Dark Night of the Soul and Despair

St. John of the Cross famously wrote the poem the "Dark Night of the Soul," as a sort of existential spiritual crisis in which spiritual despair and God's absence pervades your whole sense of being. There is an intense sense of a loss of meaning and purpose in one's life, along with feeling abandoned by God. For me personally it feels like I am knocking on a door and asking God to open it, but there is just no one on the other side. As someone who suffers from depression and anxiety, and has treatment resistant depression and anxiety, medication and therapy don't seem to work so well for me. In a world often full of a morass of war, poverty, mental illness, violence, and hatred in general, God's presence is the only thing that gets many people on the edges of society through a very often cruel and uncaring world. Hegel famously described history as a slaughter-bench, and a quick glance at the news, can confirm as Freud notes in Civilization and It's Discontents that "man is a wolf to man." Mystics like St. John of the Cross, feel this despair not just as psychological phenomena but as an existential state of being. Honestly probably a lot more people feel this way than are willing to admit in public. Kierkegaard believes that we hide from our despair by getting lost in the mass-man and the public, and by conforming and distracting ourselves. Despair though for Kierkegaard is the key to finding God, and because despair is a universal existential condition for Kierkegaard, if you find yourself in despair, and you ultimately will according to Kierkegaard, you can make that leap of faith and ground yourself in God's sustaining love.

Now back to St. John of the Cross and the "Dark Night of the Soul." Theodicy is the problem of evil, in Christian theology. If God is all powerful, all knowing, and pure goodness, why in the world is there so much suffering in the world? Why couldn't God have created a world without suffering? As someone who suffers from not often feeling God's presence and having treatment resistant depression and anxiety, this existential despair at the injustice in the world and all the horrific malevolent acts of human beings do, certainly can exacerbate feelings of despair and God's lack of presence in the world. St. John of the Cross felt this lack of God's presence deeply and so still resonates with our contemporary society. I think the problem of evil, or theodicy, defeats the traditional notion of God in Christianity but I still believe in a "Ground of Being," as Paul Tillich would describe God. Jesus cried out near the end of his crucifixion, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The cruelty and indifference of humans, along with not feeling God's presence can make life unbearable at times. With all this said great philosophy, great theology, a few good friends, and a great science fiction novel can sustain me, even when life feels very lonely and hopeless. God's free unconditional love, while often not felt by me and St. John of the Cross, is still there and God's grace won't go away just because of the terror of the world.

"Shi* happens," as the cliche goes. The random sufferings of life will continue to go on, regardless of whether I want them to or not. Being will persist whether the human race destroys itself, or continues to survive. Great thinkers such as Martin Heidegger will always come around, and make life a little more worth living for. Despair and St. John of the Cross and his "Dark Night of the Soul," will also always be around also. The dialectic between these two modes of existence will continue to go on. Through all my hardship, I am still standing. You are too. Thank you for reading.