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n. 1
gennaio 2012
Altri articoli
disponibili
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Italiano
Nostalgia-desire-eclipse
God in the contemporary world
edited by
CARMELO
DOTOLO
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The current configuration of
religious experience and the search for God is, without doubt,
paradoxical. It is no coincidence that today we talk with insistence
about a return of the religious, of its relocation in the public space,
a thirst for spirituality that enlarges the space of human
research. Nevertheless, the scenario of post-modern culture is inhabited
by a new atheism, which comes with more careful movements to the
fragility of men and women, and bearer of a way of life less burdened by
rules and principles.
God
sees the desire of man
A series of publicity appeared in several European cities has given
voice to an ironic and provocative proposal: "Probably there is no God.
Stop worrying and enjoy your life." Evidently, behind easy to use
slogans, you can see a more complex and articulated trajectory,
which starts from the prophecy of the philosopher F. Nietzsche's death
of God and the futility of contemporary man’ s life. [i]
Well, the
consequence of such a hypotesis, perhaps, should take place in the
progressive drying up of religious desire, as a farewell to the search
for a kept meaning in God's name. In fact, there is increasingly a
question of spirituality, interested in finding a personal balance and a
proposal that makes up for the stress of everyday life. The
increase, however, of religious rewarding and therapeutic experience,
indicates caution in decreeing the end of the nostalgia for the sacred,
calling for an additional investigation on the value and scope of the
religious question today. However, it is undeniable a datum: the rich
variety of the religious offer shows a plurality of faces of the
divine, understanding the human need to find meaning to existence,
perceived in its problematic nature. Before these indications, the
choice between nostalgia or eclipse of God is interwoven with the
unavoidable need to believe that endures, even though this is
considered by many an immature way to meet with life. Just such
resistance makes hardship to a reading of reality that would definitely
put in the attic the problem of God. Perhaps, if we are less interested
in the evidence’s question of his existence, this does not mean that the
question of God is indifferent to human research. But how is
articulated, then, the question of God as an opportunity to rediscover
and revalue?
An
atheist spirituality?
Let's start with an observation. The contemporary paradigm suggests (or
requires) a radical change to understand God and his relationship with
the world. [ii]
The advance of
scientific knowledge increasingly felt, and the emancipation of
philosophical reason highlighted the autonomy of the reality, which has
its own laws, working by itself. Does still make sense referring to
'"God’s hypothesis" (P.S. Laplace) when we are speaking about the
phenomena occurring in the world? Is it not likely to make God as a
necessity, an explanation that links his name to the list of hypothesis
that the first error of interpretation, inevitably falls in the register
of non-sense?
We should not wonder, then, that the scientific research raises a
question of method to know about the man, seen as reliable and
reproducible over the world in which we live. Faced with this, the
affirmation of God seems to be hard to justify, especially if it meets
some criteria. It remains as the background of a human need; indeed, a
competitive advantage for the human species in the long journey of his
growth and identity. Through a combination of imagination and desire,
God has taken the place of the unknown, the unspeakable, a code of a
partial and inadequate knowledge. In short, it has compensated for a
scientific deficit.
Nevertheless, God is convenient to emotional balance of man, even if it
has no reality outside of human consciousness. If the conclusion is
this, we understand that the question of God is already marked by a
precise remark: for it is not experienced in the same way as other
objects of knowledge, it derives its projection’s character of human
desire, symbolic utility. In short, it works as a private space that
feeds the dream, the fantasy, the emotional. Yet, it would be
interesting to understand why God and his name persist, although it is
displayable to the contrary. Crucial question, because if the idea of
God was really fantastic, it would be more logical to decree
culturally the end, once and for all. It remains, however, the need to
motivate at least as, for a no-importance of God in the life, is
accompanied by the perception that this idea plays a psychological and
social role, non-marginal in reality.
Looking for a life’s meaning
The complexity of the search
for God suggests not to have final and unappealable assessments. An
atheist spirituality and a religiosity of the unbelievers are signs of a
constant struggle that man carries in an attempt to identify the
meanings that do not stop at the surface of things. One could say that
the longing for God to enter into life through a new sacred that
acts as a horizon in which the man traces the coordinates of
self-respect, interpersonal relationships, the care of the world. The
eagerness for justice, peace, human rights, quality of relationships in
the tenderness and freedom, indicate the desire of a different world,
trying a serious opposition to evil.
The reference to God may not
be necessary, but it certainly is the possibility of a different way of
thinking and acting in the world. So, if the post-modern culture has
changed the imagery of God and criticized some of its features, while
remains sensitive, available for any new research of God. [iii]
In particular, where it experiments that God meets man with the
discretion of his action and his presence, because shares the same
passion of man in his path of liberation. It is neither a competitor nor
a stopgap in nature and in history. If the longing for God seduces
again, it is because God belongs to the logic of love and is experienced
as free, travel companion that indicates the path of life, a hypothesis
that can help to find the reality understood as full of meaning and
truth different.
God
inviting us to look on
Perhaps we are in the presence
of a change in the search for God. There is here a thought that can not
listen to one of the questions of man and try the difference of
God not as a limitation, but as a condition for a reversal of
perspective. The question: where is God?, has not disappeared
at all, but it shows with an attention to the relationship that the
existence of man, nature and history have or may have with God. This
question, however, knows having to deal with the failure and inadequacy,
on the grounds that God does not coincide almost never with our ideas
and representation. It takes them so that they can be recast in a
continuous reflection born of the experience of meeting with him.
The same religious language
formulates metaphors and symbols that make up the desire for God as
vital to man. However, what emerges from this research effort and often
from the failure of the answers, is that God remains an open question
to our thinking and living, which rises in the midst of life that
aspires to the flowering of goodness and freedom. The hypothesis,
therefore, is placed in on the question: Who is God?, knowing
that from that angle, the research may see a particular itinerary: one
that leads to the discovery of the original site of the say and
God's show.
In Christianity, this place is the event of Jesus of Nazareth, as a
starting point for a path that goes from God to the divine, rather than
from the divine to God. His experience has opened a crisis in the common
idea of God: of the imagery God, built on our logical and certain
memberships, because it calls to see the differences; of the God
replaced of our desire to dominate, since it indicates the beauty in
accepting the otherness; of God, self, where God shows a lover of life,
compassionate in the fight against evil and innocent suffering.
"God can dwell only in the
depths of your consciousness, in the depths of your secret desires for
personal fulfillment. For God can not be different from what your heart
desires the best for your neighbors [...]. Listen to people talking
about God, telling to you that God is like a light, sometimes blinding,
and sometimes imperceptible, guiding your steps towards good and peace,
never into meanness, cruelty and war”. [iv]
Carmelo Dotolo
www.carmelodotolo.eu
[i]
Cf F. COSENTINO,
Immaginare Dio. Provocazioni postmoderne al cristianesimo,
Cittadella, Assisi 2010.
[ii]
Cf
COMITATO PER IL PROGETTOCULTURALE DELLA CEI (ed.),
Dio oggi. Con lui o senza di lui cambia tutto. I dibattiti,
Cantagalli, Siena 2010.
[iii]
Cf C. DOTOLO,
Una fede diversa. Alla riscoperta del Vangelo,
Messaggero, Padova 2009, 73-97.
[iv]
4J. ARIAS,
Un Dio per il Duemila contro la paura e per la felicità,
Cittadella, Assisi 1998, 193.
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