VIEWPOINTS
Time’s call to open our eyes and ears to Climate Justice
An Ecumenical Response by Rev Rufus Kamran, Society for Peace and Sustainable Development (SPSD)
Rev Rufus Kamran is a key theologian and thinker on Climate Justice in Pakistan. He is a bold Climate Justice activist and works for Society for Peace and Sustainable Development (SPSD)-Pakistan as Executive Director. SPSD-Pakistan is a Christian faith based Ecumenical organisation, having a deep concern over the issues of Climate Justice and Economy of life. SPSD-Pakistan’s other focus areas are Rights of Women With Disabilities (WWDs); Gender Based Violence (Early Girl Child Marriages); Sustainable Agriculture and Family Farming; Peace Building and Interfaith harmony Rule of law and Human Rights; Food Security and Poverty alleviation Rev Kamran has done his Masters in Cultural Anthropology and as well as bachelors in Theology. Recently, he has participated in World Council of Churches (WCC) ECO School Asia on water, Food Security and Climate Justice held in Thailand from November 4-17, 2019 as a resource person.
Participants at the SPSD Tree Planting Campaign in District Mianwali.
he Bible is clear that God wants us to work for climate justice. God longs for harmony in the whole of Creation, not just in the human family. The Society for Peace and Sustainable Development (SPSD)-Pakistan believes that we are called to preserve God’s Creation. In the Gospel of Mark 1:14-15, Jesus is coming into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God and saying: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel." The Greek word Mark uses for” time” is carefully chosen. It is “Kairos”. It means not clock time but a critical time of special significance, a time of danger or when an opportunity has to be grasped, a time to be awake and alert and prepared to act. This sense of urgency and the need to open our eyes and ears to the significance of what is happening runs through the gospel, for instance Luke records Jesus approaching Jerusalem and, as he “saw the city he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hiding from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you… and they will not leave one stone upon another… because you did not know the time of your visitation." (Luke 19:41–44). The word for “time" is again, the same word “Kairos". That sense of urgency is also evident in the Old Testament lesson where Moses faces the people of Israel with a challenge. “I call heaven and earth to 40
INSiGHT | February 2020
witness against you this day, that I have set before your life and death, blessing and curse: therefore, choose life, which you and your descendants may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19) Through Moses, through the prophets, through Christ Himself there is this constant theme – the call to open our eyes and ears. To see and hear what God is telling us. Wake up and act. We are at a Kairos time for this precious planet. We, humankind, have been given a clear responsibility to care for God's earth. At the end of the story of the creation in Genesis chapter 1, it says: “and God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good.” In the following chapter we read: “the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." We have a duty to care for God’s earth. SPSD-Pakistan is embarking on a journey for change, responding to God’s call for us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves and to take great care of creation. It is working to foster theological, advocacy-oriented and lifestyle-changing reflection and action in collaboration with different churches at grassroot level. In working for climate justice, SPSD-Pakistan is applying both mitigation and adoptive strategies in flood-affected and disaster-prone areas through rural communities and especially with the support of rural women in Pakistan. In addition, it does its best to model ecological awareness and its contributing insights from spirituality and values informed by sacred texts, holistic and integral world views.
