“The shadow of God is vast” Nietzsche said, after announcing that God was finished, had died. He had died and, as a result, human beings had been left orphans, alone on earth, without any basis on which to claim that they are equal in dignity and value. According to Nietzshe, we are indeed unequal and ethics based on equality, if they persist, it is because the shadow of God is still cast over the world. When the sun of God is completely extinguished and not even the shadow of it remains, then the morality of the strong and unequal will be preached.
This is what happened, tragically, in Hitler’s time. In the name of the superiority of the Aryan race, which was wanted to be pure and as hard as steel, thousands of human beings were barbarously annihilated.
Marxism-Leninism likewise tried to sweep God’s sun and its own shadow from the horizon. It sought to establish a classless society. But, as without a father there are no brothers, equal in rights and duties, far from creating a fraternal world, it ended up creating herds of slaves, victims of new concentration camps and holocaust. If God does not exist, everything is permitted”, Dostoyevsky observed sadly, “Those who put out the lights in the sky”, Fulton Sheen would poetically say, “simultaneously put out the lights on earth”.
But have there not been, throughout history and today, avalanches of crimes committed in the name of God? On the belts of the Nazi SS, did they not read: “God is with us”? Did not the Christian crusaders soak the Holy Land in blood, shouting: “God wills it”? More than five hundred years ago, were not Spanish and Portuguese Jews forced to emigrate, or burned by the Inquisition, in order to “preserve the faith”, as it was said (instead of, generally, to hunt down their possessions)? In the name of Allah, on 11 September 2001, didn’t suicide planes level the twin towers in New York and fill them with people who were buried in the rubble?
It is often repeated today, and it is true, that “there is no world peace without religious peace, and there is no religious peace without dialogue between religions”. How many wars and how many hatreds of a religious nature have not sown astonishment and terror!
It is not lost on me that this often stems from a distorted image of God. The eleventh commandment,” Pitigrilli declared ironically, “is not to talk nonsense or attribute petty sentiments to Him”.
I am certain that Christ’s message can shed decisive light on the heart of the matter and contribute to the solution of the problem. Christian faith in God made man establishes that the true worship of God passes through the worship of the human being. It is not possible to love God without loving the brother or sister next to us. A religious experience that does not promote human dignity cannot be considered authentic.
God being Love and Life, whenever we lift a finger to add to the life – physical, spiritual – of a person, God is glorified. And He is offended by us, when we degrade ourselves or our fellow man. Whoever rises to God lands on the human person; and whoever plunges into the human person rises to God.
I believe that, today as always, religions have two sublime responsibilities: to unite and to build.
Faith in the one God, the universal Father, can follow no other logic than that of union and love, since all men and women on earth are covered by the same divine umbrella. The poet Ibn’ Arabi, in the 12th century, defended that true faith launches a bridge for all peoples and for all beings in the universe:
“My heart has become
a meadow of gazelles
and a cloister of Christian monks,
a temple of idols
and a Kaaba of pilgrims:
I profess the religion of love
and I go where I am led
its mount takes me”.
Prayers and worship are worth as long as they are the creative sap of kindness, welcome, solidarity, understanding and joie de vivre. Worship, according to Teilhard de Chardin, means turning body and soul towards the creative act of God, uniting oneself to him, in order to build, brick by brick, as a house is built, a world that is ever more fraternal, just, respectful of human rights, free of hatred and destruction of any kind.
Those who keep the lights of Heaven burning in their hearts will also be the first to turn on the lights of the Earth…
Abílio Pina Ribeiro, cmf
(PHOTO: Oscar Ivan Esquivel Arteaga)
