The Semi-Darkness of Secularism

As I read through the news from Zenit today, an article caught my attention with the following passage:

Benedict XVI expressed hope that the conference "might at least contribute to disperse that semi-darkness that makes openness to God precarious and fearful for the men of our time, though he never ceases to knock on our door."

This openness is important, the Pope said, since "experiences of the past, although not remote to us, teach us that when God disappears from man's horizon, humanity loses its direction and runs the risk of taking steps to its own destruction."

On the other hand, faith in God "opens man to the horizon of certain hope, which does not disappoint," the Pope affirmed.

This gives the "solid foundation on which to base life without fear," he said, adding that it "calls for abandoning oneself with confidence in the hands of the Love which sustains the world."

Why does our modern and secular society find openness to God precarious and fearful?  I was discussing philosophy with one of my students the other day.  He is quite bright and was reading through a book of selections from Nietzsche (only a few days later he was working through a similar book on Heidegger).  Being a mere amateur philosopher myself, I asked him what struck him about Nietzsche (of whom I know only vague generalizations) and he said that what he enjoyed was the man's desire to do everything in life that he could.  Upon further discussion, I found that Nietzsche's reason for this seeming zest for life was his atheism and believe that there was no afterlife.

Afterlife is ultimately heaven or hell.  If there is no heaven, then there is no point to Christian hope and no purpose can be given for human suffering.  If there is neither heaven nor hell, then there is no motivation to respond to the abyss of meaningless human suffering with anything but hedonism.

To be open to God, in the midst of a society wholly influenced by Neitzsche, requires a courage that trusts in the Word of God and the testimony and witness of the Church.  This act of faith is not an easy task for those who are naturally given over to skepticism.  It is indeed precarious and fearful.  In his Introduction to Christianity, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) retells a story of Martin Buber I once heard in my philosophy of the human person class:

An adherent of the Enlightenment [writes Buber], a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him, too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith.  When he entered the Rabbi's room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought.  The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival.  Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, "But perhaps it is true after all."  The scholar tried in vain to collect himself - his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear.  But Rabbi Levi Yitschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: "My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them.  They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I.  But think, my son, perhaps it is true."  The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible "perhaps" that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.

The truth is that atheism, with its contingent ethic and "spirituality" (for a severe lack of a better term) of doubt-inspired and emptiness-driven hedonism, requires as much "faith" as Christianity.  Christianity from a skeptical viewpoint is precarious and fearful, it does indeed require faith, but a life of atheistic hedonism requires as much commitment, and the atheist will find at the judgment that he has wasted his life in a downward spiral of self-destruction, while the reluctant believer in Christ, though once a skeptic, will find that the faith he once thought to be a gloomy gamble has become the center of his every act and the cause of his worth.  Aside from the eternal aspect, the Christian path is more challenging on the moral level, but also more rewarding in this life.  Atheistic hedonism leads to a life-long search for meaning that already excludes everything capable of fulfilling the need for happiness in man.

Those of us who are Christian (not in name only) have seen for ourselves the value of our faith.  While it is for those on the outside a precarious and fearful thing, we who have already begun to reap the benefits of our faith attest not to its precariousness but its adventure, not to its fearfulness but to its awesomeness.  We are followers of St. Anselm's theological axiom fides quaerens intellectum.  We have accepted the mystery of faith and slowly begin to understand the significance of what God has revealed.  The faith is for us no risk at all, but a challenge worthy of our lifelong dedication.  For the Christian who truly seeks Christ, a light always remains in this place of darkness.

Still, we approach the faith from the midst of a secular, semi-dark world, a place of doubt and despair where in some parts the closing sunset of Christianity is perpetually held-off only by the compline prayer of the Church, the Nunc Dimittis, expressing at one and the same time a willingness for the afterlife, which may only be reached through death, and "the light of Revelation to the Gentiles."  So must we prayerfully participate in that canticle of St. Simeon, willing to live in the shadows and dark night of society's doubt while proclaiming the light we have seen.

May we, to whom Christ comes this Christmas, have the gift of faith to rekindle for Christ a world struggling through the cold dark winter of emptiness around us.  In this self-abandonment alone will we live a life without the fear so familiar to the followers of Nietzsche.

His Servant and Yours,

Micah