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The sun was kissing New York City passionately that August day in 1995, sending the temperature into triple digits. I tried to cool off with an ice-cold lemonade at a bar in Rockefeller Center.
I was in the heart of Manhattan. My teacher, a Frenchman born in the United States, was having a beer. We had never spoken outside the classroom before, or discussed anything except academic subjects. Now he asked me who I was and what I did. When we heard my answer, his expression changed. Taking another slow draft of beer, he looked at me like a lost child and asked: "Is it possible to believe in God today?"
Sensing the irony in his voice, I smiled and kept on drinking my lemonade.
From then on, every time we spoke the teacher guided our conversation to matters of religion. He claimed to have no spiritual quest. Instead, he just wanted to prove to me that God doesn't exist. I let him talk. Listening carefully to what he had to say was upsetting and confusing. Those who were listening got tangled in the spider web of the speaker's own reasoning. I just listened and smiled.
The mind of this distinguished man, apparently successful in life, was brilliant and inquisitive. His ability to argue was outstanding. He could easily prove to anyone that it is night even if the sun is shining brightly overhead. According to his view of things, he and everything he had achieved in life are absolute proof that human beings have no need of God.
The days went by. Nothing is more effective than the time for analyzing the consistency of concepts. During the one of the last conversations he made a show of arguments against the existence of God. I saw no need to keep on discussing the matter, but he insisted. I began to wonder what he was really trying to accomplish. Finally when he stopped for breath, I said, "All right, professor, let's just imagine that you are right. There really no God. And let's imagine too that you have a son, an only son who is 20 years old and in the flower of life. A son you love, for who you would gladly give your life. To your sorrow, he gets addicted to drugs. You, as his father, have already than all you can to help him. You look for the best specialist, you place him in the finest rehabilitation programs, you weep, you cry out and suffer. But nothing and no one is able to do anything to help your son get free from the clutches of the vice. But you have attempted to prove to me that God does not exist. Tell me, then, where will you turn if He doesn't? What hope is there for yours son?".
The man shifted nervously from one side to another on the brown sofa. His eyes seemed moist. Usually they pierced right through me. This time the eyes were sad. I could see the emotion on his face. Suffering and pain. Without realizing it, I had touch an open wound in his heart. The wound bled. For a moment he attempted tos say something, but did not succeed. Wordless, he got up, nodded goodbye and left. and as he departed, I saw him discreetly wiping away a tear.
The following day I learned that he did have a son---20-years-old---who had been completely destroyed by drugs. Now I think I can understand his rebellion. his strange intellectual pride, even the irony of his questions.
Some weeks later, before returning to Brazil, I stopped by to take leave of my professor. He accompanied me in silence to the ground floor. There we embraced. We both know our conversation had not yet finished. He was emotional. Words didn't come, though---they had stuck in his throat. Suddenly he swallowed and whispered in my ear.
"Pastor, you know I don't believe in God, but you do. Please, ask Him to help my boy".
I felt sorry for this distinguished scholar. It made me sad to see this eyes filled with tears, feeling helpless before the misfortune of the son he loved. and yet incapable of seeking a solution with God. He was a product of generation of the time just before the second coming of Jesus. The apostle Paul describes is this way: "For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations".
The basic problem of people in our time is pride. They have, indeed, become "futile in their speculations". The spanish journalist Francisco Umbral, a columnist for the newspaper El Mundo, illustrated the appostle's statement. Shortly before he died he wrote "Nietzsche and all the others that we know about shut the door on the old world decreeing the death of God and the loneliness of man. This is modernity, and there is nothing to do about it. Archaic institutions, such as the church, are living today for only for residual reason".
Umbral could have cited Kant, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, or Freud to show his modernity. We shouldn't be surprised. The Bible said it a long time ago. In our current era called "postmodern" we find an abundance of such thinking. It is a general tendency, especially in the developed countries. Many intellectuals think and offer their opinions with a "pride of reasoning". Liking to be called free thinkers, they do not wish to have a commitment with anything or anyone. And even less with someone they could never see or touch, such as God.
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