Stephen Colbert makes the case that faith matters a great deal | Opinion
, a memoir about family betrayal, vengeance and the lack of love and mercy, someone sent me a clip of late night host Stephen Colbert discussing how his faith is connected to his comedy.
In different ways, Kahn and Colbert make the case that faith matters a great deal. This is noteworthy at a time when Americans seem increasingly inclined to indifference toward religion and when churches seem largely incapable of communicating a core message that persuades ordinary Americans that religion provides something indispensable.
Kahn sees his father as the embodiment of modern unbelief: “an entirely secular person, he believed in justice, not forgiveness.” The materialistic view of human life in which death has the last word means that we live in a world of “bodies emptied of mysteries.” That vision of human life may liberate us from the weight of certain types of religious guilt and fear but it leaves us with other, unmanageable burdens. It weakens our motivation for, and practice of, forgiveness.