This I Believe: An A to Z of a Life

God

“Nietzsche said: ‘God is dead.’ ”

“God was patient and one day whispered, from a mental hospital in Weimar: ‘Nietzsche is dead.’ ”

“Was the voice of Nietzsche human, perhaps too human? Because his words convey a tremendous contradiction. If God is dead, that must mean that at some point, God lived.”

“But then, when exactly did God begin to live? Which came first, God or the Universe? The egg or the chicken? If we admit the Universe is infinite, God must be more infinite than the infinite, and that notion is patently absurd.”

“Let us imagine, then, that God and the Universe have existed together, always.”

“To me, that seems to defeat Reason but, on the other hand, it does contribute to Faith. Science and Technology are reconciled. Neither God nor the Universe has beginning or end. On the other hand, if we accept the big bang theory, was this seminal explosion the work of a divine fiat?”

“Do you mean to say that God inhabited the Universe before the big bang and then, one day, for a little fun, ordered an expansive, universal explosion, knowing that everything would end, not in some kind of final explosion but in one final sob? That is, ‘Not with a bang but a whimper.’ Because the God that knows all, knew everything, including T. S. Eliot’s ‘ The Waste Land.’ ”

“Excuse me, but I seriously doubt that God reads literature. Why would He if He knew everything beforehand?”

“That is precisely what I am arguing with you. Let’s take it step by step. Let’s suppose that before God there was darkness. Let’s agree — after all, the Bible says so — that when God appeared, light emerged. But what came before God? What is that darkness that preceded the divine words ‘Let there be light.’ Can we even conceive of it?”

“I would tell you that if we admit to the existence of God, we should also admit that God subjugated Nothingness.”

“But if He were Everything, could there have even been a Nothingness? Do God and Nothingness coexist like absurd twins or, rather, are we simply confusing Nothingness with the absence of the world and mankind?”

“You are moving dangerously close to an argument that will leave us bereft of all arguments: that God is a creature of Man, not vice versa. But if God only exists because Man has imagined, thought of, or desired Him, then God does not exist in and of Himself.”

“Although he may very well have the greatest existence possible, that of being the product of human desire and imagination.”

“That is not what we are disputing right now. We are trying to envision a solitary God who, for some reason that escapes us, decided to create a being in His image and likeness: Man.”

“What for? If God is God, He needs neither the world nor man. He exists in and of Himself. He is enough for Himself. Why would he create something that is unnecessary? That is the core of the matter.”

“Perhaps God created the world because He felt lonely and one fine day experienced the horror of the void.”

“And so then are we creatures of a baroque God that reacts, as did Góngora and Bernini, to the horror vacuii?”

“Let me suggest another image instead: a God that spends all of Eternity thinking about what would have happened had He not created the world.”

“I can also imagine a God that spends Eternity not worrying the least little bit about doing us the favor of creating us and introducing, incidentally, an intruder in His Creation.”

“The fact is there was a divine fiat, and Man and the World were created. We can argue as to whether God created us, but we cannot argue that we are here, that we live, that we exist and that we die. The issue really should be whether our existence bears a relationship with God or not. Are we or are we not His creatures and if we are, what is our position in His creative plan?”

“Well, for starters, the Bible presents us with a God that is a mere organizer of things. The sea and its little fishes are here, the land is there, although without cocoa or coffee or tomatoes or corn or potatoes. The animals are all in their place and set up in pairs, just as the tale of Noah describes. But in the Creation there are no buffaloes or iguanas or quetzals. Very well. God as the overseer of a vast, pre-American zoo. Manager of the largest pre-Columbian aquarium. Author of Eolus, the god and master of storms and the movement of the heavens.”

“But not of Ehecatl, the Aztec god of the wind, the American Eolus. .”

“Hold on — we will get to that in a moment. Let me continue; you keep interrupting me.”

“Am I like the Devil?”

“No, my friend. Not even the Devil’s advocate. As I was saying. .”

“As you were saying. .”

“The essential fact of human creation is that God created us in His image and likeness. The point of contention is clear and immediate. If He made us in His image and likeness and if, moreover, He knew everything beforehand, why then did He create us in the image and likeness of Evil? Why did He include the Devil in our image and likeness? Did the image of God, from the very beginning, encompass the image of the Devil?”

“Listen, I think Adam sniffed this part out from the very first moment. Milton offers a profound bit of intuition in Paradise Lost. Adam lashes out at Creation and rebukes God, asking Him, ‘Why couldn’t you have let me remain as clay? Why did you turn me into a man?’ ”

“Just imagine, as a response, that God had His temptations as well in the Garden of Eden. The temptation of living side by side for all eternity with His creations, Adam and Eve, like a father who spoils and is spoiled by his children. And then imagine that Adam and Eve, wiser than God, commit sin and expel themselves from Paradise, only to expel God at the same time. At God’s side for centuries of centuries, would Adam and Eve have been humans? They would never have had sexual relations or descendants. And they would have frustrated God’s design. He who is Immortal cannot live surrounded by Immortals. He is Unique. God fooled Himself inventing Paradise and Adam and Eve did Him a favor by divesting Him of this illusion.”

“ ‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay / to mould me Man, did I sollicite thee / From darkness to promote me?’ Did Adam perceive the burden of existence as something so terrible that he would have preferred, as Milton says, to remain as clay in the darkness?”

“The advancement toward the light: one of the loveliest definitions of Creation, of all creation. But light only exists in contrast to darkness. Perhaps God regretted the Creation because He could not bear Adam’s immortality?”

“Are you trying to say that God is co-responsible for the horrors of humankind?”

“I am trying to say that perfect Good only lasts for a second whereas Evil will forever occupy the space of the subverted Eden.”

“Allow me to make a distinction. Evil knows itself to be Evil but it also knows Goodness, and this is precisely its advantage. Perfect, absolute, total Goodness does not know Evil and precisely because of this can fall victim to Evil.”

“God, after the Fall, turns himself into the referee in these issues.”

“No. In the end, He gives the Church that power. But we will discuss that topic later, with Jesus, in person. For the moment, I only wish to suggest that if the world is born out of God’s essence, Evil is inconceivable. And if Evil is born from Goodness, then we live in a world of the absurd. From there, this is what follows: First, burden the creatures of God, Adam and Eve, with an Evil that God could never have envisioned as part of a creative plan. Second, remind us that the Devil also belongs to Eternity. And third, console us by demonstrating that human liberty is a gift from God, practiced by Adam and Eve, that serves as an example of the infinite Divine goodness.”

“Are you saying that God is able to endure Evil if Evil is an act of liberty?”

“No, I am only suggesting that perhaps God negotiated with the Devil hoping that the eventual triumph of liberty in favor of goodness would give Him back the chips He lent the Devil to explain the existence of Evil.”

“But that would make God, whether He liked it or not, the Devil’s associate. Because, I repeat, Evil is capable of knowing both Evil and Goodness. Goodness, however, cannot conceive of anything beyond itself, including that which denies it. That is both the strength as well as the weakness of Goodness.”

“And I say to you that of course God knows both Good and Evil; but He knows them as a unit. In Man, Good and Evil are separated. And we have neither the might nor the right to unite them because that would make us God and God would no longer stand for that.”

“ ‘No longer.’ Do you add that condition to insinuate that, after the Fall from grace, God robs Man of the power to see Good and Evil as one discrete unit? That God wants to reserve that exclusive right for Himself?”

“No. At this level it is not God who intervenes, but History.”

“Which begins in the garden with Adam and Eve.”

“No. I believe that history begins with Cain. Abel is the promise of Paradise recovered, if you will, to continue with the Miltonian allusions. Cain, not Abel, is the second father and his patriarchy is based on crime. If God, malgré Nietzsche, has not died, it is because Cain’s crime makes it unbearable for us to experience history as crime, as fratricide, as injustice. We turn our eyes to God so that He may redress the fratricidal crime of Cain, civil war — not the nonexistent crime of Adam and Eve, givers of life and pleasure.”

“Is Cain the second coming of Evil, no longer as part of the Creation but as part of History?”

“I am not sure. Perhaps the World, after the Fall, is no longer God’s responsibility and becomes the poisonous garden of a Devil that is the gleeful spectator of human suffering. The world becomes the theater of the Devil disguised as God, an exclusive God — that is, one who excludes, who takes away.”

“Is the God who deprives, then, the Devil?”

“Only if God, secretly, privately, feels satisfied, smug. Instead of destroying a world that has betrayed Him from head to toe, why does God give the World a second chance? Noah’s chance, that of escaping the deluge.”

“Because I believe that if Man ceases to exist, God will die without him. Not with him, please understand me. Without him.”

“If the World comes to an end, God is rendered impossible?”

“For Himself, perhaps not. For human beings, yes. And the reason for that is that before killing God, men will have all killed one another first.”

“In that case God is the greatest human invention of all, because He frees us from the other great human invention, History.”

“Don’t you think that perhaps instead God might grow accustomed to the idea that Man commits acts of Evil because Man was created in the image and likeness of God and God, too, is both Good and Evil?”

“Such an idea would test the limits of Faith and would inevitably prove Origen’s point: the grace of God is so great that in the end, it is capable of forgiving the Devil. Because if God is not capable of forgiving Beelzebub, then He would be an insincere and crippled God.”

“Origen ended up castrating himself to prove his faith, never imagining that the Emperor Decius would do him the favor of castrating his entire life for him.”

“Origen puts the limits of Faith to the test. But Faith can only be limitless because it consists of believing the unbelievable. ‘It is true because it is absurd.’ That is how Tertullian defined Faith.”

“Does God also consider it absurd to believe in Him?”

“He couldn’t answer because then He would be saying that Tertullian was right. God is God because He never allows himself to be seen. That is why He demands Faith.”

“Even though He speaks through the voices of children, saints, and lunatics.”

“Probably. But a visible, everyday God sitting in on literary circles in cafés would not be God.”

“He would be Christ.”

“But that is another story entirely.”

“Take a look under ‘C’ in this book.”

“Thank you.”

“So now tell me one thing, which person is superior: the one who believes or the one who doesn’t?”

“For me, doubt does not weaken God, and it strengthens us. There are theologians, like Hans Kung, for whom the modern world and all its comforts are responsible for the loss of faith. For many people, believing in God has become an anachronism. Just as before Copernicus, people believed that the sun revolved around the earth.”

“Does doubt strengthen us as individuals or believers?”

“In your novel La campaña (The Campaign), you place these words in the mouth of the guerrilla priest Father Anselmo Quintana:

“. . you can’t fool Him. Little games don’t work with Him. God is the Supreme Being who knows everything, even what we imagine about Him, and he gets ahead of us and imagines us first; and if we go around thinking that believing in Him or not is something that depends on us, He gets ahead of us yet again and finds a way of telling us that He will go on believing in us no matter what, even if we abandon Him and deny Him. . Jesus said to me, ‘Anselmo, my son, don’t be a comfortable Christian; raise hell for the Church, because the Church loves peaceful Christians. I, on the other hand, love pissed-off Christians like you; you gain nothing by being a Catholic without problems, a simple believer, a man of faith who doesn’t even realize that faith is absurd and that is why it is called faith and not reason. . Please. . always be a problem. . Don’t let them pass through your soul without paying for the right at the spiritual customs house; don’t hand your faith over to any ruler, any secular state, any philosophy, any military or economic power without also giving them your mess, your complications, your exceptions, your goddamned imagination. . ’ ”

“That is a call to faith as freedom and as responsibility. How is it lived out with the triumph of Man that Georg Büchner proclaims in Danton’s Death: ‘No longer will it be possible to accuse God, because God does not exist. Rebellious freedom has occupied all the space of the world’?”

“We must ask ourselves what we have done with our rebellious freedom. .”

“We have created science, we have penetrated the secrets of matter, we have improved the living conditions of millions of people, we have eradicated sicknesses that formerly ravaged the human race, we have prolonged human existence, cleared our consciences. .”

“But we have also tortured and killed millions of people in wars fought for political and economic supremacy, motivated by irrational impulses and hatred, prejudice, the cynicism of industrial militarism, the ambition of superpowers, the misery of the helpless. . Don’t we have the right to question aloud, ‘God, what have we done with our rebellious freedom?’ ”

“The terrifying silence of the infinite cosmic void will answer you. Do you give in?”

“No. I prefer to continue doubting, asking questions, debating with you, with me, with the three of us. .”

“Always three, as in the poem by José Gorostiza, ‘Muerte sin fin’ (Death without end). You and I, laid siege by our own epidermis, full of ourselves. Who is the third person? Is it one of us? Is it God? Is it the Other?”

“Let us suppose it is God. And once again, we doubt and we question. Is God co-responsible for the errors of humankind? Does God need to take human failure and turn it into proof of His power? Does He need our failure to test himself? Is God co-responsible for the human horrors that our freedom has bestowed upon us, along with the glory that freedom has also bestowed upon us? Does God know the results of the game before it is played out, or doesn’t He? Is God the great croupier — William Blake’s great ‘old Nobodaddy aloft’—who knows each and every spin of the roulette game before they are played out?”

“Yes, let’s imagine that God knows the future. But does God know what He will think in the future?”

“Are you trying to say that our freedom may affect the image that God has of Himself and the manner in which He will act?”

“I will answer you with another question. Can a person love God without knowing Him? Yes, the mystic and the saint will tell us. Can a person know God without loving Him? Yes, the artist tells us. I offer you the example of St. John of the Cross. The verb of God is unknown. The verb of Man is known. The creation of God through words is Man’s great honor. We will never know when, where, or why God created Man. On the other hand, we do know that St. John of the Cross created God: ‘ Oh llama del amor viva / que tiernamente hieres / de mi alma en el más profundo centro.’ (Oh, living flame of love / gently you wound / my soul at its deepest core.) He also created a world without God: ‘En mí yo no vivo ya / y sin Dios vivir no puedo / pues sin Él y sin mí quedo / este vivir, ¿qué será?’ (No longer do I live in me / and without God I cannot live / to Him or me I cannot give / myself, so what can living be?)² Neither St. Thomas nor St. Anselm gave greater proof of God’s existence than St. John of the Cross.”

“Do you think God found out? It strikes me that God mustn’t like literature very much, because literature robs God of both Heaven and Hell. That is why God never writes. He hires his ghostwriter to do it for Him. God never writes. He only speaks. He is an orator. A hummingbird.”

“Well then, we should listen to the voices that speak on God’s behalf. .”

“For example?”

“St. John of the Cross, once again. ‘Vivo sin vivir en mí / y de tal manera espero / que muero porque no muero.’ (I live yet do not live in me / and wait as my life goes by / and die because I do not die.)”

“Lovely but funereal. Something a bit more lively, perhaps.”

“Simone Weil. ‘God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love.’ As such, Weil reasons, God exists because my love is no illusion. This is why Simone Weil feels in control of her free judgment to believe in God. Her acceptance or rejection of God depends on her freedom.”

“Pascal goes further than that, when he places these words in the mouth of God: ‘Thou wouldst not seek Me, if thou hadst not found Me.’ ”

“But he follows that with a warning that is almost a commandment: ‘Console toi.’ Console yourself. And I rebel against the notion of consolation.”

“Didn’t you say you believed in rebellious faith, inconsolable faith?”

“The glory of God is that of human creation. Let us accept this on the condition that this creation neither punishes nor rewards us. It simply identifies us.”

“Admit it, we live in a wounded world.”

“Only the action of humans will be able to close the world’s open wounds one day.”

“What you mean then, is that creation is unfinished.”

“Yes. And this is the fissure through which God inevitably finds His way into the world. If God created us in His image and likeness, does God contain human evil? I answer yes. We are also the reflection of the bad or incomplete side of God. We strive to make God ‘complete.’ ”

“We strive to make God complete. You know, I feel that you approach faith from the perspective that not believing in God— given that we strive to complete God — diminishes our own possibilities as humans. That not believing in God would be closing off our own horizons as humans. Is it cowardice not to believe in God?”

“Take as an example that God is both object and subject at the same time. His condition as a living being is subjective. But objectively speaking, for you and for me, He is — and can only be — the mirror of the soul. The work, then, of humans.”

“Don’t you believe in eternal life?”

“If it exists, when we arrive there we will receive a new agenda that will be unknown until that very moment. We don’t know the agenda of Heaven.”

“New instructions?”

“That’s right. If there is such a thing as eternal life, let us leave the details up to God.”

“Today we cremate dead bodies. How can we attest to the resurrection of the flesh that proclaims the credo?”

“Think, my friend, of the equivalence of the body rather than its resurrection. Think of the renewal of the soul rather than of survival.”

“In conclusion, do you believe in God?”

“In conclusion, does God believe in me?”

“Listen, I think I will stick with Pascal’s wager. I believe in God, because if God exists, I come out winning, and if He doesn’t exist, I don’t lose a thing.”