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Principle #1
The Inherent Worth and Dignity of Every Person
Reading for "To See With Open Eye"
Luke 10: 25-37
25. Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he said, " what must I do to inherit eternal life?
26. He said to him, "What is written in the law? What do you read there?
27. He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
28. And he said to him, "You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."
29. But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?
30. Jesus replied, "A man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.
31. Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw
him, he passed by on the other side.
32. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
33. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.
34. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
35. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, "Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.
36. Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?
37. He said, "The one who showed him mercy." Jesus said unto him, "Go, and do likewise."
"To See With Open Eye...."
(The Challenge of our First Principle)
As you know, we UU's covenant to affirm and promote seven principles. Do you know what they are? Can you recite the first one? It's the inherent worth and dignity of every person. When I first decided to devote a sermon to this topic, I thought we would be spending some time together exploring what we already know. But as I spent more time thinking about it, I came to appreciate that this Principle, more than the others, separates us from the religious mainstream, and that the issues surrounding it aren't straightforward. I realized that most of the time I don't even recognize when the Principle should be in play or whose inherent worth and dignity I should be questioning. Suddenly it was hard even to know where to start.
To begin we do need a brief history lesson about religion's answers to the question "Who are we?" One of the basic disagreements that our forebears, early religious liberals, had with Christian orthodoxy was over the nature of human nature. Orthodox Calvinism, the religion of early America, asserted that humanity is born sinful; we are innately depraved.
Liberals rejected that idea. John Mayhew, who preached here in Massachusetts in the mid 1700',s helped set the stage for later Unitarianism when he openly denied the doctrine of innate depravity, stressing, not the actual but the potential for goodness in human nature.
Later, William Ellery Channing built on the idea of humanity's innate goodness. In his famous sermon entitled, "Likeness to God," Channing proposed that there is a "divinity within us" which can render humankind "more and more partakers of the moral perfection of the Supreme Being." This was revolutionary for its day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was to speak even more boldly along these lines in his historic "Divinity School Address." (1838) He said,
"Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished by its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me."
Let me repeat Emerson's idea. Emerson said that the greatness of Jesus was that he correctly estimated the greatness of humanity and lived in it, and that we too have the same potential. That is powerful stuff.
Mayhew, Channing and Emerson are only a few of the men and women of our heritage who have proclaimed the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, who believed that we are not depraved, that we have the potential to be like Jesus. No wonder this conviction is listed first among our principles.
The fact that we agree about humankind's inherent worth and have it writ large in our principles can obscure the fact that it is by no means uniformly embraced in society. Because we actually may be in the minority in asserting the inherent worth and dignity of every person, it behooves us to take a moment to respectfully review, as best we can, how others think.
I remember the day I revealed to an old friend that I was switching careers to become a UU minister. He wished me luck, expressed his happiness for me and mused, "I've known a number of Unitarian Universalists. There's nothing wrong with UU's that the four horsemen of the apocalypse won't cure." The implication of his remark, of course, is that we are naive, that we somehow haven't experienced deep suffering.
The point of view which we espouse is characterized by others, especially our detractors, as liberal optimism. I should mention that we aren't the only religious liberals. There are many individual Catholic and Protestant liberals, and Reform Judaism is liberal - so our first Principle does not stand alone in the religious landscape. Unitarian Universalism is unusual, though, in that our whole denomination comes solidly from the liberal perspective.
Perhaps the most outspoken critic of liberal optimism was Reinhold Neibuhr. Neibuhr, considered by some to be America's greatest native-born theologian actually began his first pastorate as a liberal in a Protestant church in Detroit just as the automobile industry was taking off. But the callous injustice of the newly exploding industrial society shocked him.to the core. He felt his idealism was impotent in the face of the evils of that society, and he soon came to believe his liberal preachments about moral optimism were incompetent and irrelevant. Looking with open eye at early industrial Detroit destroyed Neibuhr's belief in the inevitable improvability of man. It destroyed also his belief that humanity has a "spark of the divine" within.
Neibuhr has been called the 20th century theologian of sin, but he called himself a "Christian realist." A realistic understanding of the world, he felt, has to come to grips with humanity's capacity to sin in a way that liberalism doesn't. His concern was that humankind's tendency toward wrongdoing is so profound and so pervasive that it requires constant vigilance. His love for humanity led him away from the idea of mankind's inherent worth, which he accepted no longer, and inspired him to lay out an extensive new doctrine of sin. He believed a sound theology needs to acknowledge humanity's sinfulness right up front -- that it is an appropriate starting point because it is truthful, and because it leads to a better policing of our souls.
There are many intelligent, kind and good men and women in America today whose theology and religious grounding reflects a picture of humanity like Reinhold Neibuhr's. Most who embrace this harsher view do it thoughtfully, because, in the long run they feel it will better serve humanity. It appears to be a truer path to the Kingdom of God. For them, the Unitarian Universalist assertion of the inherent worth and dignity of every person just doesn't make sense given the world they see....Such is the world in which we Unitarian Universalists covenant to affirm and promote the seven Principles....
Until recently, I thought I knew what each of the principles meant. Last year, however, I began to suspect myself after delivering a sermon in which I had extolled the virtues of the principles rather proudly. In a brief talk-back at the end of the service a member of the congregation stood up and said he didn't believe that people have automatic inherent worth; people, he said, have to earn his respect.
Driving away that day I found myself thinking about "inherent worth" and "respect." The question raised in the talk-back was a good one. My instincts tell me that I want people to earn my respect. If I assume the inherent worth and dignity of every person, does that imply that my respect goes out equally to all? If so, is my respect meaningless? I remember the distinguished Jewish author Elie Wiesel describing God's appearance at Mount Sinai, this way:
"Think about it. God decided for the first and last time...to reveal himself....You would expect God to give you a lecture on theology at least. After all, it's his domain....Instead....He gave you all kinds of commands about human relations: Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not lie;...Why did he do that? It was so simple. But this was the lesson: God can take care of himself. What he had to give man was the dignity of man."
Wiesel is saying that humankind earns its dignity by abiding by the commandments --That we do earn it. His remarks support the comment so thoughtfully made by the member of our congregation.
But the UU Principle which affirms and promotes the inherent worth and dignity of every person disagrees with that, and allows for no exceptions. It says a certain level of respect should be accorded to all, even to those who don't earn it, simply because we are human. Why is a valid question. You may have your own answers. For me it makes sense by virtue of the fact that every human being is the product of 15 billion years of evolution and therefore precious; and by virtue of the fact that each person is someone's child, a vessel invested with some mother and father's hopes and dreams; by virtue of being a fellow member of a civilization which we hope to improve for the sake of our children. All this and more is caught up in the promises and potential of every individual. I agree with a writer named Bonaro Overstreet who said this,
"Where my relationships to others are soundly growing, I am growing. Where they are halted in their growth, I am halted. Where they are twisted in their growth, I am twisted in mine...Self respect and respect for others go together.... Our attitude toward ourselves and toward others is one: it is our attitude toward human nature."10
All of this has been background theory about why one would accept or reject the First Principle. A look at the story of the good Samaritan that we heard earlier is a good place to start talking about how our belief affects our practice. If I were to ask how the First Principle helps us to respond to that story, your first thoughts might be similar to mine. I thought, "I would hope that anyone passing by would recognize the inherent worth and dignity of the beaten and bleeding man and stop to help him. The First Principle tells us that he has inherent worth, he is our neighbor, and so we should respond to his need." Those were my first thoughts. But over time I've realized what a partial response that was. You see, the way I used the first principle missed the point of the parable. Jesus's story gave two answers to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" not one. The first was that our neighbor is the one who is in need. I got that. The second part was that a neighbor is also, and this is the difficult teaching, that person who shows mercy to one in need, the way the Samaritan did. Jesus's instruction was, "Go, and do likewise." Show mercy to those who need you.
I thought that seeing the inherent worth of the man in need was a good application of the First Principle. But the deeper question was really about the Priest and the Levite. How does our belief in the innate goodness of humanity deal with the fact that they didn't they stop and help? Are they depraved? Where is the spark of their divinity? Where is their inherent worth? This part of the story is really about us, of course. The question is, why do so many of us pass by those who are in need?
Orthodox Christian teaching would explain the Priest and the Levite by saying Yes, humanity is weak, lazy, selfish and depraved.
"It's built in," they'd say. "Only through Jesus, the son of God, can we rise above our condition, and we have to work at it constantly."
The Unitarian Universalists, however, would be transfixed on that Samaritan. "How do you explain him?" they'd demand. "Huh? He's pretty divine!"
Rather than answer, of course, the Christians would then challenge: "But if humanity has such potential, if we're as potentially divine as you say, " then how do you explain the Levite and the Priest?"
Now that's a good question. UU's would probably point to ignorance, ordinary selfishness, lack of social and spiritual maturity -- as barriers to their divinity, and so they passed by. They'd say, "Only through constant search for truth and meaning and constant struggling toward justice and spiritual wholeness do we rise above our condition - -and we have to work at it constantly."
If the Samaritan story is any indicator, then maybe it doesn't make any difference which view of humanity we have - whether you believe humanity to be essentially sinful or born with the same potential as Jesus. But the Samaritan story deals with rather ordinary human failure. If UU's are committed to respecting others even if the other pays no homage to any of the commandments, is able to live without being bound by morality or conscience -is driven solely by greed, is a brutal killer, or, a Hitler... a valid question is: what resources does Unitarian Universalism have to deal with human monsters? Now consider the following story
When he was twenty years old, Aikido martial arts expert, Terry Dobson, was on a train in Tokyo when a huge, drunk and dirty laborer staggered into his car screaming wildly. This drunken man swung at a woman holding a baby knocking her over, then advanced looking for other victims.
Although Aikido is an art of reconciliation -- it studies how to resolve conflict, not start it, Dobson admitted that in his heart he had always wanted a legitimate opportunity whereby he might save the innocent by destroying the guilty. And this was it. He blew the brute a kiss successfully attracting his ire. He was going to flatten this guy.
But just as the drunk hauled off to hit him a voice from the side called out, "Hey!" and a little old man, beaming happily, invited the drunk to sit down. As he defiantly stood his ground, the immaculate little gentleman asked the drunk what he'd been drinking. He ignored the swearing which he got in reply and then conjectured "sake?" saying in a pleased voice that he and his wife enjoyed sake often. He smiled into the dirty lout's face. The man stopped and looked confused, and then suddenly he was sobbing, admitting that his wife was dead, that he had no home and no job, and he was ashamed of himself.
The Aikido expert had seen and was ready to respond to a "human monster;" but the old man assumed "a spark of the divine." Had the drunk been flattened he would have been arrested and Dobson would have been a hero. The story as it played out illuminates everything that is so difficult about living the First Principle: when the Aikido expert left the train the drunk's head was in the old man's lap. So what should happen next? Perhaps no one has a clear answer. And yet, "Go and do likewise," Jesus said.
In ordinary life that is where our idealism falls apart. Belief in humanity's depravity allows us to feel all too good about snuffing out evil or removing or isolating those who experience problems. But when we do this we are, in fact, discarding our own failures. There were two experts on that train capable of intervening on behalf of those who were in danger. Had the little old man not been present it would have been appropriate to deck the drunk because he was a danger to everyone. It is good to have a variety of responses available.
Belief in the worth and dignity of every person forces us, as people in relationship, neighbors, if you will, to own physical, psychic, structural, and emotional violence as evidence of our mutual failure in our collective quest for the divine. Living the First Principle also leaves us to assume tremendous responsibilities for those in need when our lives are already enormously burdened. But that's what it's all about.
We all face decisions each and every day about whether we're going to recognize the divinity within another who needs us or write that person off. The great difficulty is that in order to recognize the divinity within another we have to tap it in ourselves and dwell within it. Emerson says that Jesus is alone in all history in estimating the greatness of humanity and being true to it. Our First Principle challenges us to that standard.