Why Change Has Not Yet Come
Many people simply do not know what they are doing. For too long, religions have not taken seriously and daily taught our responsibilities to God’s creation and all its elements from young on. Some have interpreted dominion over the earth as unfettered use rather than caring for and using in the name of God and as God values and cares. For this reason, they have not paid attention to the complex effects of our polluting and abusive actions.
We have been acting wrong in terms of the ocean and the earth because we have been seeing, thinking, and valuing wrong. Religious communities and leaders have at times looked at science as the enemies of faith rather than tools for knowledge of creation so we have been missing the ecological, physical, economic and spiritual connections between nature and us. Like it or not, we are part of nature. Science and observation are tools to serve God in this responsibility. They offer to religion and society the eyes to track and understand physical and ecological realities and systems, and inform us when we cannot continue on a path without increasing catastrophe. When we think we are outside of nature’s cycles and species, we reduce God’s marvelous creation to commodities rather than seeing the world as a means to care for all life and to nurture and sustain it as God sustains us. The original sin was to disobey God and view the world merely as things to use selfishly, only for ourselves, contrary to God’s plan. Humanity still swallows the apple that the serpent proffers as we think we are beyond any limits.
The spiritual challenge needed is to discern and teach the holy and intrinsic value in all parts and species of the world, including those of the oceans. This means that we need to act morally and ethically with thoughtful, religiously and scientifically guided restraint to fulfill our responsibilities and strive to be as much in harmony with God and creation as we can be.
Our economic systems and physical infrastructures, energy sources, and products are built upon unrealistic visions that our waste and overuse of resources harm nothing, and that limits and regulations on corporations or business governments or individuals - guides for communal responsibility – actually harm us. As the Qur’an teaches: "O children of Adam! ... eat and drink: but waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters." (Surah 7:31). Yet much of our daily life is dependent upon the very forces and processes that harm the seas. Most of us and our communities depend upon carbon fuels for energy, heating and cooling, transportation, products and services. We rely on plastics and packaging. We depend upon chemicals for everything from household cleaning to medicine to industrial activity.
Because of this daily dependency coupled with problems of human behavior and conflict, the enormity of the interconnected problems of ocean, air and land seem overwhelming, impossible. And without God, they are. But the Mysterious, Infinite Creator of the universe has resources beyond our knowing, and nothing is impossible with God. That is why those of us with religious and spiritual sensitivity and leadership, and religious institutions and communities, must fully embrace now prayer and prophetic witness to renew the face of the damaged earth. For the earth does not belong to us (Psalm 24:1: 1 Cor. 10:25).
As in the time of Noah, if we can obey God, praying, repenting, changing our habits and correcting our vision and our lives, we can survive the disasters and thrive. We therefore call upon all people of faith, spirituality and good will, but especially religious leaders and institutions who are not yet engaged in this pro-life teaching and action, to go forth and ask ourselves and the people in our communities to examine our lives. We have to stand up for what is right and work together as citizens of the Earth – what Hawaiians call ohana. This word ohana means to work together in harmony with one another and to become as one planetary family.
To do this, each one of us is now required to see the connections between our religious teachings, and our personal habits and products, and our nation’s unrestricted policies toward the extraction and degradation of the oceans.Together we can galvanize a new religious revival and creation care movement to make the changes that are necessary so that we may live within the limits of the earth and the oceans, and set forth upon new efforts to rebuild and restore what has been lost.
This is the challenge that we face. We can either obey the ancient commands of God and repent, change, stop actions that harm nature and each other, and turn toward actions that are in harmony with nature – and work to restore the damage we have done.
OR we can continue with a life of eating, drinking and making merry without regard for the future, and meet an end of our own making. This is the choice that is set before all of us – that of life or of death (Deut 30:15-20). Let us choose life that we may thrive and enjoy the goodness and beauty of this world on God’s terms and not our own.
In this striving, religions, religious communities, and faith will be seen by the nation and outsiders as absolutely relevant and necessary. Our youth will see our communities and individuals being of service to the poor, reaching out in caring and respect to our brother and sister animals (on land and in the sea) and working to leave them a habitable planet, rather than one degraded and destroyed. They will join us as beacons of hope, as we work together across faiths and beliefs, sacrificing for something bigger ourselves -- and in doing this, touching others personally, with the healing touch of God, as we renew the face of the earth as well as ourselves. We must become the change that we wish to see in the world.
And now ask the beasts to teach you,
And the birds of the air to tell you
Or the reptiles on earth to instruct you,
And the fish of the sea to inform you
Which of all these does not know
That the hand of God has done this?
In this hand is the soul of every living thing
And the breadth of all humankind.
Job 12: 7-10
We have been acting wrong in terms of the ocean and the earth because we have been seeing, thinking, and valuing wrong. Religious communities and leaders have at times looked at science as the enemies of faith rather than tools for knowledge of creation so we have been missing the ecological, physical, economic and spiritual connections between nature and us. Like it or not, we are part of nature. Science and observation are tools to serve God in this responsibility. They offer to religion and society the eyes to track and understand physical and ecological realities and systems, and inform us when we cannot continue on a path without increasing catastrophe. When we think we are outside of nature’s cycles and species, we reduce God’s marvelous creation to commodities rather than seeing the world as a means to care for all life and to nurture and sustain it as God sustains us. The original sin was to disobey God and view the world merely as things to use selfishly, only for ourselves, contrary to God’s plan. Humanity still swallows the apple that the serpent proffers as we think we are beyond any limits.
The spiritual challenge needed is to discern and teach the holy and intrinsic value in all parts and species of the world, including those of the oceans. This means that we need to act morally and ethically with thoughtful, religiously and scientifically guided restraint to fulfill our responsibilities and strive to be as much in harmony with God and creation as we can be.
Our economic systems and physical infrastructures, energy sources, and products are built upon unrealistic visions that our waste and overuse of resources harm nothing, and that limits and regulations on corporations or business governments or individuals - guides for communal responsibility – actually harm us. As the Qur’an teaches: "O children of Adam! ... eat and drink: but waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters." (Surah 7:31). Yet much of our daily life is dependent upon the very forces and processes that harm the seas. Most of us and our communities depend upon carbon fuels for energy, heating and cooling, transportation, products and services. We rely on plastics and packaging. We depend upon chemicals for everything from household cleaning to medicine to industrial activity.
Because of this daily dependency coupled with problems of human behavior and conflict, the enormity of the interconnected problems of ocean, air and land seem overwhelming, impossible. And without God, they are. But the Mysterious, Infinite Creator of the universe has resources beyond our knowing, and nothing is impossible with God. That is why those of us with religious and spiritual sensitivity and leadership, and religious institutions and communities, must fully embrace now prayer and prophetic witness to renew the face of the damaged earth. For the earth does not belong to us (Psalm 24:1: 1 Cor. 10:25).
As in the time of Noah, if we can obey God, praying, repenting, changing our habits and correcting our vision and our lives, we can survive the disasters and thrive. We therefore call upon all people of faith, spirituality and good will, but especially religious leaders and institutions who are not yet engaged in this pro-life teaching and action, to go forth and ask ourselves and the people in our communities to examine our lives. We have to stand up for what is right and work together as citizens of the Earth – what Hawaiians call ohana. This word ohana means to work together in harmony with one another and to become as one planetary family.
To do this, each one of us is now required to see the connections between our religious teachings, and our personal habits and products, and our nation’s unrestricted policies toward the extraction and degradation of the oceans.Together we can galvanize a new religious revival and creation care movement to make the changes that are necessary so that we may live within the limits of the earth and the oceans, and set forth upon new efforts to rebuild and restore what has been lost.
This is the challenge that we face. We can either obey the ancient commands of God and repent, change, stop actions that harm nature and each other, and turn toward actions that are in harmony with nature – and work to restore the damage we have done.
OR we can continue with a life of eating, drinking and making merry without regard for the future, and meet an end of our own making. This is the choice that is set before all of us – that of life or of death (Deut 30:15-20). Let us choose life that we may thrive and enjoy the goodness and beauty of this world on God’s terms and not our own.
In this striving, religions, religious communities, and faith will be seen by the nation and outsiders as absolutely relevant and necessary. Our youth will see our communities and individuals being of service to the poor, reaching out in caring and respect to our brother and sister animals (on land and in the sea) and working to leave them a habitable planet, rather than one degraded and destroyed. They will join us as beacons of hope, as we work together across faiths and beliefs, sacrificing for something bigger ourselves -- and in doing this, touching others personally, with the healing touch of God, as we renew the face of the earth as well as ourselves. We must become the change that we wish to see in the world.
And now ask the beasts to teach you,
And the birds of the air to tell you
Or the reptiles on earth to instruct you,
And the fish of the sea to inform you
Which of all these does not know
That the hand of God has done this?
In this hand is the soul of every living thing
And the breadth of all humankind.
Job 12: 7-10
