Dear Vittorio,
I imagine they’ve already asked you, but do you believe in God? Not in some religion dictated and determined by your place and family of birth, but in God himself. I ask you this because, observing the way the world is going, I’m becoming more and more convinced that God himself doesn’t deserve certain beliefs, much less certain believers. Especially those who invoke him by killing their neighbors, making such an invocation blasphemy. I understand that we can’t expect much more from a humanity like today’s, where certain religions are considered more important than God himself. Forgetting that, to make a parallel, any religion is to God as a star is to the universe. Because it’s the immensity and not a sun that should make you lose your breath! And that’s what we too often forget when we hate each other for this or that belief! Am I wrong?
Best regards
Mario Taliani
Dear Mario,
why this indiscreet question? Obviously I’m joking, every question is legitimate and it’s not a problem for me to answer. I would really like God to exist, because this would imply that there is something after life, in short that not everything ends miserably with death, or that only our body, a kind of useless casing, will end up in the grave, while our essence, our spirit, will continue to be. Yes, it would be really nice if there were a paradise where we could find people and animals that we loved in life, ready to welcome us, there faithfully waiting for us. Yet I fear that these are collective fantasies that men have created and passed down to give meaning to what seems to have none as well as to escape the greatest anguish, that generated by the mere thought of passing away, something that affects everyone for the simple fact of being born. Believing in God is a sort of consolation or relief. When things go wrong, we know who to turn to and through prayer, of whose healing power for the soul I am sure, we can ease our suffering.
You will probably notice that I have not yet answered your question clearly. Well, I can say that I do not believe in God, but I have always wondered if I am wrong and God only knows how much I would like to. When I admire a sunset, with its fiery colors, or the moon, pale and perfect, or the stars, or the perfection of my cat, Ciccio, as well as that of other creatures, I say to myself: “Someone or Something extraordinary must have created all this beauty…!”. And in that moment I feel comforted. Yes, in those moments even I have faith. The problem is that I immediately lose it. I just can’t hold it in. Rationality prevails in me, which places me in perfect antithesis to everything that is mystical or metaphysical. Maybe, I hope as late as possible, I will change my mind, I will come into the presence of the Creator and I foresee that I will not hold back a few bad jokes. Besides, you are right: if God exists, why is humanity so disgusting? In short, couldn’t He have made us a little better? People have always killed each other in the name of God, but this is not the Lord’s fault. Humans invented religions, God has nothing to do with it. And they, which are nothing more than another reason to hate and massacre each other, are full of dogmas, prisons of thought, immutable. By invoking Allah, we blow ourselves up to annihilate the greatest number of people, because they are considered and called “infidels”, that is, not faithful to Allah, non-believers. Under the sign of the cross, people have fought for a long time and massacred innocents.
Man has unscrupulously used God to justify his crimes. He has always done so.
And it still happens today, even within certain mafia organizations, where the Christian faith is sacred and initiation rites include the presence of religious symbols to which the mafioso is fiercely attached.
I imagine that, if God exists, he is watching us in horror from up there.