Way back in college, there was this professor, Fr. Malley, who analyzed divine and human history in terms of alienation and belonging, instead of thesis and anti-thesis, the latter being more popular to the students considering the political temperature during Marcos time. The Marxist dialectical materialism took man as a mere object, a mere commodity in the historical moment. Fr. Malley’s analysis however considered man as the focal point of history. If history has to be understood, we have to dig deeper on the nature of man. To him, history is the full stretch of the tensions of belonging and alienation, played in the recesses of the human psyche and outwardly projected in our collective history.
twas in the Garden of Eden when alienation started
The Garden of Eden, although more allegorical than historical, jump starts the connection of the divine with the human and at the same time the alienation of man. At the end of the story of the Genesis, when God already breathed into man the breath of life, the Creator gave man an abode, which was a paradise on earth, the Garden of Eden. Man belonged then to the embrace of the Creator. But the snake in the garden which tempted Eve to take the forbidden fruit, opened man to the other world, the possibility of living beyond God’s reach.
It was in the Garden of Eden that man strayed away from completely belonging to God. Throughout the Bible, there is a constant struggle to belong to God and at the same time to be alienated therefrom. Moses, in leading his people to the promise land, was faced with pagan-worship, bacchanalia, sex orgies, and all vices in complete defiance of God’s commandments.
Moses parted the red sea only to be betrayed by the people he wanted saved
Human history is a mere extension of the biblical tension in terms of religious wars. In fact, the most gruesome war is not political but religious; the former war aims to conquer territory, but the latter is concerned with the conquest of the soul. What we witness today by way of terror attacks is not a clash of civilization but of one group trying to consolidate its piece in the already fractious religious debate, claiming their religion as the only path to salvation and the rest will lead to the road of perdition. The issue, to what religion should man finally belong, Christianity or Islam, has only alienated man from the source of love and belonging. In an attempt to spread its own version of salvation, people have been killed, and when called upon to account for the deaths, these groups would only charge the killings to collateral damage.
But why should man kill if he only wanted to belong to his divine? The answer lies in the estrangement of man. If we have to read historical moments, we have to go back to human nature. Without roots in the divine, man is a broken piece. The sentient, and intelligent man needs to belong, to the divine and to the people he truly loves. According to Saint Agustine, “My heart is restless until it rests in thee”. Ironically, the jihadist that kills is moved by the overpowering mission to accomplish a mission that is, for him, truly divine. If he fails in his mission, he not only fails his Allah but the people around him as well. He needs to belong, and if he has to kill to achieve this, then kill he must. Alienation is at times worse than death.
So too the Crusaders who slaughtered the Muslims on their way to redeem the Holy Land. The medals of war conferred on them were mere testaments of their deep desire to be accepted and to belong in the bigger Christian community.
The most lethal assassin is not one who brandishes his weapon with dexterity; it is one who is willing to die in the pursuit of a mission imposed upon him by his group that sets the common vision. If he dies, he will be a martyr to his brethren, no matter the scorn of the society that he has wronged. Unfortunately, in man’s desire to belong to a common mission, divine or worldly, he sets him apart, by force of circumstance , from the larger community. What we see now are packets of cohesive groups unwittingly annihilating each other.
The necessity to belong is both divine and human. It is existential in character. There is a proverbial hole in a donut. A donut ceases to be one without the hole. Man is suffering from an existential hole, an emptiness that he carries to his grave; he is forever in constant attempt to fill-it up but never succeeds. The members of the family, friends, and other humans who we love and care are sources of
belonging that somehow fill-in the hole. But while still alive, we look upon God as the source of total completeness, as the Being with whom we truly belong.
Historical movements are manifestations of this existential hole in every man. People seek salvation in recognition of this hole. Otherwise, if man feels complete, there is no need to look for the beyond. Push to the extremes, we see congregation of people, who, in their search for their own version of salvation, have relegated others as mere collaterals.
Is man cursed to kill each other in the name of salvation? Look at the mayhem in Bali.
Tags: wars, religion, philosophy | Edit Tags
Sunday May 20, 2007 – 08:30pm (CST) Edit | Delete
Comments
(1 total) Post a Comment
