By Fr. Joseph Lobo SJ
Building up a truly human fraternity is not possible merely on a humanitarian or rational basis. Religions of the world are essential for such an endeavor. That is because, among many other factors, religions also have a great potential for fraternity. That potential needs to be harnessed for harmony, otherwise it can be easily misused for creating disharmony.
Why are religions important?
Some people argue that many problems of the world are created by religions. They claim that religions create hatred, that they divide people and that they make people love and respect only those who belong to their own community. Therefore, they contend that religion as such should be abolished and that we can build a better society without any religion. We can come together, work together and live together better if religion is completely done away with, they say.
In the 19th century, Karl Marx opined that religion, besides being the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of the soulless condition, was also the opium of the people, which in promising some reward in another world, prevented them from engaging in creating a better world in the here and now. According to another philosopher of the same century, Friedrich Nietzsche, we human beings are the masters, but belief in God makes us slaves and powerless. Therefore, he opined, we should remove God and religion and then could experience our own power and capacity to live in freedom.
Many such ideas emerged especially in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Some people hold onto them even today. How should we evaluate them?
Religion as such is a tremendous force. There is no doubt about it. Religion creates a strong motivational force in individuals. However, religion can also be manipulated and misused to unleash conflict. Religion can be misemployed to sedate people to make them forget the real issues that plague them. On the other hand, religion can also be used to critique and demolish unjust regimes, structures and systems. In fact, when a new religion emerges, it often emerges as a prophetic and renewing force. More constructively, religion can be used for creating harmony and fraternity.
As a great motivational force, religion can be used for a constructive purpose or misused for destructive goals. All this is because religion as such functions at the deepest level of human consciousness and unconscious, and, hence, is able to create strong motivation. Human beings cannot live without religion – genuine or pseudo. It is for this reason, it is said, that those who say ‘Religion is the opium of the people’ end up making some sort of ‘opium’ their religion! In other words, if one does not worship the true God, he/she is sure to end up worshipping a false god (of power, pelf, position or pleasure); but God is a must for humans.
This is because we are created incomplete. As a result, we seek completeness throughout our life. As St. Augustine wrote: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” Only the true God can satisfy the restlessness and emptiness of our hearts fully. Anything other than the true God only deepens our emptiness and increases our restlessness. Riches, power, pleasure, position etc, as we see in our society, can never satisfy the deep thirst of the human heart for fulfillment. That is why human beings cannot live without some sort of religion or the other. With such a great potential and power that religion can exercise over us, it is only fitting to harness its potential towards building up human fraternity and harmonious living.
Religion and Human Fraternity
To begin with, the very concept of ‘human fraternity’ can be thought about only when we acknowledge that all of us come from the same Ultimate Source. Even science, in its own way, recognizes a common source for all that exists. Religion, of course, goes a step ahead in saying that that it is possible to relate to that Source. We, then, are the children of that Source. And so, we are siblings to each other. World religions in their essence teach this message. Hence, they are needed to build up human fraternity. The Catholic Church has time and again announced that she holds in high respect the ways in which God works in all religions.
Only a religious worldview of human beings can affirm that a human being has more than merely a physical and a psychological dimension. Many religions acknowledge the spiritual dimension of the human being. It is this dimension that makes a human being a dignified creature, someone who cannot be treated as an object.
The essence of religions being the experience of the Divine, affirms the dignity of human beings (and of all other creatures). In addition, religions provide ultimate meaning to human life. Therefore, when God, the Ultimate Source of meaning, is consciously taken away from human life, it becomes empty and meaningless, and all forms of evil and wrong sources of meaning enter personal and societal life. Human greed is one such factor. When one begins to serve and worship greed, it creates enormous evil and suffering in the world, for oneself and for others.
Religion should not be politicized for selfish purposes. At the same time, religion can empower politics towards serving the common good. The Liberation Theology that emerged in the Latin America in the 1980s served that purpose. Correct political policies, on the other hand, also can make religion serve the common good.
We must honour everyone’s freedom of conscience. No one should be forced to act against his/her well-formed conscience. Such freedom is important for building up human fraternities. Such freedom should be guaranteed to all, in all countries. Only within the framework of such fraternity can we accept each other and our differences without being hostile towards anyone.
The point of departure for a journey of peace among religions is the conviction that God loves all, including atheists. Secondly, being firmly rooted in one’s own faith is essential for entering into a meaningful dialogue with others. Such rooting tells us what is absolutely essential, what is peripheral and what is, in fact, against the core of one’s faith. Violence and hatred have no basis in the core of authentic faith. These come only from distorted interpretations of religion.
Sincere and humble worship of our Creator cannot produce discrimination, hatred and violence, but only respect for the sacredness of life, respect for the dignity and freedom of everyone, and loving commitment to the welfare of all. Rightly, then, we are told: “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 Jn 4:8 - Bible). For this reason, anyone who indulges in violence and hatred in the name of religion actually misinterprets, misuses and even desecrates his/ her own religion. In fact, the actual enemies of a religion are not outsiders or persons of another religion. The enemies of a religion are very much the insiders, the fundamentalists, those who distort the teaching of their own religion for some selfish gain, etc.. It is they who desecrate their own religion.
Religion experienced and interpreted liberatively leads to reconciliation, affirmation of human dignity, justice, cooperation, mutual respect and true fraternity. Interreligious dialogue gains its significance here. Interreligious dialogue consists in bringing forth the liberative or good values of all religions to the awareness of people. By doing so, the distortions in the understanding and practice of religions can be corrected, and more positively, the good values that are enshrined in the religions can help us to build human fraternities based on justice, reconciliation and love.
Interreligious dialogue is not aimed at finding fault with each other, nor is it an attempt to convince others about one’s own religion. It is, rather, meant for sharing the treasures of each one with the others and to appreciate the treasures found in other religions along with one’s own, and by doing so, to build human fraternity. In this process, there is also the need to critique whatever is against human fraternity, justice, harmony and peace. Beliefs and practices of this nature do not emerge from God, but from various cultural and historical sources and circumstances. They need to be identified and changed. This is also an integral part of interreligious dialogue. All of us are in a pilgrimage towards perfection, and we need each other in this pilgrimage.
Conclusion
Can there be a greater calling today than that which calls us to initiate dialogue across religions, ideologies and worldviews, with respect and openness, with the only aim of healing wounds, spreading forgiveness, ushering in justice and thereby ensuring a reconciled life for all – reconciliation within ourselves, with our fellow human beings, with the entire creation and with our Creator?
Such a vision spans across religions. It has resonance with visions such as sarve janah sukhino bhavantu and vasudhaiva kutumbakam of the Hindu tradition; with the vision of malkuth Yahweh of the Judaic tradition; with the Reign of God of the Christian tradition, with the idea of the welfare of every creature in the teachings of the Buddha, etc. Certainly, there are similar visions in other religious traditions too. Therefore, it strikes a chord of harmony and warmth in the heart of any person of goodwill across religions.
The actualization of such a vision, of course, is a herculean task of unimaginable magnitude. But we are only workers, and not master-builders. There is a deep sense of joy and freedom in realizing this truth, which sets us interiorly free to do what lies within our capacity in our place and context and leave the rest to the Master Builder, the Lord Himself.
(The author is a Jesuit priest of Karnataka Jesuit province. He was the former director of the Jesuit Regional Theologate, Bengaluru, and is currently the director of Human Resource Development Centre, Ashrivad, Bengaluru. He teaches various courses in Theology and Spirituality in various theological faculties in India and occasionally elsewhere. He regularly publishes articles in theological journals).