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The Earth and its Fullness is the Lord's

Psalm 24:1-10; Isaiah 45:18

Psalm 24 is known as a hymn of praise to the king of glory. The occasion of its use was quite similar to that of a Babylonian and Egyptian festival during which their patron deity was honoured as creator, and enthroned as king, symbolically. Psalm 23 is also a song of praise to God as the good shepherd and creator-king. The Lord rules over all that he has created. Those who fear and worship God will enjoy his care and concern for their well-being.

Isaiah also speaks of God as the creator of earth; establishing it as a place fit for human habitation. As God's handiwork, the earth reflects God's glory and will and, therefore, must be treated with deep respect. To soil God's garment is to rebel against God's will.

The biblical view is that human beings are custodians of the natural world that God has created. They are to exercise dominion over it in a responsible manner. But this is something that is lacking modern people's relationship with

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nature. Equipped with products of modern science and technology, they exploit and ravage nature to a point that nature loses the capacity to replenish itself.

The Christian view is that the relationship between human beings, nature and God is one of differentiated unity.¹ God created human beings and nature. In this sense, humans are continuous with nature. But persons transcend nature because they are endowed with the likeness of God. God wills that in exercising dominion over nature, humans must strive to ensure its sustainability.

Modern science and technology have achieved great success in the knowledge of nature and its use for humanity. However, the technological treatment of nature made possible by modern science has increased humanity's oppression and exploitation of nature to a degree previously unimagined. At the same time the oppression of other human beings – the poor (especially in the Third World) and women – has been intensified. Furthermore, science and technology, by reducing non-human nature to the state of a mere object, have denied the intrinsic value that inheres in every creature because it comes from the hand of God.²

There is a limit to what people can do in relation to nature. The power to use nature for the benefit of people depends upon the resources that nature has placed at their disposal. Science and technology can only maximize what is available in nature. They cannot create something out of nothing. If human beings expect nature to serve them, then they, in turn, must respect nature's inherent value and capacity to provide people with the resources they need to continue their creative work. The survival of the present and future generations is intricately bound up with nature's Capacity to sustain human life. In this regard, one basic

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issue that comes to the fore relates to the purpose for which scarce and limited natural resources are utilized. Meeting basic human needs is justifiable. But satisfying artificially contrived needs that do not ennoble human life is questionable. The riches of nature should not be utilized for that purpose.

Unfortunately, wanton destruction of nature has already taken place. It is said that centuries of extensive cultivation and deforestation have already resulted in the loss of 30 per cent of the earth's arable land. Currently, every year we lose another 30 percent of the earth's remaining topsoil. Desertification, deforestation and dwindling water supply are a creeping menace. Industrial wastes pollute the sea, rivers and lakes and cause death and decay to marine life. Acid rain has resulted in the destruction of some of the world's valuable forests. Modern technology has served to hasten the process of destroying nature. These are grim realities that we have to grapple with.

The majority of the world's people live in rural areas although in technologically advanced countries they tend to be located in urban centers. In the main, those who live in the villages in the Third World have not benefited from advances in science and technology. Many have barely managed to survive through subsistence farming. And many others face hunger and starvation. The denial of the means to attain and sustain a decent living standard is indeed dehumanizing. More dehumanizing is the extravagant life-style of those in technologically advanced countries. They are in a position to consume a disproportionately greater share of the world's resources.

Another burning issue confronting us today relates to the use of atomic power. It is common knowledge that the technological breakthrough in splitting the atom has placed

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in human hands the capacity not only to meet the world's energy needs, but also to destroy planet earth many times over. A viable world political arrangement has yet to be established in order to regulate the use of atomic energy.

Why Half of the World Starves

People of the ancient world saw starvation as a natural disaster brought about mainly by flood, drought, poor yield, and partly from a lack of sophisticated agricultural-technological know-how. Today science and technology have placed into human hands the capacity to produce more than enough food for the world's population. But why is it that some worry about excess consumption of fats, proteins and calories, while the majority of the world's population is underfed, malnourished and starved? The Brandt Commission Report describes such a situation in these words:

Eight hundred millions are estimated to be 'destitute' in the Third World today, as this Report has already noted: most of them by definition cannot afford an adequate diet. In some low-income countries studies have shown as many as 40 percent of pre-school children exhibiting signs of malnutrition. No one can state the exact numbers in the world who experience hunger and malnutrition but all estimates count them in hundreds of millions: millions who will either die from lack of food or have their physical development impaired. It is an intolerable situation. The idea of a community of nations has little meaning if this situation is allowed to continue, if hunger is regarded as a marginal problem which humanity can live with.³

Urban slums portray graphically the face of poverty and human destitution. Though less visible, poverty is also a massive fact in Asia's rural areas. The poorest of the rural poor have an annual income of less than US $70.00.

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a. Distribution of land

The majority of people engaged in farming do not have enough food to eat. Why is it so? In the main, the reason is social injustice. In developing countries, land as the primary source of wealth is owned and controlled by a few powerful and affluent elites. In Latin America, for example, 17 percent of all landowners control 90 percent of cultivable land. In Asia, one- fifth of all landowners control three-fifths of all agricultural land. In Africa, only four percent of all arable land is available to three-fourths of the total population. In many developing countries more than one-third of the agrarian population have no land of their own. They are merely share-croppers or tenants.

b. Whatever happened to the 'green revolution'?

In simple terms, "Green Revolution" means the practice of significantly increasing farm production without a corresponding increase in the area of land cultivated. This involves the liberal use of commercial fertilizers and pesticides, and the development and use of a variety of high-yielding crops. This also demands availability of capital for the purchase of seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and the construction of irrigation systems, not to mention the wages of farmhands.

While "Green Revolution" increased farm production, it also created formidable problems for farmers in the rural areas. Traditional varieties of crops have developed the capacity to adapt to local conditions. They are resistant to pests. On the other hand, new 'miracle' varieties are less resistant to pests and diseases and must be liberally sprayed with pesticides. Rapid growth is possible with the use of commercial fertilizers. Consequently, this raises production costs to a level beyond the reach of the average farmer. It is the farmer with ample capital who is in a position to use the "Green Revolution"

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farming method. The less affluent ones have no option but to revert to their traditional ways of tilling the land. "Green Revolution" necessitates a capitalistic approach to farm production.

Capital is invested in anticipation of profit. Increased capital investment goes hand-in-hand with increase in the acreage of land cultivated. Only agri-business concerns have the resources to engage in such a method of agricultural production. Furthermore, agri-business operating in many developing countries prefer to produce cash-crops such as pineapples, rubber, bananas, etc. Consequently, the production of staple food is reduced considerably.

The benefits of "Green Revolution" accrue to the more affluent (and more often than not, absentee) farmer-capitalists. This is a question that has to be raised again and again.

Brighter than One Thousand Suns

One early morning in August 1945, a bomb, the first of its kind in human history, was dropped at Hiroshima, Japan. No one in the impact area survived. That their silenced lips prevented them from telling their terrible experience is a grim reminder of the immense destructive power of the atomic bomb. Death and destruction in Hiroshima resulted not only from the initial impact of immensely explosive power. It also came about painfully and slowly through the lethal effects of radioactivity. The release of power in matter through the application of the second law of thermodynamics has the potential of bringing humankind to the threshold of Armaggedon. In poetic terms we can say that the nuclear energy places in human hands the capacity to release energy more powerful than the momentary explosion of one thousand suns.

What is our response to such a massive threat to

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humankind? We often hear about the large turnout of people in Europe at demonstrations against nuclear armaments. They have coined the term "Euroshima" by which they mean that there should never be another Hiroshima. In many parts of Asia, a response of that kind has not taken place. Does this mean that nuclear war is an irrelevant issue for most Asians? Or, is the struggle for nuclear disarmament merely an obsession of the affluent West?

There are some reasons for the seeming indifference to, and even cynicism about the nuclear issue. For some perceptive Asians, Western pre-occupation with peace is motivated primarily by fear of nuclear destruction, but tends to ignore another equally pressing issue of justice which has immediate relevance in the Third World to the question of human survival. For them, the ecumenical agenda of "peace with justice" represents a more holistic approach to the issue of war and peace. Some, however, are unhappy with that formulation in which justice is seen as conjunctive, not integral, to the quest for universal peace.

In an attempt to set forth an Asian perspective on this issue, the organizers of a CCA-sponsored conference chose a Chinese word for peace which seems to suggest an integral approach to the peace issue. Heiwa is a Japanese rendering of the Chinese word for peace. It touches on the root meaning of the biblical concept of shalom. An introduction to the report on the Asian "Heiwa" (Peace) conference sets forth an holistic Asian perspective on peace and justice as follows:

Justice and peace are major areas of concern for the ecumenical movement in Asia. Both are interrelated, in fact complementary to each other. However, issues relating to justice concerns have been the centre of locus in Asia because of peculiar circumstances prevailing in the region. Unequal distribution of

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resources, wide-ranging gap between the haves and the have-nots and the rule of the elites by the elites for the elites have necessarily led the Asian people to raise justice issues first and foremost. On the other hand, peace seems to be the pre-occupation of the West, perhaps because the nuclear threat is so close and immediate. The advancement in nuclear technology, coupled with superpower politics, has made the nuclear threat very much a part of the Asian scene. However, despite differences in attitudes, events in one part of the universe affect the other. Issues of peace and justice, like the issues between North and South, are intrinsically connected to an international mechanism that operates as one unit. Issues of peace and justice cannot, therefore, be looked into in isolation from the perspective of one continent or one region – they have to be viewed in totality within the framework of a universal discussion. The Asia Heiwa Conference was an attempt to look at the question of peace from its various dimensions and to bring into focus different Asian perspectives, both sub-regional as well as regional. At the same time, it was an attempt to draw other links in the international mechanism into the discussion in order to have a meaningful and useful exchange and sharing of views.

The decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was justified on the grounds that an immediate defeat of Japan would prevent the loss of more human lives that would have resulted from an invasion of Japan using conventional means of warfare. Even so, the enduring question, "Why?" raised by survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, haunts those of us who live under increased threat of total annihilation.

In Hiroshima about 140,000 people and in Nagasaki about 70,000 people were killed instantaneously. If one adds those who died in the following months due

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to residual radioactive effects the number of victims goes still higher.⁵

Those who survived the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima suffered deep psychological wounds which haunt them even today. "It was just like hell – a procession of ghosts, a sea of flames," says an old Japanese woman, who lost her husband in Hiroshima. "But I didn't see the devil, so I thought it was something happening on this earth... An atomic bomb doesn't just fall; someone has to drop it".⁶

The macabre way in which people lost their lives staggers the mind. Some eyewitnesses recall their horrifying experience in stark and vivid terms:

"In the central bombed area, there were two feet of a victim whose body had vanished in a single puff; they stood upright, stuck to head with a dead, charred black soldier; uninjured but with torn clothing, she still clutched her purse."⁷ "When I came to my senses, I found my comrades still standing erect and saluting; when I said, 'Hey' and tapped their shoulders, they crumbled down into ashes."⁸

These are only a few excerpts from a collection of stories told by surviving victims of the atomic blast in Hiroshima. The publication of such testimonies was first suppressed as they were deemed to be anti-American by authorities of the military occupation forces. Twenty years later, they were unearthed from a heap of rubble and dust in the basement of Hiroshima City Hall. Emphasizing the importance of telling the truth about what happened, the editor of Hiroshima Notes wrote:

This book consists of documents which tell the unblemished truth about the misery experienced in Hiroshima five years ago. Submitted contributions number 160, and each one moved us to tears.⁹

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Thousands congregate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki every August to commemorate the tragic and destructive advent of the atomic age. They deliver speeches and hold peace demonstrations. They ponder on the symbolic meaning of the Peace Cenotaph standing like a solitary figure making intercession for a return to sanity following humankind's venture into nuclear idiocy.

Recalling what he saw in Hiroshima, Mr. Oe felt that on that fateful day hell had suddenly come alive, conjuring a frightening image of the total dehumanization of humankind. For him that was a shattering experience. He writes:

The Picture of Hell. Throughout human history, people have had various nightmarish visions of the end of the world. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the image of the world's final days, once depicted in religious terms, is now portrayed by science fiction fantasies. Of all the eschatologies offered by science fiction, the most terrible is a final demise caused by the transformation of natural human blood and cells – and thus of human beings as such – into something grotesque and inhuman. The plagues and wars of medieval times must have given people a glimpse of what the end of civilization would be like. But people then could envision God behind all misfortune and thus hope that, after their death, another people would dare to till the soil and fish the seas. Eschatologies prior to the twentieth century still contained some sense of composure. People could believe that the end of the world would be experienced as having some kind of human shape and name.

But when radioactivity destroys human cells and alters human genes, any living beings of the future

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would be no longer human but something grotesquely different. This scenario of the world's end is the most dreadful and sinister yet. What happened in Hiroshima in 1945 was an absurdly horrendous massacre; but it may be the first harbinger of the world's real end, in which the human race as we know it will be succeeded by beings with blood and cells so ruined that they cannot be called human. The most terrifying monster lurking in the darkness of Hiroshima is precisely the possibility that man might become no longer human.

Sharing Our Resources in Love

We say that everything in heaven and on earth comes from God. We confess our faith in one God from whom every gift comes for the well-being of the created beings. Therefore, we have to accept the truth that there is nothing we can claim as ours in an absolute sense. Yet, we realize that this is a very uncomfortable and impractical truth because, we have been (whether rich or poor) for so long victimized by the value system of the consumer oriented acquisitive society.

Christians throughout their historical existence practised and honoured the virtue of charity. If we read Corinthians and the Book of Acts we discover how the poor churches in Asia collected offering to support the struggling congregation in Jerusalem. Somehow, through the centuries, Christians have lost the understanding and experiences of the early churches. Although they were an insignificant minority and struggling for their survival, they were profoundly motivated by the love of Jesus Christ to share their meagre resources with one another. Charity, therefore, has become an act of compassion only exercised by the rich for the sake of the poor. The poor, always, had to

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be the recipients and remained the object of compassion. Why? One of the important reasons may have been that the church always has been either rich and strong, or only wanted to be on the side of the rich.

As we all know, material resources acquire certain powers in the network of relationships, and power generates accessibility to material resources. This pattern exists between individuals, between communities and between nations. Once we get power accompanied by material resources we never want to relinquish it because we are aware of the realistic consequences in our societies. So churches and Christians cannot see themselves to be in a powerless position, since we have been convinced that we cannot exercise our act of compassion from that position. But, the Gospel of Jesus Christ which comes to us as the Good News has very different things to say. Of course, we all know it; but we have been ignoring it because it does not suit our self-interest and the consequences will be too serious for the structure of our churches.

In the international scene, the necessary resources exchange hands through trade. As it happens in a market place of a small village, people with money and power control the pattern of trade; and in most cases they even fix the prices to their advantage. This market place is never organized to bring benefits to those who toil for their livelihood.

Let me illustrate how economically strong nations can put the weaker partners into disadvantage. Trade is an important source of strength to the Japanese economy. Since I came to India a few days ago, I noticed a new phenomenon. Sleek and efficient looking Maruti-Suzuki cars are running on the streets of New Delhi. Hundreds of Indians coming from Singapore were bringing TV sets and

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electronic gadgets made in Japan. Weston Hitachi TV sets were being pushed in the newspaper ads. This seems to be a new phenomenon here. But, we Koreans have been going through this experience during the last 20 years. Let us see the balance sheet.

Between 1966 and 1980 (for about 17 years), Japan's total export was 138 billion dollars (US) while import remained at 111 billion dollars. The gain was 27 billion dollars. Japan's total export to Korea during the same period was 48.9 billion dollars against an import of 25 billion dollars. The gain was 23.9 billion dollars. Against a total gain of 27 billion dollars, the Japanese profit through trade with Korea accounts for 87 percent of the total profit. The surprising fact is that the Japan-Korea trade is no more than 2.5 percent of the total import, and 4.7 percent of the total export of the Japanese trade. Through this small fraction of the total trade, Japan was able to earn 87 percent of its total profits. Once we reach this point, the Korean economy is no longer sustainably independent of Japan. No matter what Koreans say about Japan, the power relations between the two countries is very much a settled reality. This is a clear-cut case of economic dependency. Obviously, this is one of the extreme examples. But, the relationship between nations is very much patterned by these dynamics.

In this world, no powerful person or nation voluntarily relinquishes- power so as to enable the powerless to take whatever power is essential to create an equilibrium. And it is a matter of serious concern for us if the reality of the present world continues to remain the same. Before too long there will be an irreversible conflict between the forces which demand fundamental change in the present world order and the forces of status-quo to maintain the present unjust disparities, which will ultimately bring about decay and destruction of this world.

The churches are called upon to bring the message of Good

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News for everyone because ultimately, the love of Christ shows to us a vision of a new world in which people can live with justice and dignity. However, the world does not accept this message and the church has no power to force the change in this world. Nevertheless, the way of the cross is the only way for the church today. As Jesus gave his life for the salvation of the world the church must witness to the message of Christ by emptying itself, and making available whatever resources it has at its disposal for the service of its neighbours.

There is so much poverty around us. There is so much injustice, exploitation, oppression and marginalization. The church must hear the cries of the people who are, in their utter helplessness, asking for just a little expression of care. Yes, our churches are not blessed with enormous amounts of worldly possessions but, whatever we have is not meant for ourselves only. Whatever we have are the gifts that God has endowed us, and these are intended to be put to use for the good of all people.

With Peter we must say, this is the time for us to be penitent and sober; to know that in order to demonstrate the mystery of the truth of God's Kingdom we must relinquish whatever small resources we have by bringing them to the foot of the Cross of Jesus Christ so that we might be able to embrace in the love of Christ all neighbours with our empty hands.

Notes

¹ Faith and Science in an Unjust World, Report of the WCC's Conference on Faith, Science and the Future, Vol.11, p.29.

² Ibid.

³ North-South: A Programme for Survival, The report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues under the chairmanship of Willy Brandt, MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1980, p.90.

⁴ Heiwa: Life for the People, Report of Heiwa Conference, Okinawa, February 19-23,1985, p.5.

⁵ Before It's Too Late: The Challenge of Nuclear Disarmament, edited by Paul

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Abrecht and Ninan Koshy, WCC 1985, p.208.

⁶ ”Kenzaburo Oe", edited by David Swain, Hiroshima Notes, YMCA Press, Tokyo, 1981, p.160.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid., p.161.

⁹ Ibid., p.162.

¹⁰ Ibid., pp.169 f.