God is The Littlest Hobo

When I was young I used to watch The Littlest Hobo. This was a fascinating show about a dog that would travel from place to place helping people in need before quietly leaving at the end. It might sound similar to Lassie, but there were several important differences. This dog had no owner, no name, preferred to be alone, and would always leave at the close of the episode. In addition to this we never knew where the dog had come from or where the dog was going to.

One of the interesting aspects of the show was the place that the dog occupied in the narrative structure. Usually the show would begin with a situation of human conflict and misery. At this point the mysterious dog would show up as a comforter. As the show progressed the dog would function as a means of bringing reconciliation and re-establishing harmony. Then, at the end, while everyone was celebrating the dog would quietly leave.

Lets concentrate on the last part for a moment. While the dog was a central part of the narrative for most of the show the last scenes rendered him utterly superfluous. In many of the episodes you could easily digitally remove the dog from the final scenes of human reconciliation and the structural integrity of the scene would remain utterly intact. The dog, who was so vital as the agent of change dissolves into the background completely and finally moves on.

Here we learn that the dog does not seek to be the object of love toward which the community focuses its attention, but rather seeks to establish love in the very midst of the community.

The structure is broadly this: Focus on human suffering, focus on dog as reconciler, focus on re-establishment of joy in the community. As soon as love is established the dog quietly disappears. In philosophical terms, the dog is a vanishing mediator opening up a transition between the two states.

This narrative structure can help shed  light on the theological notion of the Christian dissolution of God: the world is a place of sin (death drive). God enters the world and provides the way to remove the sting of this sin (breaking law), then disappears, leaving the community of believers gathering to do the work of love. The journey is one in which our mode of understanding faith and transcendence undergoes a transformation. We begin by seeing God (directly) as an object that we love and end up encountering God (indirectly) through the act of love itself. God is the vanishing mediator who we remain faithful to when we gather together in love. Like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the moment we pull God back into sight God disappears.

Here we discover the divine movement as one that constantly drives toward a form of non-existence. God is like a host at a party who prepares the food, sets the mood and then quietly retires when the guests are all busy enjoying each others company.  To grasp what this movement towards non-existence might look like it may be worth reading this earlier post entitled Love does not exist.