The German poet Georg Büchner called suffering “the rock of atheism.” When confronted with suffering, many people have concluded that the “hypothesis of God” must be erased from their perspectives on the world. All right, let’s erase it, but does that do anything to reduce the degree of suffering in the world? Or doesn’t it rather reduce the power of hope and thus give evil an opportunity not only to triumph in the external world but even to blight the human heart with cynicism and despair? Faith, which can be humanity’s ally in the fight against the evil of violence and against suffering and cynicism, must not churn out tawdry explanations; it must radiate hope.
Tomáš Halík, Night of the Confessor: Christian Faith in an Age of Uncertainty, 163.
