The Empty Bench

The character Quentin from Henry Miller’s Play, After the Fall explains a life without God:

For many years I looked at life like a case at law. It was a series of proofs. When you’re young you prove how brave you are, or smart; then, what a good lover; then, a good father; finally, how wise, or powerful or [whatever.] But underlying it all, I see now, there was a presumption.

That one moved…on an upward path toward some elevation, where…God knows what…I would be justified, or even condemned. A verdict anyway. I think now that my disaster really began when I looked up one day…and the bench was empty. No judge in sight. And all that remained was the endless argument with oneself, this pointless litigation of existence before an empty bench…. Which, of course, is another way of saying—despair.