“MORE THAN JUST WORDS:
INHERENT HUMAN WORTH AND
DIGNITY”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday,
All
Let me begin with a word about the
nature of human nature. It began, I
suppose, like everything began, in the Garden of Eden. It was there, the myth tells us, that human
beings first sinned. Thousands of years
later, certain people gave it the name “original sin.” And for some people, that represents the
brute fact of being human: that we are sinful, evil, that we are born that way,
and that we will remain that way unless something as powerful as God
intervenes.
The early Unitarians had a different
view. More than any other theological
concern, they objected to that characterization of human nature. People are not naturally evil. Yes, they can choose evil, but that is a
matter of choice, not nature.
The great 20th century
Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams reminds us that human nature has a
reputation, and that reputation seems to change over the course of
history. Sometimes the reputation is an
honorable one, sometimes it is disgraceful.
Over the years, some people have been saying some pretty bad things
about human nature and has sullied our reputation as humans.
The affirming view of human nature
is perhaps the defining value of our Unitarian and Universalist religious
tradition. We often refer to it as the
“First Principle.” Indeed, it is the
first principle listed in our Statement of Principles. But it is also the first principle in terms of importance. All other values flow from it.
The UUA Statement of Principles is
not a creedal statement of beliefs. It
is an outline of the values we share. Most
of them seem fairly easy and straight-forward, but beneath the surface is found
not only an almost uncomfortable complexity, but also an internal tension that
raises certain challenges to our values.
The first principle, offers an excellent example of that complexity and
ethical tension.
Today, it seems
simple upon first encountering it: We
affirm and promote "the inherent worth and dignity of every
person." What could be simpler and
what could be more obvious? This first principle of the UUA statement
of principles sounds fairly reasonable, maybe even trite: “we affirm and promote the inherent worth and
dignity of every person.” Upon deeper
examination, some troubling questions that can arise.
For example,
does everyone in fact have inherent
worth and dignity? Isn't
"dignity" something we earn, not something that every person has
inherently?
The most common
challenge to our first principle is simple.
Does this principle apply, for example, to Adolph Hitler or Charles
Manson, or Osama bin Ladin? Didn’t they,
through their cruel behaviors, relinquish any rights to inherent worth and
dignity? The greatest modern challenge
to our first principle came on
Walter
Royal Jones was the chair of the UUA Committee that drafted the statement of
principles when it was adopted in 1985.
When asked whether the terrorist attacks of in 2001 should cause us to
modify the statement, he said absolutely not:
“The principle
is not and was never intended to be a blanket endorsement of everything that
everybody does.” Instead it “sets a standard
by which our behavior can be judged.”
Jones recalls that when the UU principles were
first introduced, one of his parishioners said to him that she could never
endorse the inherent worth of Adolf Hitler.
“It
went through my mind that we could not judge Hitler if it were not that his
behavior violated the inherent worth of all the people for whose torture and
death he was responsible. If we back
away from our affirmation of the sacred potential, the inherent worth of every
person, aren’t we agreeing with Hitler and bin Laden that some people should be
eliminated? …..
I focus on
these cases because they help illustrate what this principle means and doesn’t
mean. It helps to keep in mind that this
is a value statement, and not a
statement of belief. It does not claim the
worth and dignity of every person; it claims that we will affirm and promote
worth and dignity in everyone. It is a
not statement about other people; it is a principle about us, about how we will
treat other people, and about where our values lie. It is not words declaring the value of
others, it is more than words. It is a
statement of how we aspire to treat others.
Bill
Schulz, the former President of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and
recently Executive Director of Amnesty International,
Our
First Principle, “does not claim that every person has worth and dignity. Rather, it is an affirmation that worth and
dignity are values we attribute to
human beings. It is also a strategy,
asserting that every person has certain fundamental rights, and that we can
make the world a better place when we treat people as having worth and dignity,
even if they do not treat us that way.”
I am reminded
of the biblical account of Jesus, when his disciples wanted to honor him and he
advised them to care for others instead, even the least worthy. "If you do it to the least of
these," he said, "you do it to me." Affirming the worth and dignity of another
person does not deny or prohibit punishment for offensive actions by agreed-upon
due process, and it does not mean we have to like everyone! It means simply that everyone deserves to be
treated with fairness, simply by the fact of being human.
In some sense
this is the polar opposite, the reverse mirror image, of the more traditional
doctrine of original sin, a doctrine, of course, that Jesus never taught. In some circles it is believed that everyone
is born stained with evil and that only by their actions or beliefs or faith
they can escape the natural condition of human depravity. Contrariwise, our principle affirms that
everyone is born with worth as a human being, and it is our responsibility to
honor that, even when there are tough cases where their worth is brought into
question by their actions. The fact is
that if we want a world where human worth and dignity is honored, we have to do
it ourselves, even in the tough cases.
Another way of understanding
this distinction is to reflect on parenting.
Parents are taught
that when correcting a child who has misbehaved, never to say, “you are a bad
person.” Rather, “what you did was
wrong,” or “you made a bad choice.”
Parents should affirm the worth of the child, even when (or especially
when) the child has done something wrong, saying, “I love you, but I don’t love
what you just did,” or “I love you, but I don’t love your behavior”
This distinction between the value
of a person and the rightness or wrongness of their behavior was an insight
central to the early Universalist tradition.
The Universalists argued that a good and loving God would never condemn
anyone to everlasting torture, regardless of their behavior. Though people should have to answer to their
decisions in life, no one is utterly, hopelessly, lost.
But again, I
say, this principle is not a statement about other people. It is a statement about us, and how we aspire
treat others. The words "inherent
worth and dignity of every person" is not a complete sentence. The beginning of that sentence is this: "We... covenant to affirm and
promote" this value.
Another
important aspect of this principle is that it is easy to forget that if we hope
to affirm the worth and dignity of everyone, everyone includes ourselves. For many of us, it is easy to be
compassionate and respect the rights of the downtrodden and the needy. Sometimes, it is far harder to honor our own
value, our own sense of worth and dignity.
And for most of us, that should be the starting place.
I wish to move
briefly to address another problem some may have with this principle. In what sense can we say that human beings
actually have inherent worth and dignity?
Aren't these qualities just mere concepts? Is there some scientific test that can
measure a person's worth and dignity, or even detect whether a person has
any? I've never seen a picture of human
worth. I've never held a morsel of
dignity in my hand. And neither have
you. Isn't this whole concept of worth
and dignity something from our imagination, with no empirical proof?
Yes it is. It is the subject of a kind of faith. Can we doubt whether there is anything such
as human dignity and worth? Yes we
can. Do we therefore have to reject it
because it can be doubted? Not
necessarily. These are values, not
things. We have the will to choose our
values.
In some sense
this first principle is, I think, our Unitarian Universalist statement of
faith. I remind you that this is not
creedal statement of belief, but a principle to live by. It is not so much a claim about the worth and
dignity of other people as it is a statement about us and an affirmation about
how we will treat other people. A more
technically accurate rendering of this principle, though it would fail any test
of literary merit, might be this: Our
relationships with others will be premised on the belief in their having
inherent worth and dignity. In some
sense, it doesn't matter whether they do.
It does matter whether we treat them "as if" they do.
I
have tried to discuss the complexities of our first principle by focusing in on
some of the more difficult cases and some of the more philosophical
quandaries. The fact is that in the vast
majority of cases, applying this principle in theory or practice isn’t as tough
as the circumstances I’ve mentioned. More
often than not, affirming the inherent worth and dignity of someone we meet is
something that could come naturally to us.
For
the next part of the sermon, I turn to what seems to me a much easier, though
very specific, application of this principle.
**********************************************
One reason for raising this topic
today is because in two weeks our congregation will vote on becoming certified
as a “Welcoming Congregation.” This
question is directly connected to our first principle.
Let me offer a little
background. The Welcoming Congregation
program is a project that prepares and educates this congregation about being
welcoming to diversity, but especially to those of a minority sexual
orientation – gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender. It was designed in the 1990s when surveys
found that there existed within our church communities underlying prejudices
and lack of knowledge which resulted in alienation or exclusion. In other words, we fell short of our wish to
respect the inherent worth and dignity in these cases. The program was created to encourage dialogue
about inclusiveness, to educate, but most of all to create our churches as a
safe place for people who are not accepted and feel unsafe in so many other areas
of our society.
Over the last year and a half, our Welcoming
Congregation committee has offered a number forums and workshops, has looked at
our organizational structure and by-laws, and done a thorough job of trying to
raise awareness and help us look more closely so that we will avoid being
unintentionally unwelcoming.
The most common first reaction to
this program tends to be the comment, “But we’re already a welcoming congregation.
We are warm and friendly and accepting of everyone, including gays and
lesbians, so why would we need a program to confirm what we already know?”
I say this is a common reaction to
the program precisely because that was my thinking when I first heard about it
years ago. I wondered why, since we are a welcoming congregation by nature,
and since we are open to all people,
and since we do not accept
discrimination of any kind, then why do we need to go through a formal process
in order to receive UUA certification as a welcoming congregation?
The reason for the program is to be
able to say, more than just by words, that we have made an effort to be intentionally
welcoming and provide a community where everyone can feel safe by being who
they are. The key words are “effort” and
“intentionally.” We don’t just say we are welcoming, we have made it
such a high priority that we have worked on it together.
I mentioned in a sermon last year
the difference between “tolerance,” “acceptance,” and “welcoming.” To be “tolerant” of someone is to allow them
to be who they are, to live and let live.
To be “accepting” of someone acknowledge they have intrinsic value in
who they are. But to be “welcoming” is
to say that this person has important value to
me. I welcome this person because I want to have this person in my world,
not just tolerate them.
Being
a Welcoming congregation goes beyond tolerance, and beyond even acceptance of
someone as an equal. It is saying this
person has something of value for
us. Don’t misunderstand. They are not important to us because of their sexual
orientation. Nor, for that matter, are
they important to us in spite of their sexual orientation. They are important to us, and their sexual
orientation does not affect that importance in any way. In other words, from a welcoming perspective,
there is no “they” and “us.” THEY are
part of US. That is the point of being welcoming! That is also the point of affirming the
inherent worth and dignity of every person.
There is no “us” and “them.”
This project is a logical and
inescapable extension of the First Principle of the Unitarian Universalist
Association: the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It is also, I might add, a logical extension
of the teachings of Jesus who not only preached, but practiced welcoming those
who were treated as outcasts in his own society. This program simply follows that lead to its
relevance in our world today.
At our congregational meeting in two
weeks, you will be asked to endorse our application to be certified by the UUA
as a Welcoming Congregation. We have
taken all the steps that are stipulated for that certification. As of now, over 500 UU congregations gone
through the process for certification – that’s about half or more. It is time we do so as well.
Why be a Welcoming Congregation when
we are already a “welcoming congregation?”
The difference may become more obvious when you capitalize the
letters. For example, there is a
difference between a “democrat” (small letter “d”) and a “Democrat”
(capitalized), or between a republican (small “r) and “Republican”
(capitalized). In the lower case, the
words identify a general way of looking at things, a world-view. When the words are capitalized, it indicates
that the person has given some level of commitment to that world-view, has made
that world-view a part of who they are, and stood up to be counted.
We are a “welcoming congregation”
(lower case letters), and we were before the process started. This process brings us to a new place, where
we are a “Welcoming Congregation” (capital letters). Those capital letters declare that this is
not just a world-view, it is a deliberate and intentional commitment, it is
part of who we want to be, who we aspire to be: to affirm and promote the
inherent worth of every person, not just in words alone, but also in commitment
as a congregation.
Human nature has indeed been sullied
in reputation over the years. Our first
principle is an attempt to reclaim its virtue.
I close with powerful words on the topic written by Channing in 1828.
“I do and I
must reverence human nature. Neither the
sneers of a worldly skepticism nor the groans of a gloomy theology disturb my
faith in its godlike powers and tendencies.
I know how it is despised, how it has been oppressed, how civil and religious
establishments have for ages conspired to crush it. I know its history. I shut my eyes on none of its weaknesses and
crimes.
But injured,
trampled on, and scorned as our nature is, I still turn to it with intense
sympathy and strong hope. I bless it for its kind affections, for its strong
and tender love. I honor it for its
struggles against oppression, for its growth and progress under the weight of
so many chains and prejudices, for its achievements in science and art, and
still more for its examples of heroic and saintly virtue.
These are the
marks of a divine origin, and I thank God that my own lot is bound up with
that of the human race.”