BELIEF AND UNBELIEF

Fr. IRENEUSZ SKUBIŚ

‘I do not believe in God’; ‘I am a non-believer’ –we often hear these words in our environments. Sometimes, quoting wise people’s words, we emphasize: he is a non-believer. I know a professor, a noble man, but stating definitely that he is a non-believer. Belief and unbelief. Let’s think on these two kinds of man’s view about the world.

Church – Christ – God

In the man’s life there comes time for a kind of précising when he is in the Church consciously and recognizes his place in the Church. Belief tells every Christian to come closer to God through a prayer, sacraments and other ways of being with God and in God about which the Church of Jesus Christ is teaching today.

The consciousness of a Christian is focused around Christ, promised Messiah who came to serve the man. The redeeming work of Jesus Christ is continued by the Church which is a place of His presence. There is no Church without Christ and there is no Christ without the Church. Christ connected with the Church is an oracle for further history of the world and the whole human action in the spirit of the redeeming work of Messiah.

We have a full picture of acting God in the Holy Trinity in the teaching of the Church. We, the Christians, adore this God and we pray to this God. A believer finds a complete reference and fulfillment in God and thanks to God. There is no other road like the one shown by the Church. It is called a road of the Gospel. Christ left us his teaching – but he also confirmed the Old Testament – and it lasts in the Church. Life of a Christian in the Church is the most beautiful picture of the man included in God’s life, who, working in earthly conditions, can achieve the Heaven. It is the most beautiful fulfillment.

A Christian looking for God feels embraced by Him and this is a great happiness. He wants to deepen his belief and accepts everything what the Church is teaching about God. He feels loads of God’s mercifulness in his life and shares it with other people. Belief gives the man a lot in the sense of achievements, explanations – but we must live somehow in the symbiosis with God.

Why to believe?

But what about those who are non-believers? Can we pass indifferently by their attitude which rejects the existence of God? No, we cannot. Belief in God is based on the vision of the world, understanding the sense of human life and nature laws. And here, among the others, one should look for arguments for the existence of God. We know the principle of efficient causality –creating of the world and also every lively cell, their functioning and development are a great God’s miracle. Therefore the Church is guarding life because God – the Grandmaster – created it in a perfect order of eternity.

Belief helps us touch the mystery of God’s love. Those who reject God, do a big harm to themselves. For, God does not need our acknowledgement, but our seeing His love to the world and the man, directs our actions and leads us to a suitable purpose. Therefore our belief is something extremely essential, something which builds and inscribes us in the creating context of God’s work.

We must pray for faith of those who lost it or those who have never accepted it, but also for bigger belief for us. Not being fed like fire, expires. For anchoring in God is the biggest human fulfillment.

(AA)

"Niedziela" 45/2012

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl