Eyre Lines

At “Respectful Conversation” I find an article titled “On Biblical Morality, Cognitive Psychology, and Narrative Ethics”. What’s not to like about such a title?

In the course of an interesting treatment, I find “At a more abstract level, we find Christians who emphasize holiness, purity, and separation, and Christians who prefer compassion, nurture, and inclusion. We have Christians who gravitate toward authority and hierarchy, and Christians who lean toward equality and democracy. Aren’t all these concepts in the Bible? What gives? So how—and why—and on what basis should we choose which moral impulses should lead us?”

I find that I am pretty thoroughly on the side of the second category in each of these binary oppositions (my initial response would have been “absolutely”. Now, I don’t much like binary oppositions; my initial reaction is to look for the false dichotomy, or at least the continuum which is being misrepresented. I am, after all, not a computer – I can think analog (pace those neuroscientists who would argue the toss – if at root it still actually is all zeros and ones, it has evolved to produce a fair modelling of analog). I naturally look for where I didn’t really fit in a system with binary oppositions of that sort. However, at first sight, I am very clearly in favour of compassion, nurture and inclusion at the expense of holiness, purity and separation; I am very clearly in favour of equality and democracy over authority and hierarchy. To me, both of these flow directly from being a panentheist mystic, both of them flow from being a follower of Jesus. Those are my two absolutes, other absolutes are, to me, illusions and often damaging illusions.

So where am I going wrong?

I do not, it seems, discount holiness and purity altogether. Granted, as I see God as radically immanent, it is difficult for me to see any one thing as more holy or more pure than another; all is in God, so all is holy. And yet, in myself, I do consider holiness and purity; I consider holiness and purity of intention, of purpose, of love (loving God, loving my neighbour as myself). Using the Twelve Step version of the Great Commandments (love God, clean house, help others), the second requires me to attend to my own inner state; this should be as pure, as holy as it is possible for me to make it (and I can then trust to God’s grace for amendment of the remainder). However, I do not consider myself required or empowered to consider the purity of holiness of others; the state of others is between them and God; it is something over which I am very largely powerless, and which I need to accept, and to accept radically.

Again, the third part “help others” (or in the original “Love my neighbour as myself”) requires me not to separate myself, not to preserve my purity and holiness against the potential corruption of contact with “the other”. If I separate myself, how can I include, how can I nurture? I doubt I can then even really be compassionate, as compassion demands action, otherwise it is a mere fleeting emotion. Here, acceptance of what cannot be changed is inapplicable; courage to change what can is an imperative. There can be no life in faith without works, as James points out; if there is some trickle of life remaining in faith, in compassion, in love, without expression it will die.

Here, though, there is a potential problem. Having compassion for and including those who are not fulfilling the quest for inner holiness and purity and whom we cannot change risks us effectively condoning, encouraging, enabling, supporting their ongoing self-destruction and, potentially, destruction of others. There has to be a balance, there has to be, in the end, an acknowledgement that yes, we cannot change them, and that our own purity of purpose, our own ongoing compassion and love, our own faith may be compromised by involving ourselves further or to a greater extent. Twelve Step refers to this as “separate with love”. We are enjoined to love others “as ourselves”, not (in the general case) instead of ourselves. There is no balance if we prefer ourselves, there is no balance if we prefer the other.

It is worth stressing that the stronger one is in one’s own self-regulation, self-knowledge and purity of purpose and commitment, the more one will be able to include and nurture. In turn, it is often the case that the more one includes and nurtures, the stronger one will be in ones self.

So to authority and hierarchy versus equality and democracy. The mystical experience leads, I think, inevitably to a radical non-preference of one over another and a valuing of each for himself, making no comparisons. It leads inevitably to egalitarian and democratic impulses. And yet human society inevitably arranges itself into hierarchies, into leaders and followers. The experience of revolutions down the ages has been that the structures are overturned, the ruling class brought low – and within a short period there is a new ruling class, and new structures of oppression. We are not ready in practice for radical egalitarianism, much as we may all be equal in the sight of God. Perhaps in the Kingdom, part-instituted for 2000 years and, I take on faith, growing steadily, humanity will be transformed and able to put this into practice.

As matters are now and have been for the history of mankind, radical egalitarianism if enforced would be individualistic anarchy, and it would have to be enforced, as it could never grow naturally. There, of course, is the problem – the structures of enforcement would be hierarchical and authoritarian themselves; they cannot be provided by human agencies. The nearest to a balance yet found is democracy; to paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy is a lousy system of government, but it’s the best lousy system which has so far been tried.

So we are stuck with authorities, with hierarchies. I cannot advocate outright anarchy, as I know it will not work, however much faith I may have (it would require very many people to have that faith, perhaps all). How do we ameliorate their inevitable damaging effects?

The first thing which springs to mind is that although we are going to have leaders, we should never follow them blindly; if they belong to a political party, we should never follow that party blindly. In other words, we should never give over to them all power, we should always be involved personally in political processes. We should agitate, we should criticise, we should use whatever power we possess to curb the inevitable tendency of those with power to become corrupted by it, no matter what the purity of their intentions may at some point have been. There are very few, if any, who can avoid the lure of power for power’s sake, of control for control’s sake (and, having been an elected politician for some twenty years earlier in my life, I am not one of them; I can only say that having realised this, I left politics).

Then again, should we involve ourselves in the political process to the point where we attain power, we should be extremely vigilant of our own motivations. This is itself an involvement, a call for compassion, nurture and inclusion which we are tasked with carrying out, and with it come the potential pitfalls I mention of risking our own purity and holiness, magnified by the political process itself. One particular stress which can be borne in mind is the radical reversal proposed by Jesus, among others, that the greatest among us should regard themselves as the servants of those below them. If you come to power, it is by the will of those you govern (yes, even if you are an autocrat – government is possible only with the consent of those governed) and it is incumbent upon you to acknowledge the contract between yourself and the governed, which is that in return for handing over some of their power, you must use it in their interests and not under any circumstances in your own, even your own psychological interests (to feel in control, to feel self-worth, i.e. importance, however good those may be, as well as to feel superior and to dominate).

Above all, we should remember that our leaders are our equals, to whom we have entrusted a mission, and if we are leaders, that we are the equal of our followers (though entrusted with a mission by them), no more and no less than that. None of us are perfect, our leaders will make mistakes, as leaders we will make mistakes. If we cannot learn from our own mistakes, we should cease doing the job; if our leaders cannot learn from their mistakes (and admitting them is the first step) we should seek to remove them.

What I am saying here about authorities and hierarchies does not just apply to government. It applies to any group of human beings (even if apparently disorganised, they will acquire leaders and hierarchies). It applies to companies, to political parties, to pressure groups, to clubs and societies, to churches and even to families just as well as to governments. Tread cautiously with all of these; you cannot and must not separate yourself from all of them in a bid for radical individualism, you equally must never submerge yourself in them, deindividuate and abrogate your responsibility towards yourself. And your responsibility to love God, clean house and help others.