Faith cannot be forced; God does not want to have as many people as possible to believe in Him

Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl: Of course, our understanding of religion has very little in common with confessional narrow-mindedness and its consequence - religious myopia, in which God is seen as a Being for whom, in essence, only one thing is important: that as many people as possible believe in him. And also exactly in the way that a certain denomination prescribes. I just can't imagine God being so petty. But I also cannot imagine that it would make sense for the church to require me to believe. After all, I cannot want to believe, want to love; I cannot force myself to love, just as I cannot force myself to hope without prevaricating. There are things that cannot be desired and which therefore cannot be organized on demand, on command. To give a simple example: I can't laugh on command. If somebody wants to make me laugh, he will have to work hard and tell me a joke.

The same is true of love and faith: they cannot be manipulated. These are intentional phenomena that arise when the subject content adequate to them is highlighted.

Once I was interviewed by a journalist from the American magazine "Time". She asked if I saw a trend to move away from religion. I said that there is a tendency to move away not from religion, but from those beliefs that do not seem to do anything other than fight each other and poach believers from each other. Does this mean, the journalist asked, that sooner or later we will come to a universal religion? On the contrary, I replied, we are moving not towards a universal, but towards a personal, deeply personalized religiosity, through which everyone can communicate with God in their own, personal, intimate language.

Of course, this does not mean that there will no longer be any common rituals and symbols. After all, there are many languages, but aren't many of them united by a common alphabet? One way or another, the diversity of religions is like the diversity of languages. No one can say that his language is superior to other languages: in any language, a person can come to the truth, to the only truth, and in any language, he can err and even lie. In the same way, through any religion, he can find a god - the only God.