Not long ago, two habitual analysts of this newspaper used the same word to designate the current climax in our society. Manel Castells answered the question about how he imagines the future: “Fear and hate”. And a few pages later, Enric Juliana, clinched it: “Fear permeates the times” (La Vanguardia, 06/11/23)
Fear has to do with the future but it is lived intensely in the present. It shelters from the will, conditions and paralyzes it. Who has not experienced more or less intense episodes of fear in recent years? Fear of foreigners and their cultural entourage, fear of a civil confrontation, fear of contracting the covid, of losing their job, of real impoverishment, of an atomic disaster… Not to mention more common fears, such as fear to grow old alone, or to lose a good relationship with a daughter, or with one’s own partner… And what about fears with more status? Fear of losing a mayoralty, or fear of losing power in the party, financial institution, or the media.
Fear is a game that is played in the basements of our self, in the most decisive Hamletian plot that we all wage every day, the internal dialectic between me and myself. Who has not been overcome at some time by this mental heaviness and has shunned all kinds of family and social commitments? Who has not thrown in the towel at some point in the face of an unbearable emotional, economic or political onslaught? And surely we can also say how many times we have resisted the pull and, thinking of our children or co-workers, have punched the table and reacted proactively?
And behold, when the splendor of nature no longer moves us to lofty thoughts, when the verticality of the Gothic cathedrals only affects the tourist eye, when the liturgical ceremonies bore us, when not even the penetrating gaze of the refugee moves us anymore. mercy… This last inner redoubt remains where, paradoxically, in the most intimate part of ourselves we can make a psychic experience of the existence of God. Let’s see it.
Life is based on trust. So how do we know that the milk or bread we buy is not poisoned? And if trust is key in human relationships, if there was a Creator God, the ultimate reason for everything, the gesture by which we should be able to relate to Him would have to be a gesture of total trust. And how could they enter into a real and proportionate dialogue, on the one hand, a whole creator God, and on the other, a small and tiny human creature? How could you compensate for the infinite distance between the first loving rationality, and the limited mind of a poor human?
Well, if from its narrow and limited vision, the human self were capable of taking a step of total trust in the Creator based on reasonable indications (need for a global sense, biblical testimonies, greatness and depth of the figure of Jesus Christ), this limited, but free and determined action – carried out without total empirical guarantees – would acquire a greatness that would equate it in some way with the infinity of the greatest God. The risky act of the will, invoking and saying “yes” to the Creator, perceived through ambiguous signs – susceptible to different interpretations – would bridge the infinite distance. For this reason, in the biblical revelation, what God asks of his interlocutors (Abraham, Moses, David, Mary) is not primarily the rational acceptance of some truths, but rather a gesture, a step of trust. Three hundred and sixty-five times the expression “Do not be afraid” appears in the Bible. One for each day. The choice, dear reader, is yours. Against fear, it is possible, also the invocation.
