AFRAID TO BELIEVE
People almost always prefer what’s easy, and we go through life trying to escape what demands risk and sacrifice. We go backwards or enclose ourselves in passivity when we discover the demands and the struggles that living with any depth brings with it.
We’re afraid to take our life seriously , taking on existence itself with full responsibility. It’s easier «to get settled» and «to keep casting around», without daring to confront the ultimate meaning of our daily life.
How many men and women live without knowing how, why or where to. They’re just there. Life continues, but for the time being, don’t let anyone bother them. They’re busy with work, later on their TV show awaits them, their vacation is coming. What more is there to look for?
We live in difficult times, and somehow we need to defend ourselves. And then each one goes about seeking, with greater or lesser effort, the self-medication that is most convenient, though within ourselves there’s opening up an emptiness more and more immense of the lack of meaning and the cowardice to live our existence in full depth.
That’s why we who easily call ourselves believers ought to listen sincerely to Jesus’ words: «Why are you so frightened? Have you still no faith?». Maybe our greatest sin against faith, what most gravely blocks our welcoming of the Gospel, is cowardice. Let’s say it straight out. We don’t dare to take seriously all that the Gospel signifies. We’re afraid to listen to Jesus’ call.
Frequently it’s about a hidden cowardice, almost unconscious. Someone has spoken of the «masked heresy» (Maurice Bellet) of those who defend Christianity, even aggressively, but don’t ever open themselves to the most fundamental demands of the Gospel.
Therefore Christianity runs the risk of becoming one more self-medication. A conglomerate of things that should be believed, things that we should practice and defend. Things that «taken in moderation» do good and help to live.
But then everything can remain falsified. One can be living their «own self-medicating religion», not very far from common paganism, that nourishes you with comfort, money and sex, avoiding in thousands of ways the «supreme danger» of meeting up with the living God of Jesus, who calls us to justice, fraternity and closeness to the poor.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
