Why love god #1: theological ignorance

grave danger to the human race

Love god pretends to uncover the shared heart of wisdom traditions, showing their theological harmony in the process. Why is the search for theological harmony important? Three reasons:

1. People embedded in wisdom traditions have arguably done the most for humanity in terms of evolutionary leaps in ethics through applied wisdom.

Rosa Parks and Martin King, two Christians, taught us that the power of love could overcome laws and customs upholding racial segregation. Sarojini Naidu and Mahatma Gandhi, two Hindus, taught us that the power of soulforce could overcome colonization and the total control of politics and economy by a foreign power. Anne Frank and Victor Frankl, two Jews, taught us that faith and freedom cannot be blotted out, cannot be taken from us by force, and can withstand even the greatest evil. The list goes on and includes people from every wisdom tradition in every part of the world.

So that is the first reason to pursue the shared heart of wisdom traditions – people embedded in those traditions have shown the effectiveness of embodying wisdom by applying it to injustices in their time and place.

We are in the midst of several grave dangers:

• the rise of artificial intelligence
• the destruction of nature
• the decline of mental health
• the vast economic inequality between rich and poor
• racial, ethnic, and religious intolerance and hatred.

We cannot afford to ignore, neglect, or misunderstand the power that has helped us overcome these kinds of grave threats in the past. We need to cherish, study, and understand the wisdom traditions that have led us out of these perils many times before now.

The second reason is related to the last grave danger in that list:

2. Given the history of conflict and violence based on religious division and misunderstanding, we have to be intentional about the search for theological harmony.

Even today, Christians are being persecuted in China and other countries. In the U.S., however, people bearing Christian crosses and Confederate flags were part of the crowd that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhists have been banned from their home country by China for 50 years. Yet, in Myanmar, a country whose official religion is Buddhism, the Rohingya people are one of the most persecuted religious minorities in the world due to their Islamic faith.

Of course who can forget the attack on the World Trade Towers by Muslim extremists, or Germany’s attempt to exterminate Jews? Antisemitism persists around the world; moderate Muslims face prejudice in non-Muslim countries.

This brings us to the third reason why the search for theological harmony is important:

3. There is a kind of insanity among wisdom traditions.

In some times and places, people in these traditions lead us forward into more peaceful relations, overcoming great odds and obstacles. In other times and places, people claiming to be followers of these same traditions lead us backward into discrimination, violence, and worse.

So today, this insanity in wisdom traditions looks like this:

• People of just about every wisdom tradition are being persecuted for their faith somewhere.
• Extremists who claim to represent major traditions – Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews, to name a few – are persecuting people of other traditions because of their faith.

Clearly, co-existing wisdom traditions are a conundrum we have yet to solve as a human race.

The human race is ill. Theological ignorance is the diagnosis. This disorder will not resolve itself on its own. It is not self-limiting. We need to be intentional. We need to treat theological ignorance and heal it once and for all.