World Council of Churches
Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches
Reformed Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn
Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF)
INTERNATIONAL THEOLOGICAL CONFERENCE
“Promised Land”
Church Center Bürenpark, Bern, Switzerland
10 - 14 September 2008
The Great Commandment and the “Neighbour”
Rev. Dr Pradit Takerngrangsarit
Payap University, Thailand
A remarkable thing happened in Bangkok a few weeks ago. An editorial appeared in a major English-language newspaper that quoted extensively Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan. The editorial ended with the recommendation that the leaders of our South East Asian nations should follow the great commandment to love our neighbour if they want to get to heaven.
If you do not immediately see how remarkable that editorial is, you do not understand how rare it is to have anything about Christianity, particularly Christian scripture, quoted approvingly in the press in Thailand. I think it is a sign of something else as well. There is a rising desperation for solutions to the squabbles and conflicts that afflict our region. Neighbourliness is in short supply.
There is tension over the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea that could erupt into more than harsh words between China, the Philippines, and Vietnam. There is difficulty between ethnic groups in Indonesia related to religion. For the moment there is no specific argument flaring up between Thailand and its northern neighbours, Burma and Laos, but this happens periodically. What prompted the editor to write in favour of loving our neighbour was rival claims by Cambodia and Thailand to a Khmer-era temple.
Inside our countries, too, there are racial, ethnic and religious squabbles. Most notable for Thailand is the trouble generated by the use of terrorist tactics by insurgent groups in the southern provinces where Islam is the majority religion.
These conflicts over neighbourliness are serious. They lead to and are also caused by complex troubles. Sometimes we see unneighbourly behaviour because of some economic conflict such as oil and mineral rights or fishing areas. At other times the difficulty is the result of poverty and the struggle to achieve equity, or at least sufficiency. Too often the troubles focus on religious practices or perceived improprieties.
Nobody has completely clean hands in this mess. We do not subscribe to the idea that one religion is purer with regard to neighbourliness than the others, or that one is more pro-peace, or that any one religion is more apt to foment violence. There is enough credit to share and plenty of blame to go around.
I have mentioned how my homeland, Thailand, has been a participant in assaults on the great commandment. But now I would like to balance the scales.
For the past 60 years, King Bumipol Adulyadej, also called Rama IX, has been the role model for our region in his attempts to work for neighbourliness. It is fair to say that when he came to the throne, Thailand was not a nation of good neighbours loving each other and living harmoniously together and with the land. Vast inequities existed between those privileged to live in developed areas, cities in particular, and the great majority who lived in poverty isolated from necessities.
Water was the most pressing issue. Some areas were parched and arid, while others flooded so often that life was precarious. Our king, whose field of study was civil engineering, personally took on the role of hydrologist for the nation. He prodded the departments of government to become serious and informed. He visited every province and carried geological maps wherever he went. He personally planned and funded water projects, and then he coaxed the government to take up the burden. Today, flooding is greatly reduced and no area of the country is incapable of sustaining agriculture because of lack of water.
Our king visited all the ethnic groups as well as the native-born Thai communities. He was a symbol of national unity, and he talked about it on many occasions. He drew minority groups into the mainstream of conservation of soil and natural resources. He personally designed, inspired and funded the first royal projects to introduce substitute crops to replace opium poppy cultivation. Now vegetables, herbs, fruit, coffee and tea are grown on the hillsides where poppies used to be the moneymakers.
Illicit narcotic drug production is not what one neighbour does for another. Our king had a world perspective on neighbourliness before Marshal McLuhan coined the phrase “a global village” or globalization entered the vocabulary.
As prosperity found its way into the mountain valleys, communism lost its allure. Slash-and-burn agriculture was given up as stable water supplies became available. Schools taught children the fundamentals of literacy in their own villages. Government services became available. And the “we-they” mentality began to fade.
Our king has been a model in this regard. He deserves credit for creating a united nation out of diverse ethnic groups. And his family has also been involved.
His mother returned from Switzerland to build a Swiss chalet on a mountainside in the north of Thailand and then introduced marketable products for the ethnic minorities to grow and manufacture. There was not an ethnic village in the hills that did not love her like their grandmother.
Queen Sirikit has taken the lead in helping disadvantaged villagers preserve their traditional handicrafts and in developing markets for them. It was the queen who stopped a snowballing campaign to make Buddhism the state religion by mentioning it in her annual address to the nation, when it was threatening to further disenfranchise Christians and Muslims.
These changes in Thailand are real, and, frankly, they are substantial. The development of hydro-electric power for the whole country and almost every tiny hamlet, the elimination of opium poppy production on Thai mountainsides, the sharp rise in income for the most remote and disadvantaged groups, and access to modern medical care are all accomplishments that grew out of a sense that we are neighbours. Contrary to the Marxist rhetoric of the last century, these changes were not brought about by the agitation and unrest of the oppressed masses, but were inspired by the king’s conviction that in this world there are no real distinctions between people practising one set of traditions and another, nor between people planting rice on hillsides and those who plant in the flat valleys, nor between those who dress in red homespun shirts and those whose shirts are black.
Even when the trends are toward fragmentation and against a sense of community, being neighbours, and loving neighbours, is doable. It can work.
