Alors? Alors, la seule utilité de Dieu serait de garantir l'innocence et je verrais plutôt la religion comme grande entreprise de blanchissage, ce qu'elle a été d ‘ailleurs, mais brièvement, pendant trois ans tout juste et elle ne s'appelait pas religion. Depuis, le savon manqué, nous avons le nez sale et nous nous mouchons mutuellement. Tous cancres, tous punis, crachons-nous dessus, et hop! au malconfort! C'est à qui crachera le premier, voilà tout. Je vais vous dire un grand secret, mon cher. N'attendez pas le jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.
Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgment. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgment of men. For them, no extenuating circumstances; even the good intention is ascribed to crime. Have you at least heard of the spitting-cell, which a nation recently thought up to prove itself the greatest on earth? A walled-up box in which the prisoner can stand without moving. The solid door that locks him in the cement shell stops at chin level. Hence only his face is visible, and every passing jailer spits copiously on it. The prisoner, wedged into his cell, cannot wipe his face, though he is allowed, it is true, to close his eyes. Well, that, mon cher, is a human invention. They don't need God for that little masterpiece.Jean-Baptiste Clamence, in La Chute, by Albert Camus (1956)
What of it? Well, God's sole usefulness would be to guarantee innocence, and I am inclined to see religion rather as a huge laundering venture - as it was once but briefly, for exactly three years, and it wasn't called religion. Since then, soap has been lacking, our faces are dirty, and we wipe one another's noses. All dunces, all punished, let's all spit on one another and - hurry! to the little-ease! Each tries to spit first, that's all. I'll tell you a big secret, mon cher. Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
No comments:
Post a Comment