The French
existentialist writer Albert Camus famously took a Catholic intellectual,
Francois Mauriac to task for ‘throwing Christ in my face.’ Camus belonged to a
post Darwinian generation suffering from ‘existential angst –‘i.e. a world sans
hope, God, heaven, certainty, justice or even reason. In Camus’ novel, ‘The Plague,
‘the character Tarrou says to Dr. Rieux”…each of us has the plague within him;
no one, no one on earth is free from it. What is natural is the microbe. All
the rest…health, integrity, purity (if you like)…is a product of the human
will”(p.229) Camus’ answer to this dilemma? Love.
“…a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when
one craves for a loved face, the warmth – and wonder of a loving heart.” (p.237) Camus’
atheism is free from the missionary zeal of many modern atheists. Speaking at
the Dominican Monastery in Paris, he said : “I shall not try to change anything
that I think or anything that you think…the world needs real dialogue …between
people who remain what they are…This is tantamount to saying that the world of
today needs Christians who remain Christians.’
(Pic:
toholdnothing.blogspot.com)
Camus,
Albert; ‘The Plague’
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