Crisis and Hope

Myths are compelling stories that shape our lives. Our complex world is a mixture of myths—stories of how we got here, what governs our lives, and what determines good and evil. These narratives shape our meaning-making worlds. Myths are neither factual nor correct in a scientific sense, but they are profoundly influential and formative. The truth is, we often care less about objective facts than the meaningful narratives that structure our understanding. What we accept as “true” is embedded in the myths we tell. In our digital age, social media functions as a myth-making machine, where we find communities and validation according to the stories, we find compelling.

Carl Jung observed that the Christian mythic framework has reached a dead end—it no longer compels and may even thwart personal growth. Similarly, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin recognized that Christianity has completed its natural cycle and needs rebirth in a world vastly different from its origins. The Christian narrative that stretches from the first to the twenty-first century remains essentially unchanged: sin, death, redemption, salvation, and final judgment, all grounded in ancient cosmology, scriptures, and philosophical concepts. The modern person exists with a dissociated religious consciousness, holding ancient concepts alongside contemporary engagement with evolutionary science and culture. As Iain McGilchrist noted, a divided brain creates a divided world.

In a recent letter entitled “The End of the World? Crisis, Responsibilities, Hopes,” Pope Francis used the term “polycrisis”¹ to describe the dramatic nature of the historical juncture we are currently witnessing, “in which wars, climate changes, energy problems, epidemics, the migratory phenomenon and technological innovation converge.”² Echoing themes explored by the Center for Christogenesis, he wrote:

A first step is examining with greater attention our representation of the world and cosmos. If we do not do this, and do not seriously analyze our profound resistance to change, both as people and as a society, we will continue to do what we have always done with other crises, even very recent ones.

His words encourage us to be attentive to change: “If we… do not seriously analyze our profound resistance to change, both as people and as a society, we will continue to do what we have always done with other crises, even very recent ones,” that is, ignore the lessons learned from them. The Pope continues by saying, “another important step to avoid remaining immobile, anchored in our certainties, habits and fears, is to listen carefully to the contribution of areas of scientific knowledge… in listening to scientific knowledge, we realize that our parameters regarding anthropology and culture require profound revision.” Then in a most remarkable way, the Pope recognizes the invaluable contribution of Teilhard de Chardin and the need for a new way forward. He writes:

Listening to the sciences continually offers us new knowledge. Consider what we are told about the structure of matter and the evolution of living beings: there emerges a far more dynamic view of nature compared to what was thought in Newton’s time. Our way of understanding “continuous creation” must be re-elaborated, in the knowledge that it will not be technology that saves us (cf. Laudato si’, 101): endorsing utilitarian deregulation and global neoliberalism means imposing the law of the strongest as the only rule; and it is a law that dehumanizes. We can cite as an example of this type of research Fr. Teilhard de Chardin and his attempt—certainly partial and unfinished, but daring and inspiring—to enter seriously into dialogue with the sciences, practicing an exercise in trans-disciplinarity. It is a risky path, which leads us to wonder: I ask whether it is necessary for someone to throw the stone into the pond—indeed, to end up being ‘killed’—to open the way. Thus, he launched his insights that focused on the category of relationship and interdependence between all things, placing homo sapiens in close connection with the entire system of living things. 

These remarkable insights from the Pope signify a way forward. If revelation has taken on new meaning in our own time, it is because modern science has changed what we know about ourselves and our world. Evolution has pushed the static God off the heavenly throne and quantum physics has entangled God and world. These sciences constitute what Thomas Kuhn called a “paradigm shift” and are sufficiently radical to enact fundamental changes in theological doctrine. 

Can we emotionally and psychologically engage a radically new understanding of religion in evolution? Can we radically re-think the meaning of the word “God?” We are such a deeply fearful people that reconstructing religion in the 21^st century may be more threatening than a nuclear war. It is precisely the deep disconnect between religion and evolution, however, that lies at the heart of our contemporary moral confusion. Unless we acknowledge religion as a phenomenon within evolution, we face annihilation. Without the vital transcendent energy of religion, we will perish. 

Christianity is conflicted: it rejects the relationship between religion and evolution. Old wine is preferred to new wine; however, the skins are leaking, and the wine is making us sick. This sickness is a delirious hope that God will rescue us from a fallen world. However, such a God does not exist. Our only real hope is to awaken to the God who is seeking to be born in us, the God of evolution. Etty Hillesum, the young Jewish woman who died in a Nazi concentration camp at the age of 29, came to the remarkable insight that God cannot help us, that we must help God to help ourselves. In her diary, she wrote:

Tonight, for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me. I shall promise You one thing, God, just one very small thing: I shall never burden my today with cares about tomorrow… Each day is sufficient unto itself… one thing is sufficiently clear to me: You cannot help us, that we help You to help ourselves… that we safeguard that little of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last (Etty Hillesum: Essential Writings, p. 59). 

Similarly, in his essay on personal identity Thomas Merton wrote, “God utters me like a partial thought of Godself.” There is no God apart from the “I.” God is the name of infinite mystery, the ground of being itself, from which I exist. Etty Hillesum also discovered this truth: We must help God to be God by guarding the dwelling place of holy mystery within us, the place of infinite love and possibilities, that makes every impossibility possible. This place of mystery is the realm of infinite love. How we love and what we love shapes the world around us because we become what we love. The refusal to love is the rejection of personhood, the consent to remaining more animal than person. Reflecting on the suffering and death around her, Etty wrote in her diary: 

All disaster stems from us. Why is there a war? Perhaps because now and then I might be inclined to snap at my neighbor. Because I and my neighbor and everyone else do not have enough love. Yet we could fight war with all its excrescences by releasing, each day, the love that is shackled inside us, and giving it a chance to live. And I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called wickedness, that I shall only hate the evil that is within me, though hate is perhaps putting it too strongly even then. In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves.

Love causes God to be God, and for this reason alone, God’s commitment to creaturely life remains unconditional. Since coercion has no place in love, our response to God’s love is a choice, not an inevitability. Being free and creative, we humans are self-determining, that is, God is not responsible for everything that happens in the world. We are the cause of our own sin or brokenness and bear the responsibility for our own actions. Since there is no self apart from God, and if love is God, then love must be actualized for God to exist. 

God is mystery and mystery can never be reduced to a single explanation or doctrine. Teilhard de Chardin came to the profound realization that God and world are entangled and that the meaning of our world is tied up with the identity of God, as he wrote: “I see in the world a mysterious product of completion and fulfillment for the Absolute Being himself” (Heart of Matter, 54). We must make every effort to move beyond the old mythic God and open up to the entanglement of God and self, to love in a radical way, a new way never imagined before. For we are not simply related to God, we are part of God’s own life and God’s life is dependent on our lives. 

If Christianity is to survive in the 21^st century, then we must climb out of the crib of dependency and into the skin of our own existence, becoming what we are called to be—image of God—worlding the world creatively and imaginatively, trusting that the possibility of the impossible makes every impossibility possible, if we choose to act. To live entangled with God is to live from the wellspring of our infinite potential, in the words of Deb Dana, to live with “the science of feeling safe enough to fall in love with life and take the risks of living.”

1. Adam Tooze popularized the term, “polycrisis” (c. 2022) but its conceptual origin (not the term itself) goes back to Edgar Morin in his book Homeland Earth: A Manifesto for the New Milennium (1993). Jean-Claude Juncker was one of the first to use the term explicitly in 2016 referring to the European Union, facing a “polycrisis.” ↩︎
2. This letter was sent by the Holy Father Francis to the participants in the General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life, on the theme: “The End of the World? Crises, Responsibilities, Hopes”, taking place from 3 to 5 March, 2024 at the Conference Centre of the Augustinianum. The full message can be read here. ↩︎