Karl Marx would be quick to remind me that I have been seduced by religion, the opium of the people. Sigmund Freud would tell me that I’m infantile, needing a “God-figure” that functions as an illusion to restrain certain human impulses. Bertrand Russell would tell me that many arguments for Your existence (cosmological, ontological, teleological) are simply false and that science, in terms of its access to genuine knowledge, eclipses religion. The atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and, before his death, Christopher Hitchens, have no place for You in their thinking unless it is to show that You have been created by human religious superstition, whose history, they might add, has proved to be morally abysmal. Yet, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at least calls himself an agnostic; he is on the proverbial fence until there is verifiable evidence to the contrary.

I’m often possessed by a visceral angst, at times unbearable, a sense of suffering that I feel isn’t satisfied by atheism, agnosticism or, paradoxically, theism. Theists, after all, are too certain; for me this certainty can too quickly satisfy that profound sense of searching, of really wanting to know, of painfully screaming in the night for Your existence to be revealed, a face-to-face moment. You, of course, remain hidden (Deus Absconditus). Why? Is it too much to ask, as a philosopher in the 21st century, to reveal yourself to me, to the world, to have an original relation to You, like Moses?

I’m not even sure of your name. I hope that confession speaks to a loving posture, an openness to know Your name and be touched by that truth, and not a failure of will on my part. So, I will call you by various names — Yahweh, Allah, Jehovah, Adonai, Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda, Kami, Obatala and Oshun. To be fair to Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Shintoism and Yoruba deities, these names I speak with respect. Of course, there are so many more names. Some, especially religious believers of various persuasions, might consider this act of naming to be an instance of idolatry. I see it as an act of humility, a longing. I stand by that humility because I long to know if You exist, where even that desire to know might itself be filled with pride.

This letter is not meant to proselytize, to convert. Rather, the letter is meant to entreat that which is perhaps beyond all of the major religions and yet inclusive of all of them, hoping that perhaps each one has something to say partially about You. I say all of this even as I define myself as a hopeful Christian theist, the kind who hopes, without any certainty, that You exist and that the strength of agape, Christian love, is possible and liberating in a world filled with so much existential, social and political catastrophe, where anguished parents cry long into the night because their children have been taken too soon by acts of mass violence.

This letter is a lamentation; it speaks to our human pain and suffering, but it also speaks to this philosopher’s dread in the face of apparent silence. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “It is not just that we are in search of God, but that God is in search of us, in need of us.” That is not a philosophical argument, but I eagerly respond: I am here!

This is not a private prayer, but an entreaty shared publicly. It is intended to be inclusive, to speak on behalf of human suffering that is hard for any of us to bear alone. As a philosopher, I realize that I’m supposed to be “philosophical,” objective, calm under pressure. As You already know, I’m not that kind of philosopher. I weep too much. I feel too deeply. I’m impatient when it comes to human suffering, especially forms of suffering that I helped to create. My anger and my frustration overflow, the existential devastations that I witness are too great to remain philosophically poised.

I am not like René Descartes sitting in his stove-heated room delineating “proofs” for Your existence. I am facing a non-ideal world where I witness haunting images of unspeakable tragedy. I’m thinking here, as You know, of the Salvadoran father Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 2-year-old daughter, Valeria, who were found floating face down in the Rio Grande; they drowned as they attempted a border crossing. In what world do I live such that it continues after their deaths? We should stop in our tracks, refuse to go on living as normal and bring an end to this level of suffering — today. And what about the lifeless body of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, who lay face down on a Turkish beach after his family tried to flee violence from Syria. When I look at those photos, or think about the tragic deaths in El Paso and Dayton, or about the three killed at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, Calif., on July 28, it is my death that I see. John Donne had it right. All human death “diminishes me.” And Donne continues, “Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”