Dogmatism

Dogmatism has been defined as the “tendency to lay down principles (beliefs) as incontrovertibly true, without any consideration of sufficient evidence or the opinion of others.”  I’ve never wanted to be a dogmatic person.  A dogmatic person is authoritarian, inflexible, arrogant, rigid, narrow-minded, opinionated, bigoted and intolerant.  A dogmatic person  expresses his or her opinion or  belief as the only one.  Parents are often dogmatic with their children and the Christian church is noted for its dogmatism—laying down principles of behavior or beliefs as incontrovertibly true. A “dogma” is an “unchallengeable and unquestionably true” teaching, belief, conviction, ethic, or ideology laid down as authoritative (absolutely true) without adequate grounds.

Throughout history, and, it seems to me, even more so in our time, we have example after example of dogmatic beliefs in government, religion, science, ethics, and in our personal relationships.  Dogmatism essentially causes us to close our minds to other perspectives and opinions.  Irrational beliefs such as “the earth is flat” or “global warming is a hoax,” are dogmatic in nature. Such beliefs are inconsistent with empirical reality, they are illogical and persons who cling to them ignore any and all evidence that does not support their line of thinking. This rigidity in one’s thinking creates anger when alternative explanations or opinions are proffered, or when they see discrepancies between their opinion and reality. 

All of us are dogmatic in a sense.  It is important for us as human beings that we hold our particular and maybe even our peculiar opinions.  We have our own ideas, our own feelings, our own opinions and perspectives—it is part and parcel of what it means to be a person.  We call this our “subjective” side: our personal, individual, internal, emotional, instinctive, intuitive, biased, gut-based ideas.  We become dogmatic when we  present this subjective side of ourselves (without evidence to back it up) as being true for everyone or as the only reality.

We can never be fully human if we do not recognize another side of ourselves.  We may be subjective beings, but we are also objective and rational beings—we are meant to be thinking, rational people. Dogmatism prevents us from thinking outside our own boundaries, from using the mind we have been given, and  from seeking truth.  That’s why I don’t want to be a dogmatist.  I want to be fully human—subjective and objective, emotional and rational, and a seeker of truth no matter how evasive.

To Admit A Wrong

There is much ado, and in my opinion, rightly so, about the Trump Administration’s new policy of separating children from their immigrant parents as a means of deterring (according to Mr. Sessions) the flow of future immigrants.  It is a sad policy and its intent doesn’t seem very logical to me—and it certainly doesn’t represent our “better angels.”

In 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, made a similar boo-boo.  It was his greatest failure as president and a grave mistake.  He forced the internment of 117,000 Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps for the duration of World War II.  It was “fear,” writes Jon Meacham, “run amok.”  The conditions in those concentration camps were despicable.  “It was a decision,” writes Meacham, “of a nation in panic, of a government that had lost its bearings, of a president who had chosen to forsake his duty to the spirit and to the letter of the Constitution.”  It was supported by the attorney general of California, supported by the majority of the Congress, and by the majority of the Supreme Court—and by a majority of American citizens. Majorities aren’t always right!

Four decades later, Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988—which authorized compensation for the detained families and an apology from the United States of America to the victims of that disaster.  It was far too late for compensation and for an apology.  “For here,” Reagan said as he signed the act, “we admit a wrong, here we reaffirm our commitment as a nation to equal justice under the law.”  If you ever have opportunity, be sure to visit the Japanese American museum in San Jose, California.

We have created a myth around our American goodness and our American rightness. The myth is fallacious.  Nations are as fallible as people—and “a government of the people, by the people, for the people” cannot help but make mistakes and renege on promises of “equal justice under the law.” It took us 46 years to “admit a wrong” and to apologize to the victims of Roosevelt’s blunder.  

Are we again making decisions as a nation in fear, of a government that has lost its bearings, of a president who had chosen to forsake his duty to the spirit and to the letter of the Constitution?  Are we wrong again?  We were wrong when we closed our eyes to what was happening to the Jews in Hitler’s Germany.  We were wrong in the way we dealt with and still deal with Native Americans.  We were wrong when we ignored Jim Crow and ignored the numerous lynchings of African-Americans by whites in the early decades of the twentieth century.  We were wrong to prohibit women from voting. We have been wrong innumerable times.  Our health and future as a nation depends upon our confessing our “sin” rather than proclaiming ourselves a people “without sin.”

A Visit From William Temple

We cannot ignore history.  We must know what happened before our time because that happening has affected our time.  We must know something of the Great Depression in America to understand the basis for and the ramifications of the Social Security program as we presently know it.  We must know about the two World Wars of the twentieth century to understand the wars of the twenty-first century. 

The same is true with great personalities of the past.  They, too, have had an effect on the present.  No one can argue the fact that Abraham Lincoln contributed greatly to what we are now as a people and a nation.  I don’t think any of us can ignore the twentieth century influence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on these early years of the twenty-first century.  What has happened before affects the now.   To know the “before” can help us avoid the pitfalls of the “now.”  

To know what people thought and what they wrote a century ago can save us from wasting our time re-discovering what has already been discovered.  It can save us from the rampant disease of contemporaneity, the arrogance of thinking we are the first to come up with a thought, or idea, or the use of a certain word, or to experience this situation or that event.  This does not mean that we cease to “keep up” with the great personalities of our own day—it is a matter of applying the holy conjunctions “both/and.”  I will acquaint myself with both the voices of the past and  the voices of the present.

This is why I am so very thankful for those friends of the past who visit me occasionally here in my study.  I welcome them when they come to me and talk with me through their own written words or the words of a biographer.  I have such a visitor this morning:  William Temple (1881-1944).  A renowned teacher, author, philosopher, and preacher, Temple served as a bishop in the Church of England.  He was the Archbishop of Canterbury (as his father before him) from 1942-1944.  He was instrumental in the founding of the World Council of Churches and in his efforts to combat anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice in Britain.  I have learned a great deal from Archbishop Temple who died the year after I was born.

William Temple said of the scientific method:  “The simple and plain fact is that the scientific method wins its success by ignoring parts of reality as given in experience; it is perfectly right to do this for its own purposes; but it must not be permitted by a kind of bluff to create the impression that what it ignores is non-existent.”  Now I can ponder that thought all day long.

Complexity and Perplexity

Do you know the difference between complexity and perplexity? Complexity is the state of many parts thrown together and the difficulty of understanding the meaning of all the parts, or to find answers  for the mess. Complexity means complicated, something entangled with many different things.  The stem of the word “complexity” —complex—combines the Latin roots com (meaning “together”) and plex (meaning “woven”).  The world is a complex (many things all woven together) place.  It is not of one piece—there are many peoples, languages, cultures, and religions, problems, ideas, philosophies, all woven together, which interact with each other in multiple ways because all are interdependent, all are entangled with each other.  We live in a uni-verse, a multi-verse, poly-verse,  and it is extremely complex to exist in such a state.  

History is a great complexity. There are so many influences, so many voices, events, points of view, varying facts, all converging into a single moment of time which the historian attempts (in vain, no doubt) to “un-complex.”  The historian’s perplexing task is to see and unravel all the disparate parts, and then attempt to weave them together to describe or explain the “real” of that particular moment in time.  Our present moment is a complex one—and most of us feel the complexity and live in a state of perplexity!

Perplexity is the inability to deal with or understand something complicated or unaccountable, that is, our perplexity has to do with complexity!  The prefix per means “through” and flex means “woven.”  How do we work through all the stuff of complexity?  Perplexity has to do with confusion, hidden intricacies, bewilderment, puzzlement, and bafflement, that is, perplexity has to do with complexity!

Nothing is simple.  Everything is complex, including my self.  I am a complexity.  That is why I am often perplexed.  How about you? 

From A Worried Soul

“Here’s a little song I wrote

You might want to sing it note for note

Don’t worry, be happy

In every life we have some trouble

But when you worry you make it double

Don’t worry, be happy now.”

Bobby McFerren’s lyrics are gospel!  Jesus says, “Don’t worry” in the sixth chapter of Matthew’s gospel.  I’m not sure he says, “Be happy,” but he certainly says, “Trust God to take care of everything.” Or does he?  “Don’t be anxious,” Jesus says.  But doesn’t everyone feel a little anxious on occasion?  It seems to be a normal emotion.  Is being “anxious” the same as worrying?  Most dictionaries seem to say they are the same.  So Jesus admonishes us:  Don’t be anxious or worry about what you will drink or eat.  Don’t be anxious or worry about having clothes to wear. Don’t fret about your height, you can’t do anything about it.  Look at the lilies of the field—how beautiful—they don’t work and they don’t spin yet their beauty surpasses the splendors of Solomon. Life is more than food and the body more than clothing.  Look at the birds of the air:  they don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet they are fed. You are far more valuable than the birds.  Don’t worry about tomorrow, tomorrow will look after itself.  Plus, today has enough troubles of its own.

Does this mean people of faith won’t worry or shouldn’t worry?  Does Jesus mean we shouldn’t work or take responsibility to get what we need and our families need to live?  If you’ve got Jesus, or Jesus has got you,  does that mean:  “Don’t worry, be happy?”

Jesus talks about a good many subjects in the sixth chapter of Matthew’s gospel and all those “teachings” should be considered together.  After all, the Bible was not originally ordered in  “chapter and verse.”  The Bible was divided  into chapter and verse by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury in 1227 and the Wycliffe Bible of 1382 was the first Bible to use the pattern.  I’m quite sure the Archbishop had no idea how his  good idea or design of “chapters and verses” would backfire through the use of  “proof texts” (verses taken out of context to prove a point) and thus causing a widespread distortion of the biblical story.

I worry and I’m sure you worry.  We worry about many things.  It seems to me to be a normal emotion and I think Jesus means for us to be “normal” in that sense.  I’ve never known a person who didn’t worry!  Would the elimination of worry make one happy?  I doubt it, but I’ll let you worry that out for yourself.

Been There, Done That!

I find myself using the phrase “Been there, done that” quite often these days.  The expression suggests that I’ve been in the situation or I’ve experienced the kind of happening you are talking about—“I’ve been there, done that!”  I use those words more frequently now that I’m 75 years old, but the expression has been around and in use since the early 1970’s.  There is now a party game called “Been There, Done That,” and country music singer-songwriter Luke Bryan has written a song with the title, “Been There, Done That.”  

Like most other phrases, “Been There, Done That!” bundles up a lot of different meanings for different folk.  One of my friends always reminds me these days of something he heard me say many years ago (or thinks he heard me say many years ago).  He says, I said, “History teaches us that we’ve been through this trouble, or acted out this foolishness before, and somehow we have always survived.”  My friend says, that gives him hope—that whatever trials and tribulations may come our way, we will be able to overcome them and survive.  “Been there, Done That” and made it through!

Reading Jon Meacham’s book, The Soul of America, reminds me of where we as a nation have been before and what we have done before—and it is not a pretty tale by any means—and yet we as a nation and people rose above our own sordidness and cruelty by “letting the better angels of our nature” come to the fore.  If we rose above bigotry and cruelty of another time, we ought to be able to call on those “better angels” again and rise above our present bigotry and cruelty.

During World War I, President Wilson and the Congress  restricted freedom of expression (the First Amendment) in the name of national security.  (We always use “national security” as an excuse!)  It was illegal to “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.”  Magazines and newspapers were censored and some suppressed.  Sound familiar.  We’ve been there, we’ve done that already—let’s not do it again!  Let’s let our “better angels” sing!

Be Not Afraid

The phrase “Fear not,” is used about eighty times in the Bible.  Other word pairings that would be equal to “fear not” (“do not fear,” “be not afraid,” “do not fear”) are used about thirty times.  “Fear” has always been around. Aristotle said fear “is caused by whatever we feel has great power of destroying us, of harming us in ways that tend to cause us great pain.”  He went on to say that fear does not strike those who are “in the midst of great prosperity.”  Those who are afraid of losing what they have,  are the most vulnerable and the fear they know is not rational.  “No passion,” Edmund Burke wrote, “so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning  as fear.” 

Jon Meacham writes in The Soul of America, “the opposite of fear is hope, defined as the expectation of good fortune not only for ourselves but for the group to which we belong.  Fear breeds anxiety and produces anger; hope, particularly in a political sense, breeds optimism and feelings of well-being.  Fear is about limits; hope is about growth.  Fear cast its eyes warily, even shiftily, across the landscape; hope looks forward, toward the horizon.  Fear points at others, assigning blame; hope points ahead, working for a common good.  Fear pushes away; hope pulls others closer.  Fear divides; hope unifies.”

Hope is a form of faith and tends to produce what it sees.  Fear (despair) is a form of faith and tends to produce what it sees.  What do you see right now? Are you afraid?  Are you hopeful? 

In the aftermath of World War II, Harry S. Truman said, “We have learned that nations are interdependent and that recognition of our dependence upon one another is essential to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all mankind.”  In other words, our “immortal declaration” cannot be limited to just those who live in one little geographical segment of the world.  In order to find “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” we have to join hands with all others around the globe.  This is not to be feared—it is our great hope.  Truman saw everything was linked together—“So long as the basic rights of men are denied in any substantial portion of the earth, men everywhere must live in FEAR (emphasis mine) of their own rights and their own security.”  The divisiveness I see now in our political, social and religious life is between two faiths:  fear and hope.  The former sees everything going to pieces and that kind of fear “robs the mind of all its powers.”  The latter, hope, sees new possibilities growing out of the present disaster.  What do you see?  What is your faith?

Photo by Nancy Montgomery Reynolds