Why does democracy need religion?
We live in a world in which the demand for economic growth has become imperative. Modern societies reach a point where their stability depends on their dynamism ("dynamic stabilization"), like a bicycle that falls over if you stop pedaling and moving forward. Everyone asks for more resources to meet their goals, more subsidies for the unemployed, artists, young people in need of training, and industries with competitiveness problems.
This is acceleration, which hits everyone's life, through burnout, anxiety, and fatigue caused by a life saturated with tasks, worries and projects. This acceleration and sustained economic growth were once associated with an optimism of a better life, especially for the new generations, so that people worked hard for the welfare of their children.
Such a world has become a matter for control and manipulation, but has nothing to tell us except what we put into it. We need resonance, a relationship of mutual understanding or trust and agreement between people.
Resonance implies several things:
- That something challenges me and forces me to stop and pay attention - resonance is not always harmony and agreement.
- That something forces me to respond, to think, to reason.
- That something helps me to be transformed in the way I act, feel or think.
- That it not only adds something to what I have already acquired, but that it changes and transforms me for the better.
- It is not cacophony like the bell that rings over and over again to announce the same thing.
- It is not the satisfaction of always hearing what pleases me.
Why has the world stopped resonating? Democracy is about expanding the number of voices so that everyone can express themselves freely, but what is the point of multiplying voices if no one listens anymore?
Here religion has its intrinsic strength, when it tells me: my existence is not based on a silent, cold, hostile or indifferent universe, but on a receptive relationship.
Democracy needs a listening heart, and that heart can be provided by religion, as an experience of radical openness to a world where God still dwells, that is, the One who calls me by name, extends a hand to me, and asks me for something that will transform my existence, even if it is a small errand or a slight amendment.
Take the case of prayer: praying is an interior experience, but at the same time a disposition of the spirit that seeks and awaits something that comes from outside, placing oneself in the hands of Another, listening, allowing oneself to be moved and responding, at least when prayer is not monotonous prayer, and pure eagerness to manipulate the will of God, but openness to the unheard of and unavailable.
Some excerpts from Eduardo Valenzuela C.
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