why are you doing this?

Sometimes, I wonder. Usually, though, the reason is very clear to me. We’re killing each other and we’re killing our planet.  Whether it is by slowly poisoning ourselves with chemicals or shooting one other, whether it is by extracting carbon from the earth and spewing it into the atmosphere or spilling millions of miniscule plastic balls into our waters because we like the feel of facial scrub, whether it is by creating such a gap between the rich and the poor that they begin to see one another as different species, we’re at a critical place in our history.  Making it out alive is not yet guaranteed. Religion has a lot to do with how we see the earth and each other. We need to pay attention to that and, if at all possible, alter the worldviews that let us do this to each other, to our planet, and to ourselves. For centuries, religion has been fragmenting humanity by teaching and preaching what are presented as absolute truths, those of each religion imbued, for the most part, with a divine authority. We have done it to create and preserve for ourselves the semblance of safety in a chaotic world we cannot control. By handing that control to an otherworldly supernatural deity, we’ve been able to console ourselves about our and the world’s pain, assuring ourselves that divine justice, in whatever form the particular religion presents it, will even what, in life, is only ever a very lumpy playing field. Within Christianity, my own faith tradition, our understanding of that otherworldly, divine authority, has been slipping for a very long time as we have examined sacred texts and institutions we once thought infallible and found, all too clearly, the imprint of human hands – and not very clean hands, at that. Recognizing, as many of us do, that the good the church has the capacity to do–strengthening community, deepening commitment to the life-enhancing values of compassion, justice, and love, sharing a message of the sanctity of all life–is not dependent upon the authority of a divine figure, I believe the church should do everything it can to ensure that it will be able to do everything that it can. Continuing to present the image of a divine being who intervenes or doesn’t in the affairs of a humanity it identifies as broken and sinful is simply not only no longer enough, it is detrimental to the welfare of life on this planet. It is time we move past the tribal divisions religion has riven deep into the web of life and work toward honouring all that is holy and sacred to us–not some supernatural realm or deity, but each other, our own selves, and the exquisite beauty of our very fragile planet.