THE COMMON GOOD IN FAMILY AND COMMUNITY. Paul Versluis (November 10, 2013)

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Lester Williamson
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1 THE COMMON GOOD IN FAMILY AND COMMUNITY Paul Versluis (November 10, 2013) Reading a brief rendition of 1 Corinthians 12, The Spirit gives us different gifts and God empowers us to serve in different ways. The Spirit gives to some of us wisdom, to others faith, to some the gift of healing, to others a prophetic voice, to some an experience of miracles, and to other gift of prayer. We have different gifts but it is the same Spirit. To each is given the manifestation of the Sprit for the COMMON GOOD. May we use our personal gifts and abilities for the common good of our families and community. Use your spiritual gifts to enable this community to flourish. We each have been given a different gift to use for the common good. If you do not use your gifts for our common good, then we are less fortunate. We need your participation to enable our common good. The same is true in the family and at work. Right after speaking about the common good, Paul writes that we should strive for the greatest gift, the most excellent way, which is love. Some teach and some lead the process, some have visions and some pray, some sing and some bring flowers, some make peace and some are prophetic, some have a way of healing wounds and some raise funds, some organize our life and some make offer challenge, but all are needed to edify the community and the most excellent way, the greatest gift is love. When we love God and each other, we serve the common good and we enable our family and community to flourish. Lend a hand, do your part to enable the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. The common good is healthy community. We have to work, participate, play our position as it doesn t just happen by itself. Sometimes I don t do this well, this lending a hand and making my contribution. Because of the distance, I attend my Pastor peer group less than I should. But when I am there, I am engaged and I do my best to enable the group to flourish. A few weeks ago as I listened to a pastor share her story, I had a simple word to share. After the meeting, one of the conference ministers came up to me, smiled and said, I wish you were my pastor. I hardly know this women, but her words encouraged my heart. Life is too difficult to live alone. We need each other, we need to be loved by others to live well. I serve on a board and feel that I am among the least helpful board members in terms of my contribution. I don t bring meals, print flyers, give them big bucks, but when I am there, I am engaged, I do my best to enable the group to flourish. I do my best to build them up. Again, it was just a simple word, about having a disposition of generosity rather than one of scarcity, and one of the members later wrote me, grateful for my part, small as I might think it was.

2 Use your gifts for the common good of your family, community and work. When we love we work for our common good and the Spirit is with us to enable this community to flourish. At our family reunion I wrote the gifts of the Spirit on a piece of paper and randomly handed each person their blessing with a kiss. Your blessing is kindness; your blessing is courage, and so on. Some of the grandchildren took their gifts to bed with them. Grace remembered the gift given to Lucia. I was using my gifts for our common good. A brief philosophy of the common good On the one hand, the concept of the Common Good argues that the good of the community takes precedent over the good of the individual. When we share things in common, we need to consider the other person s perspective and we need a good process for making decisions. The more people who share, the more complicated it becomes to arrive at what we might consider to be the common good. Adding to the complexity is not just that we have different perspectives and the process not well done, but that there are times when the good of the community should not take precedence over the individual. Most would argue that the common good of a nation is best served by military conscription, but we would support a minority position that the common good would allow for consciousness objection. Don said it well, that the common good would endeavor to work to balance collective and individual rights. And when we include not just people, but all creation and creatures in the mix, it is not always clear what the common good is. The common good is something we need to hammer out with a good collective process. Does the common good include salmon in Lake Michigan? I am told that at one time, many favored trout. Does the common good include Iran as a nuclear power? Of course not, but then what about USA? Jesus words about the least of these remind us that we need to include the disadvantaged, the poor, the little ones, the dispossessed in our discussion about the common good. The common good is about ideas and practices that make the world better for everyone and not just the privileged few. The common good does not begin with self interest or national interest but with a shared, collective, global, water-shed perspective. The common good is a spirituality of wholeness, reminding us how everything is connected and we are all part of one whole fabric, and if you damage one part you damage the whole. A Personal story Growing us as a Christian fundamentalists, the most fundamental principle of our faith was the idea and the practice of Separation. Come out from among them, be ye separate was the Biblical slogan we lived by, the deepest, most cherished principle of our spiritual identity.

3 This principle of separation fenced us off from the the world, including Jews and then Catholics, and then Episcopalians and Methodists, and then evangelicals and then any fundamentalist who would associate with any of the above. The big deal was not to deal with people who were not like us. We were to live separated and apart so we would be contaminated. We even practiced secondary separation, not to associate with anyone who associated with Billy Graham, because Billy Graham was known to associate with neo evangelicals. We were taught to isolate ourselves and distrust people not like ourselves. We were suspicious and wary of anyone on the other side of our protective boundaries. This fostered a spirit of hostility, fear, and anxiety. There was no attempt to build bridges, or listen, or understand anyone from another perspective. For the sectarian, there can be no common good or common ground with the world. The word bigot means sectarian, or partisan. These are our neighbors, our brothers and our sisters. These are the people that we need to befriend and work with to forge a common good. It seems to be an impossible task, to listen and include those who would exclude themselves from our company. I believe an attempt to forge a common good from diverse minerals is the will of God, the vision and the mission of God in our time. Not to judge or condemn but to listen and show respect. Not to avoid them but befriend them. Who will do this work of peace? And there is the problem of our brains. We tend to think in dualistic and binary ways and to work for the common good we will need learn to think in non dualistic and more unitive ways. We need to evolve to a new consciousness, a new way of thinking. Carlyon alerted us to the book Moral Tribes, by Joshua Greene. Greene directs Harvard University s Moral Cognition Lab, which uses cutting-edge neuroscience and cognitive techniques to understand how people make moral decisions. Daniel Gilbert writes about Greene, Combining insights from the lab with lessons from decades of social science and centuries of philosophy, the great question of Moral Tribes is this: How can we get along with Them when what they want feels so wrong to Us? Gilbert continues his review of Greens work, Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the world s tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground. A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Greene compares the human

4 brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings ( portrait, landscape ) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brain s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words often with life-and-death stakes. To forge a common good we will need to alter the way we think and act towards those who are on the other side. We have been trained to gain advantage over others and not to work for a common good. We need to learn to cooperate and not separate from those with whom we disagree. We need to foster cooperation with people with deeply felt different moral values. [the new peacemaker] Law of liberty: showing mercy rather than judgment in the book of James You must understand this, my beloved; let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not create God s justice. [1:19]. And then reading from James 2:1; acts of favoritism do not conform with belief in Jesus. In 2:9 James adds, [But] if you show partiality, you commit sin Showing favoritism or partiality, in this instance to the rich, is just plain wrong. Discrimination violated the law of love for ones neighbor, what James calls the law of liberty. Rather than practicing partiality or discrimination, we need to learn to practice mercy, for as James says, mercy triumphs over judgment. The common good is a dream for the future of our world. For this dream to become a reality we must practice a ethic of love and extend mercy to those whose values and beliefs are different than ours. When we show partiality and judgment rather than mercy we sin and this leads to increased hostility and fear. But when we show mercy rather than judgment, when we love our adversaries, this leads to liberty and freedom. In a world of increasing multiculturalism, immigration, and globalization, we need to learn to seek a common good, however that is defined in each context. Rather than fostering policies than increase judgment and partiality, we need to foster policies that increase mutual listening and mercy. Rather than using processes that increase separation and antagonism, we need to use processes that increase mutual kindness and respect. Rather than practice a spirituality of fear and anxiety, we need to practice a spirituality of generosity and hospitality. This is God s dream, God s mission, and in Jesus this is our calling, to work for the common good, which is just another word for SHALOM. We are by nature somewhat wired for rivalry and selfish interest. It is the Word, the Spirit and the presence of Jesus among us that saves us, transforms us and empowers us to live not

5 conformed to the patterns of this world s violence and national interests but according to the will of God. Nature is transformed by Spirit, as we are being saved by God s grace.

Question is not will we have conflict. The question is how to we respond to it in a good and godly way?

Question is not will we have conflict The question is how to we respond to it in a good and godly way? I. The priority of peace in a context of surrender I. The priority of peace in a context of surrender