Why I believe in God
The Wall Coming Down, Rita Ackermann (2014).
Translated to English for Miguel Mendez
I make this record at the suggestion of friends, to reason and, who knows, to gather arguments that make someone change their mind.
I am not a religious person in a practical sense. In other words, despite being raised in a Catholic family and with Catholic values, I don't go to Church, I haven't prayed for many years, I'm not a Bible reader, and I don't follow dogmas (consciously).
My grandfather was a communist, my father likes to remember. My father carried that materialistic upbringing with him, something very explicit in his stories about questioning the Church in his times as a churchgoer as a young man. Like a good Pernambuco native, he rebelled. And the Church became an easy target after materialism showed up. As a consequence, religion came into account, along with the concept of God.
I do not intend to write about Church or religion here. Also, for having little property and understanding that it is in these matters, things tend to get complicated, generating disagreement. The focus is God.
In the West, the Catholic God is the one who suffers the most. It also makes sense because he is the most representative. It is he that I must use as the primary
reference for the analysis, although it is not necessarily about him that I am writing.
A few years ago, I can say I came to terms with the mystery. I recognize the level of abstraction of this statement. So I try to explain. I was brought up to be rational. I am aware of this. My religious education lasted until fourth grade. After that, it was a lot of materialism in my head. As a consequence, I developed a cynical view of religion. I remember that I only started to question this view when, in conversations with my friend Bruno, one of the most intelligent people I know and one of my few friends who practice religion, I realized that belief is not synonymous with ignorance. The way he answered my questions (and my brother Rodolfo's, consistently sharper), with patience, clarity and tranquillity, made a lot of difference in changing my vision. He also never tried to convert us or anything like that. This contact was a big step toward my change of vision.
Bruno told me that faith is not a matter of reason. They are not the same thing, and analyzing faith by reason makes no sense (and vice versa). This is one of the biggest problems a materialist seems to have when dealing with “God.” He focuses on the reality of stories and images. So he questions God's human form, beard, skin tone, and the fact that he lives in heaven, sitting on his throne surrounded by angels and having everything under control. The atheist is used to focus on passages from the Bible literally. Even this last case is interesting to reflect on because the literalness of the religious diverges in essence from the literalness of the materialist; after all, the element of faith will always be present in the first. Amid unclear concepts or even relatives, depending on the position, it will always be challenging to have a dialogue. Therefore, I will try to make my ideas clear here.
We're back to the mystery. Years after the debates with Bruno and several readings, I was constantly uncomfortable with questions that reason cannot answer. Among them, the most profound and inaccessible, such as “Why are we here?”, “What is the mission?”, “Where are we going?” “What is the meaning of it all?”. My materialistic teaching didn't make it any easier, although I am grateful for it.
However, all this information accumulated over time hit my head here differently. It's hard to explain, but my life experiences, personal contacts, readings, and who I've become have come to perceive mystery as a quality rather than a limitation. And Marina Lima and Antônio Cícero won't let me lie. Look at the lyrics of Charme do Mundo (Word's Charm), which I will poorly translate to English here:
I have a fever I know
It's a light fire that I caught
Of the sea, or of love, I don't know
But it may because of age
I think the world is charming
And that it knows how to enchant
That's why I'm taken, and I'm going
In this real magic
The fact is, I'm its friend,
it intrigues me too much
It's such a new world
What a crazy world
even more than me
It's fever, love,
And I want more,
everything I want,
Really,
It's all this mystery
The charm of the world is all its mystery. And the mystery is what moves us. Something for which a full explanation simply does not apply. An origin without limits, for which answers are challenging to find and diverse. No wonder they are answers that, for the same question, change depending on the place and time we are in.
And how do you deal with questions whose answers are relative? Even more so when these questions are essential to you. Why not give up, as the response depends? Since the answer might be another tomorrow? On the other hand, why not move on since the answer will be different tomorrow?
It's tragic to realize now that I had problems with what keeps me moving with my energy, power, and potency. And potency has a lot to do with my view of God.
After some of these reflections, I read Dostoevsky's books in sequence. First Brothers Karamazov, then Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground. And it was in the latter that the concept of God hit me hard. In one passage of the book (below), the character and narrator debate the opposition between science and religion, indicating that if it were possible to explain everything by science, life would immediately lose its fun. We would be able to calculate a life from beginning to end, and we would be nothing more than organ pedals with predetermined functions and without nuances or personality. But there is something unpredictable about us, which is our virtue and our curse. Something he identifies as desire, will and freedom. The three are the sources of the mystery.
Just now I wanted to shout out that only God knows what the will depends on and that maybe that's really for the best; but then I remembered the science and… I held back. But you started talking. And indeed, if one day the formula for all our wills and whims is found, that is, on what they depend, on what laws exactly they originate, how exactly they are diffused, where they aspire in such and such a case, etc. etc., that is, the true mathematical formula; in that case, perhaps, the man would immediately stop wanting; maybe even it would certainly stop. What's the fun of wanting according to a table? Furthermore: immediately the man would transform himself into an organ pedal or something like that; because what is a man without desires, without freedom and without wills but a pedal on an organ? [Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky]
This passage catches my attention for another reason as well. We are uncomfortable beings. Even when everything is fine, there remains a feeling that something is missing. People with a more liberal personality tend to have this characteristic of dissatisfaction more pronounced. It is the communist who lives in capitalism. The capitalist who lives in communism. The married man who resents his lack of freedom, the worker who wants to be promoted, the adventurer looking for a more significant challenge. When we don't have problems, we look for new ones. Why? Dostoevsky's character writes in a cynical way, but which I believe contains an essential truth.
… even if he actually turns out to be a piano key, even if this is shown to him by natural laws and mathematics, he will not come to his senses with this, but will do something to counteract, solely out of ingratitude, just to maintain his position. In that case, if he does not have the means to do so, he will invent destruction and chaos, he will invent various sufferings and yet maintain his position! He will cast a curse upon the world, and since only man can curse (that is his privilege, which is the main distinguishing factor between him and other animals), perhaps only the curse will bring him to his goal, or that is, really convince yourself that he is a man and not a piano key! [Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky]
We are uncomfortable, and we have faith because we are human. And, in our humanity, our potency is contained. If we fail to recognize that we can be better, that is, exercise our power, life seems to lose its fun. More Dostoevsky:
You see: reason, gentlemen, is a good thing, that is indisputable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only the rational capacities of man, while will is the manifestation of all life, that is, of all human being life, including reason and all its itching. [Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky]
To believe in God is to believe in yourself and others. And consequently, recognize the potential of each one. It is realizing the will, desire and freedom in each of us. I believe it is an individual action above all. I even think of God as a superior "I,” a unique reference better than us, whom we can aim to achieve. And, with effort and luck, we can evolve towards that reference.
Contrary to what a materialist might think, God was not created to explain the mystery. He is the mystery itself. The mystery we carry within us makes us interesting to each other and allows us to have a direction to follow.
What is God? Or, in other words, how does God materialize? How does it become a word? How does it become accessible? Indeed, a religious person and more versed in theology will have good answers. For now, I'll take mine. But an important question is whether my connections between mystery, potency and God are more arbitrary than a sound analysis would recommend. After all, some understand that there can be power without God. Or even the mystery I spoke of has nothing to do with God.
I find it difficult, through material means alone, for us to access each other — or even access each other individually. Materialistic paths like these tend toward prejudice, discrimination and intolerance. No wonder even the movements of minorities — materialist in their essence — end up replicating discriminatory attitudes that they repudiate if carried out by their adversaries. It is as if we lost the reference and, amid creating new connections, we were lost and doomed to make the same mistakes.
I'm certainly not the only one with these suspicions. And, even convinced of the existence of God, I follow after information that can enrich my reasoning. Last year, I read a series of books based on materialistic thinking: Production of Presence (Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht), Future Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Reinhart Koselleck), Communication and Difference — A Philosophy of War for the Use of Everyman (Marcio Tavares d'Ámaral), After 1945: Latency as Origin of the Present (Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht) and History and Narration in Walter Benjamin (Jeanne Marie Gagnebin). Many present the discomfort of living in a world where understanding is based on the material. And, mainly, in the search for answers (and meanings): in experience, in phenomena, in the reinterpretation of history, in art. But they all fail, perhaps, in trying to build organ pedals.
I often think about our world and the changes we are going through. I wonder if it could be different, if we are doing the right thing and if we can consciously change as a group. I think it's unlikely, but I can change because I acknowledge that I have changed. And I change in a way that I find increasingly positive. I think it's because I accepted the mystery as part of me. And with the mystery came the potential. And with the potential came the future me, full of questions, possibilities, and miracles that I'd rather live than explain. This is, for me, a life with God.
Most likely, you are not convinced of anything different from what you thought after reading this text. Or even if I believe that this God I describe is particular. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a thoughtful friend willing to talk about their beliefs. In this sense, it will always be essential to consider. God is more than the suicide bomber; he is more than the profiteering pastor, more than the Pope or any materialization. Perhaps, if you keep looking for its meaning, you will be able to overcome these material barriers and realize that God is a name we give ourselves in the future. And to believe in him is to believe in that future for us.
I wrote this text in 2019 and was going to publish it on Medium, where I wrote until then. But for some reason, it was in the drafts to May 1, 2020. I even built a faith episode of the Algum que sirva podcast based on it. I thought it was good to make it as the opening post of this blog. And now I translated it to share with someone I recently met and with whom promises of good debates are on the way.