Bad theology leads to bad morality

i’m back from langkawi. had an interesting time. will give a write-up with pictures later. well, as i had been away for 3 days with no news update, don’t know what to blog about so am going to do a CnP post.

the following was written by fr. a. mowe, a jesuit priest which appeared in kakiseni on 14/9. malaysia today had it up yesterday. it is indeed a very interesting article so i have to have it up here. it’s about religion being hijacked for anger and insult and violence, touching on the makkal osai suspension.

i would like to highlight here one paragraph:

God is not insulted when images of His Son, or of His Prophet, are made into playthings. If you truly wish  to mock God, then destroy the environment that He made for our dwelling-place in the name of  development, abuse the migrant and the refugee, wallow in wealth while others struggle to make a living,  ignore the rights of the dissident, the marginalized and the weak. Christians who worry too much about the  offence done to a picture of Jesus should perhaps remember that the Bible tells us that it is humanity that  is made in the image of God: the only desecration worth talking about is the harm done to humanity by  our violence and our indifference.

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Bad theology leads to bad morality
by Aloysious Augustine Mowe 

AN image deemed insulting to a prophet is printed in a newspaper. Religious leaders express their  dismay. The common faithful see the picture as an attack on their religious beliefs. Welcome to the  delicate world of religious sensitivities. But where are the violent protests? Fiery denunciations are not  issued from pulpits up and down the land. No buildings are burnt down, and no death threats are issued  to those responsible for the outrage.

This must be an alternative universe to ours, not unlike that in Douglas Adams’ "The Restaurant at the  End of the Universe", where a group of devout members of the Church of the Second Coming of the  Prophet Zarquon are dining in Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the universe.

This remarkable catering venture is built, of course, on the fragmented remains of an eventually ruined  earth which are enclosed in a vast time bubble and projected forward in time to the precise moment of  the End of the Universe. Of course, Zarquon’s followers have to sit through a routine by the restaurant’s  entertainment host, Max, during which their prophet, whose Second Coming has been awaited for  centuries by his followers, is lampooned for still not having turned up, with only minutes to go before the  apocalypse. Instead of rioting and destroying the restaurant, as any self-respecting religious believer in  our universe would, they merely shift in their seats, then sit rigid and stony-faced.

Max, seeing their disapproval, says to the audience, "No, but seriously though folks, seriously though, no  offence meant. No, I know we shouldn’t make fun of deeply held beliefs, so I think a big hand please for  the Great Prophet Zarquon . . . " (here, the audience claps respectfully) . . . wherever he’s got to! "

A Tamil daily, Makkal Osai, recently printed a reproduction of a popular Roman Catholic icon of Jesus  Christ, the Sacred Heart, to illustrate its “Thought for the day” section. The inspirational verse was "If  someone repents of his mistakes, then heaven awaits them", a thought that the editors of the paper must  have taken to heart in the days that followed; the picture — untraditionally, and to the dismay of some  Christians — showed Jesus holding a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Bishop Julius Paul of the Evangelical Lutheran Church rejected the apology printed in the following day’s  edition of the newspaper. He called for the paper to be banned, citing the banning of two newspapers  that had reproduced the Jyllands-Posten caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad the year before. Not  having access to a device as useful as a fatwa, the bishop took refuge instead in claiming an ability to  read minds, declaring that the apology was unacceptable because the publication of the picture “looked  deliberate”.

Bishop Paul’s response should surprise no one; the banning of books, as well as their public burning
(often with the author included in the conflagaration), has long been part of Christian tradition.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, Datuk Murphy Pakiam, also expressed his dismay,  calling the picture “a desecration and therefore hurtful to the religious sentiments of Catholics”, but then  went on to accept the paper’s apology and said that he considered the matter closed.

Unfortunately for Makkal Osai, the Christian tradition of raining destruction upon the sinner trumped the  Christ-like tradition of showing the sinner mercy. The Internal Security Ministry suspended the paper’s  printing permit.

The Catholic bishops’ weekly paper, The Herald, criticized the suspension: “Why was there haste and  eagerness to punish the paper for a mistake that was already forgiven by the aggrieved party? The fact  that the paper is owned by a MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress) strongman and is at loggerheads with the  current MIC leader smacks of political interference. ”

The Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur said he was “perplexed and bemused” by the newspaper’s closing,  and pointed out that “Christians believe in reconciliation”.

The burning of the Malaysian flag in Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, this week has also been  described as a “desecration”; MPs from the ruling coalition did not disappoint us in the enthusiasm of  their rhetoric concerning the incident (they were somewhat more muted concerning the shooting of  unarmed civilians). One MP said that those responsible for the flag-burning “should not be forgiven”.  Another MP — developing on the theological theme — described the burning as “a big sin”. Following  upon this, it was only to be expected that a third MP would declare that the flag-burners “should be sent to  hell”.

This theology of the flag (semionology? ) sheds some light on the attitudes of certain religious believers  towards perceived desecrations of their sacred icons. Flags partake of the nature of tribal totems and,  as such, are guarded jealously by the tribes concerned, particularly against the depredations wrought  by rival tribes. Whether it be an ancient carved piece of wood handed down through generations of tribal  shamans, a royal banner lost to an opposing army in mediaeval warfare, or the Stars and Stripes raised  over Iwo Jima, a totem represents its tribe’s supremacy and very self. A lost flag is a lost battle, just as  the destruction of tribal totems was seen as a premonition of the tribe’s own eventual demise.

Tribal totems and tribal gods share the same nature; the only reality they represent is the tribe itself. Is a  prophet insulted if a picture of him is defaced, or if he is satirized? Can a supreme God be hurt if His (or  Her) imagined form is destroyed or lampooned? Does Jesus Christ really care very much if he is shown  having a beer, or is portrayed, as he was recently in Australia, as Osama Bin Laden? It is the  worshipper’s amour-propre, his self-regard, that is violated by such acts, not his God or his revered  prophet.

Our images of God condition how we behave. If we believe in a God who readily condemns many to the  violence of an eternal hell, we then become ready to accept and inflict violence as part of our religious  observance.

Christians who still use the traditional language of “the wrath of God” tend to be wrathful persons  themselves who would be only too pleased to see the wrath of God descend on those they deem to be  lacking in virtue. When their God is remiss in defending His honour with thunderbolt or worse, such  people often take it upon themselves to smite the sinner.

When Terrence McNally’s play, “Corpus Christi”, opened in New York, the Catholic League denounced  as “blasphemous” its portrayal of Jesus and his disciples as homosexuals. The theatre received  fire-bomb threats, and the staff and cast were told they would be killed. McNally himself received  numerous death-threats from Christian zealots in the USA, and then, for good measure, and in the spirit of  interfaith cooperation, found himself sentenced to death by the Shari’ah Court of the UK when the play  opened in London.

Thomas Aquinas says in "Summa Contra Gentiles": “Error circa creaturas redundant in falsam de Deo  scientiam (mistakes about creatures lead to mistaken knowledge about God). ” The converse is also  true; mistaken knowledge about God leads to errors about creatures.

I always ask people who are outraged by apparent insults to their chosen deit: “How big is your God? ”

We project many things onto God, but these are just that, fallible human projections that seek to make  God in our own image. God is never limited by our images and our projections. If God is real, then He is  a big God, beyond imagining, beyond insulting, and beyond the smallness of tribal projections and  aspirations.

The celebrated Zen Buddhist koan or paradox expresses this apophatic theology: “If you meet the  Buddha on the road, kill him. ” The Buddha that you imagine you know, whom you defend against insults  – he is not the Buddha, and you must rid yourself of him.

Was Makkal Osai banned because the authorities want to appear to be even-handed in the punishment  meted out to anyone who offends the sensitive souls of the pious? If this were the case, then the  numerous Islamic publications — sold in Malaysian bookshops — such as the works of (Muslim scholar  of Comparative religion) Ahmad Deedat (Sheikh Ahmad Hussein Deedat, 1918-2005) that caricature and  condemn Christian doctrines would also be banned.

Did MIC internal politics play a significant role in the paper’s downfall? The party has not hitherto been  noted as a champion of Christian sensibilities and yet, it was inquisitorially zealous in its prosecution of  the campaign against a newspaper that has been a trenchant critic of the current party leadership.

When Elizabeth I was urged to enforce greater Protestant orthodoxy in England, she is said to have  responded, “I have no desire to make windows into men’s souls. ” We could do with such reticence in  matters of religious conscience in Malaysia today. When politicians take it upon themselves to defend to  the death (always the death of others, and not their own) the honour of God, or of God’s prophets, we  would do well to ask if they are concerned with eternal life or their own political life.

When our leaders run amuck in defence of their religion, we find ourselves wishing that they would pour a  fraction of that energy into defending the rights of God’s poor, or into dismantling the baroque edifice of  corruption and patronage that they, and their predecessors have built.

God is not insulted when images of His Son, or of His Prophet, are made into playthings. If you truly wish  to mock God, then destroy the environment that He made for our dwelling-place in the name of  development, abuse the migrant and the refugee, wallow in wealth while others struggle to make a living,  ignore the rights of the dissident, the marginalized and the weak. Christians who worry too much about the  offence done to a picture of Jesus should perhaps remember that the Bible tells us that it is humanity that  is made in the image of God: the only desecration worth talking about is the harm done to humanity by  our violence and our indifference.

The predominant Christian metaphor for the afterlife is that of a banquet where Jesus shares food and  drink in fellowship with those who are saved, and which is prefigured in the meal he shared with his  disciples before he was killed. It is ironic that the man who so loved wine that he changed water into wine,  and drank a last cup of wine with his friends before his death, should be deemed to be insulted by being  portrayed enjoying a can of beer.

Seriously folks, no offence meant. I know we shouldn’t make fun of deeply held beliefs, so I think a big  hand please for Jesus Christ…whatever he’s drinking at the moment.

~~~

Father Aloysius Augustine Mowe is a Jesuit priest in Petaling Jaya. He wrote this piece on a Mac using a  voice-recognition programme because he had a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.