Religion & Ecology
July 2010
Banner photo: Alpine Flowers and Cloud Reflection, Colorado [© Carr Clifton]
Restoring Compassion
Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, from the Netherlands, is a human rights advocate and environmental activist. He is a founding member of Green Cross International and founder and chair of the Day of Respect Foundation, as well as the Hope for Children Fund. He serves as an Earth Charter Commissioner and a Millennium Development Ambassador and is a founding member of the Islam and the West Dialogue Group of the World Economic Forum. He is president of the Jacob Soetendorp Institute for Human Values.
SGI Quarterly: What in the Jewish tradition inspires you to have concern for the Earth as well as humanity?
Awraham Soetendorp: There is a text in the first chapter of Genesis that says: "and God said let us make the human being according to our image. . ." That in itself is so important, as God could create everything by Him or Herself--the creeping creatures, the planets--but when it came to creating the human being who can make choices with a free will, He needed, as it were, the cooperation of the human being. So from the beginning it is about cooperation. Only when we allow everyone into their innermost dignity and don't push anyone away because of the color of their skin or religion or culture or sexual orientation--only then, together, do we constitute the image of God.
The same sentence continues: "they shall rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole Earth and all the creeping things that creep on the earth. . ." There it is from the beginning, responsibility for the whole Earth. And then it says that on the Sabbath everyone should rest, and you should not reap or cut the Earth. And every seventh year, you should not reap the land--you should also give a breathing space to the land. All this speaks of responsibility for the Earth, and this is what brought me at an early age to associate myself with stewardship.
The moment you care for the Earth and the community of life, your compassion is increased, is nourished; similarly for your attitude toward people. This led me to the Earth Charter, which has this holistic concept of respect for human life, human rights, democracy and peace.
SGIQ: It seems to me the key message of the Earth Charter, underlying all its principles, is actually about increasing our compassion.
AS: Yes. I am also a member of the Council of Conscience, which was developed around Karen Armstrong's idea of the Charter for Compassion. Its aim is to strengthen our faculty for compassion.
In the Charter for Compassion, there is a strong appeal to use this one principle that binds all religions and spiritual traditions--because it's in all of our traditions. And then the Earth Charter puts that same compassion into real situations in the world, the way we live every day.
SGIQ: How do you think it's possible to increase empathy for other people's suffering without becoming overwhelmed by it?
AS: When you close yourself to empathy toward suffering, you also close your heart to participation in the joy of the other. It's about opening the heart. There is so much to do in order to strengthen the capacity for compassion. Because when compassion is there, there is no problem getting an agreement on climate change, because you put yourself in the situation of the other. When we say that every year more than a million children die because of the effects of polluted water, how can we express such facts and continue without being overwhelmed? We cannot become stone because of the enormous burden of all this. But we can integrate into our inner being the knowledge of the human reality behind those figures and really try to speed up all that is necessary.
What is key is whether or not we use our capacity for compassion.
SGIQ: What do you feel about the opening of the hearts of people of different faiths to each other?
AS: I cannot live a truly Jewish life without my fellow human beings who are of other spiritual traditions. I have been inspired and strengthened by them. I would say that only when we recognize that we desperately need each other can we bring about a world of peace and justice. I do think that in the spiritual traditions there is an extra potential and responsibility.
What will save this world is cooperation. When I was a baby, my parents were in hiding [from the Nazis] in a hole in the ground on a farm in Holland. My father received a request to write some lessons for a Jewish boy who was hidden in a different farm, to prepare him for his Bar Mitzvah. Not so long ago the boy, who survived, contacted me, and I received the text. Next to the same passage that I just quoted about "let us create the human being," my father writes, "My young friend, note this--God has created human beings with a purpose, and that is for the human being to restore the world to the original meaning, the meaning that God wanted; and that is a world filled with cooperation, love, truth and righteousness." Now imagine, my father in a hole in the ground, hunted like an animal. . . The order is so important, the first is cooperation, then there is love, then there is truth. Love is there before truth, then there is justice.
If we ask ourselves, in our different spiritual traditions, "What can we do?" I would suggest we start with this: God has created us as human beings in such a way that in the first three or four years of our life we cannot survive but by the love and care of others. Let's ensure that every infant in the world is receiving that care and support, and when we do that, we'll encounter all the other necessary things, the change in habits, the value changes and everything that has to happen in our society, and we'll become responsible citizens to each other. We promised in the Millennium Development Goals that every child would have basic education by 2015. Without the religious leadership and the people in the spiritual traditions, we won't be able to do it. Opening up to the community of life is a process of hope, because hope propels us to action. Compassion opens the heart. And when the heart is open, nothing is impossible.
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