Faith is not a private matter, says Jesuit father Eberhard von Gemmingen of the Catholic Church. A Pushing of God to the purely Private will lead to an increasing disorientation in the society.
If the red thread between God and man breaks, God from the life of the people is disappearing, this has vast consequences for the entire society.
What good is a world without Religion? You are obviously playing in Europe is hardly more of a role. Europe, it seems to be going well, even without a belief in God. Many people think that religions tended to lead to conflict. For you questions: religion has shed too much blood, too many people Silenced to much in policy mixes? It is religion followers at all possible, to learn from their mistakes? Religious Faith seduced not to fanaticism, intolerance, fundamentalism? Religious people think at all rational?
I want to give you a answer from the mouth of a man present, who discovered the Faith in the God of Jesus Christ personally: It was the American Thomas Merton is He died exactly 50 years ago, in 1968. Merton saw himself in his youth as an Atheist, found through literature and philosophy to Believe, was a Trappist monk and writer, was read a lot.
Renunciation of the world
He writes: “humanity is facing the greatest crisis in its history, because Religion is on the scale.”1 your weight will always be lower. A cause for the behavior of the Christians themselves: “The major Problem facing the Christendom, are not the enemies of Christ. The pursuit adds to the internal life of the Church as such never great. The actual religious problems exist in the souls of us who believe in the heart of God and know that you are obligated to love him and to serve him – and yet it will not do.“2
Already some 70 years ago, Merton argued: the world is standing in front of complete moral decay, and only a spiritual Revolution can save them. The Christianity challenge has always been this Revolution by the complete reversal of what they call “the world”. Every Christian promise in the baptism of this departure.
Merton is very sober and practical. Man can love God only if he knows him. He cannot know him, if he takes the time to pray and to delve into his truth. Time and peace had become in the modern world rarely. Literally, Merton writes: “in fact, we are not able to consecrate us to God, without, at the same time, an inner life”. The advance set but grace, which he received only when he seeks to Believe. This call but the Exercise of mind and will.
Faith is not a private matter
Why I refer so much to the designs of Thomas Merton? To my because I have the impression that we Christians today are seduced often: it is for the world, regardless of whether I believe in God and Jesus Christ. It is not! Faith is not a private matter! Often we find the reasons for the shortcomings of our society in the wrong place. You go back often to the lack of Faith in God. Because God plays in the lives of many people no longer matter, don’t get on with your life. Also, the whole society suffers from violence and ruthlessness, because one Religion to go to her in front of the eight, only the Individual.
The deepest reason why the individual person and the whole society can not live without God, good, is, in my Belief, Without Faith, it is ultimately indifferent to how I behave. For a long time, it may go without Faith. But in critical situations, the life to succeed much more, if we make ourselves to God. It is the beautiful word of St. Augustine: “You have made us for Yourself, o God. And restless is our heart until it rests in You.“3
1 Thomas Merton, The ascent to truth, Benziger-Verlag, 1952, p. 11.
2 ibid., P. 12
3 Aurelius Augustinus, Confessiones/Confessions, I, 1,1.
Father Eberhard von Gemmingen SJ, born in 1936 in Bad Rappenau. After he joined in 1957 in the Jesuit order, he studied in 1959, philosophy in Pullach near Munich, and theology in Innsbruck and Tübingen. In 1968 consecration of his priests. Father Eberhard von Gemmingen SJ was a member of the Ecumenical lay movement, action 365, the Bishop’s representative at the ZDF and head of the German editors of Radio Vatican. Since 2010, he is the Fundraiser of the German Jesuits.