Hopeful change, diverse unity

"Hope and change" cannot remain a mere slogan. We must define that for which we hope so that we can wisely manage the process of change. In defining our "hope," we discover who we are through the relationship that comes in such communication. In wisely managing "change," we help protect the integrity of our relationship with one another.

One problem with any reform effort is to remain unified. Being united by what we are against will not be a lasting unity. We must discover something in common that we can be for. By we, I mean all of us who live in this society, this polity composed of a diverse population. To continually distinguish between "us" and "them" will make potential friends appear to be foes (and vice versa). You and I may have differences of opinion on any number of issues, but we still can manage to maintain cordial relations with one another. Perhaps this is why Tip O'Neil (remember him, fighting tooth and nail with Ronald Reagan) insisted that "all politics is local."

What can we do here and now to build our community? I admire those businesses that work to integrate business activity with community affairs, modeling what is economically possible in the real world. Such businesses have ideals that they are sincerely trying to put into practice.

Perhaps this is what true community is all about - all of us trying to make real some common ideal. How we come to share a common ideal is through communication, staying together long enough to listen to one another and letting our words/actions be instruments of understanding rather than weapons of division.

We need to discover how our polity may find unity within inevitably normal diversity. It is important how we frame our questions concerning what the problems are. It is unhelpful to introduce blame and shame while trying to communicate with one another. Leave the labels off the table when laying out one's argument. Let this issues be described by definition rather than derision. It seems that we bomb one another with buzzwords than attack when our correspondent fails to reply with the politically correct answer. I am not interesting in defending or attacking the legacy of imperfect politicians past or present. I am interested in creating a society which functions well in healthy community. How can this come about?

REMAINING RATHER THAN RESISTING

Is one who “argues” much ever open to being led to a conclusion other than that which one insists on proposing? It is doubtful that, in such “argument,” some set of propositions is continuously being presented while logically leading, formally or informally, to a declarative conclusion. More likely are one’s questions an attempt to lead the other to one’s own predetermined answers.

How, then, can one ever learn something new? Resistance to persuasion is often rooted in distrustful fear rather than determinative love of logic. Maturity puts logic in service of love, which lets trust and truth temper one another. The immature fool fears learning something new, even if it be true.

The logic of friendship is such that Truth is acted out in Love, letting trust turn away doubt that may otherwise drive a wedge between one and another. When truth reveals some offensive hurt or betrayal of trust, friends find healing in forgiveness. Confrontation need not be a hindrance to friendship; in fact, it may be essential – face-to-face relationship confronts oneself with another, at which moment each one's humanity can be revealed.

Friendship means not turning away from the one who confronts us. To turn away is to make the other one's enemy. To remain with another person is profound.

CONFORMED TO THE PATTERN

“Be not conformed to the pattern of this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…”

The main character in the movie, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, was obsessive in how his mind found patterns. One wonders how this may be like any of us cope with the world as we find it - patterns emerge or on imposed in such a way as to mediate our encounter with reality. Some patterns are merely ideal with little or no correspondence with the real. Others correspond so well that we ascribe to them TRUTH.

Conscience keeps us connected to what is real - or should do so if it is well-formed and clear. Conscience that has poor correspondence between the ideal and real can make folly seem to be wise. Thus have many become fools.

CONSCIENCE AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD

Christian Ethics can be understood through the Great Commandment, the Ten Commandments, and the Beatitudes. The "the kingdom of God" is the realm of right relationship, first with God, from which follows relationship with any other person. One's conscience is significant for discerning right relationship, which is why it is so important that one's conscience be well-formed as well as clear. A mature person takes care to examine one's conscience, questioning both formation and clarity.

The word "conscience" is derived from the Greek syneidesis. I find it significant that eidesis is the root of our words for "ideal", "idea", and "idol." One's idea of reality presents a false ideal if that idea contradicts what has been revealed by God, who created all that is real. Such a false ideal is then an idol. When one's conscience is formed by false ideas, this idolatry leads one away from right relationship with God and others. Without a true God-image, one cannot go on to imagine how one ought to live - the conscience is too malformed to be trustworthy.

Christianity claims that one may clear one's conscience through confessional repentance, submitting one's imagination to the Word of God revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ who perfectly expressed right relationship with God. With the clear conscience that comes from such Christian confession, one may move on to practice right relationship in how one lives thereafter.

Consider Hebrews 9:9 (describing how there are religious practices that are not enough to clear one's conscience) and Hebrews 9:14 (describing how Christ is able to "cleanse our conscience"). Consider also Hebrews 5:14, which shows how Christian maturity is proven by practice.

The kingdom of God is found in the Body of Christ of which we prove we are a part as we live a life of love toward God and others. As long as we are alive, we can choose this way of love, initiated by God's ultimate act of love in giving Christ Jesus to suffer and die on the cross, then be resurrected to new life which is ours to share.

PHILOSOPHIC LEGACY OF JP2

The following is adapted from an interview with Mexican philosopher Rodrigo Guerra López, regarded as one of the major experts on Karol Wojtyla's thought. In this interview (found at http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=2041), Guerra López speaks about Wojtyla's intellectual legacy.

One of Karol Wojtyla's most original contributions

in the area of morality consists

in the rereading he does of Kant's ethics in several articles

and

in the book Love and Responsibility.

In these texts we are able to appreciate how Wojtyla holds that

there is a concrete and primary categorical imperative

for the conscience of every human being:

The person must be affirmed for himself!

He must never be treated as a mere means!

This idea has been explicitly formulated

in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor.

Another philosophical contribution is the way Wojtyla expresses that

action gives a special moment of knowledge of the truth

in his book entitled Person and Act [The Acting Person].

BECOMING WHO WE ARE MEANT TO BE

Life is a struggle to become who God means for us to be. Faith is the means by which we realize that we struggle with God. Without faith, we cannot please God because we cannot know God. Faith is no mere idea; faith is how our belief plays out in reality. Ideal belief is tested by real life. The truth of what we believe becomes manifest in what we choose to do. In our struggle to live, we may struggle with or against God. If we live to please God, than God is with us in our struggle. The life of Christ set the pattern for pleasing God - willing to do what pleases God, and wanting others to be with us in doing so. The struggle of life always includes others in the struggle; how we help or hinder that struggle matters.

THE RULE OF NOW AND THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE

Now is the moment in which we freely choose to act. What we do is informed by what we know. We have some knowledge of what came before now, given by our own experience or by the experience of others (knowing with others = CON-SCIENCE = communal knowledge, knowing with one's community). We have no knowledge of what will come after, although we may imagine that we do know what to expect given what we or others claim to know.

Every act we choose to do is subject to the judgment of our conscience. It is by our conscience that we know whether some act is good or bad. It is wise to follow one's conscience and foolish to do otherwise. Wisdom would then require that we be careful in the formation of conscience. Ignoring what we know will provoke our conscience to make us aware of our act of ignorance.

Acting contrary to one's conscience will confuse one's identity; one who acts in such a way must actively ignore this contradiction of conscience in order to present oneself otherwise to another person - this is hypocrisy. Community cannot continue if hypocrisy is left unchecked. Rather than sharing common knowledge, the community will suffer debililative ignorance. The lies that follow from ignoring one's conscience will ultimately dissolve the bonds of community are formed by true relationship. Rather than allowing truth to form the conscience of those in community, hypocrisy let's guile be the ground for given knowledge.

Without truth, one cannot live freely. The deformed conscience that comes from hypocritical community lets lies be the rule which will only keep those under such rule in bondage.