The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

SHOULD WE DELETE OUR FIRST PRINCIPLE?

(“we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of EVERY person”)

The Reverend Richard R. Davis

November 8, 2009

            On a number of occasions people who are considering membership in our congregation have asked me if they have to “believe” in our first principle in order to join.  Absolutely not - the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association clearly states that our purposes and principles are not to be considered a creed.  You do not have to “believe” in our principles and purposes to join - it’s a human document created collectively by us that seeks to express, as best we can, the values and ideals that bind us together – so it’s not a dogmatic creed.  Rest assured, newer members aren’t the only ones who struggle with our first principle - I know some long time members here who say that they can’t embrace it.

            Trust me, I do understand your difficulty with our first principle.  After all, this principle states that “we covenant to affirm and promote…the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”  It’s that “EVERY person” part that creates the problem for a number of us.

            When I think about this principle, a huge avalanche of questions slides into my mind.  First of all, let’s dispose of one common misconception immediately:  this principle does not mean that we tolerate harmful and destructive behavior – that we have no standards and anything goes.  If someone lies, murders, robs, steals, exploits or otherwise causes harm to self or others we will do all we can to stop it.  Affirming someone’s inherent worth and dignity does not mean affirming their behaviors. 

             Yet there are deeper questions that cannot be so easily resolved.  For example, a post modern, western educated philosophical stickler might ask if the phrase “inherent worth and dignity” has any meaning.  And a Buddhist philosopher would ask if there is really any such thing as an enduring individual self in the first place. You could get spend a lifetime exploring such abstruse philosophical matters, so let’s just not go there.  If you want to explore such matters on your own time, feel free. 

            Let’s explore the practical aspect of this principle.   Now the people I know who question this principle don’t believe that anyone lacks inherent worth and dignity because of their race, class, ethnicity, age, ability or sexual orientation.   Rather, they believe that there are those who have utterly betrayed and lost whatever worth and dignity they may have had, who have willingly perpetrated cruelty and espoused hateful ideas – someone like Adolph Hitler.  Wouldn’t you say that he caused so much harm and betrayed his own humanity to such an extent that he has forsaken his inherent worth and dignity?   Let’s say, “Yes, he has.”  So, let’s make him the exception to our first principle which now says that we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, except Adolph Hitler and others like him. 

            So who else is like Hitler?  We would hope not too many, but we do have to acknowledge that in a particular period of history many, many people did support him – not only in Germany , but elsewhere. You could say that his followers were mere pawns in his hand, unwitting victims of his hateful ideology - but you could actually say the same thing about Hitler, too.  He was an abused child who grew up in a culture which placed the weight of two thousand years of anti-Semitism weighing down on his soul. 

            Then, too, when you think about it you realize that what made Hitler such a blight on the pages of human history was not the intensity of his hateful beliefs – shocking as it may be to realize, many people in the world can equal him in that regard.  What distinguished him from the many other haters is that he had greater political and oratorical skills.  So, if we’re going to remove Hitler from our list we have to remove quite a few others.  How many?  Who knows?  At stressful times in history great hordes of people have engaged in genocidal behavior.  Holocaust studies show that evil lurks in many hearts and can prevail when conditions are ripe.   

            Yet wait a second: what is “evil” anyway?  Is there really such a thing and, if so, where did it come from?  The more you try to pin evil down the slipperier it gets.  Indeed, psychologists who have tried to locate and define evil have interviewed all felons, including murderers on death row, and almost everyone – no matter how despicable their deed, has some rationalization, some subjective narrative that justifies their actions.   The fathomless depths of self deception lead many to be blind to the harm we do.  Indeed, many historians note that Hitler believed that what he was doing was good for his homeland – purging it of an evil race.  That’s why some psychologist now speak about “the myth of pure evil.”

            In B movies you may see instances in which someone gets a malicious gleam in their eye and states “now I choose to be evil,” but not in real life.   Ironically, some of the greatest harm is done by those who believe they are launching crusades to do good, who want to purge the world of evil and serve the cause of God or some political dogma.   No one sets out to be bad, horrible, despicable.  Yes, there are the serial killers and rapists, sociopaths and psychopaths who have caused untold harm and they should be locked away where they can do no more harm.  Yet so often those are the ones who have something missing in their physiological/ psychological makeup, some genetic, bio-chemical flaw in their brains, or who were so twisted by cruel circumstances in their own lives that they grew up to act like monsters.   Yet, lacking full understanding of why they have acted as they did we should we nevertheless say that they have no inherent worth and dignity, that they have lost their humanity? 

            Yes, I understand and sympathize with those of you who have trouble with our first principle – because there are those who have perpetrated so much violence and cruelty in our world.  How can we be asked to affirm their worth and dignity when they have caused so much harm to the worth and dignity of so many?   The fact that you have trouble with it means that you take such matters seriously.   That’s admirable.  Yet for the life of me I can’t discover a valid and consistent standard by which we could judge that there is an individual or distinct class of individuals have thought and acted in such a reprehensible way, completely on their own volition - apart from any external social, cultural, environmental or physiological influences - to such an extent that these persons no longer have an inherent worth and dignity for us to affirm. 

Given this confusion regarding our first principle, the question might be asked: should we simply delete it altogether and remain completely silent regarding our view of human worth?   Yet if we did that it would leave a gaping hole in the middle of our overall vision.   All the other principles rest upon this first one, and if we pulled that out they would all come tumbling down.   Should we, then, simply have no statement at all regarding the principles and purposes of our liberal religious movement?   Now that would be chaotic – how would we know who we were if we take some spiritual stand with our principles.   Malcolm X said it well when he warned of the consequences of having no principles: “If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.”  So we have chosen to have these principles, including the first.  They did not come down from heaven but from our own minds and hearts.

            We didn’t simply pluck our first principle out of thin air - it has historic roots that go back to our Universalist forbears. They were the ones who saw that religion was the instrument commonly used to carve humankind up into divided categories of the saved and the damned, the chosen and the forsaken, the true believer and the heretic, the Christian and the infidel.   They saw the painful and destructive effects of this division of humankind - how those who were regarded as lost to God could easily be treated as less than human.  Indeed, such a divided vision of humankind made it so easy for the European settlers to wipe out native Americans with a clean conscience – after all, they were mere “heathens.”  And such theological divisions of humankind gave the slave traders and the slave owners some measure of comfort, too, for they could regard blacks as lacking souls.   

            Our Universalist forbears recoiled at such cruelty – they refused to believe in a God who did not have infinite love for each and every person – they were both tender hearted and tough minded.  They bluntly said that an omniscient, omnipotent God who would condemn any soul to eternal damnation was a monster, an abomination, not a God worthy of devotion.  They did not believe in such a God.   They believed in a God who loves all people – without exception – the people of all nations, castes, economic status, race, religion.  All beings, without exceptions or conditions.  God’s love was unconditional and universal.  All souls would be redeemed. 

            Naturally, the Universalists felt a call to follow the example of the God they worshipped and hold an unconditional positive regard for all people.  They recognized that when you try to make exceptions to this that you, when you try to discern who is worthy and who is not, then you may unwittingly play some role in creating a hell on earth – an earthly hell in which some are not seen as worthy of love and respect. 

            As I have thought about our first principle myself I have had to ask myself:  what useful or necessary purpose could it serve for me to judge whether or not someone has inherent worth or not?  Why would I need to render such a judgment?  Remember – our first principle does not say that we should be naïve and open and trusting with everyone – there are dangerous people in the world – so for goodness sake, protect yourself and others when the need arises.  Yet I have recognized that the habit of looking upon humankind with suspicious and judgmental eyes, trying to separate the good guys from the bad guys, not only serves no useful purpose, it has a destructive consequences and a negative impact upon me.  I have learned, from painful experience, that if I create a space within my heart and mind where I feel free to harbor ill toward someone, this only harms me.

            So I have heard the call of our religious tradition and have chosen the way of our universalist forbears – to regard every person, without exception, as having an inherent worth and dignity.  I don’t just embrace this principle intellectually - I strive to embrace it with my heart and soul.    Here’s a practice that helps me do this – and I commend it to you.  Take the phrase “compassion for all beings” – now the next time you are in public space amidst many others think and feel that phrase over and over:  Call it a prayer, or a mantra, or a positive wish.  As you look at everyone say it over and over.  It softens and sensitizes the heart.  You begin to see others through the eyes of compassion, not the eyes of judgment and it makes a world of difference – indeed, it’s the difference between heaven and hell on earth.  

            What our world needs – our world so full of heartbreak and suffering, so full of loneliness and despair and hopelessness, where so much hatred and misunderstanding abounds is not more of us looking through the eyes of judgment and condemnation but rather through the eyes of compassion, understanding, acceptance.  Our first principle wherein we state that “we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person” reminds me to do that.