Churches are emptying, but the questions remain

Last Saturday, Pope Leo XIV celebrated mass in Paris, on the Place de la Concorde, for an estimated eight hundred thousand people. In the country of laïcité, where the separation of church and state has almost become a civil religion, that is a remarkable image. The Genk political scientist Fouad Gandoul wrote a column about it under the title 'France is not done with God yet'. The ending keeps me busy: "Hit is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss faith as a remnant of ignorance that will further disappear with each generation.

I think he touches on something important there. And I would like to go a step further than he does.

A prophecy that half came true

Since the nineteenth century, thinkers like Comte, Marx, and Freud expected religion to disappear as people became more knowledgeable and freer. In part, that prophecy has come true. Churches are emptying, institutions have much less authority than fifty years ago, and for a growing group, God plays hardly any role in daily life. Anyone who denies that is not looking around properly.

But we have confused two things: the disappearance of institutions and the disappearance of the questions for which people once went to those institutions. The first has happened. The second has not.

Questions that no laboratory can answer

We keep asking ourselves what a good life is. Why another person deserves my care, even if they can give nothing back. How I should deal with guilt, with loss, and ultimately with death. Kant, who urged people to think for themselves, summarized it in three questions. The last is the most persistent: what may I hope for?

Science tells us increasingly well how the world works, and that is one of humanity's most impressive achievements. But a brain scan can say a lot about the chemical processes in our brain during infatuation and nothing about the question of whether I should remain faithful to someone. Evolutionary theory can explain why people are sometimes selfless, but not why I would must sacrifice. These are not gaps in our knowledge that automatically shrink. These are questions of a different order.

Two ways to read that

Why do those questions persist? You can answer in two ways.

The first: humanity invented religion itself to deal with fear, guilt, and loss, and it still does so, in new forms. It is an honest and defensible reading, and I respect whoever chooses it.

The second: a deep and persistent longing usually refers to something that exists. Whoever is hungry seeks food, and food exists. Whoever is thirsty seeks water. C.S. Lewis built his famous argument on this: if we experience a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we are made for more than this world. The longing for meaning, forgiveness, and hope is then not a coincidental byproduct, but a compass needle pointing to a source.

I choose the second reading. I cannot prove it, nor do I claim that the other is foolish. In Reasonable Faith I weigh two explanations against each other and explain why, after much deliberation, I choose to believe. For me, it is not a leap in the dark, but a choice made with open eyes.

What religion does with those questions

What convinces me is that the answer fits the question. Take guilt. Information doesn't solve it. You need a place where you can say what went wrong, someone who lets you start over, and a community that confirms it. Faith offers that. Or grief: a prayer, a funeral, people who stay when everyone else goes home.

Or hope. When I heard in 2018 that I would live my life as a disabled person, I prayed for a miracle. That miracle came, but differently than I had expected. The problems did not disappear. I gained the strength to bear them. You cannot invent such an answer, you can only receive it.

Faith also works as character formation. A moral compass is only worth something if it works when it's inconvenient. Paying the tithe is a concrete example: a monthly repeated exercise against greed, which works precisely because it does not depend on my mood. And commandments that seem to restrict from the outside often turn out to liberate in practice. I find that a surprising and recurring pattern.

This touches on the thought of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, whom Gandoul cites: a liberal state can organize solidarity, but not produce it. Where does it come from then? For me, the answer is that faith communities try again every week, with volunteers, caring for the lonely, often also for people who do not believe themselves.

Why God does not impose himself

An objection is obvious: if there is a God who wants to help us, why doesn't he show himself more clearly? I have often wondered that. My answer, which I also elaborate on in my book elaborate on, is that evidence does not compel love. A God who would unmistakably impose himself would deprive us of the freedom to choose. Faith is therefore not proof but trust, and you can test that trust by living what religion proposes: praying, forgiving, sharing, and seeing what it does with your life and with your relationships.

Staying open

That doesn't mean only religion can do this. Humanists and atheists show every day that you can live a deeply moral life without God. Countries like Denmark and Sweden prove that trust and solidarity can also flourish in a very secular society. Anyone who claims that people need God to be decent underestimates believers and non-believers.

My proposition is different: the questions remain, and for me, religion is the most convincing answer, because it not only offers comfort but also points to a source. I don't need to convince anyone to come to church. I only ask that we stop treating religion exclusively as a relic from a less enlightened time, and that believers and non-believers dare to talk together about what a good life is.

Modern man has not ceased to ask religious questions. He has mainly stopped calling them that. Perhaps it's time to call them by their name again, and listen to what faith answers.