I: Genesis
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth... Over the past week, the Catholic liturgy has offered us a daily dose of the very first words and chapters of the Bible. It has been a delight to reflect again on the poetic and evocative story of creation. The initial image of God's breath/spirit/wind hovering over the chaos of nothingness, bringing with it peace, order, and "something rather than nothing" is always stirring. Just as moving are the succeeding days of God creating land and sea, skies and whatever is above the skies, plants and animals, beasts and fish, all of which end with the repeated observation that God gazes over all these new things and finds them all very good. Finally, on the sixth day, God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them... (Genesis 1, NSRV).
So, while preparing some homiletic thoughts on these images of creation for the sisters down the street for whom I say early morning Mass, it occurred to me that in these few verses we have the absolute foundation of all theology and, particularly, all moral theology. Theology is the word that describes the intellectual work of expressing who God is, what God does, and what our relationship is to this God. Moral theology focuses on our part in the relationship: how should we act in response to what God does.
All theology flows from this story of creation because the first chapter of Genesis proclaims that we did not create ourselves; all the world and we ourselves are a gift from God. Everything that is only is because God breathed spirit over the abyss of nothingness thus forming all that is: protons and neutrons, stars and skies, and rains and forests, ferns and mongooses, and fish and buffalos and creepy crawly things and finally humankind. God did this simply because he wanted to give; it was all a pure, joyous, loving gift...no strings attached. Since it was God who poured his own Spirit into all that was created, so all that he created is good. This goodness is affirmed day after creating day when God gazes over what he has done and repeatedly observes that it is good. There is nothing in God's creation that is in itself bad. Those two simple insights are foundational for all we believe about God and creation: It is GOOD...and it is a GIFT.
Humankind finds its place in the story late on the sixth day. We are described by Genesis as the pinnacle of creation...a pride of place that gives us no reason for preening superiority since we are charged with the humble responsibility to care for all these created things. We are charged with living within this garden of grace with grace, delighting in it, protecting it, cultivating it, and, yes, sharing it. This then is the first moral responsibility we have placed upon us as humankind: care for the gift of creation on God's behalf.
The fact that we ourselves are made in God's image and likeness also means that we have a second moral responsibility: to recognize God's image in ourselves and in one another. This implies, well, actually demands, that we profoundly respect every other human being as the work of God's creating hand and a gift that bears God's own image and likeness. We are to bow with humble reverence before the divine breath that has quickened to life the other just as it did ourselves. This respect for the other is not optional; it is the second moral imperative given to us in Genesis.
Out of these two simple moral imperatives inscribed into our foundational creation story come the ten commandments of Moses' time: the first three urge us to remember the God who created us, honor this God, and love this God, while the next seven urge us to see God's image in our fellow human beings and treat them with the same respect that we would treat God. Likewise rooted in the two moral mandates of Genesis, are the two great commandments found later in the scriptures, "You shall love God with all our heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and You shall love your neighbor as yourself," (Matthew 22: 37-40). These are so fundamental to being human, that they are found in almost every religious tradition and most humanist movements as well.
II: Government
The two moral imperatives of Genesis, to care for creation and care for our neighbor, raise the obvious question as to how best we live those imperatives in the real world. We do so individually, of course, but we also do so as families, communities, religions, and, yes, nations and governments.
When humankind organizes itself into tribes, clans, states, and eventually nations, the moral imperatives found in the creation story do not disappear; what is true for human beings individually is true for the organizations they form among themselves. A national government is just as bound to respect the created world and the dignity of the human person as any individual human being is. There is no moral pass for government just because it is complex and big. Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Popes and Potentates are just as obligated to govern with reverence for the gift of creation and respect for all who are made in God's image and likeness as are all of us in our personal lives. Care for the planet we all live upon, care for the common good, and care for each and every human being, especially those deprived of the basic necessities of life are not optional values. Every government and everyone who governs carries the burdensome responsibility of dutifully caring for creation and all it contains as well as more particularly caring for the progress of collective humanity and the dignity of each and every individual human being. For people of faith, all policies, laws, and the actual deeds of governments are measured against these two mandates flowing from the Genesis narrative. For people who are not believers, the universal human imperative to care demands the same.
It is the demand to care for creation and care for human dignity that every government is charged to promote. It is by these same two criteria that their actions are to be morally judged.
In the case of my nation's government, there is much to be proud of on both scores; as a risky and largely successful experiment in democracy, as a homeland for refugees for over two centuries, and as a nation dedicated to making the advances of scientific knowledge serve the common good, we have nobly fulfilled the call to care for creation and one another. Nevertheless, it is also true that in every administration of our government since its founding, there has been much that has failed to meet the Genesis standards: the horror of slavery, the abysmal treatment of native peoples, the first use of nuclear weaponry, and most recently, the support of unproportionate military force resulting in massive destruction and death in other lands. Sometimes those failures were due to ignorance, other times, ineptitude, and still too many times, just plain hard-heartedness. Greed for power, influence, territory, money has too often been the primary motivation for raping the earth and its people.
III: The Present Moment
The present administration of my nation has been in power for just three weeks. It is certainly too early to make definitive moral judgements about its deeds, priorities, and potential lawmaking. But it is not too early to be deeply concerned, if not horrified, by its earliest decisions. It has chosen the military tactic of "shock and awe" to make its mark on the nation quickly and deeply. In just a few weeks it has issued a river of executive orders and made public statements about new policies that are remaking the character of the United States and sending tremors through the rest of the world. There are too many examples to mention here (many others are doing professional work documenting them in real time), so let me consider just three that particularly haunt me:
1-Solid scientific study has made it clear that the climate of our planet as we have known it for thousands of years is on the brink of collapse. The short-term effects of our industrial age's contamination of the earth's environment are already upturning hundreds of thousands of lives both in the United States, here in Ecuador where I am presently living, and certainly around the world. The long-term consequences that will befall our children and grandchildren are really quite unimaginable, and it is appropriate to fear that they will inherit a planet devoid of the beauty and grace we have for so long taken for granted. Yet the current administration has latched onto a bellowed forth a coarse mantra, "Drill, baby, drill!" It is a slogan which is not just about drilling for petroleum, but one that scorns the moral imperative to lower the risk of climate catastrophe. How best to deal with climate change and its causes is a matter for great study, debate, and consensus building among all peoples, but the political battle cry, "drill, baby, drill" reveals a deliberate refusal to study, debate, and find consensus on the best strategies and policies even as it displays heartless disregard of the imminent danger now facing all life on this delicate earth. This is decidedly not in accord with the imperative to care for this great garden of life that is our earth. And particularly for believers in the God of Genesis, it is a direct disavowal of the mandate to see the world as a gift to be treasured, cultivated, and protected. To deliberately not care for our earth as it stands at this cataclysmic precipice is moral folly. For believers in the God first introduced to us in the very first chapter of our holy scriptures, then "drill, baby, drill" and all it implies is a betrayal of God's will that we care for the earth given to us in love. It is an afront to God's generosity to us. It is simply a violation of the first moral imperative of Genesis. It is a moral abomination.
2-"They are eating the dogs; they are eating the cats." That particular campaign slur was directed at Haitian immigrants legally living in the United States. It was not true, but it was a useful trope to stir up animosity towards all immigrants. It deliberately sought to demean the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio so as to foment fear and justify animosity towards all immigrants, both documented and undocumented, throughout the entire nation. In using slurs of this sort, human beings "made in the image and likeness of God" had their God-given dignity ripped from them. Since coming to power, the current administration of our country has been fulfilling the dark promise implicit in the "they are eating the dogs" slur by putting into place plans for the mass deportation of millions of immigrants from the United States, or if not actual deportation, holding them in massive purpose-built camps not unlike those used during World War II for Japanese citizens...or worse. This blunt hammer is not designed to discriminate between the violent and the gentle; it is designed to pound out of our country anyone and everyone who came across the border for whatever reason. More precisely, it is designed to remake the immigrants among us into social pariahs to be feared and discarded. Such plans and the dark spirit motivating them are an afront to the foundational teaching of Genesis that insists we are all sisters and brothers because we share a common creator whose image and likeness is implanted in all of us. And as the Caine and Able story in the fourth chapter of Genesis cries out: We are indeed our brother's keeper! To speak of immigrants as those "who are eating the dogs and eating the cats" is callous and calumnious; to treat those who have migrated to the United States as so much chattel to be rounded up and disposed of cannot be anything but abhorrent to any of us who proclaim a loving God who created us all and breathed the divine spirit into us all.
3-As if heartlessly dehumanizing the immigrants in our land weren't enough, the unimaginably dangerous proposal to forcibly remove over two million human beings who have lived in their land half a world away for thousands of years, then relocate them to some imaginary "fresh, new land", as yet undetermined, is such an egregious violation of the Genesis imperative to respect the dignity of all human beings that it has to leave both humanist and believer shuddering. That the proposal includes visions of gleaming casinos rising along the Mediterranean shore where humble homes once stood only amplifies the horrifying reality that the proposal is already one of ethnic cleansing founded in greed and, arguably, just one crazed decision from genocide. This proposal to forcibly remove over two million Palestinians from their homeland, if pursued, cannot but be considered as one of the darkest crimes against human dignity of the present century. When measured by the second moral imperative of Genesis, to passionately care for the dignity of every human person, even the very thought of it is egregiously evil.
Yes, it is clear to everyone, that every president and every government has blood on their hands. Even as they have done some things well, they all have made terrible errors in judgement and policy that have had dark consequences for the earth and its inhabitants. But these three portents of where the present administration is leading us seem particularly grim. They seem to display a level of heartlessness that is new to us.
IV: "Oh, that today..."
As we face the governmental forces that work against the grace of creation and the dignity of our human sisters and brothers most of us feel quite powerless. Perhaps, the prayer of the prophets and psalmists of the Hebrew scriptures can make us stronger in hope: Oh, that today you would hear his voice; harden not your hearts! (Psalm 95:7).
Oh, that tonight the leaders of my nation might settle into their easy chairs, pick up a Bible, and read the first chapter of Genesis...and maybe the second, third and fourth, as well, and, oh, that their hearts might be softened by the stories found therein.
Oh, that tomorrow in the morning, they might breathe fresh air, see green leaves flutter in a breeze, hear rushing water in a creek, and say to themselves with joy, "This is good!"
Oh, that the day after tomorrow they might buy three tacos al pastor from a food truck blazoned with Mexican flags and stickers of Our Lady of Guadalupe, look into the brown face of the child standing nearby, find there a smile, and say to themselves, "This, too, is good."
Oh, that the day following that day, the fourth day, they might find in their news feed a photo of a Palestinian child and a Jewish child holding hands above their lands and they might say, "This is good; this is very good."
Oh, that on the fifth day, they might enter the most powerful office in the world and say to the most powerful people in the world, "Let us do good. Our earth and our children and our grandchildren deserve only good."
Oh, that on the sixth day we might all hear God's word made fresh in creation and made flesh in one another...and harden not our hearts.
And, oh, then on that holiest of days, the seventh day, may we peacefully take our rest in this blessed garden with our good God...and with one another.
.
Comments