This year at our school of theology we discussed our response to climate change. There were also some thoughts expressed about adapting to what is already happening. There will floods, fires, massive devastation to humanity and creation, refugees, poverty, rising costs. Should we adapt and live with these? Or is there something that needs to be done? Sometimes, I feel like we are swimming against the current. Sometimes I cry out in prayer asking God to intervene, how long will you be silent. However, I believe, I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. I believe in love, even when I’m not feeling it. I believe in God even when God is silent.
During these past years, we have had to adapt to an awful lot. New Zealanders have experienced earthquakes, floods, lockdown in our homes for months on end, and we couldn’t have imagined how we would cope. But somehow, we all managed to adapt to the isolation, working from home, the masks, the technology, the fears and the disappointments. We found ways to cope with a life-threatening pandemic by adapting to changing circumstances.
Humans are blessed with the ability to adapt to our surroundings. We are blessed and we are also cursed. Adaptation allows us to make adjustments to our behaviour in order to cope with changing realities. But adaption can also allow us to continue relatively unchanged. For those of us who live as the most privileged people who have ever walked this planet, the privileges we claim for ourselves, allow us to continue our lives in relative security provided we adapt ever so slightly to our changing circumstances. And therein lies the curse of adaptation. Adaptation allows for the maintenance of the status quo. In the grand scheme of things, the fundamental realities of our lives haven’t been transformed by the monumental challenges of a life-threatening pandemic. Sure, we may have tweaked a few things, but we are still the privileged few on this planet and our planet, the only home we have, is still careening toward becoming largely uninhabitable. We are clever enough to understand that the status quo cannot hold, and we are adaptable enough to carry on without being transformed by the reality that our behaviour is threatening the survival of billions of people. We have largely adapted to the terrifying realities of climate change without letting the facts transform us. And the message seems to be: adapt. The buzz word seems to be “adapt” and it will all blow over. What we need in order to survive is to be transformed. Transformation of the way in which we live which threatens the status quo. And without threatening the status quo, we won’t be able to adapt quickly enough to survive. To date human intelligence is failing us. The facts, we are all well versed in the facts, and we have all, myself included, chosen to tinker with a few minor adaptations, rather than seriously engaging our need for radical transformation of the status quo. So, I have to ask, what it will take for us to open ourselves to the possibility of the radical transformation necessary to meet the challenges which are raining down upon us.
We are blessed enough to be able to maintain the status quo longer than the vast majority of our siblings on this planet will be able to. Today, lots of privileged people, just like us, all over the world, will gather like us to listen to the Gospel reading which comes to us from the anonymous gospel-storyteller we know as John.
He tells the people he loves, “where I am going, you cannot come.” No amount of tinkering with adaptations will suffice. Jesus proposes total transformation. “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. And you’re to love one another the way I have loved you. This is how all will know that you are my disciples: that you truly love one another.”
Love one another. It sounds too simple to our ears. Love one another, the kind of love which demands only adaption without transformation.
This cannot be what a man on his way to his execution was calling for. Jesus spent his life teaching people about the kind of LOVE which shows itself as JUSTICE. “Justice is what LOVE looks like in public.” Justice is what makes the LOVE which Jesus commands transformative. Justice transforms and without justice we cannot be the LOVE humanity needs us to be in order to transform the status quo into a Way of being which is life-giving.
For quite a long time, a century or two, the “prosperity for all” goal had been the line taken; that although there was inequality now, if everyone just stuck to the program and did not rock the boat, the rising tide would eventually float even the most high-and-dry among them.
But early in the twenty-first century it became clear that the planet was incapable of sustaining everyone alive at Western levels, and at that point the richest pulled away into their fortress mansions, bought the governments or disabled them from action against them, and bolted their doors to wait it out until some poorly theorized better time, which really came down to just the remainder of their lives, and perhaps the lives of their children.
There was scientifically supported evidence to show that if the Earth’s available resources were divided up equally, everyone would be fine.
So, is there energy enough for all? Yes. Is there food enough for all? Yes. Is there housing enough for all? There could be, there is no real problem there. Same for clothing. Is there health care enough for all? Not yet, but there could be. Same with education. So all the necessities for a good life are abundant enough and everyone alive could have them. Food, water, shelter, clothing, health care, education.
Is there enough security for all? Security is the feeling that results from being confident that we will have all the things I just listed and our children will have them too. So it is a derivative effect. There can be enough security for all; but only if all have security. If one percent of the humans alive controlled everyone’s work, and took far more than their share of the benefits of that work, while also blocking the project of equality and sustainability however they could, that project would become more difficult. This would go without saying, except it needs to be said. To be clear, there is enough for all. So there should be no more people living in poverty. Enough should be a human right, a floor below which no one can fall; also a ceiling above which on one can rise. Enough is as good as a feast—or better.
Transforming our perceptions of the status quo, into a vision of reality which sounds so much like the kin-dom of GOD, which Jesus taught a new kind of status quo in which everyone has enough. This way of being LOVE in the world, is not the kind of justice which can be achieved by merely adapting, this kind of justice requires transformation. We have been richly blessed. The Earth’s blessings are more than enough for everyone. Today, here and now, loving one another, requires the kind of justice which is transformative.
Bibliography:
Spong, J. S. A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying and How a New Faith is Being Born. New York. Harper San Francisco, 2001.
Ministry for the Future : A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, 2021