What follows are some of my favorite excerpts from the Theologian Paul Tillich’s book ‘The Eternal Now’.
They withdraw into a self-chosen loneliness, taking revenge through bitterness and hostility towards those they feel have rejected them, actually enjoying the pain of their loneliness.
One of these ways is the desire towards the silence of nature. We can speak without voice to the trees and the clouds and the waves of the sea. Without words they respond though the rustling of leaves and the moving of clouds and the murmuring of the sea.
There have been nations that were unable to throw anything of their heritage into the past, and thus cut themselves off from new growth, until the weight of their past crushed their present and brought them to extinction. And sometims we might ask if the Christian Church, as well as foreign religions, has not carried with it too much of its past, and left behind too little. Forgetting is probably more difficult for a religious tradition than any other human heritage. But God is not only the beginning from which we came; he is also the end to which we go.
But all this enthusiasm also cannot be used and increased. Most of the objects of our early enthusiasm must be sacrificed for a few, and those few approached soberly. No maturity is possible without this sacrifice. Yet often a deep yearning for the lost possibilities and that enthusiasm takes hold of us. Innocence and youthful enthusiasm: we had them, and we did not have them. Life itself demanded that they be taken from us. But there are other things that we had and that were taken from us because we were guilty of taking too much for granted. Some of us were depply sensitive to the wonder of life as it is revealed in nature. Slowly, under the pressure of work and social life and the lure of cheaply pleasures, we lose the wonder of our earlier years — the intense joy and sense of the mystery of life in the freshness of the young day or the glory of the dying afternoon, the splendour of the mountains the the infinity of the sea, or in the perfection of the movements of a young animal or of a flower breaking through the soil. We try perhaps to evoke such feelings again, but we find ourselves empty and do not succeed. We had that sensitity and we did not have it, and it was taken from us.
How can we describe the life that the Spirit gives us? I could use many words, well known to everbody, spoken by Paul himself, and after him by the great preachers and teachers of the Church. I could say that the work of the Spirit, liberating us from the law, is freedom. Or I could say that its work is faith, or that its work is hope, and, above all, that the Spirit creates love, the love in which all laws are confirmed and fulfilled and at that same time overcome. But if I used such words, the shadow of the absent God would appear and make you and me aware that we cannot speak like this today. If we did, freedom would be distorted into wilfulness, faith into belief in the absurd, hope into unreal expectations, and love — the word I wold like most to use for the creation of the Spirit — into sentimental feeling. The Spirit must give us new words, or revitalize old words to express true life. We must wait for them; we must pray for them; we cannot force them. But we know, in some moments of our lives, what life is. We know that that it is great and holy, deep and abundant, ecstatic and sober, limited and distorted by time, fulfilled by eternity. And if the right words fail us in the absence of God, we may look without words at the image of him in whom the Spirit and the Life are manifest without limits.
But in our period of history, work has become the dominating destiny of all men, if not in reality, at least by demand. It is everything — discipline, production, creation. The difference between labour and work is gone. The fact that is stands under a curse in the biblical view is forgotten. It has become a religion itself, the religion of modern industrial society. And it has all of us in its grip. Even if we were able to escape the punishment of starvation for not working, something within us would not permit an escape from the bondage to work. For most of us it is both a necessity and a compulsion. And as such, it has become the favoured way of the flight from God. This coming from Tillich, a Protestant theologian, is revealing[Christopher Hill].
Or I could say that its work is faith, or that its work is hope, and, above all, that the Spirit creates love, the love in which all laws are confirmed and fulfilled and at the same time overcome. But if I used such words, the shadow of the absent God would appear and make you and me aware that we cannot speak like this today. If we did, freedom would be distorted into willfulness, faith into belief in the absurd, hope into unreal expectations, and love — the word I would like most to use for the creation of the Spirit — into sentimental feeling. The Spirit must give us new words, or revitalize old worlds to express true life. We must wait for them; we must pray for them; we canmnot force them. But we know, in some moments of our lives, what life is. We know that it is great and holy, deep and abundant, ecstatic and sober, limited and distorted by time, fulfilled by eternity. And if the right words fail us in the absence of God, we may look without words at the image of him in whom the Spirit and the Life are manifest without limits.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. – Rev. 21.6
But we should not forget that we would not be able to live and to face the future if there were not blessings that support us and which come from the same source as the curses.
Most people try to avoid the risk by being conformed to the state of things into which they have been thrown by destiny. But those who have transformed our world risk wrong decisions. And the great men they were, the most conscious were they of the risk. They did not cease to doubt in spite of the depth and the passion of their faith. For when they refused to be conformed to their families and traditions, they were not instead conformed to themselves, but were renewed in their own being and could thus renew other beings. And precisely for this reason they never became self-assured — they took upon themselves the risk of not being conformed and the anxiety and doubt and glory of this risk.
We are familiar with strong personalities, perhaps in our families, among friends, or in public life, whom we admire, but in whom we feel something is wanting. This something is love. They may be friendly and be willing to help. This they demand of themselves. But everything they demand of themselves they also demand of others. They use the word ‘be’ without hesitation. They become tyrants through personal strength. Without love he who is strong becomes a law for the weak. And the law makes those who are weak even weaker. It drives them into despair, or rebellion, or indifference. Strength without love destroys, first others, then itself. For love is not something that may or may not be added to strength in its fullest sense; it is an eleent of strength. One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life, the power of reunion of the separated. Strength without love leads to separation, to judgement, to control of the weak. Love reunites what is separated; it acepts what is judged; it participates in what is weak, as God participates in our weakness and gives uf strength by his participation.
There are no limits to giving thanks in the whole of creation. But are there not limits in our life? Can we honestly give thanks for the frustrations, accidents, and diseases that strike us? We cannot in the moment when they take hold of us. Here is one of the many situations where piety can degenerate into dishonesty. For we rightly resist such evils. We want to remove them; we are often angry against our destiny and its divine ground. And there are depths of suffering, bodily and mental, in which even the question of thanking or not thanking does not appear. Out of the depths the psalmist cries to God; he does not thank him. This is honest, realistic — a realism born out of the awareness of the divine presence.
We must therefore be grateful to those who express our present situation honestly.