Dear People                       Whom God Loves,

January 20, 2008

Dear People Whom God Loves,

BEUEVERS/NON BEUEVERS - III

We have been looking at the stages of moral growth. That is the increasing, inclusion of more and more people in our circle of concern for their care and human rights. At our last stage, this is rather broad and we begin to see things not only from our own perspective but, also, from other perspectives.

As we move into the next stage, our care and concern for human rights extends to all people and in a proportionate manner to all of the earth and the universe. We then, also, become able to see many - if not all - of the perspectives other than our own. We can see pluses and minuses in all the perspectives including our own.

This can be frightening. There is major concern in our church about relativism. This is the concern that there is no absolute truth. Let us look at the pluses and minuses of this concern.

The plus of this concern is that it opposes saying that we cannot make a judgment about the values of different perspectives. In other words, no one perspective is better than another. An example: to torture people to get what you want is just as moral as to hold that to,ture is never a legitimate means. To live in a human society, we must make judgment about morality. Science cannot do this. People can. Science is value free. Human living is not.

The corresponding minus of the concern about relativism is that we will all be biased to see our perspective in a favorable light and to see other perspectives in an unfavorable light. We need humility. We cannot get rid of all our biases. The best we can do is to be aware of our biases and keep things from overwhelming our judgments. So we do make judgments about the value of various perspectives.

Also, a danger of seeing all perspectives is this: we may be Inclined to say that all perspectives are of equal value. Then we contradict ourselves. We are saying that our perspective is better than the perspective that says: all perspectives are not of equal value.

We can reach this stage of morality whether or not we believe in God. If we do believe in God, we will think of God as the God of all people, of all time, and of the whole universe. Our God will have no favorites. We might say: we are all God's favorites.

More next time.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay

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