The God Question and Modern Man
Hans Urs von Balthasar
April 1, 1996
Before the dawn of the technical age it was easier to create genuine culture from genuine recollection. Life was more peaceful, man's surroundings expressed eternal values more directly. Moreover, the requirements of average education at school level did not overtax the intellectual capacities of young people as they do today. All this cannot be left out of account. How immediately a landscape from which men are absent can unite us to God, for example high mountains, a large forest or a freely flowing river! The handwriting of the Creator can easily be read in them; even those who have forgotten how to pray will once more learn, with deep joy, to listen to the sound of the sources of existence. In the cities, however, only man's handwriting is everywhere visible, and much more so in the modern than in the ancient ones that were still built according to human measurements.
Concrete and glass do not speak of God; they only point to man who is practically glorified in them. The cities do not transcend man, hence they do not guide to transcendence. Quickly and greedily they devour the surrounding countries and turn it into a dirty, denied forecourt of cities. For some years now the Roman Campagna has ceased to exist, the Swiss landscape likewise. The Rhine has long "had it." Overnight, "nature" will be turned into a reservation, it will become a "national park" within the civilized world; and besides, in national parks—mostly crowded!—it is not very easy to pray either.
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