Going to church is a great good that is beaten out only by going to church in unity.
Our church re-enters on November 7th. We have been helped by a government exception to allow unvaccinated people to worship alongside vaccinated people….or hurt by this exception, depending on your point of view. I want to show how points-of-view matter so much that we should follow them through to understanding our our deeper world-views. Then, having walked you down that path I want to show you how world-views shape our sense of what is right and what are our ‘rights’. And then I want to show you something from the bible that digs into our claims to rights, and might help be the secret sauce of unity.
Come with me, and push back (firmly but politely) on our church facebook page if you disagree. Plenty of you are plenty wiser than me.
Points-of-View
‘Point-of-view’ is a common-sense phrase. It helps us to acknowledge that what we see depends on where we choose to stand. It reminds us that we have almost always chosen not to see everything. It helps with tolerance of different views, yet doesn’t necessarily approve of all points-of-view. It is a halfway-useful idea. You will know various points-of-view about vaccination in the current climate. It is fair to say that tolerance is tested just now in a way that we haven’t seen for a good few years. Some of us have never seen it. It is hard to say whether the conflict between points-of-view will dim after restrictions reduce for everyone on December 1st, or whether the conflict will go from distant relationships (‘I can’t believe those people think that!’) to in-person over-the-table encounters (‘Wait, you are sitting at my table and you think….?’)
Let me declare my own point-of-view, which I think is roughly evidence-based. Of course, everyone claims this - but we all make decisions about where our evidence-base will begin and end). My own point-of-view is that a combination of lockdowns and vaccinations have helped us turn a tsunami of trouble into a slow-moving flood of ongoing trouble. A tsunami which would have overwhelmed our resources has become a flood which will continue to inundate them. This point-of-view and its’ outcome is hardly what you’d call a good win, but I think it’s been a reasonable gain - which may be the best we got. That’s my point of view.
But I have heard so many other points-of-view that do not fit neat summary. I have heard from
the person who distrusts authority, having experienced an awful lot of terrible authority in their life.
the person who got vaccinated quickly and suffered pretty terrible consequences on the same day and has now been advised by doctors not to get the second vaccination.
the person who wants everyone possible to be vaccinated because their life may be threatened by an infection, yet cannot be vaccinated themselves for medical reasons.
the person who who fled from a deeply authoritarian country and is now deeply affected by displays of government authority here.
the person who might move location to be free of judgment, and the person who might move location to be free of crowds.
the person who works in health care and is pained by anything that looks like less than deep and urgent seriousness in others.
the person who wants everyone vaxxed so they can party.
the person who wants no-one to be forced to vax so they can all party.
Apart from the last views, which I frankly struggle with, aren’t you struck by the difficulty of some of those points-of-view? Of the internal tensions in them? That some of them have involved turns in personal thinking, and high personal cost? They certainly challenge me to try standing in a few different shoes. Many of these contrary views have really moved me as I have heard the costs counted. That’s a lot of points-of-view.
From Points of View to World-View
‘Point of view’ is a useful phrase, but it is not helpful enough. What is being revealed just now is not just point-of-view, but world-view. The question for each of us is, ‘what am I protecting by my point-of-view’? What you are protecting is connected to your world-view. When the conversation stops at ‘my view is’, we aren’t reflecting on what we really value. Moral judgment is short-circuited. World-view runs deeper.
WWJHS?
What would Jonathon Haidt say?
Jonathon Haidt is a moral psychologist who wrote ‘The Righteous Mind’ (2012, Pantheon Books). The book sold well, and sold well because it identified for its’ readers the deep, deep values that lie below their surface debates. A book that explains you to yourself is always worth a read. That’s why I read the bible. But let’s stay with Haidt a moment. We trumpet our reasons for things (I just did above), but Haidt says our decisions are based less on reason than on deep moral intuition that has been formed in us by tribe and culture.
He proposes at least six different moral intuitions, and claims that people value one issue more than another in different patterns: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression.
All sorts of things affect which of these you prioritise. Usually without much thought. Roughly, I am like this:
This means you can cheat at cards and I won’t get too upset (low fairness/cheating intuitions), and put a drum-kit in a church sanctuary and I’ll want to put an atheist metalhead on it (low sanctity/degradation intuition). But if you let me down, I’ll cry (high loyalty/betrayal intuitions). Your line is different to mine and it will affect how we relate, hang out, eat, have fun, talk, worship and even (according to Jonathon Haidt) vote.
Responses to vaccination practices trigger very different moral intuitions in people. For vaccination touches on all these widely-varied moral intuitions, but it does not hit the same moral notes for everyone. We can’t expect that it will. It’s not that some of us are moral and others immoral - but (according to Christian theology) we are all differently moral (yay for us) and we all frequently fail to meet our own moral standards (boo for us). What funny creatures we are!
I want to remember that while some people will selfishly demand this or that of others (for we are good at being very narrowly righteous), most of us have a fierce moral value we are protecting that we just can’t see. And even if we see it - we often can’t see that others are not always protecting self-interest, but their own deep moral (though possibly flawed) intuitions.
From Worldviews to ‘Rights’
There is one more development - rights.
Rights are either values that are claimed to be ‘natural’, or reinforced by ‘law’. We have all sorts of them: freedom to _______ . The right to _______. Most rights-by-law are won as some moral intuition gains the power to enforce its’ tendency over another. But not all rights are rights-by-law. People claim just the language of natural rights for all sorts of things. My son says he has a right to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I note that I must inform the UN to update their charter. One basic clash in our present moment is care/harm (expressed as a right to health) vs. liberty/oppression (expressed as a right to non-interference).
This expression of ‘rights’, or just a strong feeling of ‘right’ is the cause of both world-changing good and community-dividing harm. It’s a powerful little intuition.
What did the apostle Paul say?
I am a preacher. I can only talk worldview and fancy authors so long. I just want to stick one verse up your moral foundation. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, who were very enthusiastic about a new freedom to exercise their rights. They expressed this, as people in Maroubra do, by saying ‘I have the right to do anything’ (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Smart people acknowledge that rights also come with responsibilities. But I want to push one step further. Rights come with gospel responsibilities. We are people of the gospel. The message of God’s love through Jesus Christ has changed our lives and we believe it changes the world. It is our best song. Everyday. Any day. If my life doesn’t sound like the music of the gospel, then I want to edit my playlist quickly. So did Paul.
Listen to this: ‘Am I not free? Am I not an apostle?….(on he goes for a while)….But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ.’ (1 Corinthians 9:12).
This is gospel-shaped living. To be frank, I want the assurance of best-practice health among us. I also want the securing of peoples’ free conscience. Both are going to cost me. And if they don’t, it will cost the gospel. We will stop some people on one side dwelling in our gospel community, and we will stop some people on another side dwelling in our gospel community.
The questions for me, and you, is: whatever I want to happen here…will it be for the best of the gospel? And for the service of gospel community? What am I ready to ‘put up with’ rather than hinder the gospel?
This is really tough. I might find it hard to lead, and you might find it hard to belong. But one thing that was true, is true, and always will be true - the good of the gospel comes first. We may well work that out in different ways and still disagree on how to go forward. It could still get all kinds of awkward. Or we may see all kinds of beautiful accommodation. Imagine a church in which a hypothetical vaccine-opposers is the first to mask and the quickest to clean the seats? And in which the vaccine-demanding can bear to sit (even with fear) at least somewhere near the unvaccinated? That’s what I hope for. However we express it, the good of the gospel comes first. Let’s be unified on that.