In his acceptance speech of the 1993 Ramon Magsaysay award for community leadership, Abdurrahman Wahid, the then-Indonesian President, said,

 “Indonesia as a nation displays currently the remarkable ability to sustain its commitment to a strong and highly pluralistic society without sacrificing the idea of progress…Indonesia’s ability to maintain its unity …is indeed an achievement in itself. The remarkable fact is that, today, this unity is being achieved without significant religious misunderstandings or racial outbreaks.”

Only six years later, the unthinkable happened as the country witnessed two of the bloodiest religion-driven conflicts in the nation’s history in 1999 and 2000 in Moluccas and Poso. Wahid’s remark seemed no longer relevant.

It is true that as a nation, Indonesia was relatively peaceful during the New Order regime. But it came with a cost of marginalizing the role of religions in the nation-building. The cost of driving out religions to the periphery of nation-building was enormous. Such human tragedies must not happen again, and such policy—marginalizing the role of religion in identity formation, has to be reevaluated.

A prerequisite to any successful building of a society, and a nation, is that all of its components, including religion, will be willing to participate and introspect. The role of religion in a nation building is important not only because it provides a moral foundation, it also provides guidance to the nation as it evolves into a modern one.  It is imperative to understand that religions alone neither can solve our nation’s economic, political and social problems nor provide solutions to the problems. While it is inconceivable that a prosperous nation can be established and sustained without a direct and substantive role of religions in its design and support, religions can provide what economic, political plans, and political programs or legal regulations alone can never attain: a peaceful and fully meaningful life.

As humans are not machines or being without soul, it is becoming apparent from the realities developing in the world, especially in the secular developed countries, that a fully meaningful human life can hardly be accomplished in a spiritual vacuum. Religions function to fill the vacuum. They are the source of meaning and hope for the vast majority of people around the world; they are able to provide people a horizon of meaning for their lives; they offer inner peace; and they can effect a change in the inner orientation, the whole mentality, and the heart of people, moving them from a false path to a new orientation of life.

One of the drawbacks of the modern society is its tendency to transform into a secular society where moral relativism prevails over some absolute moral conducts. Modernism, marked by the advancement of science and technology as well as the promotion of personal freedom, which often outweighs the understanding of personal responsibility, could produce some emptiness in the society and leave some moral issues confronted by the society left unanswered. Religion, for better or for worse, is and will continue to be vital to modern society. As Hervieu-Leger wrote,

 

“Science in effect is powerless to take over those functions of religion which lie outside of the realm of knowledge. It has no unfailing answer for ever-recurring questions about human nature and its place in the universe. It throws no light on the moral issues confronting individuals and the community. It cannot respond to the need for ritual inherent in society. Hence, if religion on modern society has ceased to be the unqualified language of human experience, it continues to be a vital element in modern society…”[i]

Unfortunately, as the past and current religious conflicts have shown, religions can destroy humanity as much as elevate it. Common factors that underlie these conflicts are domination and intolerance i.e. when one group seeks to dominate and impose its will on others and when religious tolerance is not upheld and practiced. If religious animosities are allowed to destabilize the nation, it will be impossible to build a national unity and foster mutual cooperation among her people. If religions arouse hatred and frictions, it is entirely legitimate that an absence of religions is preferable and non-religious people are better than the ones who profess it. Religions are “credible only when they eliminate those conflicts which spring from the religions themselves, dismantling mutual arrogance, mistrust, prejudice, and even hostile images and thus demonstrating respect for the traditions and rituals of people who believed differently...”[ii]

This suggests that a better understanding, if not a truly new perspective, about the essence and the objectives of religion is paramount importance so that religions’ positive side can blossom while their undesired effects can be minimized. Only through this way can religion become a vehicle in building not only a united Indonesia, but also a peaceful world.

This new perspective requires that religions must strive to promote the following two endeavors to their followers.  The first is to connect the creation to the Creator. The second is to connect the creation with other creation.

 

Connecting the creation with the Creator

“Religion is concerned with ultimacy—that is, it relates people to the ultimate conditions of existence.”[iii] According to religious belief, the only being that knows the ultimate conditions of the existence, including the existence of human being, is the creator of the existence himself—the Creator. Thus, for religions can bring the creation to understand its ultimacy, the concern of religions must be how to connect the creation to the Creator. And since the creation is created by the Creator who possesses loving, tender, faithful, just and righteous traits of character, religions are also concerned with such virtues.

These virtues can be attained when the creation, especially human being, connect with the Creator. Through this connection, humans will get closer to the ultimate condition—closer to perfection. In so doing, they will learn more about the Creator’s infinite abundant of virtues while at the same time, the Creator pours out His virtues to them. These two phenomena can occur through a personal relationship between the creation and the Creator.  Religions, therefore, both at a personal and communal level, have to strengthen conviction rather than stress idle conformity to some inflexible collective system. They have to elevate the personal relationship between human being and his Creator. And they must also support the challenge to humanity to discover truth and beauty through reflection and unity with all creation and harmony with the divine. Thus, the humans’ connection with the Creator will bring them inner peace, regardless the state of the world they are living in.

In striving for such perfection—inner peace and outer peace or peace with others, religions must not lend themselves to the intervention of political, power and economic influence. This will only relegate the eternal, absolute and the universality of religious philosophy into impermanent, relative and consensus-based principles.  The humans’ relationship with the Creation is deeply personal and no authority should be allowed to pre-determine the course or to deteriorate the relationship. Religions, must therefore, stay away from such practices.

 

Connecting the creation with the creation

Knowing and respecting the natural laws operating in the creation including, above all, human beings which according to religious belief is the most special of all creation, is tantamount to respecting the Creator.  In so doing, human being will have more peace with nature, one another, and with the Creator. To satisfy only one of them—get connected to the Creator but separated from the creation—is essentially wrong. If one’s concern is only one’s relation to the Creator but abandon or, worse, destroy one’s relation with the creation, one essentially denies the existence of the Creator.  Destroying other creation in the name of the Creator is contrary to faith in the Creator and is the greatest betrayal of the universality of religious faith.

Thus religion, besides providing a concept of divinity—Creator with His noble and supranatural characters and attributes, must also provide a concept of humanity and its links with other creation including with their fellow humans as well as their relations to nature.  In other words, religious must provide a model of social and individual behavior that helps religious believers to live a kind of daily lives that simultaneously honor the Creator and respect the creation.

Through their relationship with other creation, human being will learn to understand about the character of the Creator. This understanding will provides a basis for morality and ethics, two of ideas that also govern the way people interact with others. Morality can be understood as an embodiment of collective consciousness, and ethics is the operational phase of morality. Morality guides people’s consciousness while ethics guides their behavior and attitude in their relationship with others. When one injures other persons, he or she commits not only immorality, but also unethical action. Those aspects—morality, and ethics—turn out to be very crucial at our present time.

Today we live in a fast changing world; in a world where the boundaries between right and wrong are often blurred.  We are constantly being confronted with situations and challenges that require some moral judgments.  And the questions we are facing are often not limited to individual decision, but they frequently deal with a broader group of creation such as community and nation. For instances, should Indonesia become a purely secular or completely a religious-based nation or somewhere in between? Should religion become a vehicle to build a united or disunited nation? And how should religion play a role in promoting a better nation—united, democratic, and prosperous?

The questions above can simply be stated as follow: In a nation such as Indonesia, how can religions protect the dignity of all people and foster the mutual understanding among people?

One of the most important things a religion does is to offer a way of thinking about such problems by providing an intellectual framework within which moral decisions can be made.  Essentially religion needs to stress ethical conduct or universal moral principles. As Dimock wrote:

“Ethics is the operational phase of morality, which is the quest for truth and goodness firmly on a reliable knowledge of universal principles deriving from a nature and spirit of the universe which God created. Since it is than morality….[It] has at least two essential roles in human society: first, it is the best assurance man has that his own life and that of his community will survive; secondly, it sets the standard for a constantly enlarging area of ideals through which a better society is to be attained.”[iv]

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. That means every human being, regardless of sex, age, race, skin color, language, religion, ideology, possesses an inalienable and untouchable dignity. Everyone and every entity including the state are obliged to honor this dignity and guarantee its effective protection. The basic subject of any society, including ours, is the human person. Human must never merely means, and never be the objects of politics, power, and religion. It is, therefore, the role of religion to uphold and elevate human’s dignity, and to foster the conditions for all human to flourish.

Thus the basis to evaluate whether we should develop into a purely secular or a completely religious-based state is to ask questions: Will and can the State guarantee the basic rights and respect the dignity of all people? Will our nation become disunited or united? Will people have more peace with one another or just the opposite? Will our laws diverge from the characters of the Creator—loving, tender, faithful, just and righteous? The teachings of religions must provide a framework or a basis to answer such questions. They do so by promoting what they are supposed to do: connecting the creation to the Creator and connecting the creation with creation.

In addition to providing a moral framework to answer such fundamental questions, the teachings of religion must also provide a contextual guidance so that people do no opt for backward culture or a purely hedonistic life or so that people do not only live for themselves and abandon social values. Ultimately questions such as the following must be asked: Should our socio-economic, politics and science become part of a religious system? Did all socio-economic and political problems arise because people abandoning religious teachings? Or, are they emerged because of fundamental mismanagement in our development programs?

Religious beliefs and convictions can have a tremendous influence on how we, as individuals and as nation, react to the challenges of new situations, new ideas, and new developments. Our responses to the challenges will determine our future.  Survival is a matter of our responses to both internal and external challenges. The quality of our responses depends on the number of creative people within the society who can analyze, organize, and answer the challenges. They are not necessarily a single group or certain groups of people from the same background, including religious belief. They are people from all backgrounds that, through a cohesive cooperation among them, conduct scientific inquiry, knowledge exploration, as well as social and economic development for a better living standard of our people. Religion thus must provide space for creativity of and nurture the cooperative spirit among human beings to find solutions to our challenges. 

On an individual basis, survival depends on individual adaptation to the external environment.  Within every individual, there has to be a balance between the cognitive, rational approach, emotional sentiments and ideals. A balance will ensure a healthy and integrated personality. Any individual who is taught only emotional sentiments and ideal, without access and exposure to science and knowledge, will be incapable of solving human problems in a constructive manner. Thus a creative religion must ensure freedom of conscience, a search for the truth and people’s creativity.

Creativity requires freedom for people to develop a sense of independence and achievement during their interaction with the whole environment, including with their fellow human being. Without liberty, creativity is impossible. For that reason, it is an obligation of religions to foster the freedom of speech, assembly, association and the right to disagree including the freedom to not embrace religion or embrace any particular religion. Freedom of conscience and religious freedom are inviolable rights of the human person. Violating it would only contradict the essence of the religions itself.

So religion and liberty must be hand in hand. And our officially recognized religions should strive to create not only religious individuals—those who honor their Creator, but also humane ones—those who honor their fellow human being. This is the ideal Indonesians we want to achieve, and religions play a critical role in that endeavor.

Ours is a multicultural society, and while this diversity can be, or ought to be, a source of vibrancy it also has its problems. The only way we can maintain a civil society is to develop a high degree of tolerance for differences, especially religious differences.

Put simply, religious tolerance is a must.