Summary
In
this article, I argue that relativism which manifests commonly
around the world today also does exist in the Church. I
argue that this is detrimental not only for the world but
also for the Church. The existence of such relativism within
paints out God to be an entity afraid of the truth. I also
argue that relativism is not only dangerous because it
necessarily results in incorrect conclusions but also and most
importantly it is abusive. It undermines the capacity of the others
to come to the realization of a truth. It paints the
people across the divide as being sub-human. Just like it does
elsewhere relativism separates freedom from truth and God from the
person. Further, I say it stands in the way of the growth of
the Christian life because it undermines charity. I also make
argument that all teachers should make more effort to communicate the
person of God correctly.
While I make all effort to
communicate the object of my focus with fidelity. I am
aware that I cannot achieve perfection in such any attempt. And my
only hope is that what I write will be meaningful to those
that read.
An
earlier version of this article was seamless, written without any sub
titles. My primary goal was to write in a manner such as to present
the subject matter in as brief a way as possible without
leaving any room for ambiguity from well intended persons or
misleading anyone who for one reason or another may be inclined to
lean to the right or the left. Since I am writing
through a public forum, I have felt that it is imperative that I
should make the article especially given its length and possible
depth to open it up a little for everyone to be able to understand at
the very least parts of it according to the degree to which
they might be able to perceive what I am saying.
Contents
Introduction
The painter and the painting
The Object of Goodness.., What do people really want
Relativism in the Church
The problem of communication
The Wisdom of the Pharisee
The Value of the Eternal
The Dilemma of the counselor
Freedom and the Man in Eden ...
The duty of the teacher
Introduction
Pope
Francis will be coming to my country Uganda in November. There is
definitely a lot of excitement and strategies to have this possibly
once in a lifetime event; see or perhaps meet the Pope. What would I
tell the Pope if I had the chance to meet him?
Recently
i watched a video on YouTube in which an
atheist answers a question on what he would do if he died and found
himself at the pearly gates facing “the man”1.
I found his description of God to be quite like anything i have
known. In fact if the description of God that he presented is
actually true, then i would not want to near the pearly gates at all
either. Fortunately, for me he has concluded and correctly that the
entity he is describing does not exist at all; saving me from the
thought of having to boycott the pearly gates.
It
is not very uncommon coming across descriptions that depict the
person of God in a poor and even forceful way; even when it can be
interpreted in an ambiguous manner. There are people for example who
trace their rejection of the conception of God on assertions made
that only a certain group of “Christian's” will find
salvation which not rhyming with the plausible logic that all people
of good will should find salvation has caused people to go in search
of truth that is more universal. And many instances where teachers in
an attempt to maintain one aspect of the truth which they can
perceive have inadvertently destroyed another aspect of this truth
and ultimately the entire truth. Even for facts which can be
questioned, it is not very uncommon to hear judgments made while
seeking to encourage one good act or another that have inadvertently
distorted the image of God.
Not
only is God seen as being separate from the object of goodness but
arising out of inappropriate execution of judgment and
miscommunication he has become the object of oppression. The one who
takes away what people like and then takes delight in dolling out
punishment to those that do not agree with what he has ordained. His
advent is no longer as Zechariah proclaims; “the one who
comes to his people and sets them free”2. Rather it is something
to be loathed. He is no longer that Epitome of goodness as says
St John, “Deus Caritas est”3.
No longer the one in whom the heart finds rest as indicates Augustine
of Hippo when he says “the heart is restless until it rests in
God”. That he comes to help man to mend this broken song has
been obscured.
Relativism4 in the Church
Such tendencies have been fanned also by currents of philosophies within
the Church which in reaction to and out of fear of the growth of
relativism in the world have taught and promoted principles which
have ultimately not only adopted relativistic dimensions but in so
doing have justified and promoted the existence of relativism. For
example there exist principles which render the salvation of the
individual on obedience without any need whatsoever to reference the
truth in the execution of such a judgment. The premise of the
trueness of such judgments are maintained squarely on the fact of the
relative position of the person upon whom judgment is being executed
to the person executing this judgment. While such philosophies
correctly paint out the passion of Christ from the view point of his
total submission to the will of his Father5 and the very real
difficulty in maintaining objectivity when making judgments about the
self, they overlook the fact that not only did Christ lay down his
life of his own accord 6, but that he longed for that moment7. In so
doing they have rendered as fundamentally irreconcilable the will of
God and the person, thereby creating a permanent rift between God and
the person. Ultimately such philosophies have fundamentally separated
truth from freedom since the persons that do as they desire cannot
posses any truth. Furthermore they disregard the complexity of the
nature of communication of a truth.
Such
a call eliminates the need for an individual to correctly understand
what they have been called upon to undertake creating many
opportunities for the distortion of the nature of the truth.
The Problem of Communication
Communicating
a truth is not easy because communication is a fuzzy process; one
seeking to transmit an object held in one mind to another mind using
words and symbols. However words can have multiple meanings. Aside of
this, different persons and groups of persons may have different
meanings attached to the words resulting from differences in culture,
experiences and knowledge. As a result of this different people
perceive the same words in different ways. Practically every
individual probably has their own language; One whose landscape is
reflective of the experiences and knowledge of the individual, of the
pains they have suffered and of injustices they have endured real and
or imagined. As such it is nearly impossible to communicate the same
object to different people using the same words. This makes possible
that the attempt to communicate one object will convey a very
different object occasionally even the exact opposite of the intended
object. In any process of communication, the number of objects
communicated is often at least equivalent to the number of distinct
groups anywhere up to to the number of people listening. It is such
that God too has taken time, more than 2000 years preparing people to
receive him; to ensure that at least there are a few people who have
the capacity to understand the nature of freedom his dawn promises.
That Christ too has to be patient with his Apostles, for even at the
time of his departure, there still exist things which he would like
to say which would be too much for them to understand.
The
fact that people for all practical purposes speak different
“languages” makes it imperative that of two persons one
should move out of their comfort zone to be the one who seeks to
understand rather than be understood, so that people might speak at
the same frequency and foster communication. This obligation falls on
the first person always because it is they who express to have
knowledge of truth. In reality though every person needs to be
contextualized and the one who is not contextualized is already
wrong. And indeed all individuals with charity will always take
effort to place other persons in context otherwise they trade the
right to be contextualized. However in the case of the teacher when
they express their judgment in the absolute sense8
(as a judgment that cannot be questioned or interpreted like
in the case in which the salvation of the individual is rendered
on a judgment whose premise of trueness is founded squarely on the
fact of their position), and indeed anyone who expresses judgment
in an absolute sense, when they do so; dissolve their right to be
contextualized for they have expressed that they have explored
sufficient evidence upon which the case can be judged. Any attempt to
contextualize their judgment amounts to holding them in contempt. The
obligation of charity in this case falls on and only on this teacher
or on that individual that expresses their self in that absolute
sense. The teacher then in expressing this judgment is obligated to
contextualize the student thoroughly because if there is any
miscommunication, then the teacher will distort the image of God.
This is especially important in the light of the fact that the
student has due obligation to respect the teacher and what he says.
And this is like abandoning the children of God since it is only with
a faithful image of God that the Christian life can take root and
grow. In this case, the teacher takes away all Christian options; for
if the student bows in obedience, then they are resigned to living
with a wrong, perhaps tyrannical picture of God. On the other hand
overriding the teacher's words undermines not just the importance of
the teacher and the church given that the teacher is a representative
of the Church but also of revealed scripture as notes the Angelic
Doctor9
And any such move is likely to also result in a distorted image of
God.
The Wisdom of the Pharisee
Miscommunication
(the transmission of an object other than that which the author has
in mind) happens all the time. Every time miscommunication occurs
(assuming good will) bad things happen. People lose
opportunities and sometimes violence results leading to the loss of
value. Miss communication that can result in loss of value makes
those with a stake to execute communication with prudence. The
political scene for example is one in which opponents often seek to
take advantage of people's lapses in communicating their object.
Using such lapses aggressively to their own benefit with little
consideration of the personal, situational and locational context in
which the individual speaks. While being unfair, it is only proper
that the leader should try to communicate in a way fitting with all
people since he has the duty of uniting them. The politician hence
often adopts the “wisdom of the Pharisee in response to Jesus's
question on the source of the authority of John the Baptist”.
Gaging first how the people will think and then providing answers far
from what they would like to say or even believe, rather one which
they consider will inflict the least damage. The greater the
consequences of mis-communication the greater it is that
communication should be made to be faithful. What then might we
compare the object of the person of God and that of Eternal life so
that we might make judgment of its value? The answer to this might be
obtained by asking another question, what might one be able to do if
they had an indefinite or eternal time frame at their disposal.
The Value of the Eternal
An example with our computer systems might provide an elegant solution.
Our computer systems are protected with pass phrases “more commonly
referred to as passwords”. These protect personal information and
in some cases vital systems making their security of paramount
importance. A good sought for, by the enemy, by those who seek to
take control and plunder. One of the ways of obtaining these is by
trying all the possible combinations until one of those is true a
technique referred to as “brute forcing”
Now
our current computer systems are designed such that it would be
meaningless for any individual to try to “brute force” a good
pass phrase since this would take an incredible amount of time,
perhaps millions of years before the correct combination is found by
which time the person seeking to obtain the information is long dead
and the information obsolete. This however changes if this person has
an eternal time frame at their disposal; because then they do not
have to worry about the time they need to get the password.
Furthermore people with an eternal time frame are not limited to
carrying out operations in a sequence because without time the
concept of before and after are meaningless. They would get this
password in a single instance of time. So then if they are a
terrorist seeking to get hold of the latest state of the art military
drones, then any moving creature on earth they do not like is doomed,
knocked out from the sky with high precision missiles. Breaking the
barrier of time enables persons to break through all limitations
imposed by virtue of being temporal entities. So then it can be seen
as true from the view point of what can be achieved that there is
nothing, no summation of everything that is known or can be imagined
that can compare with the value of a single intelligent entity with
an eternal time frame in its possession. The person then who has to
be correct about eternal issues has a truly colossal task, because
the object about which he has to be correct is bigger than his head.
He cannot provide any restitution for a judgment that can cause a
loss equal to an object of such value.
The Dilemma of the Counselor
So
then we can see that the teacher is justified in being stern. He
should be vigilant, for as says St Peter10,
the devil is prowling like a hungry lion, looking for someone to
devour. He should take all effort to ensure that the children of God
are not deceived on the object of goodness. That they are not given a
snake when they asked for fish. The task is far from simple task. It
can be likened to the counselor desirous of the children that they
are counseling that they might not act in ways that might expose them
to dangers of HIV. They do not want them to take the issue lightly
because of its gravity. If they choose to paint a gruesome picture of
the reality without considering that some of these children might be
HIV positive; Then they abandon the people who need the Doctor the
most; also to being ostracized by the even less knowledgeable
compatriots11.
Adding salt to wounds already bleeding with profusion.
On
the other hand by expressing the truth in a violent manner, they
express that except through fear people are not able to come to the
acceptance of the good. They have employed fear, an object of
oppression and of slavery and have thus inadvertently obscured the
freedom that the advent of Christ promises. He has forgotten that
Christianity is for those who can take courage; to wake up again
after miserable failure; to admit they are wrong; the brave ones and
not the fearful. They also stand in the way of the growth of the
Christian life; for it is only in an environment in which there is no
fear that charity; the origin, the basis and the end of the Christian
life can take root and grow. They are no longer shepherds but they
are goatherds, who have to stand behind the flock with massive sticks
beating the flock to keep them from straying.
Freedom and the Man in Eden ...
He
is like a man who afraid that his wife will be unfaithful to him
decides to lock her behind doors. This man maintains unfortunately
that his wife cannot be saved for she will always be evil. That the
only acceptable course of action is to protect his wife from the bad
consequences of her evil nature. And he cares to have a wife but does
not care to have one capable of loving him freely. By locking his
wife, he has expressed himself in absolute sense, as the person whose
conclusion can always be trusted. That he is not subject to the
temporal, spatial, sensible, sentimental and even intellectual
limitations which obviously plague the reasoning process of other
individuals creating uncertainty on the completeness of their
observations from which correct conclusion would have been drawn and
therefore rendering their conclusions to be inaccurate and their
actions to be questionable. He is like a man who has given to himself
exclusive entitlement because of an apparent superiority that he
possesses. So that tomorrow when appears another individual who can
demonstrate a superiority greater than his, then he no longer has any
right to any entitlement since the truth he has created is that
exclusive entitlement belongs to the individual that demonstrates the
greatest superiority.
He
has acted as if to use force to block Adam and Eve from consuming the
forbidden fruit and has therefore painted as foolishness the fact
that God is painted as waiting until after the fact to appear to Adam
and Eve even with the knowledge that this action of Adam and Eve was
going to cause his death and the loss of many souls. Otherwise, if we
are to maintain the assumption that God is infinitely wise, rational
and has infinite Love for mankind, then we can argue that the only
reason why he choose not to intervene in time to prevent Adam and Eve
from consuming the forbidden fruit is for a reason at least equal in
value to what their action put at stake. The sharing in the life of
God.
This
teacher has taken worry, forgetting that salvation is the work of
God. That nobody can come to the Son unless the Father draw him12 and
that the Son leads everyone to the Father13. He has
forgotten that it is the Spirit that leads people to the truth14 That
it is the lord who builds the house as says the Psalmist, for they
labor in vain if he does not build the house. And keep vigil in vain
if he does not guard the city15. Afraid that the truth will be
vanquished, he has raised the sword forgetting that it is Christ who
calms the stormy sea.
The Duty of the Teacher
If
it is to be assumed that the teacher is moved to teach out of charity
which should indeed be the case since this forms the foundation of
all meritorious Christian action as notes Paul of Tarsus16.
Then the relationship between the teacher and the student can be
modeled as that between the lover and the loved one. The lover if
they ascribe equality to the loved one will make considerations that
that which is available to them can also become available to the
loved if it is indeed true since the lover and loved one are
fundamentally the same. He is mindful of the fact that what is said
is important, but what is understood is most important. For it is
what is understood that has the power to become motive. If he has
charity and therefore wishes to communicate the truth that they might
witness the salvation of the persons they care about, they become
aware that it is not sufficient anymore just to know the truth. It is
important that they communicate faithfully this truth. And for this
he gets knowledge that he can rely on the example of Jesus, looking
beyond just the words he said, to the way he has cared to communicate
the kingdom of God. He should teach, trustful that those who have
been admitted to the class have been given the capacity to understand
that which is necessary for their graduation and the grace to accept
that which is beyond their capacity to understand.
I
am asking, that the Church may make more effort to help the painter
to paint a faithful picture of the person of God. Because not only is
the quality of the Christian life dependent on the fidelity of the
picture of God. But also the ability for the Christian life to grow.
Without a faithful painting we shall be resigned to lamenting that
the Christian life should not be a sad one. That teachers may never
obscure the effort that God has taken and which he still takes
everyday to communicate himself not just as being good but as being
goodness itself. That they should keep the name of the Lord Holy.
NOTES
1
. I
am presenting this as a characteristic inversion of the object of
the person of God and
of
the Christian life which I find to be common. I can not make
argument to blame any particular
member of the Church for
the views that Stephen Fry presents in the Video.
I
think that it is also important to point out the very common
rhetoric which seeks to attain happiness by annihilating guilt which
the Church is commonly accused of creating. The argument to destroy
the conception of guilt so as to achieve happiness is as lethal as
saying people should be numbed against pain because pain is
horrible. As
disorders like congenital analgesia suggests, pain is actually vital
for survival. Go Back
3
Deus Caritas Est,
Benedict
XVI, Love has come to mean many different things for different people Go Back
4 This is a topic covered by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical, This is summary in Wikipedia is nice
“The Splendor of truth” Go Back
9.
St Thomas Aquinas makes argument for the need for divine law (Sum I-II, 91, 4). In regard to his second
answer on the uncertainty of human judgment;
I have observed that, we make judgment basing on what we have seen
or experienced. And since only a total subset of observation is
required to arrive at a correct conclusion. It is not prudent for
any individual to lay claim to being correct since he cannot
absolutely guarantee that his set of observations is complete as I
have argued herein. St Thomas Aquinas also argues very beautifully
about the Judgment of internal issues not available to the human
being since we Judge based on what is visible. I argue in regard to
such a principle in relation to salvation, that any Judgment
pertaining to especially individual salvation
cannot be complete without a thorough consideration of the internal
movements within the individual including
the possible action of the grace of God as Jesus paints in the story of the
rich young man in the gospel Mt 19:16-22 Go Back
11.
The cruel treatment of aberrant people is often justified in the
proverb, "a rotten tomato spoils the whole basket"-that
their continued presence will inflict damage on the society by
spreading their evil nature. It therefore seems acceptable that the aberrant persons should be
eliminated from active society at the very least. If justice is to be maintained. It would
be required that evil is uprooted from its primary source. As the history of serial murderers
has often shown, the genesis of evil is often deeply embedded in the society, in blatant neglect of duty, in cruel inhumane
treatment, in wanton selfishness. Carrying proper justice then would wipe put the entire society. And in any case,
removal of the aberrant tomato would not remove the primary causes of the origin of evil. It would therefore
not really serve its purpose. While it is true that people
are subject to bad influence and the power of social conditioning especially on those whose judgment is
justifiable compromised such as children and who therefore should be rightly protected [Mt 18:6]. To maintain
that a rotten tomato will spoil the entire basket also inadvertently maintains
that people are passive participants in the society. Further Jesus points out
that it is not possible for the servants to correctly select the weeds from the good wheat Mt 13:24-13 which implies
that an attempt to execute justice would fail.
Go Back
.
