Edited by Jim McCrory, Saturday, 19 Apr 2025, 07:34
“It's wonderful how, the moment you talk about God and love, your voice becomes hard”
Image generated with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot
There’s a haunting moment in August
Strindberg’s novel The Father, where a character says:
“It's wonderful how, the moment you talk about God and love, your voice
becomes hard, and your eyes fill with hatred. No, Margret, you certainly
haven't the true faith.”
The power of this line lies not
only in its irony, but in its psychological clarity. It exposes a jarring
contradiction: that someone can invoke the vocabulary of heaven while radiating
the temperature of Venus. Margret speaks of God and love—concepts that ought to
soften the heart and lower the voice—but her words clang like iron gates. Her
expression hardens, her voice sharpens. Instead of warmth, there's winter in
her eyes.
Strindberg, ever the critic of
spiritual and familial pretence, holds up a mirror here—not to Margret alone,
but to any who weaponize piety. Faith becomes less a wellspring and more a
performance; less a light to live by, more a spotlight to control others. His
character’s rebuke— “you certainly haven’t the true faith”—lands not as
insult, but as diagnosis.
It’s the genius of fiction to
crystallize complex truths into a single breath.
This idea resurfaced for me while
watching a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Peter Kreeft. They touched
on a sobering point: that many who reject belief in God do so not from
intellectual rebellion, but from wounds inflicted by those who claimed to
represent Him. Religious trauma often wears the face of an apparent Christlike
figure. Who reveals a dark secret. The degree of child abuse in religious institutions
testify to this fact. Compounded by the act of brushing such under the carpet
to protect the “brand”, but only to have the sins coming back to bite with crippling
lawsuits.
In these cases, the religious organisation
becomes less sanctuary and more stagecraft. But divine justice is not so easily
outwitted. The ancient words still echo, heavy with warning:
“But if anyone causes one of
these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to
have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of
the sea.” Matthew 18:6, BSB.
The trauma isn’t always dramatic.
Sometimes it’s simply the coldness of a leader whose actions betray his creed.
It's one thing to preach Christlike love, another to practise it when no one is
watching. Harshness in the name of holiness is a strange heresy—and perhaps the
most enduring kind.
The Voice Betrays the Heart: August Strindberg
“It's wonderful how, the moment you talk about God and love, your voice becomes hard”
Image generated with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot
There’s a haunting moment in August Strindberg’s novel The Father, where a character says:
“It's wonderful how, the moment you talk about God and love, your voice becomes hard, and your eyes fill with hatred. No, Margret, you certainly haven't the true faith.”
The power of this line lies not only in its irony, but in its psychological clarity. It exposes a jarring contradiction: that someone can invoke the vocabulary of heaven while radiating the temperature of Venus. Margret speaks of God and love—concepts that ought to soften the heart and lower the voice—but her words clang like iron gates. Her expression hardens, her voice sharpens. Instead of warmth, there's winter in her eyes.
Strindberg, ever the critic of spiritual and familial pretence, holds up a mirror here—not to Margret alone, but to any who weaponize piety. Faith becomes less a wellspring and more a performance; less a light to live by, more a spotlight to control others. His character’s rebuke— “you certainly haven’t the true faith”—lands not as insult, but as diagnosis.
It’s the genius of fiction to crystallize complex truths into a single breath.
This idea resurfaced for me while watching a conversation between Jordan Peterson and Peter Kreeft. They touched on a sobering point: that many who reject belief in God do so not from intellectual rebellion, but from wounds inflicted by those who claimed to represent Him. Religious trauma often wears the face of an apparent Christlike figure. Who reveals a dark secret. The degree of child abuse in religious institutions testify to this fact. Compounded by the act of brushing such under the carpet to protect the “brand”, but only to have the sins coming back to bite with crippling lawsuits.
In these cases, the religious organisation becomes less sanctuary and more stagecraft. But divine justice is not so easily outwitted. The ancient words still echo, heavy with warning:
“But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” Matthew 18:6, BSB.
The trauma isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s simply the coldness of a leader whose actions betray his creed. It's one thing to preach Christlike love, another to practise it when no one is watching. Harshness in the name of holiness is a strange heresy—and perhaps the most enduring kind.