The 2010 monsoon floods in northern Pakistan are huge and horrific. 20 million dead, injured or with their livelihoods swept away. An agricultural economy losing huge tracts of land, $billions worth of crops and some 100,000 animals. What devastation.

Sadly, 90% of disaster victims live in poor countries, where there is inadequate infrastructure or the resources to recover. Victims don’t have insurance or welfare. Pakistan is desperately poor and is already unable to service current debt to the IMF and World Bank. Yet they will need to borrow more.

At a personal level, we ask ““How can we powerless people possibly make a difference?  Aid agencies send our donations; but is that enough?

At the international level, the response has been slow but the western world is now responding to the UN urgings. That is in spite of much disquiet about the government of Pakistan and the fact that there is little generosity from the Islam world or Asian countries.

And good people ask, “But why are such severe catastrophes increasing?  Are our petitions being ignored by our God?

Perhaps these tragedies are calling us to open our mind to wider concepts of God and our world. Just maybe, the God Creator of the Universe is saying “I have entrusted to you a planet and the means to sustain it.  Act urgently. Change your ways or continue at your peril”.

Of course this would require a new world order – a new paradigm that reverses our pursuits of waring, military might, national self interest, resource exploitation, national borders, global warming  and denials of social justice.  The answer of “impossible” will come quickly. However, the hard questions will surely endure!

So again, how can we powerless people make a difference? As a start, could we too discover a new paradigm?  Might we open our minds from our ancient theism to a new concept of a Universal God in relation to and our planet? Might we spiritually transcend our divisive religions that are so bound by fundamental interpretations of the old-testament Bible or the Koran? Might we truly respect our planet in total?

Instead, might we dare to live our common “golden rule” and truly treat all others as we wish to be treated?  In short, might we act to witness credibly to a model of the world we aspire to? Then Governments might listen.

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1 Comment

Ron Sharp
Aug 24, 2010 11:51