Faith doing Justice

Tsunami Theology

By Cedric Mayson

The earthquake which ripped a thousand kilometre slice in the floor of the Indian Ocean last month also revealed fault lines in popular ideas about God. Now the physical and emotional shocks have subsided, people are assessing the spiritual tremors.

Since the Scientific Revolution began in the sixteenth century, many sincere religious people have questioned traditional teaching about God. The early myths of a loving Father up in the sky, blessing or punishing, do not add up anymore.

The hypotheses of heaven and hell ring fewer bells. Many congregants wriggle with embarrassment over inherited beliefs, but lack the expertise or courage to question them. Theology is an unfolding revelation, a book of many chapters probing a meaningful framework for human life and a new chapter is being written now.

Attention has moved from science versus faith to science and faith, from a self-centred obsession with our own souls to the role of human community. Today’s cosmic theology embraces everything from deep space to the pulse beat of Earthly humanity. 

Homo sapiens are part of the evolution of Earth. We are not outsiders, but insiders who emerged on this ball of rock and water in a breath of air only three miles thick, where things go bump in the night like volcanoes, epidemics, droughts and tsunamis. Earth operates within the dictates of its own structures from the Big Bang to particle physics, and we are part of these 'forces of nature'. It has been an incredible process.

Professor Brian Swimme has written, "The image I like is this: you have molten rock, and then all by itself, it transforms into a human mother caring for her child.  That's a rather astounding transformation.  Of course, it takes four billion years. You've got silica, you've got magnesium. You've got all the elements of rock, and it becomes the translucent blue eyes, and beautiful brown hair and this deep sense of love and concern and even sacrifice for the child. That is a deep transfiguration.  Love and truth and compassion and zest and all these qualities that we regard as divine become more powerfully embodied in the universe."

Human nature has four elements: body, mind, and spirit working in community, which demands that we relate to others with care, compassion, sharing, generosity and honesty. It is spirit which directs what minds think and bodies do. Spiritual power is the secular guts of political, economic and cultural processes in the community.

So success is not in coddling our souls to curry favour with God in heaven, but in building humanity for the good of all.  Community emerges by engaging the challenges of nature, politics, an economy that benefits all humanity, and the spiritual awareness that stops religions from demonising one another. Life is driven by the spirit in us, the ground of our being, not something in space. Madiba said recently, "My wish is that South Africans never give up their belief in goodness, that they may cherish that faith in human beings as a cornerstone of our democracy."

Tsunami is a typical Earth event. Lightning strikes. Many fell off whilst domesticating animals, went hungry learning to cultivate vegetables, and died in Comet airliners whilst discovering metal fatigue.

Catastrophes far worse than tsunami occur about every 500 million years and at least five have almost extinguished life on Earth.  The last of these, about 250 million years ago, seemingly saw an asteroid blast a hundred kilometre crater near Mexico which shook and warmed the globe, poisoned the atmosphere, and wiped out the dinosaurs. It also cleared the stage for the mammals, including the humans. Enter us.

Asking 'Why does God allow it?' is the wrong question, like 'Why is ice cream cold?' It is part of being human. It is through collective conquests from microbes to meteors that this incredible human-ness has emerged. But now we are facing a sixth extinction.

Tsunami disasters will still happen -- the San Andreas fault in California can blow at any moment -- but the major peril today is that humanity has lost the plot. We are causing global warming, environmental destruction, war, and over-population which will extinguish centuries of life in a dozen disastrous decades unless we change it.

Humanity is cursed by evil forces pretending they are good. We have allowed our creative zest to be hijacked by self-centred, competitive, political, economic and religious structures which think they are gods. Sweeping over us like a tsunami wave, individualism, capitalism, and fundamentalism have brought humanity to the brink of oblivion.  The answer is to unite and regenerate the spiritual dynamics of our nature.

We can rediscover human community, not as individuals opting out and going to heaven, but as the end-product of millions of years of evolution upon Earth. It is a reorientation of belief like being born again, a creative leap which has prompted ecumenical inter-faith movements, the United Nations, a globalized economy, instant communication, and a spate of quests for new spiritual initiatives in this post-religious age.

This is where God thought helps. We must not permit some religious institutions with pre-scientific views of Creation to destroy the spiritual teaching of the great prophets. God is in the tsunami because God is embedded in the actual process of the Universe, Earth and Humanity.

God is the spiritual reality in us, the deep destiny who shapes our future. Human creation is a caring compassionate community within which God copes with physical and spiritual tsunamis. God suffers too because God is love. That's the way it is.

This happy creative leap of belief enables us, for example, to reclaim the Good News of Jesus about the Ruling Power of God in the inter-faith, here-and-now, human collective. God's liberating power comes through love in the human community: that is the gospel.

Love is the secular spiritual dynamic which can overcome the tsunami of political violence, economic poverty making, and religious misconceptions. The devout palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin once wrote, "The day will come when we shall harness for God the energies of love.And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, the human being will have discovered fire."

Faith does not see the future in sky-god dogmas, but in the faith energy of caring.  The strategic perspective of secular spirituality reaches out like the finger of God to Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling – pointing even to other worlds and other millions of years.

This secular spirituality has its feet on the ground in Africa. Africa's holistic approach to life is not packaged in religious institutional boxes. Despite arguments over details, we know the Luthuli-Tambo-Mandela-Mbeki years have set us on a different way of life. The Liberation Struggle, African Renaissance and African Union arise from the conviction that humanity can find the answers.

The western Oppressive Empire seeks like a black hole to suck us all into its destructive political, economic and religious structures, but our vision is to liberate and transform society. Apartheid was only a practice session. In questing a progressive healed Africa together we experience the spiritual dynamic of being fully human.

This is the positive input of a Tsunami theology. Humanity perches on a living Earth and is part of its evolution. Through these physical and mental challenges rises our faith in the spiritual power of God-in-us. We can turn our backs on the false gods because they will never arrive on a heavenly helicopter to lift us out of the storm; we can face the demons together; we can re-experience the creative potential God has put in the human initiative. It is a humbling and empowering opportunity.

The tsunami of individualism, capitalism and fundamentalism threatens us with the sixth extinction. Our task is to inspire and mobilize the progressive forces to liberate ourselves. The Good News is that we can.