"What to give the child for his first communion? A watch, a book, no, no, that will come up with others... I'll give him a rattlesnake!". After a week of thinking, Grandma was satisfied with her decision. "A little snake can be very useful when it's well tamed," she said to herself. It sends messages, entertains with its dances, and even helps you sleep when it makes the figure-eight motion. Everyone has acquired one for a reason... The only thing is that sometimes it bites a little, and it's poisonous, but well, everything has its good side and its bad side, right?".

The child leaves the church, happy to receive so much attention from his family. They arrive at the house to celebrate and then the gifts appear. A book, a watch, another watch, a penknife. He accepts with his little hands and smiles. Grandma is waiting her turn to enter, looking for a coup.

At last, she makes her way through the guests and pulls out of her purse a beautiful rattlesnake with a little red ribbon tied around its neck. "Here, honey," she says, stretching out the creature, which begins to coil in her arms. Her name is Panchita, you can keep her in your pocket. But educate her, eh? Lest she digs her fangs into you, injects her venom and you end up dead in some corridor".

The child's eyes sparkled. He did not see the snake, but a smartphone. So he left the guests pinned in the living room, went to his room, bolted the door for the first time, and created an account at Instagram. Then another in Tik Tok. Thus, without realizing it, the day was gone. The same thing happened the next day. And the next...

Those who are part of the 96.7 million people who have watched the series Adolescence (Netflix2025) will agree that I am not exaggerating.

The use of screens among minors is a nightmare, but they get them anyway because, "whatever"Everyone has a cell phone. Many schools are taking action, but it is difficult to make progress because it is difficult to reach agreements between families.

Thanks to Jonathan Haidt's book, Anxious generation (Deusto, 2024), many educational institutions around the world have finally found the scientific basis they needed to dare to ban the use of cell phones during the school day.

For those who have implemented it, it has been a respite. "Now they play in the playgrounds," a teacher told me the other day. "When they had phones in their pockets, of course, nothing could compete with that. Now at least they listen to me," commented another.

However, once the problem is solved in the mornings, there are still the afternoons and weekends, which are often stolen by the screens. Therefore, the next step is to postpone the delivery of mobiles.

Haidt shows that doing so before the age of 15 is a serious imprudence. From this point on, the debate begins and the quality of the training provided by some families versus others is measured. Some prefer to stay with that age, others prefer to delay the delivery until 18. In this second position is, for example, the Spanish doctor Miguel Ángel Martínez, with his book Salmon, hormones and screens (Planeta, 2023). And, modestly, so am I.

At this stage of the game, young people recognize that the cell phone with social networks is rather like a poison. Many would like to use them more freely, but the notification system is addictive. The snake smiles at first, but then shows its fangs. The same thing happens with cell phones: once they fall into the hands of the teenager, they soon try to devour the owner.

Boys waste time, lower grades, deteriorate relationships with parents and siblings, fragment attention, incur mental illness (in the UK, a third of 18-24 year olds experience symptoms of depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder), suffer in their self-esteem, sleep less, witness cyberbullying, forget about God.

Parents, on the other hand, have not received special training to heal snakebites and understand their children less and less each day.

In the midst of all this confusion, there are families who manage to open an umbrella. "If it rains, at least we won't get wet," they say. They fight tooth and nail to preserve some traditions: eating together, having father-son conversations or praying as a family. At the same time, they look for tricks to avoid unfair competition: they delay the delivery of the cell phone until 18, or give one away at 15, but it is one of the old ones, that is, not suitable for social networks.

I've also seen some ingenious parents who get a brick without social networking, but with WhatsApp.

The effort of going against the tide involves them entering into lengthy discussions, it is true, but they know that the conflict is far less than if their children were to keep a IPhone-rattlesnake in his pocket since the day of his first communion.

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In the next few days, La Esfera de los Libros will publish my essay entitled The meaning of Christianity In it I explore, from a critical perspective, the relationship between Christianity and contemporary culture. Can Christianity offer a significant contribution to the construction of a more just and caring society? How should Christianity face the challenges posed by secularism, materialism and nihilism?

My response is optimistic, both for those who profess the Christian faith and for those who do not. Christianity still has vitality; it is by no means, as some argue, a lost cause. Being a Christian in today's consumerist society has intrinsic value and is beneficial to all, believers and non-believers alike. If the human being of the 21st century wishes to be vindicated, he or she must seriously consider Christianity. To do so, it is essential to return to contemplation, mysticism, aesthetics and liturgy.

To continue to illuminate our environment, Christianity needs to undergo an intense process of spiritual renewal, to return to its roots, to contemplate without rest the crucified and risen Christ. Paradoxically, in order to renew itself, Christianity must secularize and declericalize, and look to the first Christians, those who lived before the alliance between religion and politics, altar and throne, was established in the fourth century.

I argue that a society that undergoes a process of secularization without the guidance of Christianity runs the risk of falling into an impasse, plunging into extreme individualism, purposelessness and a deep existential sadness. In short, decadence. Therefore, my position is clear: let us secularize Christianity and open the process of secularization to transcendence. Let us collaborate between believers and non-believers, foster dialogue and eliminate the ideological prejudices and harmful polarization that has arisen in the wake of the woke culture.

Healthy secularization does not exclude God

A healthy secularization that opens the doors to transcendence does not exclude God. In this essay, I confront the theses of modern atheism with the mystical experiences of so many people over the centuries. I argue that Christian faith is not based solely on rational evidence, but on personal experience and divine revelation. I also insist on the importance of faith as a fundamental element for understanding the full meaning of human existence and for building a more just and compassionate society.

I conclude this essay with a fervent call for the construction of a culture of love, grounded in the essential values of Christianity. This culture must be inclusive, welcoming of diversity, promote sincere dialogue and be wide open to spirituality. In my view, Christianity is not a threat to modern society, as has been said; rather, it is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for forging a more humane, just and caring world.

The meaning of Christianity

AuthorRafael Domingo Oslé

Editorial: La esfera de los libros

Pages: 296

Year: 2025

Our society has the capacity to advance more rapidly and find a more effective balance if it transforms itself into a space that is simultaneously more secular and more transcendent. It must learn to be more technical and at the same time more human, more active and also more contemplative. In short, it must aspire to be a place of greater happiness and well-being.

Can a vibrant Christianity illuminate the secular age? Definitely. Not, however, a tired Christianity that victimizes, nor a fearful one that hides or lacks clarity and purpose. What our society really requires is a revitalized, energized, bold and transformative Christianity that deserves the enthusiastic and eternal recognition of Jesus Christ.

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Transcendentalism was an American philosophical, political and literary movement that flourished roughly between 1836 and 1860. It began as a reform movement within the Unitarian Church that sought to extend the application of William Ellery Channing's thought on the inner God and the significance of intuitive thought.

For the Transcendentalists, the soul of each individual is identical with the soul of the world and contains what the world contains. They labored with the sense that the advent of a new age was at hand, were critical of their contemporary society for its reflexive nonconformity, and urged that each individual seek, in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "an original relation to the universe."

The American transcendentalism proposed by Emerson is based on the transcendental foundation laid out by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. This foundation is that objects are not cognizable in themselves, but only through the spatial, temporal and categorical structure that the subject projects on the world. Based on this idea, Johann Gottlieb Fichte defined his metaphysics of the I and the Not-I as transcendental idealism. Friedrich Schelling elaborated the system of transcendental idealism and Arthur Schopenhauer called transcendental the reflection directed not to things but to the consciousness of them as mere representations.

The main figures of the movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott. Also associated with transcendentalism is Emerson's friend and member of the "Transcendental Club," Walt Whitman.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803-Concord, Massachusetts, April 27, 1882) was an American writer, philosopher and poet. A leader of the Transcendentalism movement in the early 19th century, on November 5, 1833 he gave a lecture in Boston in which he laid the foundation of his most important beliefs and ideas, later developed in his first published essay on Nature: "Nature is a language, and every new fact learned is a new word; but this is not a language taken apart and dead in a dictionary, but a language put together in a meaningful and universal sense. I wish to learn this language, not in order to know a new grammar, but in order to be able to read the great book written in that language."

Emerson's philosophy is typically liberal: it enhances the values of the individual and the self, it is affirmative, vitalistic and optimistic. Hence the praise he deserved from Friedrich Nietzsche. He was staunchly anti-slavery. Towards the end of his life he sometimes forgot his name and when someone asked him how he felt, he answered: "quite well; I lost my mental faculties, but I am perfect".

Henry David Thoreau

His friend Henry David Thoreau (Concord, July 12, 1817-Concord, May 6, 1862) was an American writer, poet and philosopher, of Puritan origin, author of "Walden" and "On Civil Disobedience". Thoreau was a surveyor, naturalist, lecturer and pencil maker. One of the founding fathers of American literature, he is also the conceptualizer of civil disobedience practices.

In his work Walden he writes: "I went to the woods because I wanted to live alone, deliberately, to face the essential facts of life and see if I could learn what I had to teach and not discover, at the hour of death, that I had not lived. He did not want to live what was not life, nor did he want to practice renunciation, unless it was necessary. I wanted to live deeply and to extract all the marrow from life, to live in such an intense and spartan way that I could do without everything that was not life...".

On July 24 or 25, 1846, Thoreau met with the local tax collector, Sam Staples, who asked him to pay six years of back taxes. Thoreau refused to pay because of his opposition to the U.S. Intervention in Mexico and slavery, and spent a night in jail for this refusal. The next day, Thoreau was released against his will when someone, probably his aunt, paid the tax, against his wishes.

The experience had a strong impact on Thoreau, and he would write: "under a government that unjustly imprisons anyone, the home of an honest man is prison"; "any man who is more right than his fellow man is already a majority of one"; "kindness is the only investment that never fails"; "make your life a brake to stop the machine". His essay on civil disobedience had a powerful influence on Lev Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.

Walt Whitman

Finally, Walter "Walt" Whitman (West Hills, New York; May 31, 1819-Camden, New Jersey; March 26, 1892) was an American poet, volunteer nurse, essayist, journalist and humanist. His work falls within the transition between transcendentalism and philosophical realism, incorporating both movements into his work. He is considered among the most influential writers in the American canon and has been called the father of free verse. He was a deist and believed in the immortality of the soul.

Considered the father of modern American poetry, his influence has been extensive outside the United States as well. Among the writers who have been influenced by his work are Rubén Darío, Wallace Stevens, León Felipe, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Fernando Pessoa, Pablo de Rokha, Federico García Lorca, Hart Crane, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Ernesto Cardenal, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg and John Ashbery, among others.

In 1855 he published his most famous book, "Leaves of Grass", where his most famous poem appears:

Oh, my self! oh, life! of your returning questions,
From the endless parade of the disloyal, from the
cities full of fools,
Of myself, which I always reproach myself (as,
Who is more foolish than I, nor more disloyal),
Of the eyes that in vain yearn for light, of the objects
of the ever-renewed struggle,
Of the bad results of everything, of the crowds
and sordid that surround me,
From the empty and useless years of others, I
intertwined with the others,
The question, Oh, my self, the sad question that
back - what good is in the midst of all this?
things, Oh, my self, Oh, life?
Reply
That you are here - that there is life and identity,
That the mighty drama continues, and that
You can contribute with a verse.

In 1865 he wrote the famous poem "O Captain, My Captain!" in tribute to Abraham Lincoln after his assassination.