Understanding
of humanity,
the significance
of interaction
and encounters
in our societies
Speech on the
understanding of
humanity, the
significance of
interaction and
encounters in our
societies
Bishop
Björn Vikström,
8 May, 2013
The Christian vision of humanity
As human beings, we should have a native ability to be human. Humanism
often includes the thought that in essence the human is good and that the
resources for growth, learning and responsibility can be found in each and
every one of us. The task of upbringing and education is to clear away the rocks
and stones so that these internal abilities could flourish.
Even the Story of Creation in the Bible can be interpreted this way. God affirms
with satisfaction that the created world is good. Very good. The creative work
culminates in the creation of man: God created them in His image, male and
female. Nevertheless, in the biblical stories of creation, human imperfection
and limitations appear very early on. The origin of serpent remains obscure. It’s
just there in paradise.
Good and beautiful world have been created before humans. World is not the
result of our work, but God places us in His already existing world. The
goodness does not come from us, but neither does evil. The serpent indicates
that the origin of Fall is outside of us, but the story of Adam and Eve
accentuates that the evil materialises in us and through our actions.
God and His opponents are fighting over humans. Humans have a tendency for
both good and evil. As the image of God, we have a conscience that helps us to
distinguish between good and evil. Man is unable, by his own will and volition,
to free himself from the power of sin, but through God's salvation. Our
conscience has to struggle with our selfishness, indifference and laziness, and it
needs help of the rules, good values and inspirational role models.
It follows from this dramatic vision of humanity that humanity is not a starting
point, but the target. Being a human means growing towards humanity that is
more authentic. The respective step will be fulfilled when we as Christians will
try follow in Jesus footsteps. Jesus set the bar impossibly high: be perfect, He
urges. We will never reach that far, not as an individual and not as a church.
Although we (like Moses) will not reach the heights, but still living as Christians
means participating in incarnation. God's good will became flesh in creation.
This happens again and again when God sustains care for his creation. God's
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good will became flesh in an extraordinary way in Jesus Christ who showed us
the Father's face and how God's love can become a reality both in words and in
deeds. We are witnessing the same incarnation when the disciples of Jesus
adopt this merciful, forgiving and encouraging life philosophy, so characteristic
of Jesus.
Essentially, the religious life is to receive the message from Bible and
particularly from Jesus in different situations, in different languages and in
different cultures. When we receive this message, we simultaneously give it a
shape and make it visible. At that time, we serve as hands, ears, eyes and an
instrument of God.
By emphasising the visibility of Christian life, we make visible its limitations and
its imperfection at the same time. As long as we talk only about invisible church
or internal personal faith, we can we live under an illusion that the church is
perfect. As soon as the church and the Christian community become visible, we
will also see their weaknesses. The image of God is in all of us, but so is human
imperfection.
However, this, actually, is logical. The church is the body of Christ. His body was
neither beautiful nor perfect, even though he was the son of God who became
a man. If we were to take seriously the prophets' predictions of evangelists'
stories, we would have to say that Jesus' body was covered with wounds and
bruises after the assault. It was so terrible sight that people turned their gaze
away. This broken body is an image of church. Through a miracle, a different
kind of body emerged from the broken body of Jesus on Easter morning, the
kind that no walls or locked doors could stop any longer from travelling freely.
After the resurrections, Jesus is different. Usually, he is not recognised until he
does something characteristic of Him: He shares bread, He invites the disciples
to eat, etc. As soon as He is recognised, He disappears from the sight. Jesus is
different. He cannot be labelled. He would also like us to have the same
opportunity: everyone that is born of the Spirit is like the wind - you don't
know where it comes from or where it goes. This freedom to be yourself,
different yet valuable, we should allow each other.
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According to the Biblical Vision of Humanity, human does have tendency to
both good and evil. According to Lutheran doctrine, human is simul iustus et
peccator, simultaneously righteous and sinner. This should prevent us from
simplifying life in such a way that we wouldn't project evil only to other
humans.
The Bible does not give its unreserved support for the acceptance of difference
and otherness. Like with a number of other interpretation questions, we have
to compare the different verses of Bible and to assess which of the texts should
be given more weight. We can use as an example the Old Testament's vision of
strangers. On the one hand, there are texts emphasising the ritual purity. In
those, God commands the citizens to clear the cities of all other other nations
and those who sacrifices to any other gods. The defenders of slavery, racial
oppression and immigration may have found in those texts the support for
their stances.
The thought of a scapegoat is in close connection with despising the otherness.
When nation is facing hardship, there must someone to blame. The kings or
their foreign wives, who brought strange gods to Jerusalem, often were like an
eyesore to prophets. There are also other examples of the need for
purification. In the course of history, the scapegoat way of thinking most often
targeted minorities: Jews, disabled, sexual minorities, etc. The fear caused by
otherness and difference is irrational, but, unfortunately, common even
nowadays.
The Old Testament has also different, almost opposite rudimentary tone. The
manner in which the widow, the orphan, and the stranger is treated by the
society is used as indicators of the nation's ethical status. Common to these
groups is that they did not automatically have the social security, which was a
necessity for the survival in the society of that time. Hospitality is a Biblical
Virtue - and it, in fact, extends to strangers.
The Bible also contains references to a number of exemplary strangers. They
include, for example, the mysterious priest Melchizedek who blesses Abraham,
a Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at the well, a fictional Parable Of The
Good Samaritan, Roman officer at Jesus' cross, the Ethiopian courtier in the
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Acts of the Apostles, etc. These are the examples of how the action of God
transcends boundaries between people.
This is also, where the whole Bible is heading. It doesn't happen all at once and
it is never perfect, but step by step, the gender equality and equity
transgressing all borders of the Kingdom of God are breaking through even
more clearly. Its realisation is never taken for granted, but it is a task for us
Christians and us humans.
About interaction and encounter
The characteristic feature in Jesus' action was that He talked to people He met.
It can of course be taken for granted, but in the Jewish culture of that time, it
was not necessarily like that. On the contrary, the interaction was dominated
by many rules that drew boundaries between men and women, scribes and
sinners, Jews and foreigners.
Jesus transgressed the borders, and he did not pursue just one-way
communication. By allowing time for questions, dialogue and debate, He
anchors the message and the reality of human lives.
In the past, Socrates used the discussion as a teaching method. In his case, this
method was very sophisticated if we were to believe the dialogues written by
Plato. Socrates always gives the impression that he does not have any answers.
At the same time, he allures his interlocutors into traps as they confidently
present their opinions and then Socrates mocks them. His method has been
called "therapeutic" because it is not about the care of souls, but rather about
the care of knowledge and prejudice.
Most of us have heard numerous times how important it is for people to get a
chance to unload their feelings and experiences. However, the words are not
always even needed. The book of Job tells how his three friends came to him
when he had lost everything a man can lose. According to the story, his friends
sat silent with Job for many days. And then, they, unfortunately, committed a
mortal sin for a physician of the soul: they began accusing Job and explaining
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that he himself was to blame for the punishments inflicted on him by God.
Instead of listening, they called upon him to convert and to repent.
Thus, the story of Job has reference to both respectful silence and religiously
motivated accusation. In the latter option, we simplify and generalise the
problems of a fellow-citizen.
Is it even possible at all to understand another human being? One way to
answer this question is to start with the fact that both are humans. I can
empathise with another human life situation by comparing it to my own
experiences. But this approach involves risks. When I begin from my own
starting points, I might forget that the other human is different from me and
that his experiences are different from mine as well.
As fellow men who are ready to listen, we should avoid comments like: "I know
exactly how you feel, I have experienced this myself!", or "I have a friend who
has been through the same process". In doing so, we are cutting off the train of
thought of the other person and perhaps starting to tell about ourselves or our
friends. Of course, we hope that our story would somehow help our
conversation companion. But unwittingly we have already put him in a specific
box or human category; we no longer are open to his uniqueness. And we do
deal with his situation as an individual case, but we just offer universal
standard response.
Each and every human being is always, in some sense, is different from all the
others Different, but still valuable. This is the key concept in our Christian faith.
The Story of Creation teaches us that the human is created in the image of God.
You and I, therefore, are the image of the largest and the most inscrutable
mysterious image of all.
French philosopher, Gabriel Marcel, has said: human life is not a problem to be
solved, but a mystery, in the face of which we should pause and render
quiescent. In my opinion, this is a valuable wisdom of life. Human can have
many problems, but he is not the problem. Problem can be solved using right
methods and tools. Human life does not need a solutions - life is to be lived.
We certainly need help and advice at times, but not necessarily in a form of
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solutions and answers, but rather with the support of fellow-citizen and the
help of God-given power.
Every human being should have the right to be seen as he is. No one should be
treated as a typical representative of some group, sex or race. When we see a
fellow-citizen only through stereotypical judgments, we rob them of the right
and freedom to be themselves. If we are not able to overcome our prejudices,
we will never move along with the interactive transformation process that
should lead every discussion.
When we, as empathy-oriented fellow-citizens, encounter a fellow man in
distress, I think that we rush to find a solution too fast. I, myself, am a typical
representative of such approach. We think that we cannot finish the
conversation before we have offered a ready-made solution to the other. Such
pragmatic approach may have positive points. It is worth if we succeed to
guide, carefully and with respect, our fellow-citizen from the difficult life
situations by showing him what kind of small concrete steps he could take to
gain more solid ground under his feet. In our eagerness to find a solution, we
take to carry too large portion of the other person's responsibility n our own
shoulders, and we do not respect the other person's integrity.
So, the solution is not the only possible outcome of the good conversation.
Sometimes, the conversation itself is already enough to help, if a person feels
that he have been heard and seen. When one human being in distress realises
that the other human being volunteers the time to listen to him, his selfesteem can rise which may be the first step on the way to change. The story of
Jesus' encounter with Zacchaeus is a very good example of this. Jesus stopped
under the tree and looked at Zacchaeus who climbed up into a tree and offered
to visit his home. After Jesus' visit, Zacchaeus changed so much that he was
willing to make his wrong right and return to people the money he stole from
them.
When we are given an opportunity to share our experiences, we are offered, at
the same time, an opportunity to form a coherent story from the individual,
possibly chaotic, memories and experiences. The healing effect of telling is
born when the pieces, so to speak, "fall into place", or at least the will become
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a part of a more or less coherent life story. Also for this reason, the discussion
can lead to the strengthening of the life control, even when the volume of the
words does not seem to show visible results.
The second stream we can tumble into is hence a preconception that another
human being is the same as me. But there is always a second stream. In that
case, I assume the opposite that the other human being is completely different
than me. Putting such label as "different" on another human being can happen,
among other things, when we activate prejudices directed at certain groups of
people in our society. For example, "Men do not know how to express the
feelings" or "immigrants are lazy and simply want to enjoy our social security
benefits". In a similar way, we may label others as alcoholics, hypochondriacs
or unwilling to work, just like those names represent objective categories.
Some people are different than me but not completely different. We shall not
ignore this suspense when we are dealing with other people. It is natural and
perhaps even necessary to compare people to each other and to ourselves. The
comparison may be arranged without ranking people by order, but rather more
in a manner like we usually explore new things and phenomena. We learn by
relating new experiences to our previous knowledge. We are looking for
similarities and differences. With their help, we perceive and interpret our
world.
That how we act when we get excited about new things, such as birds or a
particular kind of music. As we learn more, we at the same time learn to
recognise and interpret smaller and smaller differences and finesses. There,
where the untrained ear hears only a birdsong or music, the enthusiast
recognises distinctive differences and attributes.
In my opinion, we should respect and maintain this suspense between familiar
and inscrutable in our mutual interaction. By preserving this openness, we give
our fellow men a chance to grow, change and surprise us. This is the only way
he will still be able to retain the opportunity to be both at the same time to us,
a friend and a mystery.
The words "familiar" and "friend" say a lot in this context. The matter is familiar
when we have a previous experience with it. If someone asks us, "Are you
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familiar with a smartphone?", we say "yes" if we have the experience with it,
even if we do not understand anything at all about how it works or what
components it consists of. In a similar way, we can the other person a "friend",
even if we do not know his deepest thoughts or his entire life story. But the
friendship is born from the fact that our life histories have encountered. He has
a role in my life story and while I have in his life story.
In the wedding speeches, I have often expressed the wish that the future
spouses would preserve their curiosity towards each other throughout their
lives. Love survives when the dynamic surprising and even uncontrollable
dimension brands the relationship. If we stop and just wallow in the perception
"now I know this person perfectly", we deprive him/her of a chance to change
and evolve, or to show us the nature of the previously unknown personal traits.
For the relationship to work, this chance to get surprised is vital. But this
openness can be taken too far. If the element of surprise and absence of
expectations are emphasised too much, we no longer know at all what to
expect from another person. Then, a trusting relationship cannot develop.
Trust is based on predictability: we can trust that this fellow-citizen does not
want to hurt us, does not leave us stranded, and does not leave us as soon as
some more attractive option comes along.
Hence, in the interaction with another person, we should strive to preserve the
suspense between the similarity and difference, familiarity and mystery as well
as predictability and element of surprise. In such a dynamic field of suspense,
our fellow-citizens can stay different, but still of equal value. He is one of us,
even if he is not the same as me.
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