There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. - Proverbs 14:12

(Bear with the political intro... this really is a Sunday Churchy post...)

As poorly as Bush's sanctimonious "faith based initiatives" sat with me,

As much as I get the joke about "faith based" foreign policy,

As much as I loathe the Administration's practice of subordinating science to politics,

...the whole "reality-based" meme current in liberal circles never set right with me, either.

I think I may have sorted out why that is. First, a few more words on "faith-based". It's a misnomer, especially the way it is used by the White House, describing funding for religious charities. The qualifying feature of the recipients of these funds is not their faith, but rather the object of their faith: namely religious traditions, mainly those that center on God. There are oodles of organizations and individuals who are guided in their humanitarian work by faith... sometimes it is religious faith, other times faith in the positive side of human nature, or just optimistic faith that work can bring about a better world. They don't qualify. Those who do share only the distinction of having faith in a tradition.

Let us be clear on another point: members of certain religious traditions express faith in "God', or "Christ", or some other supreme being. That's well and good as an expression. But, the truth behind it is that their faith in these beings is perfectly equivalent to their faith in the religious traditions that center on them. Certain individuals profess a "personal relationship" with God, or having "met" or "found" Christ. And those are fine expressions within their tradition. But, the stark truth is that everything they know of God or Christ, or whatever, comes either directly from their religious tradition, or from their experiences in the world interpreted in light of that tradition. Certainly they have those experiences - be it a miraculous seeming reprieve from some horrible fate, or be it a profound sense of peace, joy, comfort, or calling, that they consider direct experiences with God. But absent a religious tradition for interpreting (or even producing) those experiences, they have only the same ineffable experiences all humans have. So, the experiences themselves are only "God" insofar as there is a religion handy for interpeting them as such. I say all of this, because I don't want anyone reading to think that this doesn't apply to them, because their faith is in God rather than in a religious tradition. I hope you, the reader, will acknowledge that your Holy Books and your churches are instruments of tradition. I hope you, the reader, will acknowledge that you believe the Bible to be God's Word, if you do,... because of religious tradition. I hope you will acknowledge these things at least, whether or not you take to heart my suggestion that tradition isn't the best or only source of beliefs and values, and my advice to subordinate tradition to reason and conscience in guiding your views on public policy.

Reality-based. Besides an being unabashed conceit, the term misses the important point of focus. Do liberal politicians and pundits indeed have a friendlier relationship with reality than the Bush administration and its champions? Perhaps, perhaps not. Certainly when we feel supported by the facts, as best they can be understood, we are very keen on them. But the rest of the time, our relationship with the truth is only as good as our commitment to objectivity, to reason and observation, and to rigorous thinking. To keep this thing brief enough for a sound-bite let's just say that we strive to be the "reason-based" community, OK?

Then, there's this whole other issue - values. On the one hand, we have "traditional" values. On the other, we have "progressive", "humanistic", or "secular" values. It's my personal view that tradition serves much better as a guide to values than it does as a guide to reality. And yet I assert that tradition cannot rightly be the end-all of values. As Emerson stated so forcefully in his great essay, Self Reliance, "He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world." Values must be informed by all of the devices of conscience: tradition, yes as far as it can apply, but more important still are empathy, compassion, hope, and the courage to defy or re-invent tradition when these other qualities conspire to reveal a great fault in it.

The faith-based community, in my experience, puts a lot of stock in the passage of scripture at the top of this post from Proverbs. In effect, what they are saying is that God's thoughts trump "man's" thoughts. Maybe so. But in the final analysis what they are really saying is that tradition, the prime source of human beliefs about God - trumps the rest of human thinking about reality and values. They are trying to convince one another and themselves that a firm enough faith in traditions about God and their Holy Books will allow them to know the mind of God, and to be able to act upon the basis of God's wisdom rather than their own. Unfortunately, since tradition is a human practice, their efforts are undermined. Like it or not, human wisdom is all we posess - we cannot bootstrap ourselves to a share of God's wisdom, even by reading the book tradition holds to be God's Word. So there is a way that seems right to a [person], and maybe the end thereof really are the ways of death (nobody in recorded history has made it out alive, you know)... but that may just be our lot in life. Even the "Godliest" person is following human traditions. Humans just can't avoid the ways of humans... no matter how "saved", "indwelled with the Spirit", or anything else they may become, they are still working from human traditions.

The reason I take such pains to point this out is that there is a huge barrier in religious fundamentalism to the most important task of following reason and conscience even when they seem to be at odds with "God's Word".

And, if we are ever to find a productive dialogue between people of different faith traditions and those whose faith is not placed in religious traditions, one that will advance goodness and leave sanctimoniousness behind, we must all be willing to constantly re-examine our values and the relevance of their sources. We must give religiuos tradition its due and, even those of us who do not rely on it, must acknowledge the good among those who do, but we must all be careful not to overestimate its importance - because to do so is to cause harm.

A couple of weeks ago, Alice posted a link to this story, about a child who is about to be taken away from his family for no other reason than the "tradition-based" legislation of the state of Florida. I discussed this with a conservative religious friend, hoping to persuade him that laws based more on tradition than conscience were wrong-headed. Unfortunately, he was unpersuaded. Perhaps this post will be a more effective effort at persuasion on this point, or perhaps not.

I have known a number of people who lived in families that sucked the very life out of them - families where there was abuse and neglect, and anything but familial love - who stayed for years, or indefinitely, while irreparable harm was being done to themselves and sometimes their children, mainly because they could not square the idea of divorce with their traditional values. There are parents, here in the U.S., and abroad, who have learned only poorly the power of unconditional love, acceptance and toleration towards their children and their children's growing minds, because their traditions taught them that strictness in discipline was the most important parenting tool (in fact, I have at times been guilty of this myself, and the harm from it was no small thing). There are other kinds of harm that come from deifying a faith tradition. There is a kind of cultivated ignorance that "Creation Scientists" have created becaue they feel their traditions threatened by scientific investigations in to the origins of modern life forms. Perhaps this harm is not so great as that which tears children from families or drives gay teens to suicide, but it should certainly be avoided if possible.

We must realize that we are all, religious or not, just people doing our best to understand and solve the problems that confront us. We use the tools at our disposal - conscience, compassion, reason, and tradition. Not one of us speaks for God or has any objective evidence of what God would wish - we only have human tradition. If we keep that in the forefront of our minds, and are careful to lead with consicence and reason, and let tradition follow us - especially when we see harm coming from too much reliance on tradition - then we will be able to build a better place for all of us. This is my call to everyone to come together, whether liberal or conservative, whether "tradition-based" or "reason-based", to introspect on the quality of our values, and to be sure that we are employing all of the tools that we can use to make sure those values are placed well, and that our work truly brings good instead of harm.

I'll just climb down from the pulpit now... take your turn up there if you like, in the comments thread.

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Posted by smijer at July 24, 2005 07:19 PM