Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 8, No. 11. August 8, 1945

Faith in Modern World—What Offers?

Faith in Modern World—What Offers?

(We print without comment the following report of a recent SCM discussion. We print it so that the religious may thank themselves they are not as other creeds, and that the non-religious may reoffirm their rational security.)

But though we may not realise it, whether consciously or unconsciously, we all base our lives on some ultimate attitude to life, some faith, some hope, some religion if you like. For instance, the Curies had a sort of faith when they placed the hopes of all their labours in the discovery of radium. Again, at a casual glance it seems that New Zealand's chief religion is horse-racing.

Faiths may vary, indeed be diametrically opposed, or we may hold a mixture of faiths; but they all have in common the power of satisfying man's desire for an integrated outlook, something which will give to life a meaning and significance. Whether we believe them or not, then we should analyse other faiths and compare them with our own.

Firstly, Brahminism. This faith centres on the baffling mystery of life, the impersonal force from which all things come and go, and which annihilates the individual personality. Its anti-personal thought and its asceticism are found in some modern thinkers.

Buddhim is akin to this. Ultimately Buddilist ethics is a road to nothingness—so is Humanism, or any faith in "Science" which sees no significance in man beyond the material.

Thirdly, the outlook of Fascism is an ancient and apparently satisfying one for many people. Essentially it regards the individual as absorbed in a greater whole (e.g., the nation whether Nazi or New Zealand'), a united body which demands absolute allegiance and acts absolutely above the heads of its individual members.

Next we come to Communism, Marxism or Dialectical Materialism, with its economic interpretation of history. This view sees the world advancing through a series of conflicts or negations, through times of stress under Feudalism and Capitalism, through a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, to the ultimate desirable end of the ideal Communist Society. Though not "idealistic" in the ordinary sense, this outlook is Utopian in hoping for such a radical change without a fundamental change in the nature of man himself.

Christianity has several points of resemblance to Communism in its ideal of community. Both are "Messianic," and are concerned with the historical process. But the vision of Christianity is deeper and more ultimate, and it puts its faith not in coercion, but in the rule of love, in personal relations with God and one's fellow-men. It offers something more than what is in the power of man by himself.

But if any of these faiths is to be really effective in our lives and in society, it must be a totalitarian faith—it must be the basic driving force in our lives. Only when it integrates and orders everything within us does it become a satisfying faith, a philosophy with power in it. The Nazis have given us an example of that.

But have we got a faith better than Fascism? Buddhism and Communism offer faith in man. The Brahmin faith negates life. Christianity offers warmth and life in God. Which do we chose? "What faith for the modern world?"