“On Religion and Sustainability” 

Dr Richard Smith 08/10/2023

Readings - “10 Commandments”

I have discovered that History is not about facts, but the interpretation of the facts, which is why people keep writing books (and I keep on buying them). But the interpretations of the facts become more enduring when they are biographical and are told as a fictional narrative. This makes them easy to remember for repeated retelling and often inspires new meaning, as they are passed down through the generations. They often become allegories for the deep spiritual truths of our Christian faith.

Today our first bible reading continued the story of the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt and after 3 months of wandering in the desert, Moses receives the 10 Commandments on Mt Sinai. This story forms part of their founding myth, whose narrative is in the first five books of the Bible known as the Torah or Pentateuch. Genesis, the first book, explains how we came into existence and the following four books are how to live sustainably on this planet building on the 10 Commandments revealed to Moses, the first to download information from the cloud to a tablet! .

We should not be distracted by the fact that the consensus of modern scholars is that these first five books do not give an accurate account of the origins of the Israelites, who appear instead to have formed as a tribal entity in the central highlands of Canaan some 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus.  It is a story that comes out of their experiences of enslavement by a sequence of Empires with Jesus himself being born when Judah, the remnant of Israel had been conquered by the Roman Empire.

Empires of the Middle East oppressing Israel

1.    Egyptian 3150 BCE to 900 BCE

2.    Assyrian 900 B.C.E. to 600 B.C.E.

3.    Babylonian 597 – 587 BCE

4.    Persian 550-529 BCE

5.    Greece 320-198 BCE

6.    Rome 63 BCE – AD 70

Such conquering Empires continue in our present time, going to war to enslave others, steal their wealth and subjugate their people. The Exodus myth if read allegorically remains relevant to our day and has inspired many movements to attain freedom. However, if we read the story literally, we have to explain the appalling violence inflicted on the Egyptians and people of other kingdoms by God. When religion goes bad, we see such violence happening time and time again down through history, while religion at its best brings enduring peace. The struggle goes on, but in a different form now with Mother Nature taking centre stage as she suffers from our dominant religion of consumerism and is punishing us with the devastating impacts of global warming.

Under this religion of consumerism, we are seeing the rise in violence with physical, verbal and psychological violence becoming the method of choice to resolve differences and advance a cause. What is happening? Are we losing our moral compass?

Are the Ten Commandments no longer relevant or have we lost the ability to apply them as a set of principles in our changing world?

Joan Chittister of the Benedictine Order asks the question : Are the Ten Commandments just a set of rules or the key to a sustainable way of life? What does it mean to love God and neighbour in a world of violence and fear that threatens our lives and our souls?

Of the Ten Commandments the first three deal with our relationship to God. With the first declaring that there is an ultimate reality and sacredness of all life on earth which was expressed by God’s “I am who I am” response to Moses from the burning bush.

As we are made in the Image of God, the second and third commandments promptly reminds us of the danger of making God in our own image and using God’s name to advance self-interest.

To avoid breaking this third commandment the Hebrews would not say the name of God, instead they would use the word, Lord. Therefore, the Hebrew name for God revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 3) in the burning bush, was represented by the four consonants Y H V H (or Y H W H)  and regarded by Jews as too sacred to be pronounced to avoid breaking the third commandment. These consonants can be transliterated by inserting vowels to give us Jehovah or Yahweh but also without the vowels they represent the sound of breathing which is essential for sustaining all life on earth.

The following commandments are described by Sr Chittister as more generally the laws of life:

The Fourth Commandment is to keep the Sabbath day holy, a demand that once a week justice and equality be extended to the whole of God’s creation – even to the domestic animals, slaves and to the lowest of the low.

In our own State, this command was obeyed for 93 years on Rottnest Is, a penal settlement for young aboriginal men imprisoned there to break up the tribes so they could be moved off their ancestral land, to allow white settlers to move in – under the lie of Terra Nullius. For six days a week the Aborigines would be treated as slave labour in the limestone quarries, cutting stones for buildings. However, on the sabbath - the seventh day they were given freedom to roam the island. They would often catch a Quokka, light a fire and roast it for a meal of fresh meat to complement their largely vegetarian diet. Other times they would paint themselves with traditional markings for a corrobboree, with dance and song to keep their language, stories and spirituality alive.

The fifth commandment to honour our father and mother was to honour and care for those who the Aboriginal people would say “grew me up” – as often other members of the tribe would become de-facto parents to an abandoned child. For this reason, acknowledgement of country, often begins by honouring their Elders past and present – the fifth commandment.

I was recently struck be the relevance of the 7th Commandment that “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15) which Sr Chittister calls the “Law of Sharing”.    Recently I was pondering the future of two Good Sammys recycling bins located outside All Saints Floreat UC. Occasionally, at night these bins are raided by opportunists who spread their contents on the ground, upsetting a neighbour. So now there is a move to have the bins removed, this would severe All Saint’s 17-year contribution to this charity which provides much needed employment for disabled people and low-cost recycled clothes. Faced with resisting this move, I was struck by Chittister’s analysis of the 7th commandment where she writes:

         “The Bible forbids waste as certainly as it commands charity. “You must      not destroy trees,” Deuteronomy commands (Deut. 20:19). Nothing that         is of use to anyone is ever to be destroyed and must be put to use for   those who need it. To waste food, to give in to conspicuous consumption   by throwing away something that still has value in order to simply get a new one, is stealing from those who have need of such things but can’t         possibly afford to get them for themselves”.

These bins were originally placed in 2006 at the suggestion of a group of younger members of All Saints as an outcome of their confirmation class in which they learnt that Good Samaritan Industries is a proud agency of the Uniting Church who use recycling to provide employment for disabled people, a pathway to open employment and source of low-cost goods. When asked to reflect what they learnt from their Confirmation – recommended the bins.

Who would have ever associated the 7th Commandment of “Thou shalt not steal” with the waste of our conspicuous consumption? This is the challenge of our war on waste – to recycle and make sure the money we make goes to a charitable cause – to those less fortunate than ourselves here and overseas.

As we face the Global issues of climate change and environmental destruction, we are facing the consequences of the 8th Commandment of not lying as powerful groups systematically deny the science and promote any excuse for inaction. Inaction that has cost many years of reducing emissions - bringing misery to many from floods, fires, drought and extreme heat.

However, there is one lesson we can learn from our present situation. Even though our modern end of the world scenarios, or in biblical terms secular eschatology is different from the popular eschatology of Jesus’ own day, the ethical teaching of the historical Jesus, stripped of its supernatural dress, and recently reconstructed by scholars, is now even more relevant to our day than it was to people in Jesus’ time. Perhaps Jesus will get a better hearing now than he got then when he answered his critics, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone …". The sceptics of his time realized that he was speaking about them and conspired to have him arrested and killed. Today they conspire via social media to kill the truth and arrest those who promote it.

May we have the faith to endure in these difficult times for the future of our world and the mission of the Uniting Church here in Western Australia.

May the power of goodness and truth revealed in Jesus’ life and teaching  prevail over evil.

AMEN