God The Politician

 I’ve often stated that when it comes to religion, I am a Buddhist student of Christian theology who has been blessed by Muslims, Jains and Hindus. Someone on Tremertitus described my situation as messed up and a few people have suggested to me that my I’m destined for hell and that my lack of material success is down to my inability to devote myself exclusively to a single God.

I think of this as a blessing. My experiences with people of different creeds has made me understand that there is yet to be a single faith with a monopoly on virtuous people and no religion has a monopoly of arseholes. I’ve often said that the best and worst paymasters I’ve had were both Tamil and Catholic. I’ve noticed that the Almighty tends to come to us in different forms. For me, while I will bow to Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist statues as much as I cross myself every time, I pass a church, I tend to see the presence of the almighty as a guidance rather than an active player. Prayer is an act to assurance.

It’s not the same for everyone else. For the entrepreneur I married, prayer is the seeking of blessings in business. For others, God is a doctor and a banker. I’ve heard that people experience cures from things that the doctors had described as incurable. The Old Rogue used to say, “We are more than just a collection of atoms,” and you can’t write off everything as mumbo-jumbo.

Having said that, I do believe that there are professions where God should not enter. I’ve stated previously and I’ll never tire of saying it, God should not be in real estate. Just look at the insolvable issue between Israel and Palestine. Two groups of people which share so many similarities have been unable to settle a land dispute for nearly a century because they were under the impression that God was a real estate broker for certain parts of the desert.

The second profession where God should not enter is of course, politics. If you look at human history, you will notice that God does not exactly have the best of records when it comes to politics. OK, I’m saying that I think that politician should be without faith. I do believe that faith can help make a person better and as having good people in politics is imperative.

What I do object do is you have people coming into office on the grounds that they are God’s exclusive agents on earth. The problem with that is that the people who usually come in on the ground of being “God’s Exclusive,” have a way of ensuring that they do everything else except what you’d imagine God would want them to do.

Take the world’s most prominent theocracy as an example. Iran has a dual system of government where there is an elected president and parliament. However, the elected portion of government is subordinate to the guys who are nominally chosen by God. Iran’s presidents are all limited by term limits. The Supreme Leader stays for life and pretty much nothing gets done in Iran without the permission of the Supreme leader. So, despite being filled with highly educated and rational people, Iran remains unable to interact with the wider world because, well God’s agents don’t see the need to.

Once again, arseholes are not limited to a single religion. Buddhist Burma has been involved one of the worst human rights abuses of all times with massacre of the Rohingya population. In Israel, the Sha’s party of extreme Orthodox Jews prevents any form of intelligent settlement with the Palestinians.

One of my favourite examples of why we need to keep God of politics is in America, where the current President has chosen to have a rather interesting spiritual advisor. This is woman is called Paula White..

To be fair to Paula White, she has a nice rag to riches story. She is in her own words “trailer-park trash” and somehow, she found God, wealth and the ear of the most powerful man in the world. The other thing that you can say about Paula White is that she’s pretty in a “trashy” sort of way (eye-candy might be the politically correct term) and looks presentable in a dress:

However, that’s probably as far as it should go. If you listen to this woman with a rational mind and consider the fact that the world’s most powerful man takes spiritual guidance from her, you’d end up rushing to cave and hiding in the hope that the end of the world will happen soon and swiftly.

This woman tells people that the ground she steps on makes things Holy. She, has, apparently been given the authority by God himself to make the grounds she walks on Holy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5hWPfJTz38

When the election results were called against the Donald, Ms. White proceeded to launch a sermon accusing demonic forces of rigging the election and summoned angels from Africa and South America to sort things out (theologically wrong – summoning angels is God’s job not an individuals and angels live in heaven not in Africa or South America – though an African pastor in another video did suggest that she needed African angels because the American ones ate too many hamburgers and were too sluggish to do anything).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4daeEacIVI 

I’m not against people having faith or a relationship with God and politicians can choose who they pray to. However, when you’re talking about someone who has the ear of the most powerful man on the planet, it’s a different story, particularly when the world is in the midst of a pandemic and the country in question has by far and away the world’s worst number of cases. It’s a situation that requires rational and scientific solutions rather than someone’s conversation with angels and demons.

It’s like the Malaysian Bomoh (witch doctor) who went on TV to declare that elves and demonic spirits made MH370 vanish. Sure, what this guy is saying is funny in a dark humour sort of way but it was totally unhelpful and it doesn’t help that there are people who listen and believe this stuff. The only benefit that the world had at the time was that the aviation authorities did not hire him to be a consultant.

I’m all for politicians being believers. However, we need to remember that we live on the material plane where things like facts matter. Ironically enough, it was another so called “theocracy” that understood this. When Covid-19 struck, Saudi Arabia took steps to suspend Umrah and Haj Pilgrimages despite the economic benefits to Saudi Arabia (second largest revenue after oil) and political implications for the ruling family. Can you imagine how much worse the situation would have been if the millions who normally attend the Haj had been allowed to mingle and spread the virus because they thought God would protect them from the virus?

In the middle of a pandemic, you do not need a snake oil version of God trying to convince people that they have magic powers. This is how you undo God’s work of making life on earth better for all mankind.  

God’s Virus

Although I’m officially a Buddhist, my intellectual framework is based on Christian Theology. This was a subject that opened my eyes and challenged many of our long-held assumptions about faith. It was a subject that I excelled at and the two teachers I had, had high hopes for me. My last teacher, David Pook, in particular, had high hopes that I’d get an “A” at A-level and go onto read theology at university. Unfortunately, I got put off by the idea of having to learn ancient Greek (can’t even speak to Greeks), Hebrew and Sanskrit, which were all part of the theology courses in British universities. David did take it personally that I didn’t go onto read theology.

It’s been nearly two and a half decades since I’ve looked at a Bible with an analytical mind. However, I still find the way man relates to the higher powers, fascinating. I think that its probably no coincidence that I ended up back in Singapore, which has a shockingly high number of “religious” people and the societies that would provide most of my benefactors would be India and Saudi Arabia.

I would also add that my personal religious beliefs have been shaped by encountering people of many faiths and life is such that I’ve found beauty and horror in all religions. I am a Buddhist who loves the teaching of the Abrahamic God. My guiding principles on faith come from a Malay taxi driver who told me that “Salaam,” the shaking of hands and building of friendship is the first real religion and a Malay bus driver who told me that “Too much emphasis is placed on the word of the book and not enough on the spirit.” Whenever I post anything on religion, it’s always based around these two principles.

Covid-19 has been a particularly interesting time for anyone who observes man’s relationship with God and one of the fault lines in theology has become very clear – namely that its “human” centric. Our beliefs have always been shaped around the principle that God has given us the human race “mastery of all other beast” and we behave as if God only deals with us when it comes to planet earth.

Think of all the things that we pray for. It’s all about us and us alone. We ask God for wealth, good exam results and so on. Praying for the rest of our planet doesn’t even cross our minds. Human nature is such that we’re now fighting over our right to worship in places where we want to worship rather than what we’re worshiping. In the US, the debate is about “Church” being an “essential” service. In places like Indonesia people hold up placards saying “Don’t Fear the Virus, Fear Allah.” People still insist on their right to gather to worship God despite the fact that such gatherings have already struck down enough people with the virus.

From a theological perspective, I’m starting to think that the virus was sent by God to set us straight. The human race is now being forced to look at the world beyond itself and God, for want of a better word, is now getting us to think of the rest of the planet.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the virus started in Wuhan, China, the world’s worst polluter. While China has achieved something amazing from an economic perspective (Third world shit hole to second largest economy in a generation), it has done so at huge environmental costs. While the average Chinese has more money than his or her parents could have dreamed of, they live in a world where breathing is dangerous.

I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that the world leader in number of cases and deaths is the USA, which under the Trump administration, has become the world’s most arrogant nation that tries to use its clout to get its way. Trump Administration had plenty of warning and time to act and continues to live in a state of denial. To add to this point, its no coincidence that Brazil under Bolsonaro, which has allowed vast destruction of the Amazon, is now in second place in terms of number of people infected and killed.

I think of the virus as God’s way of reminding us that there is something greater than our own materialistic pursuits and that we have to look out for the rest of the planet. The human race is being forced to understand that the divine gift of “mastery” over the other beast, also means looking after the eco-system as well as taking from it.

As the human race is forced to halt “usual” activities, nature has had the chance to heal. In Singapore otters have been seen wondering our streets. The air, which was unbreathable in places like Delhi, Shanghai, Mumbai and Beijing is suddenly clear.

I actually had the privilege helping a client get the point across in a public forum that the human race cannot continue as before and that economic development has to work hand in hand with looking after the environment. The client in question is organizing a business accelerator program with a focus on businesses that help preserve the environment. The article can be found at:

https://www.todayonline.com/voices/why-cant-cleaner-air-last-beyond-circuit-breaker

For the better part of a millennium, the human race assumed that God gave it an exclusive to do as it pleased. I hope that people look at Covid-19 as God’s way of reminding us that we got to look after the state of the world. Rather than asking for God’s protection, perhaps its time to see this as God’s way of getting us to be more reflective and less selfish as a species.