Why are we having difficulty accepting God?

In the past catechists, we reflected on the words of St. Augustine and considered how to live in God’s presence all day, every day, and throughout their lives. St. Augustine pointed out that when we live according to God’s will, we glorify God with our lives even if we do not pray. We live in his presence, sanctifying ourselves and others.

But today, we ask: Do we really desire it? Why do many baptized people live this way of life? Or is it enough for us to live with God only occasionally, as people say “in the church,” and live the rest of my life as if God did not exist? It was on this topic that I recently read an interesting consideration:

“Adam’s fear of God, which he experienced after his fall, entered our nervous system, our subconscious. Therefore, prehistoric but also modern paganism – that is, the religion that one creates for oneself – is marked by schizophrenia. According to which worship, or otherwise religion, consists of prayers and sacrifices, which serve to reconcile the deity and to gain his favor, but in the daily life of man, the deity has nothing to care for. ” 

Most clearly see this way of perceiving faith in the case of superstition. Man is afraid of forces he does not know and cannot control. Since they can harm him and do not know how to defend them, he tries to find some defense mechanism. He will perform a ritual, make a sacrifice, pay only to do something to protect himself. At its utter extreme, this perverted form of religion manifests itself in human sacrifice. Since God is powerful and everything depends on him, we need to appease him. We need to be given the most valuable thing we have to show that we respect his sovereign power. That is why we sacrifice man. And so we offer murder to God, who is the giver of life, who wants us to live and be happy. This is an entirely perverted view of religion, but this can provoke the fear we have before God.

Father Balázs reasoning helps us to understand that this logic applies not only in this extreme form, superstition, and human sacrifice but also in every other form when religion is perceived only as a necessary accompanying phenomenon of our lives when I have to give God what belongs to him. so that I may have peace from him and live my life freely.

This reflection also helps us understand why it is so difficult to invite a person to live his faith deeper. After all, he has already given him everything that belongs to him. After all, I agreed with the dream that the price for peace of mind is a mass for Christmas and Easter, plus that it will give children to religion, the first holy communion, and the confirmation! And now the price is suddenly rising? Should he go to church every Sunday? If we start from his mentality of fear, where religion takes only how to give God what it takes to be okay with him and live as I want, then it seems like a grand deception to him. Fear is then multiplied by not knowing where it ends. After all, God’s demands will continue to grow, and then he will have no room left to live peacefully, freely where he can do whatever he wants and is not controlled by anyone or God.

It’s precisely the same logic as when a teenager rebel against his parents and tries to gain autonomy, and it seems to him that his parents are just increasing their demands, and he has to fight more and more to show them that beware, that’s not how it works! A similar situation is experienced by a husband whose wife wants to involve more deeply in his parental “duties,” and he loses his freedom, or by an employee to whom the employer is beginning to fill his free time by organizing events in his free time.

Here to see the difference between being someone and doing something. If I want to be someone, my attitude is diametrically different. If I want to fulfill the role of a Christian, a parent, a priest, etc., then each new request will only be an additional task in the already scattered calendar.

If the proclamation of Christ comes into this logic – to do things – then it will meet with misunderstanding and rejection. He will go to church faithfully every Sunday, both for confession and praying, but he will not want God in his daily life. That is why people react so aggressively to questions of faith when they grew up in a traditional setting where religion was passed on as a duty and not as a personal relationship with God.

It is essential to keep these things in mind when we want to announce the gospel’s good news to someone. If he suffers from this ailment, he must first be cured; he needs to look at faith as a relationship with a loving father. Otherwise, all our efforts will end in misunderstanding. Even if he accepts something, it will only be like the annexation of Crimea. I will take the dictation because I still cannot fight the stronger one.