Image credit: https://www.geographyrealm.com/equal-earth-map-projection/

World maps, global bias, and the infinite nature of God

by Sarah-Leah Pimentel

On 4 September, the United Nations adopted a resolution to replace our traditional world map with one that more accurately reflects the actual landmass of the world’s continents.

For more than 450 years, we’ve typically viewed representations of our planet as a flat two-dimensional space criss-crossed by latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. Yet we know the Earth is a globe, not flat. Both realities exist at once because they serve different purposes.

The Mercator Map was designed in 1569 to help navigators keep their bearings on the open ocean and recognise the land masses they were approaching. Astronomers, on the other hand, are more interested in Earth’s position in relation to our solar system and the wider cosmos. Each depiction optimises for something different and yet, for hundreds of years, we have accepted both as true.

Despite its navigational benefits, the Mercator Map has also shaped our perceptions in subtle, harmful ways. Looking at this map, we have internalised that the continents are bordered by massive icy caps of uninhabitable terrain, making Greenland look similar in size to Africa. Consequently, the Global South seems much smaller than the more politically and economically imposing Northern Hemisphere.

These perceptions are not merely geographic. They have shaped political discourse for 400 years. The political maps we coloured as children taught us an unconscious lesson: Africa is a small continent carved up into 50-odd countries, perpetually embroiled in conflict. We easily fall into the Conradian trap of viewing Africa as a place of divided chaos or “horror”, contrasted against North America, a landmass depicted as two highly organised countries, one of which has dominated world history for the last century.

The UN resolution asks us to consider a different view by adopting the Equal Earth Map. In it, Africa and Australia are 14 and 3 times the size of Greenland, respectively. Africa appears as the second-largest continent, representing 20% of the world’s total land mass and 25% of its nation-states. It reveals that Africa is not an insignificant, troublesome blob at the centre of the world, but an active participant shaping world culture, thought and economics.

Interestingly, the United States was the only country to vote against the resolution, calling the Equal Earth Map “ideological.” The US did not reject the mathematical science behind the map. It rejected the acknowledgement that America is not the centre of the universe.

What does this geography lesson have to do with the spiritual life?

Just as navigators, astronomers, and political scientists require different maps to understand the world, there are different ways into the spiritual life. There is no single, exclusive path into the heart of God. Forms of prayer that served me well in my youth may no longer nourish my adult faith. The simplistic religious concepts I learned as a child revealed only a fraction of a larger, deeper truth that I’m now being called to explore. Perhaps I’m being asked to encounter God through a different form of spirituality or through the experiences of someone from a different religious tradition.

Changing our perspective is difficult. It introduces questions that unsettle our comfortable paradigms. Seeing God, myself, and others in a new way challenges the notion that God can be contained by our personal images, upbringings, life experiences, cultures and languages.

To grow spiritually, we must learn to hold the tension that multiple perspectives can be true at the same time and that accepting this is not a rejection of God. When we finally stop mistaking our limited map for the whole territory, we open ourselves to the limitless fullness of the divine reality.

This week, let us have the courage to step off the edges of what we know and trust that God is present in the uncharted expanse.