Thinking of God as the Vanishing Point at Infinity
For many years, when I considered the existence of God, I thought to myself “sure, there might be a God, but there might also be aliens hiding behind the moon, invisible unicorns living in my closet, or vaccines with brainwashing microchips.” It’s impossible to prove definitively that these things do not exist, but they all seemed extremely unlikely, so I didn’t spend much time thinking about them.
I have, however, spent much of my life searching for meaning: in my family, my career, my hobbies, and my spiritual communities. What these pursuits have in common is a connection to something bigger than myself — a place where I feel I belong, and an opportunity to contribute something worthwhile.
One can consider a search for God to be the ultimate search for meaning and connection. For an analogy, consider the landscape above, where the road represents family, the line of trees represents career, and the lines of brush represent community. These lines are all perpendicular to the picture plane and they represent different paths toward God. God lies at the place where they meet — a vanishing point at infinity. Searching for meaning and connection in anything bigger than oneself is, ultimately, a search for God. Moreover, if a family member dies, a job is lost, or a community stagnates, the loss hurts, but there remain infinitely many paths that can bring you toward the vanishing point. To live well is to seek a path that moves in the right direction.
A search for God is a search for the right action at any moment, a search for the right place to put one’s attention, and a search for the capacity to love, even during difficult times. A prayer to God can be a prayer for the wisdom to know what is right and the strength to carry it out. It isn’t necessary to see to the end of the path you’re on. All that’s needed is to listen to the voice of God in the way you can hear it, to strive to walk in the right direction at each moment.
Originally published on Medium, January 1, 2022.
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