A seminary professor once taught me about the most important passage in the book of Job. From her perspective, the most significant passage was neither Satan's convincing God to try Job's faith by torturing him, nor the graphic descriptions of Job's boils, nor God's verbal counterattack from the whirlwind after Job finally lets God have it.
For Dr. Trible, the most powerful passage in Job described the initial reactions of Job's comforters to the hideous spectacle their friend had become. Before these friends spend 34 chapters pressing their useless explanations and misplaced faithfulness on a blameless man with a shattered life, their initial actions -- before they open their mouths -- offer more help than their subsequent 600 verses of speech. When they first realize what has happened, they "wept aloud and tore their robes ... They sat with Job on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, because they saw that his suffering was very great" (Job 2:12-13).
In the first seven days after the Gulf Coast oil spill, I've heard a lot of responses that fall into two primary categories. One reaction is from various industry experts, who've observed that oil spills are unavoidable. Like Job's comforters, these experts appear to believe that their response is adequate, and that we need to accept that the price of a steady energy supply is an ongoing litany of environmental and humanitarian disasters. Several of these experts have noted without irony that the US has it good because our environmental laws are so tough -- citing the example of less-regulated countries like Nigeria, which apparently has suffered an Exxon Valdez-equivalent spill every year since 1969. This kind of response is the pastoral equivalent of telling a family that's just lost a loved one in a horrible accident that "stuff happens." It doesn't cut it.
A second, more heartening reaction has been that of the thousands of volunteers who've wanted to act. NPR carried a story about the effectiveness of human and animal hair as an attractor for oil, and described hundreds of barber shops and salons nationwide shipping their trimmings to a central location where volunteers are stuffing the hair into cloth tubes, creating sausage-shaped, hair-filled booms to skim the Gulf's surface and to collect the oil.
In the wake of these two initial reactions -- one avoiding the heart of the matter while the other sought to make it right -- I heard two other stories, one directly related, the other indirectly. The first described Michael Brune, the Sierra Club's Executive Director, taking a helicopter ride to view part of the spill from the air. The report noted that Mr. Brune was silent during the ride, and that he said very little after it. The report went on to relate several of Mr. Brune's words -- and I don't remember even one of them. But I do remember being grateful for his relative silence, and for his allowing himself to be moved. Like the initial reaction of Job's comforters, his sobriety felt more evocative to me than most of the ink that's been spilled on this catastrophe. It created space to recognize the pain of the victims -- human and beyond. People deprived of their livelihoods and culture. A vulnerable coastline battered by a second cataclysm in less than a decade. Sea turtles, fish, birds -- oil-suffocated and washing up dead. These images and this suffering command silence, at least in part. And if we can't manage that silence, I doubt we'll find the humanity to respond in a genuinely decent and effective way.
The second story was on the release of the President's Cancer Panel report, a 200-page report that, according to those who'd seen advance copies, expressed grave concerns about the impacts of thousands of unregulated chemicals on human health. The report described the growing prevalence of certain cancers in children, the fact that "many known or suspected carcinogens are completely unregulated," the warning that "to a disturbing extent, babies are born 'pre-polluted'" because of chemical exposure in the womb. "We wanted to let people know that we're concerned, and that they should be concerned," Professor LaSalle Leffall, Jr., a leader of the Panel and an oncologist and professor of surgery at Howard University, told The New York Times.
Silence, followed by the larger view that this report provides, can create the space for the disaster in the Gulf to strike a chord. The world's religious traditions teach that we owe respect and care to the earth, to our own bodies, and to the world's most vulnerable communities. In the wake of the Deepwater disaster it's time to listen to these traditions, to strengthen our resolve, and to act.
For example, numerous classical Jewish sources mandate the proper disposal of waste, and state that noxious products from industrial production be kept far from human habitation (Deuteronomy 23:13-15, Mishnah Baba Batra 2:9). The New Testament teaches that Jesus Christ died to redeem people and all of creation (Colossians 1:15-20), and joins with its Jewish forbearers in affirming repeatedly the goodness of the earth (Genesis 1). Islam teaches that human beings are the "vice-regents" of Allah, responsible for the earth's care, and warns against human self-destructiveness: "Neither kill or destroy yourselves: for verily God hath been to you Most Merciful." (Quran 4:29). Hinduism's Atharva Veda offers a beautiful prayer: "Supreme Lord let there be peace in the sky and in the atmosphere. Let there be peace in the plant world and in the forests. Let the cosmic powers be peaceful. Let the Brahman, the true essence and source of life, be peaceful. Let there be undiluted and fulfilling peace everywhere." Basho, the acclaimed 17th-century Buddhist poet, describes the entire earth as a sanctuary with his succinct offering: "The Temple bell stops. But the sound keeps coming - out of the flowers." And there's more, much more. We just need to be quiet and listen -- and then act.
Nothing can undo the suffering that this oil spill is creating. There will be no immediate balm in Gilead. But we can redeem ourselves by understanding this disaster for what it is -- yet another indication, along with the President's Cancer Panel report, that we need to change course. Developing strong federal policies to create renewable energy and fight climate change, and to regulate and replace the toxins we're spewing into the earth, would be a good start. Do we have the ears to hear, the eyes to see, and the resolve to act?
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori: A Lesson from the Gulf Oil Spill: We Are All Connected
Gulf Coast oil spill could eclipse Exxon Valdez - Yahoo! News
Oil spill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
YouTube - US oil spill explained
Oil spill approaches Louisiana coast - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Size of Spill in Gulf of Mexico Is Larger Than Thought - NYTimes.com
Louisiana Oil Spill 2010 PHOTOS: Gulf Of Mexico Leak Reaches Land
Oil spill - Encyclopedia of Earth
'Controlled Burn' Considered for Gulf Oil Spill - NYTimes.com
I will say, however, that you don't need God to come to the exact same conclusion as the author; you just need common sense.
If people find religious parables a useful means to make sense of life and to do the right thing, that's okay. In my opinion that was the original reason we invented God or gods, and wrote books of scripture in the first place.
I hope these ancient words and the wisdom therein gives religious people the resolve they need for making some difficult changes.
Why don't Pat Robertson, Oral Roberts, Hagee, Graham etc. go and pray at the Louisiana coast: they may bring about a miracle in stopping the gusher.
They have been bragging, hectoring, terrorizing for so long in the name of Evangelical Protestantism.
Now is the time to show the power of their faith and prayer.
Or if they can't perform miracles - fork over the money, resign and shut up.
It would have been embarrassing just to walk into the coach’s office and throw in the towel, so I put a spiritual spin on it. I engaged in some fancy rationalization; I convinced myself that God was telling me to quit. So I marched into the coach’s office and announced that I felt it was God’s will for me to leave the team.
The coach was not a religious man and made no attempt to appear so. But his response has remained with me to this day. After a dramatic pause, he replied, “Son, I’m sure you know a lot more about that kind of thing than I do. But I wouldn’t want us to blame something on God that He didn’t have anything to do with.”
I think I was neither the first nor the last to blame something on God that He had nothing to do with. I heard folks sat that Katrina and AIDS were acts of God. Now I hear folks saying that the oil spill was an act of God.
I’ll bet God gets tired of His name being used in vain like that.
www.onthefencewithjesus.com
The problem with blaming a deity becomes when people fail to act to protect themselves or the earth, and expect their god to jump in and save them. If she does, then it's a 'miracle.' If not, then it is 'god's will.'
It amazes me how people can manage to cherry pick, as though God's up there saying, "well sure a kid just got leukemia but I was busy with the Jet's game."
If God didn't have anything to do with the oil spill, then in what affairs does he involve Himself? Wars? Famine? Football Games? Electing a Republican? Does God have a staff of accountants, who decide if an earthly event warrants his intervention?
Either He's in this with us or he isn't. I happen to think He isn't. At all. Ever.
The LAST thing our country needs is more federal government.
To all of the four directions,
to the above and
the below and
the Sacred Fire at the center,
we ask a blessing.
We ask a blessing.
for the wingeds
for the two leggeds,
the four leggeds,
those who swim,
those who crawl,
We ask a blessing
for the sacred medicine plants,
the food plants,
the trees,
the grasses,
the water plants
for all of life we ask a blessing,
that we may walk in balance
and harmony with all that is.
That life may teach us the reason
that we came here from
the Mind of the Great Mystery.
We have choices - respect and use nature wisely or lose it. And losing our natural resources on land, in the water and in the air is not to our benefit.
That said, humans cannot reconcile the existence of both omnipotent good force ("god") and evil in the same world because we live in linear-time reality. However, try to conceive of this life as a magnificent tragic/comic movie, where the director knows the ending, in which good triumphs, while the actors have not seen the finished film. There are some terribly heartbreaking scenes, which are still being edited. We are allowed to provide improvised input to improve the plot. All things are possible. May we all get to attend the premier.
Great conclusion to a great article.
Individual actions will fall far short of what is needed to reverse these terrible trends.
We need strong legislation to force change.
No. Roughly half of the US population is convinced that the End Times will happen in their lifetime. For too many individuals this is reason enough to just let the chips fall and the oil spread and the poor starve and the temperatures rise where they may. An acquaintance once told me that god would never let us run out of oil. Another said that Global Warming is not real but merely a test of our faith. So you can pretty much count these two out of any solution.
There are no religious answers for the problems man has caused. That's because too many religious people seldom take responsibility for things they don't understand. The story of Job is just a story about patience. Unfortunately, the takeaway for most people is that, if we all just be patient, god'll fix this mess.
Good luck with that.
And that's if god was real.
Gather all of the so-called Christians here on HP, here in the US and get their pastors, priests, etc all together. Get all of the televangelists who can cure cancer and all other sorts of diseases and physical ailments and have one great, big prayer meeting. You all go out and arrange for a time. Let's say 8AM EST tomorrow morning. All of you start praying real loud and beg God to stop the oil from flowing.
I mean, let's think about this. The so-called Christians are so righteous and so holy, that they have favor with God. And everybody else is so wicked and sinful that God doesn't listen to them. So, how about a prayer meeting where you all pray that God will make instant converts of all the unbelievers.
Get God to stop the oil leak instantly (He's God, he can do that, right?) and I bet there will be a huge conversion of "wicked" people from HP.
I have no issues with God. I have issues with modern religious people. Please note that I didn't single out Christians in this response but since I have the most exposure to that "brand", I addressed them in my original post.
But regardless of my personal beliefs, why is this a problem? If we think about this critically, why would it be a bad idea? From a "marketing" perspective, this would be the ultimate revival/awakening and opportunity for "religious" people. Here is a country that is facing a serious issue. There is danger ahead and the spill hasn't been stopped. This isn't something that God isn't capable of doing. Let's think about this for a moment.
Do you doubt that God could stop that leak? I'm not talking with help from BP or any man-made influence. What is so wrong with the question?
Do you doubt the ability of God?
Don't use reason when talking about religion, don't use the word logical in sentences about religion.
Do you know politicians made these toxic poisons exempt in 2005?
Do you think man has been good stewards of the earth?
http://clearville.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/clearville-says-casey-got-it-shuster-needs-to-get-it/
"When they first realize what has happened, they "wept aloud and tore their robes ... They sat with Job on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, because they saw that his suffering was very great" (Job 2:12-13)."
Really? It seems to me they were saying, "Ewww, you are dead to me.!" and sitting Shiva.
"Michael Brune, the Sierra Club's Executive Director, taking a helicopter ride to view part of the spill from the air."
Really? The Sierra Club director just had to see the slick? From a helicopter? Really? What did that trip do to help the environment? Burn fuel and spit pollution. Really Mike?
"NPR carried a story about the effectiveness of human and animal hair as an attractor for oil, and described hundreds of barber shops and salons nationwide shipping their trimmings to a central location where volunteers are stuffing the hair into cloth tubes, creating sausage-shaped, hair-filled booms to skim the Gulf's surface and to collect the oil."
Really? Would any of these people wipe the oil off of a human? These guys are all about protecting birds, fish, and dogs, but never seem to care a lot about people.