EVERY New Year should mark a fresh start. Is there also a new beginning for religion? This could become the principal question for many new years to come. Religion is facing a game changer: climate change. Unless it prioritises climate change ahead of all other concerns, it will be hit by a swelling tide.
Civilised societies have no experience of climate change as the last one occurred a distant 15,000 years ago, long before the advent of the oldest civilisation. Although impacting different geographical areas in varying degrees, climate change is one global phenomenon affecting 7.8 billion people.
Our Indonesian neighbours are feeling the effects as the 16,000-ft high Puncak Jaya mountain in Papua province has lost 85% of its glacier. Seniors in Kuala Lumpur will remember the 1950s when there was no need to air-condition your house or car. Up till the 1970s, a hill resort visit would require wearing a thick jacket. Forty years on, you can go about Fraser Hill, Cameron Highlands or Genting in just tee-shirt during a dry spell.
Climate change should make all religions adjust the concept of sin and salvation. In the list of sins, you don’t find coal burning or plastic dumping although we know that coal burning is a major factor in climate change, and plastic dumping is killing oceanic life. Still not a sin to continue doing them?
However, the most dangerous shift is the growing emphasis on strengthening and defending our separate religious identities. In this rising tide of separateness, we are frequently hearing the word “unbeliever” thrown at anyone who doesn’t follow your religion, and a duty is often imposed on the faithful to convert non-believers.
Instead of forging global unity, we build ring-fences to wall up different communities of religious adherents. Then we try to breach the ring defences of other faiths and convert their followers. Proselytism is regarded as a holy obligation despite its slicing of humanity into combative factions.
Politicians have shown they are a letdown pandering to national self-interest that subverts global caring. We have been reminded that change is not going to come from the people in power, it’s going to come from the masses. But religion is even more tangled in communal factionalism, unable to overcome the supremacist mindset that fuels enmity.
How can we stop climate change when, instead of bonding with one another, religious adherents behave as if they are in a gladiatorial arena wildly cheering their favourite saviour and showing disdain for the rest? Stopping climate change requires global cooperation, with responsibility falling upon everyone. Yet there is no move to forge a global alliance of world religions.
The reason for religious divisiveness is that we are putting up rival claimants and making them vie for the crown of world saviour. There is a world saviour – it is Mother Nature. What is nature? It is not a phenomenon created by God; Mother Nature is the power of God and her ever-living Book of Nature carries this important revelation: The means of grace are available everywhere and accessible to all.
What four things are essential to sustain human life? Hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. Nature sees to it that these Big Four are present everywhere on Earth. Antioxidants help prevent heart disease and cancer; so Nature ensures myriad sources – common fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, egg yolk and lean meat.
Eco-thrashing is a lifestyle behavioural trait that signifies rejection of Mother Nature, and here’s a warning from her: Researchers in Kenya’s Msasai Mara National Reserve have observed that in times of plenty, animals of different varieties will socialise with one another to form bonds of friendship. But when food resources become scarce, gazelles and zebras part friends and go separate ways.
Adverse rainfall conditions have induced food shortages affecting 800 million people around the world. If climate change hits acceleration point, it will intensify water crises and global polarisation with barely any hope of a turn-back. Hence, the time to forge a global alliance of world religions centred on Mother Nature as the saviour of all humanity is now when the window of opportunity is still open.
The writer champions interfaith harmony. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
