Faith makes demands on our comfort, on what we plan, what we propose for ourselves. The sickness of our time is a false idea of freedom that confuses freedom with preference and thinks that life is rich, familiar, and beautiful only when we act and live in a way that gives pleasure to ourselves and conforms to our desires. Psychologists tell us that it is the absence of demands, of challenge, of opposition that runs counter to human nature, that makes us sick, and causes us to confront one another with hostility. Freedom does not consist in preference. It is foolish of us to regard the demands of faith – which makes unwanted demands on us and contradicts our own will – as “legalistic” and “institutional” and whatever similar terms may suggest themselves in order to shake ourselves free of it and so to sink into the leaden emptiness of a lusterless and selfish existence that receives nothing because it gives nothing. This thought should strike us anew: admittedly faith is uncomfortable, but only because it challenges us, compels us, to let ourselves be led where we do not wish to go. In this way it enriches us and opens for us the door of true life.
From: Christlicher Glaube und Europa, pp. 120-21
