INTRODUCTION:
The basic feature of reality is its creativity, and
that creativity is always a particular way of bringing together the given
multiplicity.
-Aflred North Whitehead.
The World Community will, on September 21,
2016, mark yet another International Day of Peace. The Celebration is devoted
to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and
peoples. The Day’s theme for 2016 is “The Sustainable Development Goals:
Building Blocks for Peace.”
Again, the World Community will also use
the opportunity of the celebration to mark the 30th Anniversary of
the 1986 Interfaith Peace meeting convoked by the late pontiff, Pope John Paul
II at Asisi. The three day event sponsored by the Rome based Community of St.Egidio
has, for its theme, “Thirst for Peace: Faiths and Cultures in Dialogue.”
Many observers have strong reservations for
and still question the motif of what could be regarded as an “experiment in
syncretism.” But for constructive minds, the anniversary and, from another angle,
the World Day of Peace will provide the religions and indeed the World Community
with the highly needed opportunity to raise the contentious but inescapable
questions of and demands for peace and dialogue in a terrorist and terrorized
world.
Instructively, the two events are strong
expressions of humanity’s need for peace and security.
Quest for a Global ethic.
I am unreservedly seduced by the remark, as
boldly affirmed in the U.N Website, to the effect that the World Community
today is facing challenges of peace and security at a heightened level and that
there exist new types of security threat requiring new approaches and
strategies. With the mounting complexity and growing costs of addressing crisis
situations (the remark continues), the imperative of conflict prevention is
higher than ever. And so, how best to engage with sometimes amorphous movements
or fractured armed groups and how to ensure inclusivity is a challenge before
the United Nations with regards to its work of conflict prevention and
mediation.
In September 1993 in Chicago, U.S.A, at
a Conference of “Parliament of World Religions” convoked at his instance, Fr.
(Professor) Hans Kuhn attempted a “Declaration for a Global Ethic” and went
ahead to outline its principles and its urgency.
He
founded the Global Ethic Foundation – a Non Governmental Organization - and had
it dedicated to this cause.
Vigorously, I had sought to work or partner
with Fr. Hans Kuhn in furtherance of his vision for a Global Ethic because I quite
agree with him, in his own words, that:
·
There
cannot be a new global order without a new global ethic.
·
It
is a fundamental demand that every human being be treated humanely.
·
That
there are irrevocable directives which a global ethic spells out and these
include:
i.
Commitment
to a culture of non-violence and respect for life.
ii.
Commitment
to a culture of solidarity and a just economic order.
iii.
Commitment
to a culture of equal rights and partnership between men and women.
iv.
A
transformation of consciousness.
Novelties demand official response – one
which must take into account the imposing edifices of rights and obligations in
a pluralistic and democratic society. And to refuse to respond, or venture into
a response outside the demands or conditions unequivocally outlined by freedom,
justice and peace is what it means to appear unarguably unreal and
exasperating. Real and authentic response to the imperatives of peace, justice,
development and security is an issue that underlines and defines the urgency of
a Global Ethic.
Humanity has come of age and to dangerous
crossroads in its journey towards actualization and so novelties must pose no
surprises to anybody even though they are more clearly appreciated by
progressive minds and hearts than by a rigid mentality. Our contemporary world
is assailed by such novelties as an aspect of creativity in the process of
reality’s own unveiling. (Permit me to borrow from the Process Thought of
Alfred North Whitehead).
DEVELOPING
THOUGHT: THE SACRED DEED AND THE GLOBAL ETHIC IMPERATIVE.
In his book “Foundations Of Christian Faith”, Karl
Rahner successfully developed a Theological Anthropology where he
authoritatively asserted that every individual human person is fundamentally
constituted at the very depths of his existence by the very being of God
whether this particular individual person is aware of this or not; whether he/she
admits of this or not. And that faith and the resultant action is just a
thematic manifestation or the concretization of that which is inherent in the
nature of every human person.
Therefore, every form of authentic
religious belief is a consequent evolutionary imperative of human nature in a
particular epoch though conscious or unconscious efforts may be, and is often
made, to stifle this, or delay it, or deny it completely. Here is found the
real meaning of atheism, agnosticism or skepticism.
According to Karl Rahner, the official
faith of the Church, in the midst of all others, is the ultimate and most
authentic confession ever made and ever would be made. In Jesus Christ of
Nazareth, the human person discovers and grasps in concrete terms and in
freedom that which he/she has ever known to be real; that which is lodged in
the very depths of his/her own very being as an individual human person; that
which he/she has always yearned to touch, to feel and to embrace but cannot
because, though a spirit, he/she is drawn down by the event of his material
body and by space and time but God himself is an absolute, unbounded Mystery.
Therefore, in encountering Jesus Christ of
Nazareth, the human person discovers, embraces and lives in constant tangible
communion with that God who has always presented himself initially in man’s
experience as inescapable and the answer to the question about man himself as
well as an answer to all other questions. Thus, while Jesus Christ is the
shape, form or size – that is, the real identity and the only one – which God
can take and which he has already taken
(and therefore, no other identity or concrete manifestation of God is possible
except in Jesus of Nazareth even though one can admit of some rays of the being
of God in other places or persons), the Eucharist is the final irrevocable condition of God who is Jesus Christ
and the logical conclusion of God’s gift of himself to man in the person and
actions of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Therefore, for Rahner, God is not the Deus Absconditus
(the God who created the universe and then latter ran away), or the Undiscovered
Unknown (that which cannot be known and remains unknowable as presumed by many
skeptics and agnostics), but the Discovered Unknown (that which has
been made known, seen, heard, touched and experienced but yet remains a
transcendent absolute mystery not fully and exhaustibly given to human
experience or understanding). God is Immanuel. For Karl Rahner, even though God
is unknowable, inconceivable, unfathomable, untouchable and a transcendent
absolute Mystery (or in its technical terms, the Immanent Trinity), He is, also,
one and at the same time, the God that is now known/knowable,
touched/touchable, discovered but yet in an inexhaustible manner (Economic
Trinity).
The Immanent Trinity, writes Rahner, is one
and at the same time, the Economic Trinity and the Economic Trinity is one and at
the same time, the Immanent Trinity.
Karl Rahner took this course so as to
provide some additional bricks that will serve to hold historical objectivism,
and in this way prepare the foundational ground of the Christian faith to be
able to withstand the hostility and devastating arsenals of an age of
relativism, scientificism, technologism, terrorism, corruption and atheism.
The other side saw Karl Rahner tilting towards what has been considered
as a misplaced sympathy for non
Christian believers, agnostics and atheists. Here, Rahner disputes and regards
as cruel the view that the overwhelming mass of people who are not only
non-Catholics but also non– Christians, both those before and after Christ, are
unquestionably and in principle excluded from the actualization of their lives
and condemned to eternal damnation. Rahner strongly maintains that a greater
number of Christians, more than those we know to be expressly professed, have
remained anonymous because of the conditions and circumstances into which they
are born or in which they have inevitably found themselves. Thus, for him,
anyone who does not say in his heart “there is no God” (like the fool in Bible)
but testifies to him by the radical acceptance of his being is a believer,
irrespective of what he states in his
conceptual, theoretical and religious reflection.
Therefore, the faith of an anonymous
Christian, in deed and in truth, can be present in an implicit form whereby he/she
undertakes and lives out the duty of each day in the quite sincerity of
patience, in devotion to his material duties and in the love of neighbor. It is
just as highly probable, in the words of Karl Rahner, that there should be
Christians without knowing it as that there should be “theists” without knowing
it.
Anonymous Christianity does not however
include anyone who, in his/her basic decision, were really to deny and to
reject his being as ordered to God; who were to place himself/herself
decisively in opposition to his own concrete being by living a worthless and
unfulfilled existence. It refers only to someone who gives - even if it be ever
so confusedly – the glory to God and who has let himself/herself be taken hold
of by this grace.
Rahner is convinced that human
thought-patterns may not be able to absorb this classification immediately for
the very reason that its structure is not always immediately perceptible but
merely a transitional state whose meaning and definition can be seen in the
light of the finished product, that is, when such a one becomes a member of the
church in its existential and fullest sense. There is every reason to dwell on
this conviction especially if we come to recognize every being is always
characterized by its final aim whether he/she recognizes it as such or not. The
Anonymous Christians are “believers on the other side” or of “the other sheep.”
THIRST
FOR PEACE.
It has been discovered and subsequently
proved, through research and investigation, that responsible citizenship and
authenticity in the practice of the different faiths by the adherents of the
world religions are two inescapable demands that create the required gateway to
a functional Global Ethic because they have unfathomable significance for global,
regional and national peace and security.
If development, peace and security constitute
global and national imperatives, then a global or national ethic is a need that
is at once urgent and critical.
In the view of James Madison, even though
human nature makes internal and external controls on government necessary, it
will take obedient angels to build and run a perfect government. Down through
history, peoples have suffered the evils of unjust, oppressive government –
whether their own government or that of another nation. American leaders took
this issue into account in devising the over 200 year old American Constitution.
Yet even this “best effort” of human self government has its problems. Human
nature has not changed. The age old problems of greed, self interest,
corruption, strife and petty hates remain inherent in the administration of any
form of human government.
A global or national ethic must therefore
show itself an obtrusive practical force of humanity providing the impetus for
and adequate policing of every action, individually or collectively. It is the
generating principle of every legitimate action and, at the same time, the
primal policing agent of that action. It is the force that bonds national citizenship
and belief (ideology and faith), power and rights, freedom and responsibility.
And it must be seen to have the capacity to generate this power from within
itself, not by some external influence.
A global ethic subscribed and applied in
this way to the life of a country automatically translates to a national ethic.
Consequently, it becomes the generating principle of every constitutional
action and, at the same time, its inner policing agent. With this application
humanity acts for and rules itself.
A National Ethic as well as a Global Ethic
are a silent but obtrusive revolutionary power at our fingertips, and for
reasons that are as cogent as they are grave. This is what the SACRED DEED is
all about.
OUTLINE OF A
BROADER INVOLVEMENT.
Terrorists
have always lived under a cover - religion, institutions, etc, and have
unsuspectingly worked hard to upgrade such institutions, by the use of
propaganda, blackmail and betrayal to instruments of mass destruction. And as
terrorist templates are put in place, and working almost always unaided,
gullible citizens of different nations and real owners of institutions have
watched, albeit helplessly, as the vision and mission of the founding fathers
are hijacked, subverted and ostentatiously replaced with uncanny idioms hiding
behind the cover of attractive slogans like religion, morality, democracy,
freedom, foreign policy and progress.
The ability to buy a cover for their nefarious
actions, more than the massive deployment of funds to the purchase of weapons
of mass destruction is the reason for the huge success recorded by terrorists
in their evil expedition in genocide.
Today,
terrorists are putting propaganda and advertisement strategies to a selfish end
that lampoons the responsibility and accountability consciousness of religious,
institutional, national and individual actors. Infiltrations, pretentious
collaboration and leakages are factors which terrorists employ to dispossess
others of and hijack ownerships of private establishments, institutions and
even national governments. Thus hijacked, these are built into formidable
terrorist enclaves or nuclear tanks. And not to be concerned about this
misnomer in human and institutional development is, more than the menace of
Boko Haram, the Al-Queada, Taliban, etc, the meaning of a culpable ignorance
about an ongoing war in every nook and cranny of the globe.
At
this material time when such poisonous gas and scandalous delicacies as
terrorism, corruption, dictatorship, Satanism and conspiracy are on the menu of
many African leaders, including those in the religious fields, one cannot help
taking the risk of raising the critical question of justice, peace, development
and security especially in its relation to freedom and to the practice of the
different faiths of the religions.
AGITATIONS AND THE ATTENDANT
DANGERS: CATHOLICISM AT CROSSROADS.
Creation,
Redemption and Transformation have been discovered to be three radically
necessary, decisive, unrepeatable, irreversible dimensions - historical
moments, if you like - of the Reality that is continuously evolving, whatever
name one chooses to give to the reality which its unfolding can also be
perceived through the difference and the tension that exists between the
Kantian two worlds of the Nominal and that of Experience; or through the
Hegelian lenses of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis; or, through the
Heidegerian necessary pre-occupation with “Dasein” as a necessary moment in the understanding of the truth of
the Incarnation; or as a “Process” in the thinking of Alfred North Whitehead.
For
the total and correct appreciation of the truth about, the beauty and the unity
of this reality which alone is the Good, and no other, these three dimensions -
Creation, Redemption and Transformation - must be taken into serious account
and must not be confused with one another even in our efforts to establish the
utility of the reality and its practical implications for political, economic
and social living. Nevertheless, one has to be realistic that rich and powerful
practical contents are involved and stand to be explored and must be exploited.
This is one side of the question - and one which is very much appealing to
investigative and adventurous minds.
There
is the second aspect. Diversion. Equivocation. Subversion. Perversion.
Inversion. These are also different ingredients - highly related, catalystical,
attractive, appealing and influential in their own rights - that forcefully
assert themselves and seek to be grafted and integrated into the reality that
is continuously and consciously evolving. Though the very structures of reality are well
outlined even in their evolutionary conditions, these ingredients oftentimes
introduce different colorations to the understanding and appreciation of
reality that come with some serious distortions and total eclipse of its basic
aspects.
In
a general democratic parlance, for instance, Satanism will resist and contest its
characterization as Evil which Christian and Muslim believers might impose upon
it, and instead insist that it is a beautiful bride and a huge asset which Pope
Francis’ Holy See and Kabul must cherish and regard as a strong collaborator in
ministry and the development of the faith.
The
community - whether the world community or the community of faith - may be rife
with suspicions to the extent that one becomes inundated. But is it justifiable
to swerve a need which serves the cause of one generation or particular context
only with the general need or common good except if the Common Good is
inundated with suspicions and total hollowness? Providing answers to such
questions about evil, relativism and freedom are proving more difficult and
risky, not only in the political community, but also among members of the
Christian community. This development is instructive for reaching a compromise
and achieving results in the search for global peace and security.
ESTABLISHING THE
GROUNDS OF THE SACRED DEED.
The
human person and all people of goodwill find/make the Abode of Good their marching ground, and their activities in their
relationship with power are governed by Truth,
Name and Love in their journey through life, or in their efforts to maintain
a cordial relationship with the Great Architect.
Only
those Pyramids (people, institutions, unions, parties, etc) erected and
nurtured in accord with the provisions of The
Standard Measure of Accounts or The Mystical Mirror of Justice can challenge
and overcome the menace of terrorism and violence.
The
original Pyramid of the SACRED DEED (see Fig.1) is open and has no
limitations. The language is plain. There is a clear demarcation between Good
and Evil. They are not mixed up and confused.
In
analyzing The Standard Measure of Accounts, or The Mystical Mirror of Justice
(see Fig 2), one will discover ten operative factors at work in the
building up of a new spiritual, political, economic and social order. And these
operate at two levels:
i.
Ideological/Philosophical (for the general World
Community).
1.
Knowledge
2.
Foundations
3.
Level
1: Grace
4.
Level
2: Freedom
5.
The
Mason/Seeker
6.
Elevation
(Angle of)
7.
Justice
(Cloud of)
8.
Glory
(Reward)
9.
The
Great Architect (Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient)
10. Pyramid.
ii.
Mystical/Astral/Spiritual (for Religions, notably
Christianity):
a. Name: The Standard Measure of Accounts or
the Mystical Mirror of Justice.
b. Residence: In the Human Heart as (a living)
“Conscience”.
c. Modes of manifestation and operation: Love,
Peace, Unity, Justice, Freedom and
Mercy.
How The Standard
Measure Of Accounts Works.
Every
human person (Mason/Seeker) aspires to know (knowledge). The
acquisition of knowledge is grandiose affirmation of the human person as a
being on the path to growth and development. A good and strong “foundation”
for life and its varied projects can only be laid on the basis of and greatly
depends on a broadened knowledge base legitimately acquired, otherwise it is
built on mere sand and erected with straws.
But
the sustainability and continual re-enforcement of authentic life’s foundations
goes beyond the possession of a wide spectrum of knowledge even though the
neglect of this is consequential. It is solely “grace” (Grace understood
as that primordial natural provision that is given independently of the
beneficiary but which the beneficiary must confront and realistically address
in every of his/her existential decision and actions. This provision
necessarily constitutes a pedestal upon which every other decisions and actions,
both individually and collectively, can stand before they could be said to be
meaningful, productive and responsible) that gives it a stamp of permanence.
Such foundations are only sustainable by grace, and also can only be developed
into a house, a duplex or a skyscraper by grace. Thus, while knowledge lays the
foundation, and as grace introduces itself as the sustaining and developmental
factor, freedom gives it the quality of maturity and beauty. Its
maturity is measured by is ability to assert itself and grow without much
interference by the mason himself except for the purpose of monitoring and
verification.
Again,
having caused the “pyramid” to evolve, take shape and mature into a building, a
house or a skyscraper, the ability of
the mason/seeker to defend this project authoritatively armed with the
necessary and effective tools of knowledge, grace and freedom from violent
oppositions and obstacles, both natural and otherwise, as well as the
willingness to surrender this project unreservedly to be enveloped by the Cloud
of Justice strongly and irrevocably “Elevates” the seeker to
a very highly exalted golden platform on which to stand to expect a “Reward” (see Fig 3:Graphical Representation of the
Standard Measure of Accounts).
The
recourse to justice must not be a journey in litigation or a demand for reward,
since all these are issues which can be easily addressed at the Throne of
Mercy. It is only when the seeker/mason has been to the throne of mercy that
the road to justice can be said to have shortened, and one must not be afraid
to let oneself be dragged roughly along the road to justice as a demonstration
of one’s preference of the Abode of Good to the Axis of Evil.
The
weight of the matter brought against the seeker, and the abundance of
incriminating evidence - especially issues that have been long taken care of in
act of sincere contrition or a remorse of conscience but which has now become
public - do not present any cause for allowing oneself to take a flight, or
nose dive into the Triangle of Death when there is a close proximity between
oneself and the Triangle of Repentance. Thus, supposing one is inescapably
bound to receive the verdict of justice, the best place to stand to receive it
is at the Throne of Mercy.
The
Four-Way Test of truth propagated by the Inner Wheel members of the Rotary
Club of Nigeria finds or pretends to find an echo in the Pyramid of the SACRED
DEED. But then, all the lullaby concerning growth and development has been
discovered to be a veiled mockery of the Good and the conscious subversion, in
disguise, of this Good as far as some members of this group are concerned.
Regrettably, such clubs, organizations, unions, etc have been the springboard
for the different political parties - some dead, some alive - that have emerged
in the course of Nigeria’s national history.
Equivocation,
subversion and inversion, as tools whether in the political, economic and
social life of the different religions and in the nation, cannot find
justification anywhere within the conscious and unconscious sphere of authentic
human activity that is said to be creatively engendered or divinely inspired.
A
tangential appreciation can be located within the controversial bracket of the
Principle of Double Effects. But again the rules apply. The total devaluation
of the different religious faiths and the conscious violation of the solemn
dictates of freedom with the sole purpose of providing a hiding place for
terrorists and satanic plutocrats as stepping stones to the realization of
selfish and bleeding ambitions born out of insatiable greed and lust for power,
wealth and influence provide no solutions whatsoever to the authentic needs of
the religions or of the secular community but instead raise more complex
questions with regards to the real identities and intentions of some suspicious
elements that are hiding behind the diplomatic machinery of the UNO, EC, NATO,
AU, the religions, the Holy See e.t.c to pull some strings in global terrorism
and corruption.
GLOBAL ETHIC:
AFRICA AND THE WORLD COMMUNITY.
Strenuous
efforts have been made to uncover and expose the pretensions of the civilization
that was brought to Africa by the West and the subversions that grew out from
the trunk of initial missionary activities by the churches.
But
a mature and realistic appreciation of Africa’s experience of colonialism and
slavery, together with the consequent demand for restitution, cannot fail to
relate anew to similar experiences shared by other peoples or nations elsewhere
in the world community.
Whether
the African experience predates these others, or whether it was in anticipation
of them, are questions whose significance is considerably diminished in its
confrontation with the Doctrine of Discovery, and the fact
of the absorbance and eventual translation of this doctrine into the S-Code
(a super-effective and functional code devised by and operated by a notable
world organization for the purpose of arrogation, usurpation, acquisition and
exercise of political, economic and spiritual powers).
Further
historical illumination of the Doctrine of Discovery is necessary, and must
allow for a total reconstruction of the questions of colonialism and slavery,
and be designated a strong factor in the search for global peace and security.
If,
at one level, Africa stands in need of liberation and healing from the effects
of colonialism and slavery, Christian Europe\America, I think, equally deserves
some healing and liberative attention that is compulsorily directed inwards.
And this is at another level.
From
the platform of Islam with a defined subscription to violence as an official
tool of expansion, the issue goes beyond acknowledging the fact that lack of
education breeds a primitive mindset that is akin to imbecility especially when
the factors at play are clandestine religious indoctrinations. Islam’s
unpretentious search for lasting solutions to the menace of terrorism must
start from here. This, together with the issue of corruption, is a very big
challenge to Africa.
CONCLUSION.
It
is incontrovertibly clear that reality is one, true and beautiful, but there
are different agitations, claims and counter-claims which purport or pretend to
be the robust and necessary expressions of the one reality.
The
list is uncountable - religion, philosophies, science, e.t.c. In the general
sphere of human existence, the questions have become multifarious, complex and
overbearing.
What
does humanity, precisely the human being, want?
What
concerns and involvements serve reality - whatever meaning or name one decides
to assign to this reality, or whatever form or shape by which this reality
chooses to present and press Himself/Herself/Itself to our conscious,
sub-conscious and unconscious selves respectively.
Research,
investigations, debates, dialogues, studies, discussions and other forms of
inquiry must continue. But some issues and events are urgent, inescapable and
sacrosanct.
Individually
or collectively, the definition and application of the concept of GOOD and EVIL
are intractably interwoven with and are evoked together and inseparably with
these themes.
Both
in the religions and out there in the secular world, humanity must evolve means
and ways of “crossing the threshold of hope” in a manner that is devoid of
rancor, violence and corruption.
All
of us, as long as we are in this corporeal side, are mere “seekers” or “masons”
hoping to come face to face one day with the “Great Architect” (or whatever
name one decides to attribute to this Reality).
At
the face of the corruption and terrorism that have ravaged and continue to
ravage the religions and the World Community, the evolution of a solution is
the one cause that has occupied my attention - one governed by the principle of
application which maintains that, while a process of total reversal against an
incongruent and demon-infested system is desirable but not always possible
except, perhaps, if one decides to relapse to some excessive reactionary
encodings, the inauguration of a new process that is open to growth,
development and progress is not only desirable but also an imperative.
This
is the significance of the SACRED DEED.
The
SACRED DEED defines and asserts authentic and effective identity, citizenship
of nations and membership of religions or institutions.
The
illuminating factor about the SACRED DEED and the compelling force that has
made subscription to and adoption of the SACRED DEED necessary are to be
located in the fact of the discovery of the S-Code.
The
SACRED DEED is a total reconstruction and a reversal of the S-Code whereby
every fact, event and actions of the human person - past, present and future -
individually and collectively, are translated into a universal language,
brought to a functional harmony and built into a code that serves humanity’s
quest for justice, development, peace and security.
The
capacity of authentic Muslims, Christians, traditional religionists as well as
all world religions to find or locate the fundamental basis and historical
figures of the different faiths within the framework of the SACRED DEED and the
conviction achieved in respect of the fact that these do not and cannot exist
outside this framework is the only contact the global community and national
governments have with peace and security.
Religions,
nations, peoples and institutions must subscribe to and sign the SACRED DEED.
Along
this line, the SACRED DEED is hereby presented to the International Community.