Well, there's the Narnia version, where God is sometimes here and sometimes there and damned if we know why but he seems to know what he's doing.
And then there's the Jewish-theology version, that God's presence goes through periods of being closer to or far away from earth, and that either we just happen to be in a withdrawn period, or we're in one for a damned good reason, because if you were God, how impressed with the current state of the world would you be, and why would you hang out here when you have all the other options in the universe? There are probably some other variants on this, too.
(And then there's the Yiddish proverb, "If God lived on earth, people would break all of His windows." Maybe He'll come back if we buy him some good property insurance.)
And then there's the Waiting for Godot version, in which God is not so much absent as bizarrely detached and hard-to-get (I've only seen the first half, though I assume nothing major changes in the second act, at least not anything explicable). Though I've had trouble taking the play seriously since I discovered that Beckett intended the name of the title to be pronounced with the accent on the first syllable. I mean, really, can we have SOME attempt at subtlety here? I've read Endgame; I know Beckett can be capable of so much subtlety you don't even know what happened.
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And then there's the Jewish-theology version, that God's presence goes through periods of being closer to or far away from earth, and that either we just happen to be in a withdrawn period, or we're in one for a damned good reason, because if you were God, how impressed with the current state of the world would you be, and why would you hang out here when you have all the other options in the universe? There are probably some other variants on this, too.
(And then there's the Yiddish proverb, "If God lived on earth, people would break all of His windows." Maybe He'll come back if we buy him some good property insurance.)
And then there's the Waiting for Godot version, in which God is not so much absent as bizarrely detached and hard-to-get (I've only seen the first half, though I assume nothing major changes in the second act, at least not anything explicable). Though I've had trouble taking the play seriously since I discovered that Beckett intended the name of the title to be pronounced with the accent on the first syllable. I mean, really, can we have SOME attempt at subtlety here? I've read Endgame; I know Beckett can be capable of so much subtlety you don't even know what happened.