Mr. Hahne, according to your bestseller ‘Schluss mit lustig,’ the typical European is an egomaniac, addicted to pleasure…
Hahne: …I don’t know about the ‘addicted to pleasure’ part. The egomania manifests itself immediately in matters concerning possessions. The value placed on one’s own ego appears to have become the standard by which all other things are assessed.
If our ego has become the standard, we have created a religion for ourselves. What then are the commandments and sacraments of this ego-religion?
The first commandment is: You must always take the biggest slice of a continually diminishing cake, so that it may be well with you – regardless of the cost to others. The ritual of this commandment is: If everyone thinks of themselves, then everybody is covered.
In your book you state that ‘this dance around the golden self’ has taken away our momentum – individually as well as for our entire society. What is the power depleting factor in this dance?
Instead of investing viability in society we waste this energy on ourselves. Focusing exclusively on ourselves prevents us from having goal oriented strategies. Aimlessness leads to instability and loss of orientation.
Have you been called a kill-joy?
The title of my book actually provokes this response. During television interviews critics have used this as a final ace in the hole, which however, does not prevail for anyone who has read the book. On the contrary, I am criticising the self-made, senseless nonsense which has resulted in arbitrary irrelevance and mundane superficiality. Fun has failed to deliver the meaning of life. As humans we are only capable of experiencing true joy if we have roots providing strength, if we have identity and personality, yes, if we have included God in our lives. Otherwise, we will be flying high one minute, down the next. We must rethink, and return to a society which remembers its values, which pauses while there is still time, recognizing that the sale of its last taboo represents loss of its identity.
Hasn’t this train left a long time ago? According to your diagnosis, our society is already oscillating between constant partying and depression.
No, but it is five minutes before midnight, meaning this is the final chance to catch the train. Indeed, not until the loss of values has taken place, do we recognize their worth. When our children tell us that their fellow students are celebrating Ramadan and ask us: ‘What do we celebrate?’ we helplessly realize what has happened.
Yet, the only absolute in our time seems to be that there is no absolute truth. How can we determine what should be considered generally accepted values?
Such values must always be experiential values, which have endured throughout generations and have helped people in good as well as hard times, providing guidance, goals and vision. These are always ‘conditions which we cannot create ourselves,’ as the constitutional court judge Boeckenfoerde summed it up. Such values resist fads and can therefore not be penned by the spirit of the age. We do not need a religion thought up and created by man. We must aim for eternal values if we wish to accomplish something during our time on earth. The Ten Commandments represent such values for me.
Unfortunately the implementation of these Ten Commandments failed to truly be successful with the Israelites of the Old Testament. Would it not require each individual to first of all make a serious turn-around?
Of course, we must return to God if we want to make progress. The world can only be changed by redeemed people who have been freed from guilt and self-righteousness, which inhibits viability. People who include God in the balance sheet of their lives can count on grace, forgiveness and compassion. This kind of Christianity frees one to take responsibility for the world; because whoever is certain of heaven can never be indifferent toward the earth.
Faith cannot be prescribed by the state – at least it could not function. Since you advocate God’s return to politics, please tell us how this should take place?
I do not desire clericalism – nor by the way, politicization of clerics, meaning the church! I desire politicians who are aware of the limits of earthly possibilities and have a firm value structure which is not shaken by moods and opinion poll driven democracy.
The German constitutional law still invokes God. The necessity of such a reference is being increasingly questioned. However, the European constitution is not supposed to include such a reference to God. This very important reference to God in the constitutional law results from the basic experience of the war generation: never again ideological totalitarianism, its root being godlessness. Even an atheist would not be able to dispute this historical fact. Humans must realize that they will always only be second; otherwise all hell will soon break loose. God must be included in the constitution, including the European one!
If Europe is an ‘idea, a community of values, a cultural unit,’ which values does Europe then uphold according to this definition?
These values are the basic values of human rights and human dignity, of freedom and equality. All of these are values which stem from Christian roots.
‘Faith, love, hope’ then for the European hymn?
One of the great intellectuals of the ancient world, the Apostle Paul, set foot on European soil with this triad. This message holds the foundation for our continent’s value structure, which guarantees our human rights and human dignity. The value debate would hang on thin air if we were unfamiliar with the basic foundation of faith with each of its sides being ‘truth’ and ‘love’ and without which there would not be any reason for hope for the future.
You speak about the Christian Occident; others see the origin of Western culture in ancient Greece. Are Christian roots really vital for Europe?
In our culture we find countless practical examples for this, as for instance our judicial system. The biblical creational approach that ‘man is made in God’s image’ is no pious-philosophical embellishment, but rather the greatest principle of equality of legal history that all men are equal before the law and that man and woman are of equal value. That failure to render assistance is considered a crime in our culture is based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Not to mention the keeping of Sunday as a holy day, or the sanctity of life at its limits of birth and death.
Christianity and ancient philosophy, faith and humanism – can one find a common value base here?
One should not be too quick to affirm this without thorough analysis. Christian faith cannot be treated as an ideology because its most important credo states: Man is not the standard, but rather a created being, and therefore accountable to his Creator. It is indisputable that Christianity and philosophy, faith and humanism have many common answers to numerous questions.
Is there then a principle all can agree upon?
Take the Golden Rule Jesus gave, saying we should treat one another as we also would like to be treated. It appears again hundreds of years later in different words in Kant’s categorical imperative.
We have had the Golden Rule for two thousand years and the categorical imperative for two hundred years. Why have we not been able to manage to implement this simple principle in our everyday lives?
In this lies exactly the compelling logic of Christmas and Good Friday. Jesus Christ came into this world and died for this world because we cannot accomplish it. The idealistic idea of man as a self dependent humanum who loves his fellow man is a fallacy. It is this fallacy that caused ideologies to fail. Christ is the end of man’s overestimation of himself.
And how does it become manifest how humane a certain society really is?
It manifests itself for instance in the manner it treats children and the elderly, as Nelson Mandela has once said; or how it treats the weak, the physically impaired, the unemployed and the losers. If we look in the mirror concerning this, our affluent society suddenly appears destitute: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, or the fact that one cannot find a job after 40. These are just a few examples for this whole terrible false labelling of an oh so – apart from God – emancipated and auto-humane society!
Could you think of some role models we could follow today?
There are everyday heroes who are making great personal as well as financial sacrifices in order to be exemplary role models: parents who do not, like many today, delegate the upbringing of their children to schools or supervisors.
If only a life with clear values makes life valuable as you say – how valuable then is a life without God?
It is as valuable as a treasure which has not been discovered. It is so valuable that God does not cease to look for us. Our value is not measured by our own performance but by God’s value standard by which He forms us into His image as already described on the initial pages of the Bible.
Other religions also refer to God. You always refer to the Bible as a source of crucial impulses for the value debate. Why?
The Bible contains guidelines for successful living; messages that can shape us and help us cope with the problems of this world and the problems in our own individual lives. The Bible should become more to us than just a book one reads. It should become a life book. For me personally it is a new publication each day. The news of today will be yesterday’s news by tomorrow, whereas the Bible stays current at all times.
You frequently quote Jesus. What does He mean to you personally?
He is the most credible guarantor for the meaning of life, because, being the greatest provocation in history (“I am the way, the truth, and the life”), He became so small that He could fit into a manger, in order to later show His omnipotence in the powerlessness of the cross. One cannot invent this; one must experience it.
