So when Stephen Daedalus says at the beginning of Ulysses, ‘What’s God? A cry in the street,’ he’s right. God is present in the cry in the street. That, it seems to me, is the radical nature of Christ’s message. I think it’s already there, by the way, in the burning bush, in Exodus 3:15, in the Song of Songs, and in certain other texts. But Christianity to me is a very important narrative and story and testimony by Jesus Christ to this fundamental message that the divine cannot be locked up as a thing. And if it is, it leads to war, and then atheism is not only desirable, it’s necessary to rid the world of that religious triumphalism and fundamentalism and self-righteousness, which to this day is still the cause, I believe, of most of our wars.
Richard Kearney on The God Who May Be. From the transcript: ‘The God Who May Be: Richard Kearney on Narrative, Imagination and God,’ IDEAS, ed. David Cayley (CBC Radio).
Also available on audio:
- ‘The God Who May Be – Part 1‘ (CBC Radio)
- ‘The God Who May Be – Part 2 ‘(CBC Radio)
- ‘The God Who May Be – Part 3‘ (CBC Radio)