“Is there a way out of this accumulation of crises, of which we restrict ourselves to two? I believe that neither the Papa not o Dalai Lama, no privileged wise man can predict our future. If we look at the evils of the world we have to give reason to Jose Saramago which said: ‘I’m not a pessimist; the situation is terrible'”, writes Leonardo Boff, theologian, philosopher and writer.
According to him, “neither philosophy nor theology have managed to offer a convincing answer to the problem of evil until today. At most, it is to affirm that God, when approaching us through the incarnation – not to deify the human being – but to humanize God – was to say that this God goes with us into exile, takes on our pain and even despair on the cross. This is great, but it does not answer the reason for evil. Why did the human God have to suffer too, “even though he was the Son of God , he learned obedience through the suffering he suffered” (Hebrews 5,8). This proposal does not make the evil disappear. He remains like a thorn in the flesh.”
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There is a convergence of countless crises that are afflicting the humanity entire. Without needing to mention them, I restrict myself to two, extremely dangerous and even lethal: a nuclear war between militarist powers, vying for hegemony in running the world. As security is never total, the formula 1+1=0 would work. That is, one would destroy the other and take the entire human life system with it. A Terra it would continue to be impoverished, full of wounds, but it would still revolve around the sun for we don’t know how many millions of years, but it would be this Satan of life who is the deranged human being who has lost his sapient dimension.
The other is the increasing climate change that we don’t know at what degree Celsius it will stabilize. One fact is undeniable, stated by skeptical scientists themselves: science and technology arrived late. We have passed the critical point at which they could still help us. Now they can only warn us of the extreme events that will come and mitigate the harmful effects. Climatologists suggest that, in the very next few years, the climate would possibly settle, globally, around 38–40 degrees Celsius. In other regions it can reach around 50ºC. There will be millions of victims, especially among children and the elderly who will not be able to adapt to the changed situation on Earth.
These same scientists have warned States to the fact of millions of migrants who will leave their beloved lands due to excessive heat and the frustration of food crops. Possibly, and it is desirable, that there must be a global and plural planetary governance, constituted by representatives of peoples and social classes to think about the changed situation of the Earth, not respecting the obsolete limits between the nations. It is about saving not this or that country, but the humanity entire. Realistically I said it several times Pope Francisco: this time there is no Noah’s ark that saves some and leaves the rest to perish: “either we are all saved or no one is saved”.
As can be seen, we are facing a limit situation. Awareness of this urgency is very weak among the majority of the population, numbed by the capitalist propaganda of unbridled consumption and by the states themselves, largely controlled by the dominant classes. These only look at a horizon ahead, credulous of unlimited progress towards the future, without taking seriously that the planet is limited and cannot handle it and that we need 1,7 planets Earth to satisfy your sumptuous consumption.
Is there a way out of this accumulation of crises, of which we restrict ourselves to two? I believe that neither Papa not o Dalai Lama, no privileged wise man can predict our future. If we look at the evils of the world we have to give reason to Jose Saramago which said: “I’m not a pessimist; the situation is terrible.”
I remember the charming Saint Francis of Assisi who, enchanted, saw the bright side of creation. He asked, however, his confreres: not to consider the evils of the world too much so as not to have reasons to complain about God. In a way we are all a little Good who patiently complained about all the ills that afflicted him. We also complain because we don’t understand why there is so much evil and especially because God remains silent and often allows evil to triumph, as it does now in the face of the genocide of innocent children in Gaza Strip. Why don’t you intervene to save your sons and daughters? Isn’t He “the passionate lover of life” (Wisdom 11,26)?
Attributed to Freudwho did not consider himself a man of faith, the following sentence: if I appear before God, I have more questions to ask him than he does me, because there are so many things I never understood when I was on Earth.
Neither philosophy nor theology has so far been able to offer a convincing answer to the problem of evil. At most it is to affirm that God, when approaching us through the incarnation – not to deify the human being – but to humanize God – was to say that this God goes with us into exile, takes on our pain and even our despair on the cross. This is great, but it doesn’t answer the reason for evil. Why did the humanized God have to suffer too, “although he was the Son of God, he learned obedience through the sufferings he suffered”(Hebrews 5,8). This proposal does not make the evil disappear. He remains like a thorn in the flesh.
Perhaps we have to be satisfied with the statement of Saint Thomas Aquinas who wrote, admittedly, one of the most brilliant treatises “About Evil” (Of bad). In the end he surrenders to the impossibility of reason to account for evil and concludes: “God is so powerful that he can bring good out of evil”. This is confident faith, not reasoning reason.
What we can say with certain certainty: if the humanityespecially, the capital system with its large globalized corporations continues with its logic of exploiting natural goods and services to exhaustion due to their unlimited accumulation, then we can say, in the expression of Zigmunt Bauman:”let’s join the procession of those who are heading towards their own grave”.
After having committed the worst crime ever perpetrated in history: the judicial murder of the Son of God, nailing him to the cross, nothing is impossible anymore. As I said J. P. Sartre after the bombs about Hiroshima e Nagasaki: the human being appropriated his own death. And Arnold Toynbee, the great historian, commented: we no longer need God to intervene to put an end to his creation; It was up to our generation to witness the possibility of its own destruction.
Pessimism? No. Realism. But it also belongs to our possibility of taking the leap of faith that is inscribed as a possible emergence of the cosmogenic process: we believe that the true master of history and its destiny is not the human being, but the Creator who from the ruins and ashes can create a new man and a new woman, a new heaven and a new Earth. There life is eternal and love, celebration, joy and communion of everyone with everyone and with the Supreme Reality will reign. And then it will be the end.
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Where are we going? Article by Leonardo Boff – Instituto Humanitas Unisinos – IHU