mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of
the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days
we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the
concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to
restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have
placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only
to find out that we were being deprived of our most
precious possession: our spiritual life.Realism is important. Pragmatism and scientism and skepticism
are too. They all have their place. But still, you have to believe in
something. You just have to. Or else everything is empty and cold.
The comedian Stephen Colbert survived a tragic childhood guided
by a deep and earnest Catholic faith that he maintains to this day
(teaching Sunday school well into his show business career). His
mother, who bore the brunt of that tragedy when she lost her
husband and two sons in a plane crash, was his example. “Try to look
at this moment in the light of eternity,” she would tell him. Eternity.
Something bigger than us. Something bigger than we can possibly
comprehend. Something longer than our tiny humanness naturally
considers.
We could find a similar story for just about every faith.
It is probably not a coincidence that when one looks back at
history and marvels at the incredible adversity and unimaginable
difficulty that people made it through, you tend to find that they all
had one thing in common: Some kind of belief in a higher deity. An
anchor in their lives called faith. They believed an unfailing hand
rested on the wheel, and that there was some deeper purpose or
meaning behind their suffering even if they couldn’t understand it.
It’s not a coincidence that the vast majority of people who did good
in the world did too.
The reformer Martin Luther was called before a tribunal
demanding that he recant his beliefs, on threat of denunciation and
possibly death. He spent hours in prayer as he waited his turn to
testify. He breathed in. He emptied his mind of worry and fear. He
spoke. “I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian