![\"j.k.](\"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/rowling.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A post by J.K. Rowling<\/strong> about God hides a radical question. What evidence for faith?<\/strong> Do people believe without seeing? Here is what we answer<\/strong> to the unease she spoke about.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n JK. Rowling<\/b><\/mark> asked a question to believers and offered a reflection to non-believers.<\/p>\n The author famous for the Harry Potter saga, in a post<\/a><\/em><\/strong> already read by almost 1 million people (and therefore long pondered), the well-known British feminist confesses to having a \u201cGod-shaped vacuum\u201d<\/i><\/strong> in her heart that will probably accompany her to the grave.<\/p>\n And then she asks: what would I have to \u201csee\u201d<\/i> in order to decide? A radical question that we take up and to which we respond<\/strong>, albeit briefly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n First of all, the context of the question.<\/p>\n The confession about God emerges from J.K. Rowling speaking about her changed convictions<\/strong> over the years, among which she cites assisted suicide<\/strong> and the non-dangerousness of drugs<\/strong> (marriage to a doctor, she says, opened her eyes and today she opposes them).<\/p>\n The writer recounts that \u201csince adolescence I have struggled with faith<\/strong>\u201d<\/i> but, while perceiving this divine “vacuum” within her, \u201cI never seem quite able to make<\/strong> up my mind what to do about it\u201d<\/i>.<\/p>\n Among all the convictions that could change based on concrete opposing evidence, the only exception, Rowling writes, is the \u201cGod conundrum<\/strong>, because I’d have to see<\/strong> to make me come down firmly on either side\u201d<\/i>.<\/p>\n She herself tries to answer: \u201cI suppose that’s the meaning of faith, believing without seeing proof<\/strong>, and that’s why I’ll probably go to my grave with that particular personal matter unresolved.\u201d<\/i>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The nostalgia<\/strong> expressed by J.K. Rowling is also called the “religious sense”<\/strong>, that is, the original and ineradicable perception of an ultimate Meaning, though considered unattainable.<\/p>\n Too bad that, as a good Anglo-Saxon, she concludes by falling back on the difficulty of “believing without having evidence”<\/strong> that she would need in order to decide.<\/p>\n Thus the theme of how faith is born<\/strong> returns, of “seeing to believe”. But what kind of “objective evidence”<\/strong> does she expect? A mathematical explanation? Or a divine apparition? That is the point.<\/p>\n Christian faith was born and spread throughout history always in the same way: from a human encounter<\/strong>, physical, with someone who already lives faith authentically and radically, an exceptional witness of Christ in whose face an Other who acts is glimpsed.<\/p>\n Are the “objective proofs” of God missing or are authentic witnesses missing, who generate in the human soul clues and proofs<\/strong> of an opening of the heart and reason toward the Mystery?<\/p>\n But that encounter has not occurred, has not yet taken place. Well, what to do?<\/strong> J.K. Rowling asks what “to see to believe” and to decide about God?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What we would tell her is to begin to look seriously<\/strong> at this “God-shaped vacuum” that lies within. Is it a bizarre personal creation? A self-deception?<\/p>\n Or is it the very same shape that synchronically extends through times and places<\/strong> to all humanity and on which Christian history has focused?<\/p>\n This “God-shaped vacuum” was described by Blaise Pascal<\/strong> as the \u201cinfinite abyss\u201d that only an infinite and immutable being \u2014 that is, God \u2014 can fill. Equally famous is the thought of St. Augustine<\/strong>: \u201cYou have made us for yourself, Lord, and restless<\/strong> is our heart until it rests in you\u201d<\/i>. St. Francis<\/strong> exclaimed: “Quid animo satis?”, that is: what is enough for the human soul?<\/p>\n But it goes back even further, to the primitive peoples<\/strong> who began with unease to prepare for death and the Hereafter.<\/p>\n It is a common experience to all major religions that man is never truly free<\/strong> and at peace with himself, that an ultimate dissatisfaction remains within. What is this common nostalgia, present in every man and woman who seriously reflects on himself?<\/p>\n The theologian Hans K\u00fcng<\/strong> wondered: \u201cWhy is man forced to live separated and estranged<\/strong> with respect to that hidden, ultimate and highest reality, which is his true homeland<\/strong>, constitutes his freedom and indicates his true identity: a reality that man calls the Unconditioned, the Ineffable, the Absolute, the Divinity, God or by other similar names?\u201d<\/i>1<\/a><\/sup>H. Kung<\/b>, On the Dignity of Dying<\/i>, Rizzoli 2010, pp. 12-16<\/span>.<\/p>\n This perception is all the less perceived<\/strong> the more one throws oneself headlong into the frenetic activities of life, into entertainments, into pastimes.<\/p>\n For contemporary man, only in the most difficult moments of life (called “limit-situations”<\/strong>) is the trivial briefly interrupted and it is the opportunity for many to realize not so much the lack of an ultimate meaning, but the desire that it fulfill<\/strong> the expectations of the human heart, that existential need that we have not given ourselves and that we cannot entirely remove.<\/p>\n Martin Heidegger understood it, when he wrote that \u201cin certain moments of deep despair<\/strong>, when every solidity of things seems to fail and every meaning to darken, the question rises again<\/strong>\u201d<\/i>2<\/a><\/sup>M. Heidegger<\/b>, Introduction to Metaphysics<\/i>, Mursia 1986, p. 13<\/span>.<\/p>\n
\nJ.K. Rowling and God: “What would I have to see to believe?”<\/h2>\n
What evidence is needed to believe?<\/h2>\n
The “proof” of the religious sense<\/h2>\n