Cedric Mayson
SPIRIT LEVEL
‘God is not a Christian,” is a typical Desmond Tutu sound bite. He uses it to restrain his too-churchy colleagues from tying God up in hymn books, creeds and clerical collars.
Many sincere but misinformed Christians find it difficult to accept that they worship the same God as the Jews and Muslims, and that Allah is not a different God, but an Arabic form of a Hebrew word.
Hindus contemplating the divine reality behind their exotic temples, or probing the depths of dharma, are moving within a shared human experience.
John Mbiti has researched the names for God in the traditional spirituality of over 400 African tribes and found the same positive qualities of creative, life- giving, goodwill.
Liberating the notion of God from its colonial constructs has been one of the most important achievements of the late 20th century. All the great religions have developed god-concepts focused on benevolence towards all people, mercy, justice and peace-making.
W Cantwel Smith, the Canadian inter- faith fundi, says: “We are the first generation of Christians, seriously and corporately, to discern God’s mission to humanity in the Buddhist movement, in the Hindu, in the Islamic, as well as the Jewish and Christian.”
God is not an angry old man in the sky, a cross between Father Christmas, Paul Kruger and great-grandpa, seeking to slap us into hell if he can catch us out in a sin which has not been cleansed by holy water, bread or wine.
The God that most atheists and agnostics reject never existed anyway.
But they must not leave it there. It is just as foolish to throw the divine baby out with the colonial bath water.
Millions believe there is a spiritual power operating within the human community, a vital life force, that is all good.
The good news is that there are ruling powers within society which promise happiness and victory and that oppressive forces will be beaten. It is an inspiring vision, a driving faith, encompassing the positive values of motherhood and fatherhood, inspiring creative culture, and linked to nation-building pursuits.
The varieties of these religious convictions and the cultures they have inspired should lead us towards one another, not into opposing camps.
Many religious industries have claimed a monopoly on God for so long that we forget the great prophets of God have seldom been priests. Amos was a shepherd. Isaiah was a politician, and Jeremiah an activist who died in exile. Jesus was brought up by a carpenter, and spent much of his time with fishermen like Peter and John. Luke was a physician. Paul lived by tent making. Mohammed was a camel driver. Most seem more at home in the Congress of South African Trade Unions than the Chamber of Mines or bible school, and their strictures on the rich merchants of Samaria, Jerusalem, Ephesus and Mecca ring a bell in the South African Communist Party.
The God we worship is not confined to religious circles, but is the positive liberating movement in the whole of life – including politics and economics – with strong convictions about justice, poverty, ignorance, disease and riches in South Africa today.
God does not lull us into a sentimental swoon of angelic choirs and heavenly harps, but commands a liberating dispensation. It means joining the struggle of the oppressed against poverty and odious debt, exposing such evils as medicine producers peddling pills at 1 000% profit, caring for the sick, being committed to providing housing and land and banishing ignorance, and enjoying a spirituality that bubbles up from liberated religion like a fountain of clear fresh water.