Dear Editor,"Atheism's farewell to God," (Sunday Observer, August 25, 2013) by the Lord Bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands was a welcoming response to The Gleaner's "Goodbye God..." (August 16, 2013) that should generate well-needed discussions about religion in Jamaica.
According to The Gleaner's article, "the majority of Jamaicans will not believe in the existence of God" by the next three decades. Religion forms a collective unconsciousness of our people and is a powerful symbol that constitutes how we view human life. However, in support of what Bishop Gregory wrote, I wish to add that history reveals that it is the symbols or images, that is, 'the composite public impression' about God, which have always experienced rejection by each generation. As humanity advances intellectually, they are challenged to view concepts of the divine in new ways and reject outdated views/images of God. It is a fact that the educated, and in particular the prosperous, will want to forget God; so much so that Israel was warned not to forget God in prosperity (Deut 8:18-20) and one of the principal reasons why 'grace' is said at meals (Deut 8:10).
In the Bible there exist examples of the evolution of belief. In the story of Saul's rejection as king over Israel, it was commonly believed that it was God who sent an evil spirit to torment Saul whenever he became depressed (I Sam 16:15); centuries later the writer of the epistle of James reminded the community of faith that "God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one" (Jam 1:13). When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon (586-538 BC) they encountered a view that creation was by different gods. This led them to rewrite and reinterpret the Babylonian creation epic, attributing all creation to one supreme being (Gen 1: 1-2:4a). Each generation has the responsibility to separate God's revelation from the prevailing culture, especially those that originated from humanity's views to be "an abomination to the Lord". For example, God's love in Jesus challenges human attitude to the wicked (Prov 17:15) who was rendered a "fool". Jesus' own teaching warned against calling fellow humans fools ( Mt 5:21-22), thus making God's love the new canon of human judgement (Mt 6:4-5).
Currently some religious groups in Jamaica teach that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testement, yet there exist scientific and literary proof known as the "Documentary Hypothesis" that shows the Bible's documents of poetry, prose, and law were formed through a long process, over many hundreds of years by different writers, sources and editors. We now know that the biblical community of Israel's first "Constitution" has been preserved as the "Ten Commandments" (Deut 5: 6-21); that it was inserted by a redactor in the older document (Exodus 20:1-21), replacing the original "Ten Words" given by God to Moses (Ex 34:14-28). All these discoveries should assist in the rethinking of religious symbols/images about God and to distinguish God's revelation from human thought and culture. Many Jamaicans currently suspend their intellectual ability to reason due to ignorance and fear when religion is to the fore, as against other subjects. Now is the time to examine these composite public impressions about God that need to undergo transformation in a post-modern world.
Dudley C McLean II
Mandeville, Manchester
dcmduart@yahoo.com
No farewell to God
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