Compassionate Calvinism and "Not playing God"

As I have been researching Presbyterianism for my and Ed’s presentation on Wednesday, I am seeing a lot of similarity between the United Church of Christ’s stance on social ministry and Presbyterianism’s. Being both heavily influenced by the protestant reformer, John Calvin, it seems to me that both are faced with a similar challenge of justifying moral works and faith. Calvin’s obsession with the justification of salvation through faith alone has always troubled me, especially since learning so much about the Puritans in New England in our freshman MOI class. The atrocities that happened at Salem and other places in New England that were in large part due to certain ignorances perpetuated by Calvinist Puritans have given me a strong suspicion of traditions that so strongly emphasize faith as a virtue above all others that they often overlook virtues as essential to Christianity as love and mercy. I do find it quite refreshing and revealing of my own ignorances that there can be such a wide spectrum of within the Calvinist tradition, for, on the one extreme there is the case of the Puritans and near the other end of the spectrum the United Church of Christ (as well as Presbyterianism) can be so involved in progressive ideas. I was really surprised to learn just how liberal the United Church of Christ is, especially how they have already opened up to the concept of gay marriage and incorporated into their own beliefs. I was very pleased to see a similarity of view to Catholicism (which tends to combine faith and works/love together more as a single unit) with the quotation from the Epistle of James in the first paragraph of the longer reading we had on the United Church of Christ, which stated, “faith apart from works is dead.” I have found a very similar point of view coming from Presbyterianism in preparing for our presentation. From the presentation, I really enjoyed the refrain that we should not play God, which to me seems to be one of the biggest problems that Christianity faces. For as Christians live in a manner that they, at least as individuals, believe is in accordance with God’s will, it becomes very difficult to be faithful to that view without falling into the danger of judging other people according to their personal beliefs. I think that the statement that we should not play God, especially when dealing out judgments to other people, is a major part of being a good Christian. For even in the Gospel, one can see Jesus resisting the making of judgments over others’ actions (with the exception of barren fig trees, but that is precisely because of their own inaction) as he forgives the tax collectors, prostitutes, and adulterers. To me it is the times in the history of Christianity, when man begins playing the role of God (like the inquisition, crusades, etc.) that all hell breaks loose.

Reviewing Objectives

Since the beginning of the semester I have gotten the chance to interact with First Presbyterian Church and construct some ideas of how our service with them might benefit the Washington community. The way it now appears that Ed and I will work to serve the community is through working to revive more communication between Churches in the Washington neighborhood. There was an old group of churches under the title of Downtown Dubuque Christian Outreach that once existed, made up of protestant churches in the Washington neighborhood area that used to put on events. It has since dissolved, more or less, but there is still some funds that are under the name of the group. Ed and I plan to try to use our service to facilitate communication between these churches and perhaps resurrect the group, if possible. Our hope is that, through facilitating better communication between these parishes, they could coordinate their efforts in a more well rounded manner to build a better community around them. Even to just make all of the churches aware of what programs the other churches in the area provide might help to make sure that essential services are not forgotten or overlooked and that certain programs aren’t heavily and unnecessarily repeated.
Looking at what I know now that I wasn’t aware of before, my learning plan has narrowed down more toward putting First Presbyterian church into a more historical perspective, and learning more about its involvement in the Downtown Dubuque Christian Outreach as well as the history of the group itself. Our job in achieving our objectives will be in a big way, very informational. We are going to have to create a picture of what the DDCO looked like in the past, what its purpose was, why it has dissolved in recent years, what we can to do try to restore communication between these churches. Another aspect that we are going to have to deal with is in communication. We are going to have to contact these churches, and try to facilitate communication between them by either setting up a meeting or event. Hopefully, if all turns out as well as it might, the churches in the Washington neighborhood area will be able to better support each other in serving the community of the Washington neighborhood.

CST: Good Message, Poor Reasoning

If I had to give a talk on Catholic Social Teaching at First Presbyterian Church I would surely address what I believe to be the central message of Catholic Social Teaching, the dignity of the human person. The dignity of the human person is the major aspect of Catholic Social Teaching that I find meaningful, however, I myself believe that the Catholic Church does a terrible job conveying it in a truly universal manner. I was especially bothered by the treatment of atheism and the source of human dignity in sections 19-21 in Gaudium et Spes. The beginning of this passage states “The root for human dignity lies in man’s call to communion with God.” The conflict of this assumption and the opposing stance of atheism leads to the statement at the end of the same paragraph which states, “atheism must be accounted among the most serious problems of this age.” I find the church’s assumption here, that human dignity is sourced in God, to be a very dangerous statement, which here is working more to support their own conflicts with atheism rather than to protect human dignity. In fact, by treating human dignity in such a non-universal way (seeing that belief in God, especially the Christian God is hardly a universal) the Catholic Church seems to undermine the very dignity of humanity. I believe that, whether or not a God exists for man to be in communion with, there would still be reason for human dignity. Man is undeniably a social being. Whether or not this is because God created him this way I feel is beside the point. The fact that man is means that man is social. From birth, man is helpless, completely reliant upon a mother. This reliance is the root of all social reliance later on in life. By virtue of man’s necessary connection to his fellow man and fellow creatures, for survival, growth, sanity, man is immersed in a social web that encompassed the entire planet. Man’s actions spread to other people and creatures, both indirectly and directly, and, in turn spread back to him. It is a sense of one’s own dignity that leads to respect for the dignity of others, for how can man expect others to do for him, what he will not do to others. In this respect, man’s dignity seems tied to the golden rule, which is more along the lines of communion with others than specifically a communion with God. While God, for some, may seem to be an idea that also encompasses all others (which in practice seems to be less the case), it is not, or at least no longer a universal belief. Yet it is hard for even the most skeptical person to deny the existence of others, for at the very least there is the connection to the Mother, the human connection that binds all humanity together, beyond race, nationality, or religion. And the golden rule, though spoken at one time by Jesus, is hardly confined to him alone, nor was he even the first to say it, yet it is present, in some form, in almost all major religions and philosophies and can even be seen in the ideas of secular humanists, many of whom are themselves atheists. I therefore do not think that Catholic Social Teaching is best taught by what we have read from the encyclicals, but could best be expressed, and expressed in a more universal and convincing manner, in the various philosophical and spiritual traditions that have existed through the ages, for I feel that the only way that there will ever be a true respect for human dignity is if it is no simply tied to a single religion or dogma, but can be seen to be reflected in all of the wisdom of humanity, to be seen both through the workings of logic and reason, as well as the traditions that have served humanity throughout history. I have had a lot of difficulty in reading through the encyclicals, because they always seem to refer all of their reasoning back to God, the church, and scriptures. As a logical foundation, this basis is weak, and if another person does not agree with the basis for the argument, it makes the entire argument invalid and even appears to undermine the very values of the argument, which I feel hurts human dignity rather than helps it. I feel that something as universal as human dignity should be argued for on a much more universal and fundamental level than the Catholic Church has been proposing in these encyclicals. The Church’s agenda here seems to be more to protect its own authority in relation to human dignity than to fight for human dignity itself, which I feel must be at the very heart of any spiritual, moral, or ethical argument. For the question of God or no God is a matter of faith, but human dignity cannot be left purely to faith, especially in an age when there are those who have no faith and even the “faithful” seem to have no faith. Human dignity must be protected because it is necessary for every person’s existence, and no man is an island but is made from relationships, literally. Human dignity is necessary because we are all connected in this world and each of us, whether we are conscious of it or not, feel the echoes of our actions, good and bad. There is an image in Buddhism which has resonated strongly in the new sciences of the last century, and that is the myth of Indra’s Jewel Net. This myth I feel illustrates necessity of human dignity in a world which even science has proven to be interconnected beyond our comprehension. The myth goes like this, the god Indra has a net that hangs above his palace. The net is made of an infinite number of jeweled, with every single jewel connected to every other jewel by strings. The jewels are also cut so that each transmits an image of every other jewel in the universe, so that a person could, by looking at one jewel, see every other jewel reflected in it (and within each of those other jewels in the reflection, see another set of reflections). The point of the myth is to show how everything is interconnected. If a person were to move a single jewel in the net, it would move all other jewels. Likewise, in our own world which is similarly interconnected like the mythical net, if a person were to harm a single other person that harm would be transmitted to the rest of the universe, because that person has connections both directly and indirectly to the rest of the universe. I guess if I were to be talking to the group about Catholic Social Teaching, I would teach it in terms of the universality of its message arguing from these different vantage points which all seem to be pointing to the same thing. I would likely break the group into smaller groups and have each discuss how a different religious or philosophical tradition connects to this essential aspect of Catholic Social Teaching, and have them reconvene to discuss the similarities and the different perspectives they saw in their own topics. I would do this because I feel that human dignity is too important to be left to be the responsibility of a single tradition or to be founded by a single point of view.