Where Does “Justice” Come From?

           

The Supreme Court is going to decide about what a “just” penalty for Exxon is for the oil spill so many years ago.  Of course, I have my own idea of what is “just,” as I’m sure Exxon has, as I’m sure the people in Alaska have.  And it got me thinking.  How do we come up with what is just?  Specifically: where does justice come from?  I don’t mean who administers it (courts) or who writes the laws (legislatures), but where does the idea of justice itself come from?

 

For the moment I want to shy away from talking about God in this context because of the enormous amount of baggage all of us (theist, atheist and agnostic alike) carry with us when we  relate to that word.  So the question I would pose is this: Is “justice” a scientific question or a spiritual one?

 

Some people find their spiritual answers in God, some in searching for God, some in defining an ethical or moral imperative that has no tie to any concept of God whatsoever.  My question is – can an answer to justice be reached through science?  And if not, where does it come from?

 

As I ponder it, I would propose that only science can tell us about DNA, the Big Bang and evolution.  I think we lose our way when we try to apply the spiritual to such things.  But I also think that only the spiritual can tell us what is just and unjust, and that we lose our way when we try to apply science to such things.

 

Take something as “simple” as killing.  Science has no opinion on whether it is just or unjust for a cougar, for example, to kill another cougar that “invades” its territory.  So what about when one human “invades” another human’s territory? 

 

Survival of the fittest is a scientific concept.  But does that mean that we should get rid of any medical treatment that allows the weaker among us not only to live but to procreate?   And if that seems a ridiculous question: then why is it ridiculous? 

 

I will confess I am unmoved by the question of which religious or non-religious group got God’s Law “right” while all the others, however well meaning, blew it.  What fascinates me, and what I am intensely curious about, is what I believe to be a universal conscience.  Which, surprise of surprises, brings us yet again to Interfaith.  We can find ourselves easily tangled in the differences between the wonderful multitude of our religious beliefs.  But I find myself deeply moved by the astonishing similarities of our collective conscience.

 

Where does justice come from is a powerful question, worth our time. 

Who’s Right?

 

On Sunday I’m preaching on the touchy subject of “Who’s Right?”  I come to it having encountered on so many levels the idea that there must be a right answer, one right answer to the question of God.  The more “liberal” among us tend to tolerate the “misguided” beliefs of those we don’t agree with.  But somewhere, deep within us, seems to be the assumption that there truly is and indeed truly must be only one right answer.  It’s hard to shake.  I still get blindsided by it in my own thinking from time to time.

 

It is, of course, all belief.  The Atheist believes that there is no God, just as the Theist believes that there is.  The Atheist believes that s/he can “prove” that there is no God, just as the Theist believes that s/he can “prove” there is.  Underneath it, again, is the assumption that there is only one right answer.

 

How did we get here?   I can’t help but feel that the religion of my heritage had some role in it.  In the ancient world, each community, city, state, had it’s own God or Gods.  If your people defeated my people, we all assumed your God was stronger than mine and that was that.  It was the ancient Hebrews who said no.  There is only one God, the Hebrews said.  If your people defeated mine, it was because the one God was unhappy with my people.  Hence in Hebrew Scripture so much handwringing among the prophets about why God was upset with the Israelites this time.  Christianity, which was born from Judaism, took up this calling.  So did Islam.  The curse, if you will, of the Abrahamic religions. 

 

Weirdly, I think the Age of Enlightenment only made things worse.  Science took it’s heady place at the forefront of human progress.  According to science, at least until very recently, there is and can be only one right answer to a question.  If I pick up a piece of paper and someone asks me, “What is that?”  The only right answer is: “It’s a piece of paper.”  It’s not an onion.  And if I believe it’s an onion, I’m quite deluded.  Combine two hydrogen atoms with one of oxygen and you have water, not an egg.  And if I believe it’s an egg, I’m quite deluded. 

 

I’m so very grateful for quantum mechanics.  Suddenly there are things of which science is not quite so sure after all.  That “thing” you are so certain is a particle? …  may at this very moment be a wave.

 

Yet even this delightful development misses what is for me the crucial issue.  For me what is crucial is not what I believe but how I act on those beliefs.  If I am a Christian, or a Jew, or an Atheist, or Buddhist, and my beliefs cause me to act in a loving and compassionate way – isn’t that what’s important?  Is my compassion and love “better” because I do these things in the name of Jesus, or Hillel or Humanism or the Buddha?  And if I am a Christian, or a Jew, or an Atheist, or Buddhist, and my beliefs cause me to act in a selfish and destructive way – isn’t that what’s important?  Is my selfishness and destructiveness any “better” (or worse) because I do these things in the name of Jesus, or Hillel or Humanism or the Buddha? 

 

We have a right to be respected (not simply “tolerated”) in our differing beliefs.  As I reflect, I don’t see that it’s our beliefs that save us or get us into trouble.  It’s how we act on our beliefs.  Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Humanism, none of these on their own can save me.  But love and compassion just might – they just might.

 

It’s not that what each of us believes isn’t important.  What we believe as individuals is more than important, it is crucial to who we are.  For each of us, individually, our beliefs are determinative.  For me, Judaism practiced within the framework of Unitarian Universalism and Interfaith is what helps guide me towards compassion and love.  What I recognize and respect is that what guides you towards compassion and love may be an entirely different spiritual path.

 

A televangelist once famously called Islam a “gutter religion” because of the way that some people practice it.  But every religion can become a “gutter religion” if practiced destructively.  In the end, I think it is not the religion we practice, but how we practice our religion that must truly count; and for me, as a Theist, what will truly bring us closer to God.  Let’s leave “who’s right” for the angels to argue about … if they ever find the time.

The New Dark Ages

 

It was hammered home to me as I was reading the New York Times – how badly written the article was.  Followed by an incredibly careless piece in Newsweek.  And once reminded of the problem, it seems to leap at me from everywhere: television, a drugstore, conversations with younger people at church.  We may be smack in the middle of “the information age”, but as a people we know less and less – our reporters as well as ourselves.  Less about politics, less about history, less about religion.

 

But in a way it is the loss of any sense of history that bothers me the most.  In politics, I hear the candidates (both parties) talk to us as if they hoped we hadn’t any idea of what had been said and done a week ago, or a year ago, let alone ten years ago.  What’s truly frightening is that they seem to be right.

 

“News” papers only seem to encourage it.  “Yesterday’s news” is forgotten.  What does it say about us that the only public person who seems to be interested in what happened last week and dares to compare it to what’s being said this week is a comedian: Jon Stewart?

 

So what has this to do with spirituality?  Unfortunately: everything.  I wonder if one reason we are becoming more and more spiritually isolated is that we have become more and more “me” oriented.  And the more “me” oriented we become, the less relevant history seems to our lives.  It is when we reach out to the “other” that any history beyond our personal genealogy takes on meaning.

 

How on earth can we reach out to Islamic countries, as example, if we won’t study Islam?  And I don’t mean studying it as an enemy studies an adversary.  I mean studying it as one human being reaching out to another wants to understand.

 

George Santayana warned us that “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  There is much of history I don’t want repeated.  I would hope that the Sunni and Shi’a might learn from the vicious “hundred years” wars between Catholic and Protestant, ramifications of which linger to this day.  I would hope that  the people in an around Israel might learn from Northern Ireland.  And I would hope those in the United States who would like to obliterate the wall of separation between church and state might learn from the founders of this great country who built that wall stone by precious stone, because they saw first hand what religious “tests” for candidates could do. 

 

We need to talk to each other – not yell, not berate: talk.  And for sure this is much bigger than Interfaith.  But we who have committed ourselves to walking a spiritual path are perhaps better positioned than many to lead the way by example.  If we can talk to each other, believing differently yet respecting those differing beliefs, it might serve as a model.

 

Some of my spiritual brethren fear the tree of knowledge.  I don’t.  But I do fear ignorance.  I fear the hatred it brings.  I fear the Dark Ages it heralds.

Me or We?

 

I will be a guest minister at the Shoreline Unitarian Universalist Church this Sunday – which means a new sermon.  I knew what I wanted to spend my time on this week.  It’s the question of how is it possible that with the world getting smaller and smaller, we seem to find ourselves more and more isolated?  It’s a tougher nut to crack than I thought it would be.  But that yet again is what makes ministry so stimulating: the opportunity of taking a week to wrap my mind around a single spiritual question.

 

Some of it’s easy.  I love to walk.  But I can’t go walking without seeing other folks talking on their cell or their Blackberry or, oblivious to the world, totally involved with their “I”-pod.  Activities that used to at least bring about eye-contact if not a friendly hello, seem just more instances of how we isolate ourselves.

 

Yet it goes deeper than that and here it is Friday and I still couldn’t get a handle on what to say, let alone how to say it.  But luckily I not only have the sermon to do, but a story to share with the kids.  Every minister is different, but I really like to boil down the “adult” message into a story for the kids.  It’s fun to send them off with, “Now you know what we’re going to be talking about while you’re in class.”

 

So what was I going to tell the kids?  When I realized I had no idea, I realized why my sermon wasn’t “writing itself.”  So what did I want to tell the kids?  About two hours of mulling and suddenly it was clear.  I’m trying to write the wrong sermon!  The issue isn’t me or we.  The issue is me and we. 

 

Each kid needs to feel good about him or herself.  So “Me” is important.  Each of us, as an individual is valuable and valued.  Each of us, EACH of us is valuable.  Which makes “We” just as important, for I must value you as well as myself.  It can be tempting to get wrapped up in “Me, me, me!”  I want this.  I need that.  What about the “us” that includes my team?  What about the “us” that includes both teams?  What about the “us” that includes every race, both genders, every religion.  There’s a wonderful proverb from Ghana that says, “It is because one antelope will blow the dust from the other’s eyes that two antelopes walk together.”  We need a good sense of self.  But we also need to blow the dust from each other’s eyes. There needs to be a balance.  Community that works requires a balance of me and we.

 

Ok.  Not rocket science.  But if I've forgotten it, other people may have as well.

 

And I realize that the pivot point, for me, comes from my own tradition: Judaism.  Rabbi Hillel, writing over two thousand years ago put it, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  Yet if I am only for myself, what am I?”  There’s the balance.  Me and we.  Yet importantly, Hillel then adds, “And if not now, when?”

 

That’s the kicker.  If not now, when?  So much that we put off: “until we’re ready,” or “until it’s time.”  But when will that time be?  If not now, when?   

 

I think it’s time to write the sermon…and a story for the kids. 

Can We Talk?

 

I am committed to dialogue (there’s another part of this website dedicated to the basics of starting an Interfaith Dialogue).  Yet the more I listen to the world around me, the more it feels like dialogue may be on its way out.  Bummer.  For if we as a people, as a culture, can only talk to those we already agree with, then what chance is there for dialogue about one of the most deeply rooted of human practices: religion?

 

A natural reaction might be, “Yep, that’s what other people do all right.”  But it’s not just other people.  For whatever reason, almost all of us seem to have been infected at least in part with ultimate righteousitus.  We enter into a “I’m on the side of the saints, and your side is despicable” frame of mind.  I do it.  I’m working hard not to.  I do it a lot less than I used to.  But I still catch myself.

 

Harry Truman famously said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”  But if all we do is keep cranking up the heat, how will we ever be able talk to each other?  What about, “If you can’t stand the heat, turn down the oven.”?   I begin to think we should be teaching (and modeling) dialogue in our schools.  There’s certainly little modeling of it anywhere else.

 

Crucial to dialogue, of course, is listening.  But there’s listening and there’s listening.    Argumentative listening is me hearing just enough to know how to frame my (hopefully) killer response.  Dialogue listening requires that I give the speaker’s words my full attention, allow them to bounce around in my mind, and then respond to the thoughts expressed rather than counter with arguments I’ve long rehearsed. 

 

At it’s most mundane, an argument is: “Did!”  “Did not!”  “Did too!”  “Did not!”  (nyah, nyah, nyah optional)  Dialogue is: “I hadn’t thought of it that way.  But OK.  How would that affect …?”  A dialogue, therefore, can not only take a good deal of time (and meander a bit), but it is also exceedingly dangerous.  It is dangerous because if I enter into a dialogue, I have to risk actually changing my mind! 

 

Of course, one may ask, “What’s so important about dialogue anyway?!” – which brings us back to Interfaith.  Each of our faiths not only asks us to love one another, but also teaches some form of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”  Don’t we all want to be respected?  Don’t we all want a chance to be truly listened to and heard?  And if so, don’t our spiritual paths instruct us truly to listen and to hear others – even those we don’t agree with?  Just asking. 

 

Can we talk to each other?  I hope so.  It will take effort.  It will take respect.  But mostly, I think, it will take intention.