Lenten reflection - Week four

In the newspaper today, a reader asked a number of Ottawa religious leaders, including Archbishop Gervais and Rabbi Bulka, why the leaders of the world’s religions did not convene and start a movement for peace. The archbishop pointed out (as did the muslim representative) that in fact the leaders of the world’s religions have been doing so since 1986, when the Pope, the chief Rabbi of Rome, and the Dalai Lama organized the first St. Francis of Assisi gathering.

As Bill Gates pointed out on Wednesday, although it never makes the newspapers, the state of the world is actually getting better. War is less prevalent than it used to be. Many diseases that used to ravage the world are gone or exist only in labs. The quality of human life is increasing in many parts of the world. However, good news arrives more slowly than bad news. And good news is difficult to package for news reporting media, and the bad news tends to be easier to report.

What drives these improvements? It is not simply luck – Darwin established some time ago that living species have to struggle desperately to hold their place in the world, improving or dying. Yet the improvements we’ve made in the quality of human life have raced far past the rate at which evolution works. Could it be that we are actually working hard to make the world better?

I think perhaps we are. For the imperative that runs through all religious thinking, and even the quasi-religious philosophies such as secular humanism that occupy the same mental meme, is the golden rule – treat others the way you want to be treated. It is a simple philosophy, but at the same time it reflects the incredible evolutionary leap that is the human being. No other creature possesses the ability to put him or herself in the shoes of another, and try to envisage how awful it can be to be the “other.”

The gospel reading tomorrow includes the shortest verse in the New Testament – the lines that says only, “Jesus wept.” Even though there to work a miracle, Jesus is not unmoved by death of his friend, and the grief of the man’s sisters. In fact, I’d suggest that this – grief – the ability to stand in the place of the other, is the primary source of any miracle a person works.

Much greatness will come in the years ahead. Someone may develop the AIDs vaccine. Perhaps the elusive cold fusion puzzle will be solved. But whatever happens, it will be done because one person has seen the “other”, and wants to make things better for that other.