In my view, religion is love. It is basically the only area of ​​human activity in which we explore Transcendence, Mystery, the Divine – and the confrontation of these with our mortal condition, finite but, at the same time, infinite in our feelings, thoughts, and knowledge. That is why religion is so present in our lives and plays such a preponderant role in the existence of most people—even though the statistics of our days see fluctuations in this and indicate an increasing growth of atheism.

​

It turns out that atheism is not exactly the opposite of religion or faith. It just fails to explore this area of ​​transcendence—so they continue to exist sovereign in their own business, which is to deal with it, rather than not deal with it.

​

People feel love when they read their books, when they retell their stories, when they meditate on their myths. And this, much more than whether it is “true” or not, gives us the possibility of experiencing a side of life that, for some people, has a very strong calling.

​

I am one of those people. But I also really like History, Geography, Archaeology, Politics, Literature, Anthropology, Geopolitics, and even religions other than my own. It was with this in mind that I decided to start studying biblical texts through these disciplines, taking religious discourse out of the focus in order to try to find the voice of the texts, of the biblical author, of their time and context. And the most interesting thing is that, although the text read in this way, in what I consider to be closer to its context, contradicts the religious discourse on numerous occasions, especially because the latter always comes after the former, the encounter with Transcendence, in my opinion, always finds a way to appear... because that was what the biblical author really wanted to convey, I believe.

​

 

And all of this makes the encounter with the Sacred Text even more beautiful and loving.