The Role of Faith Traditions

We humans have begun asking questions about "sustainable development." This is an important question, but it does not go deep enough. We must also begin asking questions about "sustainable faith."

Is there a faith tradition in existence today that is practicing a way of life that provides "progress" for the whole community of life, not just the human species? Is there a faith tradition such that if everyone on Earth suddenly adopted it, the human future on Earth would be assured?

I do not know enough about the faith traditions of the world to provide a well-considered answer to this question, but on the basis of my limited personal experience, I doubt that there is a faith tradition on Earth today that can provide the moral foundation needed for the 21st century.

Specifically, I do not believe my own faith, Christianity, is a sustainable faith -- at least not as it is generally understood and practiced. The Bible, especially the New Testament, is a weak document on the subject of mutually enhancing human-Earth relations. Admittedly, there are a few scattered texts in the Bible (especially the Old Testament) that suggest "stewardship" of resources and concern for the land:

• Is it not enough for you to drink the clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? (Ezek. 34:18)

• Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field, til no space is left and you live alone in the land. (Isaiah 5:8)

• Take with you . . . every kind of . . . animal . . . to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. (Gen. 7:3)

• I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable. (Jer. 2:7)

• The time has come . . . for destroying those who destroy the earth. (Revel. 11:18)

But if gathered together, such texts would scarcely cover a single page of the Bible. There is no unequivocal commandment, "Thou shalt not destroy Earth." Furthermore, the only biblical guidance on the stewardship of the gift of human fertility is: "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28), and such limited and inappropriate guidance on this critical matter is not adequate for a sustainable faith.[*]

To make matters worse, the institutional manifestations of Christianity have shown little or no serious interest in a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship. With perhaps a few exceptions, churches are not prime examples of excellent stewardship of resources; they are generally as wasteful and environmentally thoughtless as any other human institution. Churches have no active environmental programs comparable with secular environmental groups. Churches do not use effectively what limited environmental guidance the Bible provides. The few Earth-sensitive texts in the Bible (such as those above) are not in the lectionary and as a result are almost never the subject of sermons and homilies. Seminaries teach the Bible, church history, theology, inter-human ethics, and homiletics, but do not provide even primer-level knowledge of Earth or inter-species ethics. Budgets and most major statements by Christian churches lack commitment and substance on human relations with Earth.

Why is this? The God I know cares a great deal about Earth and is not at all pleased with what we humans are doing to Earth and to each other. Why then is the sacred text of my faith such a weak source of inspiration and guidance on caring for Earth and on the stewardship of the gift of human fertility?

Personally, I suspect it is because the early Christian community understood that the second coming of Christ would be very soon, within their generation. They delayed decades before writing the gospels probably thinking Christ would return so soon that it would not be necessary to write for future generations. Three hundred years later, Christ had not returned, but at the Council of Nicea Christians closed their sacred text, the Bible, confident that they had all the revelation needed until Christ's return.

Now 1700 years later there still has been no second coming of Christ, and there have been no further revelations added to our sacred text to guide us in addressing the issues of the 21st century. We do have some "church tradition" that has evolved over the centuries, but it is not particularly helpful in dealing with many of the issues before us. I wonder if God has stopped speaking to us, or if we have stopped listening. [*]

Sir Shridath Ramphal, former Secretary General of the Commonwealth and Foreign Minister of Guyana, has implicitly raised this same question in the context of "the holy texts of many religions." He writes as follows in the official report prepared for the opening the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development:

In the language of the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian

Issues . . . , the holy texts of many religions, not to mention legal traditions,

philosophies, and custom " . . . abound in moral injunctions that imply an ethic of

human solidarity . . . . For centuries, the great religious texts have taught the

essential oneness of the human race." What scriptures have not always taught is

that nature is the loom on which is woven life's seamless fabric of which

humanity is a significant, but not unduly dominant, part.

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New Revelations

The God I know is still speaking, and there have been at least four new revelations.

First, it has been revealed that among the most destructive forces on Earth today is hatred between the followers of different faith traditions. Of the fifty plus armed conflicts in progress currently, the majority are motivated in significant part by hatred of the followers of one faith for the followers of another faith. The arms industry -- the largest industry in the world, larger even than illegal drugs and oil -- is supported in significant part by the hatred of the followers of one faith for the followers of another faith.

Stories of interreligious hatred and violence are found on page after page of our history books and now almost daily in our newspapers. There are so many that it takes an extraordinary one to catch our attention. An extraordinary one appeared recently in the National Catholic Reporter under the headline "Torture, Rape, Murder Outlaw Love in Bosnia:"

You ask me my name? So the entire world can witness my shame? Just write:

female Muslim, 35 years old, professor of literature. As for my newborn son, I

have simply given him the name Jihad. The first time I ever nursed him I said, "If

you ever forget, may this milk curse you so help me God."

The Serbians have taught me to hate. For the last two months, within me I have

only hatred, no pain or bitterness. Emptiness.

Not so long ago I taught my students only love. But my Serbian neighbor's only

son, Zoran, who was also my pupil, urinated in my mouth. While wild-bearded

vagabonds were roaring with laughter, Zoran told me: "You are good for nothing,

you stinking Muslim woman."

I don't recall if I heard a scream or felt a blow to my body. This colleague, a

physics professor who yelled like a maniac at me, began to beat me continuously.

My mouth filled with blood.

There is nothing strange here; I have been deadened to the pain but my soul . . . it

hurts, oh how it hurts so much. I taught my students to love, and they were

preparing themselves, and even bringing up their children to slaughter all who are

not Orthodox Christian. Jihad, war! As simple as that!

Our best man at our wedding was even a Serbian! Poor me and my people. Leave

the fine words of love for someone else. You may talk about Muhammad and

Muslim goodness as much as you wish. Even if I lose another eye, I will walk

blind and curse every Muslim who speaks of "forgiveness."

You ask what they have done. They raped my mother before my eyes, my good-

beyond-beautiful-old mother.

I remember my childhood, the garden near the house, and my mother hesitating

beneath the trees. She would seek the blossoms where the fragrance was most

intense; she would spread the bed linen. Yes, she would bow to Allah and pray.

Wherever I turn now I smell my mother's fragrance. I wait for her footsteps, those soft, quiet steps and the rustling sounds from her Muslim robes.

I cannot forget the stench and roar of my neighbor Sava Pejic, whom my cousin once dated. As he jumped on my mother, I lost consciousness.

Blows to my body woke me. Her hand was still warm; lifeless, but warm. The heat still burns within me; so does regret, for just that same morning we quarreled. It was about Papa. She always worried about where he was.

That same day he had gone to his relatives in a village nearby, which saved his life, but not for long. People say when he heard about his wife he didn't cry. But he stood in silence all day. In the morning he was found hanging, facing the meadow where my mother saw him the very first time.

No, my husband doesn't know about our second child's birth and I don't know where he and my other son are. They assure me they are somewhere in Macedonia. What can I do? I have to believe if for the sake of Jihad.

Believe me, it's very hard to concentrate. They pulled me off from my dead mother and dragged me by my hair. They asked me, "Where is the gold?" Instinctively, I pointed at my pregnant stomach of eight months, but I suddenly remembered and I showed them.

On the way to headquarters in Vogosce, they spit on me and kicked me. I recognized the Duke of Chetniks, Jovan Tintor, who stood silent and watched. The others had been drinking. Tintor said, "Bring Janko!" He cut my hair so it formed a cross. On my hand with a knife he carved "S" (the sign of the Serbian Chetniks) four times.

"This is just the beginning if you don't tell us where the rest of your relatives are," Tintor yelled. They poured drinks over me and forced me to strip.

Nightmare was interrupted by the noise coming from the street. They took me outside, naked as I was. In the middle of the courtyard stood a girl. She was less than 10 years old. Naked and surrounded by a group of bearded beasts. There were plenty of onlookers from the neighboring windows. She stood silent, uncomprehending.

I stood there leaning against a steel monster -- it seemed to be a tank. I began to bang my head against the steel.

When I opened my eyes it was very dark. Apparently from the beatings I lost an eye. Where I went, what I did, whether I walked or crawled, I do not know. Some villagers found me by a brook near Ilidza two days later and informed the Territorial Defense (Bosnian defense forces).

They are the only ones who visit me now. They call me "little sister" because of

the pain we all share. Also because of our goal, Jihad. Misery makes us brothers

and sisters. [82]

This story happens to be about Christians -- people of my faith -- hating, raping, and killing people because they are Muslims. But in the same area during the 1389 battle of Kosovo, it was Muslims hating and killings Orthodox Serbs, and the Serbs still have not forgotten. Nor have they forgotten when, during the Nazi-supported Croat regime, Roman Catholic priests forcibly baptized thousands of Orthodox Serbs living there. And now, how long will it be before little Jihad, if he still lives, forgets or forgives what happened to his grandmother, grandfather, and mother.

And this story has many other applications. Change the faith names to Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, indigenous peoples, . . . and this same story would apply in India, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Nigeria, Senegal, Iraq, Israel, Sudan, Algeria . . . . What faith is now not involved in acts of hatred and violence in one or more of the 48 religious and ethnic wars now in progress? [83] What a revelation we have of the destructive hatred between followers of different faith traditions!

The second revelation comes from a meditation on Earth that has been continuing for about 1500 years, a meditation we usually call "science." From this meditation we know that Earth is the product of a 15-billion year journey from the first burst of creative energy. We know that we humans and all other life on Earth are intimately connected through a single, integral, and continuing creation journey and that we humans are related genetically to everything that contains the DNA molecule: to eagles, apes, snakes, frogs, trees, grasses, molds, bacteria . . . . We are all distant cousins. And we all depend on each other through the complex bio-geo-chemical cycles of Earth. Earth is not just our home; we are Earth. Our entire physical being is made up of bits and pieces of Earth -- water, air, rice, potatoes, etc. -- all of which are products of countless deaths. Life, at a point, concedes itself to death, and all new life has its origins in death. Collectively, we humans are an important part (but not the only part) of the consciousness of Earth. [84]

A third revelation derives in part from the second: we know now that the characterizations of man and woman, male and female, in the origin stories and traditions of many faiths are factually wrong and socially destructive. Sexual differentiation occurred very early in the continuing evolution and continuing creation of Earth, long before there was a human species, and the human female certainly has nothing to do with the origin or the perpetuation of a "dark side" of human nature. There is no defensible justification for any faith tradition perpetuating the pernicious falsehood that woman is the source of "evil" and "death" in human society. There is no justification for any man or for any male-dominated institution or faith defining man as superior to woman and normative for society.

The fourth revelation is that we humans have become co-creators of the future with the Divine. We humans -- not as individuals, but as a species -- will exercise an enormous influence on the future of Earth. Five billion of us individual humans, both poor and affluent, are acting today in ways that are destroying the life-sustaining capabilities of Earth and thereby destroying our own prospects. There is little question that we humans can destroy our species and many others with us. We can create an Earth future without humans. Now, nothing survives -- no person, no species, no lake, no river, no ocean, no forest, no soil, no mountain, not even the atmosphere -- unless we humans will it to survive. We can create a wasteland Earth-future or we can create a rich, vital Earth-future. We humans as a species will decide which way to go, for we have become co-creators with the Divine Earth-future.

This fourth revelation is of some considerable import, but to my knowledge, no faith tradition has prepared us for it. No faith anticipated the development of human power over Earth's future, this enormous responsibility. To my knowledge, no faith tradition has prepared us to know ourselves not as individuals but as a species. To my knowledge, no faith tradition has provided moral precepts to guide inter-species behavior, to decide which species should cease to exist, to understand which new species should be created through genetic engineering (and then patented), and to judge the alternative futures humans are considering for Earth. [85]

Where can we turn with questions about what to do, with questions that deal with matters of ultimate meaning and direction, with cherished beliefs, with fears and insecurities about the future? Where can we turn to learn to act responsibly as a species? Where can we turn for insights as to what possibilities there might be for a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship in the future? Where can we turn for insights into what the original creative energy might desire our species -- humans collectively -- to make of Earth?

These are fundamentally spiritual questions, and they are being raised openly today in many communities, by scientists and economists, by philosophers and theologians, by historians and anthropologists, by religious and secular leaders alike. [86] Such questions are in the hearts of ordinary men and women who wonder about the future for all life and wonder how to answer their children's questions.

The questions being raised are unique to the experience and consciousness of peoples of our times, peoples who have looked into the farthest reaches of space, seen back in time to the very origins of the cosmos, have come to know Earth to be a relatively small planet in a galaxy of billions of stars and planets in a cosmos of billions of galaxies; people who have probed the core of the atom, lived with the prospect of nuclear annihilation, and now face the possibility of ecological annihilation. The questions are welling up from the human spirit struggling to be faithful to the moment, and a faith tradition, if it is to remain viable and relevant, must have answers to the ultimate questions welling up in the human spirit. So, in hope and trust, we turn to you, the carriers of our spiritual wisdom, with our questions.

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In a sense, Earth is no longer orbiting peacefully about the Sun. Earth is careening toward the spiritual equivalent of a massive stone wall.

The brutality of humans to each other -- the "ethnic cleansing," the ignoring of hunger and poverty, the acts of terrorism -- and the environmental destruction and loss of natural beauty are already draining us of the spiritual and emotional energy we need to change course, and the situation is growing worse daily. We are becoming numb, unable to feel and react as we must if we are to put Earth back into a peaceful orbit.

Changing course will require an immense amount of energy. Not the energy that comes from coal, gas, oil, or even nuclear fuel, but rather spiritual and emotional energy, enough to change the thinking and lives of more than 5 billion people.

Can so much energy be generated? Can so many people become empowered to think and live differently? Maybe.