A talk to the first Havant Green Festival - 16th Sept 2023
Thank you for this opportunity to address your Festival. It’s real privilege. I’m especially aware that not everyone here
would call themselves a person of faith.
But in the next few minutes, I’d like to make the case for a stronger
connection between the Green movement, and the world of faith in general.
You will know, I’m sure, that there are hundreds of creation
myths, from religions all around the world.
All the ancient civilizations had them.
The idea that Creation was an event of some description seems to be
hard-wired into human beings. Perhaps
that’s because we each have our own beginning, and we can’t cope with the idea
of anything else not having some kind
of beginning. We also, instinctively,
want to know where we came from, and why we are here. It is part of our endless search for meaning.
The word ‘religion’ comes from the same root as the
children’s toy, Lego – it’s the Latin word ‘legio’, which means, ‘to choose, to
collect, to connect’. It was from that
word that the Romans created their legions – collections of individuals, chosen
to be connected together by a common cause (to fight for Rome). Religion, then, means to ‘re-connect’, in
spiritual terms it means any activity which re-connects us to the sense of the
Divine within all humans. Religion is
about that endless search of all humanity for meaningful origin stories for
creation, and discovering meaning for our own short lives within creation.
The world of science has been a challenge to religious
thinking, since the Renaissance. That’s
a great pity, as far as I am concerned, since theology was once considered ‘the
queen of the sciences’ – precisely because good
theology has always used the scientific method of hypothesis, test, repeat, to
deepen human understanding of that which is beyond our limited gaze. For those with an open mind, science still
has many unanswered questions, to which religion can sometimes provide helpful
answers.
The obvious big unanswered questions remain the ones about
origin and meaning. Science teaches us,
for example, about the Big Bang. But it can’t tell us anything meaningful about
what happened before the Big Bang. Science
can only hypothesise. Was it, for example, just a latest big bang in an eternity of an
ever expanding and contracting Universe?
We’ll never know for sure. Did the trillions of stars and incalculable
matter of the Universe really emerge from a tiny point in space, no bigger than
a pencil dot? Again, science can only
hypothesize. What about meaning? We are hard-wired to search for it, but
science has no answer to the question, except to hypothesize that we are the
Universe observing itself, through our reasoning brains. There are many other areas we could
explore. What is dark matter? Are there multiple dimensions? Could one of them be ‘heaven’?
My point, though, is to say that it is tempting to assume
that science has replaced religion, over the essential human questions of
origin and meaning. But, in reality,
science really knows very little about those vital questions. And so, I would argue, it is unwise to
jettison the wisdom of the millennia of religious truth-seeking, in favour of
the new kid on the block, of science.
A more troubling aspect of science, is that it is frequently
highjacked by greedy men, for their own purposes. That is true of religion, of course,
too. But whilst the greedy men who highjack
religion have done so mainly to feather their own nests, the high-jacking of science
and technology is that it has global consequences. Science has given us mass transportation, and
the food to feed billions who are multiplying as a result of scientific
advances in medicine. But it is science
that has also given us the ability to fill the air with pollutants, to carve up
the earth for minerals, to lay waste to the forests, and to pollute our rivers,
and to fill the world with plastic gadgets and gizmos. All these things have happened because some human beings have had the will and
the wit to use the advances of science to sell ‘meaning’ to the rest of us.
But the ‘queen of sciences’, theology, offers us a different
lens of meaning, which might yet hold some of the answers to the global
problems we are facing. The religious myths
of the world provide us with a moral framework in which to operate the tools of
science. At their heart, all religions
have some common moral commands – which offer meaning, and teach restraint. For example, you’ll have heard of the ‘Golden
Rule’ – that great teaching common to all the major religions of the world, and
most of the minor ones as well. It goes
like this: ‘Do unto others as you would
be done unto’. Jesus, the Buddha, the
Prophet Mohammed and many more have taught this rule.
If (if only!) that rule were commonly taught, and commonly
held, we might begin to imagine and entirely different world. Shareholders of water companies might not
permit sewerage to be pumped into our seas, because that’s not what they would
want for themselves in their own seas – on whatever tropical island they reside. Forests might no longer be cut down by
shareholders who live happily in beautiful countryside, because they would
think about how they would feel if someone cut down their local forests. Native
lands might no longer be excavated for minerals, because the owners of the
mines would think about how they would feel if the land beneath their luxury villa was dug out from
under them.
Another common theme among religions is the call to live
lightly upon the earth. These are
captured in teachings of the great religious thinkers, like:
Christianity:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and
vermin destroy, and thieves break in and steal”
Buddhism: “The secret
of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the
capacity to enjoy less.”
Hinduism: “The earth,
the air, the fire, the water, they are all made of the same elements as our
body. So why do we continue to harm
them? We must learn to live in harmony
with nature”
Judaism: “Who is
rich? Those who are satisfied with what
they have” and “Better a little with the
fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil”
Islam: “The world is
beautiful and verdant, and verily God has made you his stewards in it, and he
see how you acquit yourselves”
Taoism: Nature does
not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.
I hope you are grasping my central point here. Science has given us amazing tools to improve
the nasty, short and brutish life that most of us spend on earth. But scientific progress devoid of meaning has
led us to the brink of extinction as a species.
I would argue that only religion, in its broadest sense, can offer us a
framework for stepping back from that brink, by reminding us of what our ancestors
knew instinctively. They knew that the
earth, of which they were stewards, had rhythms and limits – and they learned
to live in harmony with them. Religion
gave them a meaningful framework, and adequate myths, for living equitably with
other humans, and with the planet, their home.
Whether their creation myth was of Mother Earth, or of a Creation by a
god, religion offered them a way of seeing themselves in relationship to creation…not masters and exploiters of it, but
stewards of it.
As a ‘religionist’ with a Judeo-Christian background, I can
think of no more powerful myth than the story of Creation, as told in the Book
of Genesis. In one of the great Creation myths of the Bible (and there are at
least three!) God builds a garden. It’s a delightful place full of all manner
of animal and plant life. Into the
garden he places human beings, and he commands them to ‘take care of the
garden’.
Perhaps, I suggest, that one
phrase, ‘take care of the garden’ could become a new rallying cry for the Green
movement. It has religious roots, which
are deep enough for anyone with the time and inclination to explore. It contains a sense of command, and of
urgency, that our world needs to hear.
It implies the wise use of technology, and it implies purpose. It presumes that the garden, if taken care
of, will abide for ever. Yes, my
friends, let’s ‘take care of the garden’ – and teach the world to do the same.
I remember two of the questions that were asked after this
talk.
Q. Do you think God will solve the climate catastrophe?
A: It depends on what
kind of god you have in mind in your question.
If you picture God as some kind of Santa Claus in the sky, rewarding his
children or punishing them depending on whether they are naughty or nice, then No. But if you see God as the creative and loving
source of every positive human action, inspiring and leading us to become all
that we can be…then yes, I could see God helping us to save ourselves, if we
listen to the still small voice within.
Q. Why should we trust
religion when all they do is fight each other and exploit others?
A. I always say ‘judge
a religion by the teaching of its founder, not by the idiots who pretend to
follow the teachings, but pervert them to their own ends. Every organization, political party, even
football clubs attract people who are on their own power-trip. But that doesn’t negate the essential core of
what each organization, including religions, are teaching.
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