Religion has a packaging problem. It is like a supermarket with thousands of products on the shelves which really deal in two things only: calories and cleansing. Kilometres of competing packets turn a simple matter of eating, drinking and washing into a nightmare of choice when all you need is more or less to bounce to the bulges of sweet-smelling you.
Religion comes wrapped in packages of history, traditions, ritual and custom. They sometimes use foreign languages, their liturgies need a guide book, their attitude to scripture often verges on worship, they use religious voices and even their clothing and hair styles have to fit the patterns.
Some religions concentrate so much on the packaging that people miss the immense value of the product they have to offer. Under the wrapping is a concern for moral strength and spiritual integrity which South Africa needs as much as political stability and growth rates. Our value systems need tuning up. We need the moral guts to pull ourselves out of crime and corruption, poverty and violence, pride and self-esteem, and enable us to cope with sexual surges. We need the vision and courage to design economic systems that do not make people poor, and a national sense of co-operating with one another instead of competing to destroy one another.
Religious or not, we are all human beings seeking to polish up the image of God in which we are made, and have the ability to be spiritual giants. We can be kind, just, honest, self-sacrificing, devoted to the good of others as well as ourselves, family makers and nation builders. That’s what having a spirit is all about.
Religious people argue about histories and structures, but there is agreement that their common concern is a way of life that transforms society. When the Torah talks of “the way of the Lord”, when Christians say “Jesus is the Way”, when the Qur’an calls “show us the straight way”, when Hinduism speaks of “the three ways to salvation”, and Buddhism about the “noble eightfold path”, they are all affirming there is a positive way to live together. The same attitudes are summed up in our African ancestors’ understanding of ubuntu, and touch on what Karl Marx called “the heart of a heartless world, and the spirit of a spiritless situation”.
All religions recognise that the engine of this way of life is faith. We need to rediscover that secular spiritual vitality we knew earlier. We believed in the liberation struggle, and that faith drove us to victory. Many don’t have faith in the transformation struggle today and so lose the way.
Faith is the engine that drives us along the way, whether we are Catholics or Protestants, Jews or Muslims, Marxists or agnostics. Belief that we can win the future drives us to enact it, and those who believe in God should be proclaiming that faith.
Religious pluralism does not mean seeking one single religion, or discarding histories and traditions. It means recognising their common objectives in the life of the nation, and enabling people to believe in it.
Cynics will scoff – they can do no other. Some who garner profit and prestige from demanding ecclesiastical privileges will also be outraged. Let them scoff – no religion can hijack the human spirit.
Whether we are turned off or on by religious packaging, or a mite sceptical, faith can move mountains. Abolishing sin is not our business, but we can trash corruptors; remove many causes of crime; rediscover education; turn the tide against Aids; find our voice in the globalised world and turn its pocket to the poor; be part of a renaissance in Africa – because you can’t keep a good God down. Or in religious packets.