Monday, April 15, 2019

Article source of my Response from Christian faith essay


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Disclaimer: I'm parking this translated version of the article I responded to with my essay, "Response from Christianfaith on a commentary article about Human Fraternity". Please be advised that the translation from Indonesian to English might somewhat missed the intended meaning but I have done my best to carefully put it in English. My TOELF score in 2019 is 600, to assure you of the translation process.

links to the article in Indonesian:
https://kompas.id/baca/opini/2019/04/04/persaudaraan-umat-manusia-2/
http://doa-bagirajatega.blogspot.com/2019/04/artikel-opini-persaudaraan-umat-manusia.html


Human Fraternity, an opinion article
Gumilar Rusliwa Somantri, April 4, 2019


Al-Azhar and the Vatican carved out important historical mark through the signing of the Document of Human Fraternity in Abu Dhabi on February 4, 2019.

The symbolic signing of the "Abu Dhabi Declaration" marks a new era in the relationship of Muslim-Christians worldwide. The two communities are expected to be able to live together side by side in a more peaceful manner and work together to fight humanitarian challenges, including the enemy of all humanity, namely terrorism (Kompas, February 6, 2019).


How should we interpret the monumental event above?


Universalism of Nature

Human Fraternity is a key concept that reveals many basic things that so far have not been clearly undertsood by most people. This concept basically rests on the understanding that all human beings are basically the same and are brothers.
As a result, a man who tyrannizes his neighbor; ceteris paribus, doing the same for all humanity. Thus, terrorism which has caused destruction to many places and human souls, hard to imagine the magnitude of the dimensions of damage that has been caused.

Logically, humanity fraternity is easy to understand. All humans built from the same element. He was built of physical and spirit union. The physical itself is a gifted entity, not independent. It totally depends on the existence of the spirit. During sleep or post factum of death, the body becomes a pile of flesh, and the bones cease functioning.

Thus, the brain and senses are only mediums and are not controllers. The process of thinking, then, physically is an amazing complicated phenomenon. However, in essence it is very simple. It is the spirit that makes the brain think and creatively reasoned. This perspective blows down the classical understanding of Kartesian that believed reason centered on the physical abilities of the brain, cogito ergo sum.

As known, the human body originates from the elementary structure of the soil quintessence. It starts from the meeting of the ovum and seed that takes place in the "great glass palace", the womb. Modern medical science has proven that the meeting of the two above continues to form a lump of blood, then becomes a pile of flesh, then becomes a super tiny human body structure or fetus, then becomes a fetus.

As recent gynecological research has shown, at the age of four months and ten days, the transformation of an astonishing "human" usually occurs: life begins to look complete with all its features. The fetus that at that age "gets" the spirit as the source of life will survive so the baby is ready to be born, vice versa will abort and demise.

The mentioned life, academically supported, is brought about by the presence of the spirit. It is a gift of the Supreme Creation as an unspeakable blessing for all humanity without exception. He is the light (nur) that brings humanity from darkness (infidelity), which is the basic character of the soil entity, towards "right". This spirit cannot choose to be blown in whose body and where, complete with all its ascriptive attributes.

This is entirely the supraprerogative area of ​​the Creator. As a result, diversity and differences are extraordinary gifts given by God to all humanity. It is logically easy to understand, if the Supreme Creation wants to make all humanity the same is not difficult. Humanity was created in different formats for only one purpose, namely "interpreting" the greatness of God in the process of understanding and making peace with one another.

Humans who submit to the majesty of the Creator and make peace with others, have an educated spirit. Educating spirits is not in human-created educational institutions. It is a product of his encounter with the Creator in a ritualistic or non-ritualistic arena in His Palace at all times.

In this context, religion was given down by God from the prophet to the prophet - through revelation - is in order to educate the spirit so that its light is always glowing grandly over the darkness. Thus, the wisdom and mind emanated as a beautiful form of love, peace, and spread kindness to others and the natural surroundings.

Religion as an essential right from the spirit relationship with the Supreme Source has been intervened by the power of human interpretive thought. This is further compounded by the phenomenon of religion which manifests itself into a social institution, complete with a variety of purposes for its interests. Furthermore, the reduction of religion in certain cultural identifications is an amazing stupidity, beautifully packaged to deny the essence of light called "right". Religion in practice, thus, is often trapped in the wave of daydream in textual narrative interpretations of divine law in the midst of the cradle of involution institutional prison.

Both of human interpretive thought and daydream in textual narrative interpretations of divine law, has perfectly transformed the intrisic goal of the religion into devices for reaching it. Fanaticism and religious militancy and the schools within it have made humanity horrifyingly compartmented. In this context, hostility often arises in everyday life. In fact, religion does not carry a gene of differences, sourced only in one treatise.

In short, the declaration of Abu Dhabi is a revolutionary honest recognition of two important world religious institutions on the basis of human brotherhood in essence. The conception of God the Creator may be constructed differently in every religion, sect, and school. However, God who created nature and everything in it must be the same.

This understanding primus interpares penetrates truth claims. At the same time it has shifted the attention of mankind from sibling quarrels, to substantial cooperation dealing with the threat of destruction of civilization itself.


Humanitarian challenge

Religious people are like a group of people clawing each other on a leaky boat that sails towards the island of hope. They are not looking for a point of equality, to move together to close the leak and guarantee the safety of the sailing; instead, they are engaged in fierce quarrel for the claim of the island of hope that still clearly uncertain. So, the Abu Dhabi Declaration was a symbolic reflexionist puncto to end the siblings quarrel of humanity as well as sparked an optimistic hopes of building a better future together.

For example, the planet earth, which has been around four billion years old, is characterized by the vulnerability of being overwhelmed by excessive loads. can support the ideal presence of around 4.5 billion people. However, the population of the earth has now approached twice the capacity. Mankind needs food, clean air rich in oxygen, mobility, space, and so on. Every inch of the above needs also carries a dimension of damage. The population that increases uncontrollably also means the greater the damage the populace could cause. In reality, most human beings are morphed into carpe diem creatures, who pretend to forget that the future fate of the earth must be maintained and guarded together. It seems that this is a challenge for the religious community to move together towards a synergistic point in order to respond to the above challenges.

Another example is science revolution that acts like a double-edged knife. Michio Kaku, in this instance, suggests that Einstein's theory of relativity was not closed by a period, but with a comma. He spoke of optimism for the future born from the womb of the wonders of science and technology. He predicts the future of civilizations jumping higher and faster so that in an instant changed the patterns of old life.

Another surprise will keep on approaching even when we are still surprised. New patterns emerging based on widespread use of data, artificial intelligence, and supermicro technology such as nano and genomes. The challenge of science and technology is the fact that the worship of the human brain is acute, forgeting the fundamental forces that move it. The wilderness of science and technology becoming a space of unlimited exile. On one hand it provides solutions to technical limitations, on the other hand it minimizes the natural space of human function. Thus, science and technology have an unimaginable evolutionary impact.

No less important, the humanitarian challenge arises from the fact that the capitalistic system of liberal life has brought life to fantastic imaginary bubbles. There is some degree of validity in Fukuyama's classic, a quarter-century ago, about the dangers of a single system post socialism collapse in Cold War struggles. There is also some validity about the liberal-Westerm dichotomy with Huntington’s version of Islamic puritanism. Both ideas dissolving into capitalism thesis and becoming a silent, expansive force with massive trampling capability. It also subconsciously able to beautifully packaging humanity as a commodity and sorting it then divided on prices.

Finally, universal humanity is experiencing challenges and even serious threats from the spread of terrorism, drug abuse, bleak possibilities of WMD based war, the spread of infectious diseases such as AIDS, and so on. It's time for humanity now to matrix the equality of fate to cover a leaky hole in a boat that is being shared.

Proposal

It will be marvelous if the important symbolic steps above can be if taken seriously by both parties together. The fundamental thing is mutual “juxtapose” the nature of human fraternity itself. This, can be then, followed by socializing and application among the "elite" of religion so that the echo could even be transmitted to the most basic grass roots. With that, religionist and their adherents would be able to shift to the same awareness in responding to humanitarian challenges as an inherent responsibility.

In the above conditions, efforts to safeguard the earth from damage will meet with the increasing quality of humanity. As the result they will be able to become wise controllers of the mercy from the revolutionary of science and technology. In fact, both of these met in balance between the gentle nature of human care and the wildness of liberal market practices.

At this point, human race always strives to stand on its humanity as the controller of various "tools" and to not get lost on its intoxicating seduction. Finally, challenges and threats should be responded by the construction of wise character as a manifestation of "spirit" being maintained by the Supreme Creator. Thus terrorism, drug abuse, WMD-based war, and the spread of AIDS can be minimized.






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