Distorted hope

There was a time when any medium and long-term planning was condemned. The time required emergency actions from the young energy. Attempts to build the future on investments that were disapproved of by the quadratic understanding of life were censored. Either the youth immersed themselves in the few options or limited themselves to the community world. Projecting oneself into new areas of knowledge, opening doors closed by authoritarian guidance or leveraging relationships and bold business ventures meant facing criticism and disapproving looks. Time was the measure of all acts.

There was no time to waste on fleeting plans. It was necessary to focus the mission on confessionality, restricted to the exclusivist bubble, far from the secularist contaminations constructed by the imaginary of membership. Going against the guidelines became risky and the risk was subject to ecclesiastical normative implications and even divine judgments, according to the absolutist interpretation. The young people increasingly stocked their granaries with packages of “fear” of absolutes, predominantly of God. First of all, because they don’t know Him. Second, when projecting the character of mortals and earthly absolute failures onto the character of the Infinite.

As a result of the hegemony of this particularism, the nodal point of each youth representative ran the risk of having the empty signifier filled by forces contrary to confessionality. The meaning of the signifiers “fear”, “dread”, “respect” and “reverence” was confused. The wide-open conceptual gap provided an opportunity for an invitation to Marxism and its branches, Freudianism and its roots, and today to the complexity involving creationism, intelligent design and deistic Darwinism. Faced with the absence of proposals, others opted for skepticism, agnosticism and even atheism.

Within confessionality, it was determined that fear is directly related to conclusive, guiding, clarifying responses. This was one of the most glaring mistakes, as it froze the creative capacity of many young people, leaving them dependent on authoritarian voices. The fear caused the faithful to weaken throughout the journey, establishing a regime of radical conservatism, sustainer of absolutes. Jesus dealt with this theme well in the parable of the servants: “For I feared thee because thou art a harsh man” (Luke 19:21). To this end, time proved to be a determining factor in the actions of those holding the scepters and watchwords, imperative and full of veridiction. In the name of false zeal, the sense of mission undermined every second of the time of those who molded themselves on the platform of phobia, gradually altering the meaning of hope. (Continued in Part 7)

Ruben Dargã Holdorf, Comm.Se.D