Native Theology Is An Oxymoron

Historically, humanity never stopped thinking about God, or about the Creator. As a consequence, the disciplines of today are in fact quite new. The responses in doing theology typically acts out of an angry disposition towards the ‘other’. White people going to Americas took Natives on a path of destruction because they had nothing of value to offer to Natives. Their attempts to enculturate Natives and make them embrace Western culture is nothing but an example to this angry disposition towards the ‘other’. If Natives were to become good, authentic, pure Christians as Europeans expected them to be, they would need to become white inside even though the darker skin would persist. They would need to become westernized, assimilated. They would need to talk, walk, act, think or dress like white people. (see pg. …, Contact Zone) Natives had to try to move away from this angry disposition where nothing of value was brought to them by Europeans when they came. They also had to move away from self-punishing place where they beat themselves up because they were not ‘civilized’ enough. These are only a few examples to the exploitation of various theological constructions in global context.

Nature of the gospel is both personal and social. Thus, approach of Christianity not only involves individual salvation but also the salvation of society as well. It considers the redemption of all creation. For Natives, the consideration of all creation as redeemed is a reference that is defined in quite Western terms. There are challenges encountered in understanding the differences between Native and white way of life. One of the main challenges encountered in understanding the differences of life and theology between Native and white people is that while white people feel the need to tightly defined, articulated, factually described realities; Natives tend to like mystery. For them, not everything needs to be tightly defined. Western Christian theology has historically focused its purpose on the restoration of the relationship between God and humankind, the salvation and recovery of the lost human soul. Its philosophical basis, dualisms and biblical foundations prove that. The emphasis has almost entirely been exclusively on the restoration of human relationship with God. The relationship with others in the community or with the nature was next concern. On the other hand, the interrelatedness of Native theology with nature is something that Western theology has not often explored. They rarely paid attention to this in Christian theologies.

From a Native perspective, white people fail to account for the spirits that are abundantly existing in the nature. Rather than thinking that they are intellectually superior than Natives, they could try to explore Native perspectives as well. If they paid attention more carefully to the spiritual ways of life, they might learn something out of Native means of ‘salvation’. Most times, these spiritual ways of life offer another means of redemption (or salvation) that are interrelated with the wonderful pastoral scene of nature. This is the basis of Native American creation theology.

The theological framework that allowed Christian mission of crossing oceans to places where they had not brought God argues that God had never been present in Americas before Europeans have sailed. So how can Christians call Natives godless heathens if they thought the Americas were godless heathen lands?

Native people were seen as flora and fauna until the Pope announced them as authentic human beings possessed of a soul. Senior researcher of RMIT ABC Fact Check Sushi Das says, “A regularly repeated claim in public debate is that Indigenous Australians were covered by a flora and fauna act, which did not classify them as human beings.” Until that point, they could kill them as they want.

Trying to understand the life in simple binaries lead Natives to not being able to find themselves a convenient place. There are so many bad consequences that emerge out of this binary (or dualistic) framework of Western Christian theology. If Natives want to be a citizen of the government for a better life, they had to leave the reservation. However, they are never given equal opportunity even if they manage to become citizen. There is also the chance that they might not be accepted in the reservation again. This dualistic framework led so many lives to deprivation of being part of a group. Pauline in Tracks is an example to this situation. …

Natives find the gifts of spirits most consistently to teach them about their past and present. They find this expression in the natural way of life in which creatures are living in a more intuitive way with their creator. They believe in the interrelationship and the interdependence of the order and act accordingly to it. They acknowledge the spiritual reality present in all of creation. I would extend this acknowledgement further to make it more emphatic and assert that the spiritual nature of Native American religion system is at the core of the entirety of creation. It is their ontological design of God. It is neither andromorphic nor something like a literary device such as personification or metaphoric.

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In Genesis 1:28, the rest of creation is described as having to submit to human. It says, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” In the West, there is dualistic bias that argues the rest of creation as inanimate, subjugated or subject to destruction of the human just like the human spirit is subject to redemption.

It is for Western Christian theologies to comprehend this without a sense in which the loss of authenticity of Christian faith or the fine point of balance between the understanding of the transcendence and imminence of the creator will be the result. Western theology tends to approach oxymorons as either this or that. For Natives, it can be both. The oxymorons does not need to be resolved as “either”.

Main purpose of Christian theology is to find ways for the restoration of human beings to a new heaven and a new earth. This kind of theological reflection produces in such thinking almost exclusively anthropocentric human-centered world. So, the Christian theology today is so anthropocentric. It is made to be anthropocentric so that it can be useful for the benefit of humanity. Even Jesus died for this more anthropocentric human-centered world plan. However, Natives have instead focused their discussion on the gifts of the spirits, the timing of those gifts, the possession of those gifts, whether they are still available, the purpose of the gifting or so on.

In Genesis 1-2, creation is described as primarily and inherently in relation with God because it is innately spiritual. The spirit of God “hovering over the waters” and existing in the rest of creation as life has been given to it. Relationship with God (or spirits) is, in fact, the intent of the act of creation. Each part of creation in its respective way through its form and function reflects this. (See Genesis 21 or 28-30)

These are nested in a set of relationship. Animals, plants, birds and fishes are linked to their creator spiritually and intuitively. An intuition that is retained in the rest of creation but which in humans has been supplanted by ego and anthropocentrism. Unlike humanity, the rest of creation lives in constant harmony with the spiritual world and the intent of creator.

The redemptive act of Christianity is about restoring the severed relationship and relatedness as it were. It is about meeting the full companionship of the first human being with its environment. Their spiritual relatedness to one another and to the human is nevertheless described partially in the process of naming these relationships. reciprocal nature

Understanding God’s original intention in creation makes it clear for individuals to grasp that restoration shall be defined only in more profound terms of loss. These shall include restoration of relationship and relatedness of all things with the spirit. It is not simply restoration of human soul salvation though. Our fist parents descend into a state of separation with the creator as they willfully choose to break relationship.

Throughout the history, the Church has been exploited in many ways. Taking into consideration the fact that the Church is a male-dominated institution, this inequality leads to an idolatry that misrepresent the intended relationship between humankind, the creator and the rest of creation. This is the curse. The creation is subjected to its effects.