By Anil Netto
Much of what is wrong with society stems from our disconnect from the natural order. Blinded by greed and the pursuit of profit, we have uprooted ourselves from the land and plunged into, first, the industrial era and later, the information technology and financial services era.

Trapped in the capitalist obsession with making ever-growing returns from investment, we have disregarded the environment and the social fabric. The more capital you have, the more returns you need to make. And the more profits you make, the greater the need to ensure that this additional capital generates even more returns.

This has widened the gap between the rich and the poor. In the process, all manner of social ills — and even mental health problems — have arisen from this disparity in wealth.

To make matters worse, we have a situation where the real economy alone cannot guarantee ever-increasing profits — especially when workers are paid so little that many cannot afford all the goods that have been produced. Thus real economic growth has stagnated and, to make up the slack, speculative activity mushroomed — either in commodities or in debt and financial services driven growth. Consumers are encouraged to borrow to buy the goods they otherwise couldn’t afford.

The environment, which we have largely disregarded all these years, has now come back to haunt us as global warming threatens us with climate chaos. Not enough is being done to drastically cut greenhouse emissions to safer levels before it is too late.

The twin problems of a global recession and environmental catastrophe have shown us how far we are from creating the kingdom that God has envisioned for us.

Much of it is due to the great gulf between our daily lives and Gospel ideals. The Gospels tell us to sell what we have and follow Him. We are asked to share our resources with the marginalised and the dispossessed. We are called to visit the sick and to set the captives free.

But the world around us tells us directly the opposite. We need to buy, buy, buy — often beyond our means. It’s every person for himself or herself. This selfish, individualistic attitude is translated into national economic policies. Thus taxes for the rich and for corporations are gradually lowered even though this leaves the government with less money to run essential services such as health care and education.

To compensate for this shortfall, privatization is promoted and tariffs are raised. If you are rich, then there is no problem — for you can always avail of yourselves of expensive private schools or hospitals. But the poor will have no choice but to turn to under-funded services provided by the government, whether in crowded classrooms or overcrowded general hospitals.

In centuries past, humanity’s rootedness to the land gave them a spiritual connection with Nature. Our ancestors grew their own food and bred their livestock. A sense of place to a village gave them identity while the extended family and interdependence with their neighbours provided them with a connection to the community.

But ever since we got sucked into the industrial era, we have been wrenched from our rootedness to the land and our sense of place. We no longer know our neighbours; we no longer know what it means to live in communities that are self-sufficient; we have largely lost that spiritual connection with Nature that Jesus and his disciples so clearly displayed — whether it was cooking fish by the lake shore, praying on the hills at the crack of dawn, or walking from one dusty hamlet to another.

In a sense, we are in exile, much like the Israelites who were driven out of Jerusalem from 597 BC. They lost their city Jerusalem, their temple, their land, their homes, their connection to the land while they were in exile in encampments in Babylon. The Israelites felt that, with the destruction of the Temple, they had also lost the presence of God in His dwelling place. Much of it was due to their failure to live up to God’s standards of justice and mercy just like our failure to live up to Gospel ideals.

Remember that song made famous by Boney M? “By the rivers of Babylon...” How could we sing a song of Yahweh on alien soil? (Psalms 137:4) Words failed the Israelites in exile as they lost the capacity to sing. The only words that poured out were their lamentations of what they had lost.

Today, in many ways, we too are alienated from our connection to the land, its community and a sense of place. We are disconnected from food production — why, our food is grown so far away from us; we are no longer connected with the community as we build walls and fences and live in gated communities; we travel great distances in search of work and are separated from our families and communities. More than that, the very process of industrialisation has alienated the human being as Capital is given priority over Labour and Profits over People.

We can even see people who are not just spiritually in exile but also geographically in exile in our midst — the Rohingyas and the Burmese refugees and other victims of human trafficking. Just as the Israelites lamented what they had lost, today we too lament for what we have lost.

But God himself did not abandon the Israelites. Gradually, through a process of repentance and restoration, they discovered that God himself was “in exile” among them. Today, we too need to rediscover what we have lost “in exile” — our connection to Nature, to the community, to self-sufficiency and sustainable development, to a sense of place, our failure to live up to his standards of justice.

In the process, we will re-discover God living “in exile” among us, through his Spirit poured out for us. And once again, free from the chains that bind us to our machines and the trappings of progress, we will break free from our false delusions and live in harmony with our world again. And then we will sing again.