**7. The current state and the covenant of fate**

Can we think of the "current state"—of the plague, of the challenges of sustainability—as the natural state, which requires human partnership? Does the "current state" of "global warming" and other diverse environmental and technology issues require a new social contract? I would like to think of the current situation, as a change that humanity is facing these days.

There can be a new social contract to connect people, to deal with the problems of the natural challenges that are common to all of humanity. We should think about the historical circumstances of this time—and how to connect all of humanity together. Instead of competing with each other, instead of separating the rich and poor countries, instead of creating competition between economic and medical needs between country and country—we can allow for the signing of a new international contract.

Can we think of the "current situation"—of the plague, of the challenges of sustainability—as the natural state, which requires human partnership? Does the "current state" of "global warming" and other diverse environmental and technology issues require a new social contract? I would like to think of the current situation, as a change that humanity is facing these days

Our time allows us to engage in hope, but at the same time make place for fear and despair. Although we want to think that global warming is common to all of humanity, and therefore, should lead to a universal human partnership, it is possible that the results of the current situation will lead to a struggle against each other. It may be that the consequences of the ecological crisis, will eventually lead to a series of wars, and even world wars. Why? Because humanity may be too large a group to think of a social alliance. Humans may prefer to keep their means and abilities to themselves rather than share it with all other humans. Indeed, this may be a mistake, but for any country, it is a good enough reason for the political powers not to share with others.

### **8. Responsible theology facing contemporary challenges**

There are different and varied ways to think about the meanings of the COVID-19 epidemic and its challenges [14–16]. Some are related to the ongoing suspicion that the scientific world is out of control. Some suspect that the plague is not a result of a natural disaster, but the result of the development of science and medicine. It could be worse, like the unwanted result of creating biological weapons, one that gave birth to an unplanned mutation. It might have been developed purposely to create chaos, or maybe something went wrong in the process.

Like the descriptions of the Golem, man's attempt to control his environment led to a devastatingly unplanned outcome. This suspicious approach is not an immediate political or socio-economic suspicion, but a description in the microcosm, of industrial and economic processes, in which the person seeking to control nature, to control the world, and is surprised to find that nature continues to control it. Man creates the Golem—or robot—so that a machine can help him manage his personal or national affairs. And here it turns out that the Golem is nothing but a destructive and dangerous monster. And as in a horror movie, the creature created by man, gets his monstrous nickname and threatens society and even its creator.

We may be dealing with an act of natural destruction, of ecological damage, whose severe effects are encountered through melting glaciers, global warming, and climate change, including the outbreak of new diseases we have not known to date. The twenty-first century is the century of man's encounter with ecological processes and their impact on man: significant damage to flora and fauna—extinction of animal species and of plants—which ultimately harms man himself. Previous warnings of diseases have become a global warning through the epidemic of Covid 19. However, it becomes a threatening warning against the next diseases we face.

We may have to direct our thoughts to the modesty of mankind, to his limits, to the ability of science and politics to organize our lives. The Covid epidemic has brought us face to face with a lot of uncertainty and question marks, about what we can and cannot know about our environment. It has revealed to us the human limits in knowledge, deed, and influence. The most important discovery of the plague is not what we know, but rather what we do not know.

I want to suggest that these questions are the great questions of sustainability facing humanity at this time. Humanity pretends on the one hand to control nature, but on the other hand, understands the limits of her knowledge and learns in the hard way about the limitations of her actions. The Age of COVID forces us to rethink the meaning of human action, and its religious meaning in particular.

I want to think of the story of heaven as a parable, since we have supposedly turned the whole earth into a paradise on earth [17, 18].

We knew most of the paths of the Garden, like the first man we were able to name all the animals, like the first man we learned to know which tree should be eaten from and which is forbidden, and like the first man we guarded and nurtured the garden … for human needs. In this parable, the tree of knowledge of good and evil is not a particular tree, but represents what we do not know completely, and those things whose purpose we do not understand. And here, as a man of the parable of the garden—the man and the woman in heaven—if we too are not careful about guarding and respecting the garden, we will find ourselves expelled from heaven. In a sense, what seemed like a parable of divine punishment, seems now the necessary result of the activity of man in a world that he does not respect.

*The Challenge of Sustainability: A New Covenant for Humanity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.106822*

The close reading of the parable of the garden also reveals the moral significance of human activity. Not only within the relationships between God and man, but within the relationships between man and man. The parable of the garden in Eden, becomes our world, a world in which ecological deterioration becomes a problem of climate crisis, provokes diseases and epidemics, and turns out to be a theological problem.
