NOT A PARADOX, BUT SYMBIOSIS
Autor: Look at the Children | Publicado: 2011-10-29T15:21:00-07:00

NOT A PARADOX, BUT SYMBIOSIS

Luck 11:1-4

I remember my first week at the theology’s university, when we received a visit
from an American teacher who spoke about Cosmo Vision. I realized then it was the key
to a better understanding of the Great Thinkers. The hermeneutics’ rule of interpretation
is necessary to understand it well so that we can correctly have an interpretation of what is
happening at the present time.
Karl Marx was an example of this way of thinking; he was, in our opinion, one of the
greatest false prophets of all times. Karl Marx came from Illuminism entering Modernity,
in a reaction against the stoicism presented in Illuminism, but without losing the Cartesian
mind of his time. He used his knowledge to make his prophecies by calculating: more
reason, less faith and more science, more and less being always equal to less. With this
formula, he prophesied the end of spirituality. When we talk about here and now, it’s easy
to think the same way if we do not use the Cosmo Vision contribution.
From this fact we can extract our first lesson: if we just use our knowledge to make
our predictions, we will fall in the same error and become a false prophet as Karl Marx
was. All our theology and our sources may not be enough to become a prophet of God, as
the only way we can tell God's message is if it comes from Him.
Of course with this, I don’t mean that all the knowledge we have is not important,
as the title says this is Symbiosis, not a paradox. As Leonardo Boff said in his text: Time
of Transcendence: The Bible can be read by various codes, Genesis, for example: can be
read with the contribution of philosophy, transcendence and immanence, this is pure
metaphysics. It was God who was at the transcendental peak and stepped down to the
depths of hell starting the “un”transcendence, to extend a hand to those who had fallen, me
and you. The Bible can also be read with Anthropology’s contribution. The God that created
man from dust; who knows the contribution of sociology the God who was related to the
man in the cool of the day (that is pure sociology).
I want to talk about contributions as we say here. I remember when my mother took me
to Mr Manoel’s store, so I could get some things to help me in school. My mother bought
five brochure notebooks, five sheets of wrapping paper to cover the notebooks, sheets of
foolscap paper, a sharpener, which I did not want in plastic, but in metal because it was the
in thing. The teacher gave us the choice to pick between color pencils or “Sylvapen" color
pens (by the way you can see in the brand’s name an influence of Iberian Catholicism and
the influence of colonial evangelism of Americans, SILVA, from Portuguese Catholicism and
PEN from the North American colonialism).
But back to our subject, going to school we would put all the support material we got
in a backpack with an "S" for Superman because the manufacturer guaranteed that it would
bring us strength. Today, when we see a little boy going to kindergarten, we can see him
pulling a bag with wheels, with much more “support material”, (there is the globalization
convention. Because we have an American Macintosh notebook, assembled in Taiwan
which comes with a bag which was put together by a Bolivian, in a company in a suburban
neighbourhood in São Paulo). Anyways, in addition to this material, they have on CDs,
programs with the Subjects, and Positivity, like for finger-painting, on the PC, where they
choose a color by touching the screen with a finger, thus eliminating the "Sylvapen" color
pens of the past. These are small marvellous students, equipped with technology, who are
going to be the members of our churches tomorrow. Here we can understand that we need
to update ourselves. And from this, I get the second lesson: we must be ready for this new
coming generation and to be able to speak with them, we will need new investments.
Today, when talking to people, we no longer see man as human beings as they
were seen in anthropology, where man was the center of all things, and therefore man was
self-sufficient. Today man is valued for his contributions and the study of this question is
biotechnology. "Bio” that is the sum of his life plus his contributions to the technology. But
while we were talking about these things, we already got outdated; because now the new
way of thinking is called bio-ethical.
The discussion of bioethics began in Europe with a man named Hans Jonas, who started his
line of thoughts after the bombing of Hiroshima. The questions were: Whether throwing a
bomb on a city of civilians was allowed? Could we retaliate against innocent people because
of the harm caused by others? And the most important question is the selection of who
should or should not die? Because of these questions the author entitled his book “The
imperative of responsibility”. So that we understand it better, during the same time when
bioethics was spoken of, in the USA another phenomenon took place, the invention of a
dialysis machine.
They invented a machine that had the capacity to treat one hundred people, but
the demand was for thousands of terminal patients. As the newly-built machine could only
save one hundred, how should the selection be handled? The doctors did not feel capable
of making such selections, neither the directors of the hospital, nor the biomedical teams.
What could they do? The answer was to call philosophers, theologians and lawyers to
discuss the responsible ethical thing to do. And from here, at this point, I take my third and
last lesson. And I invite you, my dear friends, theology students, teachers and the public
opinion to decide with me, who should die and who should live today. The UN reports say
that in this decade, thirty million Africans and people from smaller countries in the world
will starve to death because of the lack of food. It is not enough just to have money because
the food production is not enough. All of our support and knowledge are not enough to feed
these people. And right now, I invite you to Go back to the text of Luke 11, and I humbly
suggest that He will teach us to pray the way He taught to His Disciples "...Give us day by
day our daily bread..."(NKJV) but do not cry out just for our bread, but also for the bread for
all these thirty million people, lest they die.
This is not a paradox, but Symbiosis, because these two truths cannot be set apart.
Theology and spirituality must walk together, and this way, we build our bioethics.