Saturday, August 7, 2010

Retractions

In reply to my questions about past love, minionofthepope writes:
But why is God dead at the end of your piece? The sentence makes me think I did not understand your post.

He is asking about the question, "How do you keep a promise to a dead god?" In putting this question, I seem to have fallen into (or fallen in love with) a way of talking that I don't understand and which in the past I myself have questioned. Now, I am like a fool who cannot even say what made him say what he said. It strikes me now as empty. Yet, I cannot persuade myself (is this just pride?) that I was a fool to say it.

Can we take this change as a case in point? Was there a god here making me say things I did not understand? Then where is that god now? If it is gone and dead, how can it have been a god? Certainly, it is not the God who "at every time and in every place,...draws close to man" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1). By withdrawing from me after exacting my promise it has withdrawn its right to be called a god. But a god does not change, so it never was a god. Never to have been a god: this is how a god dies.

Well, and if it is not that God beside whom we are to "have no other gods," why should I feel that I ought to remain faithful?

And so after many twists and turns, and feeling that I had escaped the danger, I find myself back in the same position as before, renouncing the unknown god.