The problem of God and Man.
God! Who is God?
Today, the problem of God is being discussed again. Many atheistic thinkers are claiming that God and religion are of a detriment to society and the progress of man. Although this is a new way of putting it, the problem is not new at all.
If we look back at human history – and we need not go very far -, what happened when man decided that God does not exist? He developed an atheist ideology, like communism, that violated the fundamental human rights and brought great misery to the people that believed it.
However, the problem is not just whether God exists or not. The problem is also who is God.
Those who do not believe in a God who speaks, in a God who reveals Himself, and therefore, in a God who needs to be listened to in order to realize what He is saying about Himself; ends up with the logical conclusions of his wisdom: God that is Great; God above whom there is nobody else; God to whom man is incomparable; an authoritarian God who rewards the faithful and punishes the infidels….
What happens when man believes in a God who is so detached from man? Man assumes his divine mission of defending God in an aggressive and fundamental way against fellow men who do not submit to this idea of God.
And Man! Who is Man?
The last two Popes are spelling it out crystal clear: since man today is doubting once more the existence of God and is removing God aside, man has ended up with an anthropological problem (in other words, we human beings do not know any more who we are), with the risk of destroying the human race.
The reason is this – and this too can be confirmed historically -: when man looses faith in God, he starts to think that man is God. When man believes this lie, he ends up creating the terror that brought on their contemporaries people like Herod, who killed the innocents, and Hitler, who committed the greatest genocide in human history… and the list is never ending.
On the other hand, if man believes in God, but not in a God who revealed Himself in man, whom He created in His own image and likeness, than man looses his self-esteem and put even the animal above him, like the Egyptians who adored the Black Cat as the image of God.
The unique message of Christianity is and will ever remain relevant to man in his struggle with the problem of God and Man. God is God, to whom nothing is impossible, not even that of becoming Man! Man remains a creature, part of the universe, and can never become God! However, with the Incarnation of the Son of God becoming Man in the person of Jesus Christ, God “married” our human nature – and there is no divorce with God! -.
This is the message of hope we Christians bring to humanity today, when it wanders in a state of loss, darkness and death. The One and True God is a friend of humanity, rather in love of humanity, espoused to her, no matter how unfaithful it is to Him! Man’s own true dignity lies precisely in this nuptial relationship to God, rather than his emancipation of Him!
