seems designed to do the opposite of what Strobel suggests because if God deserts us, then we are left to our own devices.
Furthermore I find it pastorally unhelpful. Is this a good model for our relationships to one another. Is it really good, for example for parents to teach their children to trust them by becoming emotionally unavailable. It is true that I am prone to wander. It is true that God grows me through wilderness experiences. However, God does not desert me.
Faithroots 