Would I be a good pastor? I dont know. When I was a little boy, my dream was: a church with an adjacent football field. Both dreams ended for reasons of age, both for the man of God and for the professional footballer. After all, some critics point to my preaching qualities.
So, if I really became a pastor, I would preach this sermon on Christmas Day 2022:
God is a great villain. And all those who still believe in him are considered rednecks in well-informed circles. They say the poor lack composure. You desperately cling to the illusion to find a foothold in life. Without the vanity of God, they would perish.
Not properly! Because if we look outside or at a screen, we are faced with a big, confusing world. Chaos is growing every day. How does this fit in with the divine order? Those who nevertheless fearlessly believe in an all-good and all-powerful Creator in their lives have to commit gross intellectual tricks. Living with God in a confused world is more than tiring – the opposite of stability.
But above all: those who believe in God, no matter what, remain humble. He does not understand the big picture and coolly admits it. He says goodbye to cheap fantasies about saving people and faith in reality. Because he believes that he is – in the old terminology – redeemed, that is, free from everything bad and has eternal life. And here the believer is essentially a realist: man, this strange being, cannot redeem himself, for this a higher being is needed.
God-haters of all directions are different. Without noticing it, they continue to invent surrogate religions and worship new idols, especially fashionable now: climate, nutrition, diversity. Who CO2– lives neutrally, eats, thinks and speaks correctly, can be sure: he redeemed himself, already during his lifetime, already in this world, solely by his own efforts. It’s pure, it’s good, it’s justified.
This was where the sermon could slowly end. However, I did not become a pastor. As a sober philosopher, I ask myself – who is more enlightened here? Believers in God who humbly work on themselves and keep hope that in the end everything will work out well (or at least better than expected)? Or self-righteous self-rescuers who look down on anyone who doesn’t share their belief that the world will perish without them?
René Scheuil is a philosopher and director of the Swiss Institute for Economic Policy (IWP) in Lucerne. He writes to Blick every second Monday.