"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt"
About this Quote
Tillich refuses the comfortable definition of religion as belonging, rule-following, or even belief. He makes it an activity: a relentless interrogation of existence itself. The verb choice matters. "Asking passionately" turns faith into appetite rather than assent, a posture of need that can’t be satisfied by polite, Sunday-safe platitudes. In Tillich's world, religion is not a cultural badge; it is what grips you at the deepest level, what you cannot stop caring about.
The second clause tightens the screw. "Being willing to receive answers" sounds gentle until the last four words detonate: "even if the answers hurt". Tillich is smuggling in a moral demand. If you only accept consoling conclusions, you're not pursuing truth; you're curating a mood. The subtext is a critique of both pious certainty and modern cynicism: the first answers too quickly, the second refuses to be answered at all. He’s carving out a third stance where doubt is not the enemy of faith but its engine.
Context sharpens the edge. Tillich lived through the collapse of old European certainties, served as a chaplain in World War I, and was pushed out of Germany by the Nazis. In a century when ideology and nationalism offered easy, brutal "meanings", he insists that authentic religion risks pain because it confronts guilt, finitude, and the possibility that your life must change. The line works because it rebrands faith as courage: not the courage to be right, but the courage to be undone and remade by the answer.
The second clause tightens the screw. "Being willing to receive answers" sounds gentle until the last four words detonate: "even if the answers hurt". Tillich is smuggling in a moral demand. If you only accept consoling conclusions, you're not pursuing truth; you're curating a mood. The subtext is a critique of both pious certainty and modern cynicism: the first answers too quickly, the second refuses to be answered at all. He’s carving out a third stance where doubt is not the enemy of faith but its engine.
Context sharpens the edge. Tillich lived through the collapse of old European certainties, served as a chaplain in World War I, and was pushed out of Germany by the Nazis. In a century when ideology and nationalism offered easy, brutal "meanings", he insists that authentic religion risks pain because it confronts guilt, finitude, and the possibility that your life must change. The line works because it rebrands faith as courage: not the courage to be right, but the courage to be undone and remade by the answer.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
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