Frei Betto, Biblical scenes

There are events that register forever in our memory. The same thing happens in the histories of peoples. The Asian populations touched by the tsunamis will never be able to forget this catastrophe.

It's a tragedy that, unlike other events, does not demand the passage of time to achieve the power of a myth. It so surprised us and reached such monstrous proportions that it reminds us of Biblical phenomena. Thus no other comparison comes up when one thinks of the Malay baby, only 20 days old, who was saved when found sleeping on a mattress that floated above the giant waves. Wasn't Moses saved from the waters of the Nile this way? Or the Australian mother, Jillian Searle, who, forced by the pressure of the waters, saw herself obliged to choose one of the two sons that she carried in her arms. In a cruelly Solomonic decision she chose the younger, Blake, a two-year-old, letting go of the elder, Lachie, a five-year-old. Happily the latter child was saved, although he didn't know how to swim, by being able to grab ahold of a door, on which he was found paddling.

None of us, so many kilometers away, can imagine the depth of the tragedy that consumed the lives of more than 120,000 people, as if an angry Neptune had taken the form of an anteater's tongue to devour ants.

The giant waves that closed out 2004 in mourning had the dimensions and significance of a great flood. Every time something similar happened in remote times, like when a great overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers devastated villages and fields, faith identified it with the wrath of God, and at the same time, with His mercy. Noah and his animals preserved in the ark were a sign that for God a new start is always possible.

Our secularized mentality doesn't attribute the giant tidal wave to any sign of God. Today we know that He doesn't wish his children ill, that he takes pleasure not in punishing but in pardoning. However, heed the warning of President Lula when referring to these events: "The Earth appears to be taking revenge for the destruction we have wrought."

We are reaping the rotten fruit of the seeds we have sown: the unbridled lucre, the atmospheric pollution, the contamination of the seas, the cutting of the forests, etc. With the Earth there is no evasion: if we give it life, it yields us life; if we do the contrary death takes over.

Now it's up to us to leave the fragile cocoon protects us and, in a great mobilization of solidarity, succor the survivors and the devastated regions. Not with demagogic gestures, like that of President Bush, who initially donated only $35 million, a derisory sum given the dimension of the tragedy. As a Democratic senator declared in Washington, Bush sent the victims less than he spends before his morning coffee in one day in Iraq. Later, under worldwide pressure, the American president multiplied this sum tenfold.

Terrible is the logic that leads to spending on death and saving on life. Something is going very wrong, and it's not just happening with our planet, which makes signs of an imbalance for which there is no therapy. The only exit is the consciousness that every one of us is the new Noah, responsible for the preservation of the environment. From our ark, we must be able to see on the horizon the flight of the dove that carries an olive branch in its beak.

The author is a journalist, Dominican friar and aide to the president of Brazil

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opinion

Biblical scenes