Wenders Away from God

Image journal, published by Gregory Wolfe, has "Why Believe in God?" for its Fall 2007 cover story. German film director Wim Wenders has a brief entry in this symposium of artists and writers. In it he writes:

I've been away from God for a large part of my life, so I remember his absence. No, that's the wrong way to say it. He wasn't absent, I was. I had gone into exile of my own free will. I meandered through all sorts of philosophies, surrogate enlightenments, adventures of mind, socialism, existentialism, psychoanalysis (another ersatz religion). Some of these I won't deny or badmouth. I'm happy to have been there--and back.

I remember how tentatively I started to pray again. I remember how that slowly changed me. I remember how I wept when I realized I had finally come home, when I felt that I was found again.

And how that feeling slowly transformed into a certainty.

Yes, a certainty.

But can I now answer: I believe in God because I remember how lost I was when I didn't care? Or: I believe in God because I couldn't take his absence anymore? Or: I believe in God because I cannot imagine any alternative? Or could I even conclude: believe in God because in my life God has become such a reality that the very question is like asking myself why I breathe?

Wenders seems to have experienced the coming home of the prodigal as he describes his return "home." Wenders directed Wings of Desire, for those who've not seen any of his films, by the way, the one I'd most recommend.

Comments

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Wim Wenders<<<

I'll take bets that the guy is Sorbian--or Wendish, if you please.

[DGP]

I read this series in *Image.* It's not bad: There are a few trite comments about belief, but many have a personal, aesthetic, or other depth worth considering.

Another interesting series might level the playing field: "Why not believe in God?" This avoids the presumption that belief in God is somehow an extraordinary state for man, when in fact atheism is the unnatural condition, both philosophically and statistically.

Of course, you'd have to work harder to get past the same stumbling block that Mr. Wolfe's series deftly circumvents -- the problem of the tedious apologist, who simply rehearses arguments long since rebutted or stalemated. In my experience, atheism seems to have more than its share of such people, so finding a sensitive and literate group of atheists for a similar roundtable might be difficult indeed. Still, I'd read it. :-)