Warning: this one is going into law, politics, and religion. I decided if I was going to be controversial, I might as well touch on just about everything controversial. If you are the victim of religious trauma or abuse, the last part - “The Heart of the Matter” - might not be for you. And if you are the victim of religious trauma or abuse, while I can never speak for Christianity or even a significant part of it, I apologize for their acts, understand your distance, and wish you healing.
Foundations
Every system of thought must have a foundation.
There needs to be some basis for it. It’s one thing to have a set of rules, but ultimately that set of rules must be rooted in something. There has to be some foundation to build on. If there is no foundation, whatever that base level is becomes your foundation. In the same way that a tree needs roots or a building needs a foundation on which to be built, any system of thought or logic must have its own foundation, its own base on which to build.
Moreover, that foundation needs to be simple. There’s a very good reason for this, which we will get to shortly.
Science has this foundation. Consider cause and effect. That a cause will produce an effect - and not the other way around - is to an extent a foundational matter. (I say “to an extent” because the nature of time itself is still being researched. For our perspective, time flows in a particular direction, and we experience the world based on that direction.) Consider the principles behind the Scientific Method - a systematic set of processes involving the testing and retesting of hypotheses in order to find out characteristics of the world. Underpinning this scientific method are things such as integrity of knowledge, objectivity, honesty, and openness - qualities necessary to have assurances that the results of science are as reliable as possible. Can we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these foundations are necessary for science to work? Not absolutely, but experience has shown us, oftentimes by their absence, that science works much better with that underpinning.
Even mathematics has a foundation. Specifically, it has what are known as axioms. These are building blocks on which a mathematical system is built. An example of this would be the Peano Axioms for the Natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, …), which includes things like “The number 0 exists”, and “if A=B and B=C, then A=C”. These are things taken as given; we don’t prove them and can’t prove them, but we need them as a backbone for the things we can prove.
For those familiar with religion, this should sound very familiar. We’ll be getting there; be patient.
The problem with axioms - and, by extension, anything that acts as a foundation for a system of thought - is that we can run into issues with what we consider an axiom. If we have too many items as axiomatic, we run into the possibility of contradiction, where one axiom crashes into another and produces an impossible result. So, when it comes to these foundations, we need to keep it as lean as possible - only what is absolutely necessary, and no more.
Any foundational system needs to have a few priorities - no less or more. Everything else should branch out from those priorities. So… what other systems have these foundations?
That is what this essay is intended to explore.
Against The Law
Several years and one lifetime ago, as part of my responsibilities as a faculty member, I worked on a committee tasked with rewriting the Faculty Statutes. I was the best candidate from the Business School to serve on the committee at the time; I was tenured but not overly so, and I’d had experience with the Statutes by serving on Faculty Council.
At the time we started work, the statutes we were working under were… old. The last full rewrite of the Statutes had taken place before I was born; we knew this because of a footnote dated from 1973. Much of the work that Faculty Council had been busy with up to that point was patching up contradictions and outdated passages in the Statutes.
Any rewrite of Statutes is contentious. The Schools within our University all had different concerns and different needs, and establishing a set of University-wide rules was an exercise in understanding, discussion, and ultimately compromise. Then, once the faculty of the University had reached this consensus and the language wordsmithed into oblivion, we finally presented the results to the rest of the Faculty and to Administration.
That said, one of the most contentious areas was in the Preamble. I will not go into the details of those discussions, but it was a source of some debate, both among faculty and between faculty and administration. Some faculty insisted on it; me, in my foolishness, didn’t understand the importance, and in fact had concerns, as the Faculty Statutes have significant legal force in controversial situations. Shouldn’t the rest of the Statutes - the nuts and bolts, the rules and regulations of Faculty governance - suffice?
That significant legal force, though, is kind of the point. A Preamble is the foundation, the legal version of a mathematical axiom; it’s the principles that should guide all of the other rules, all of the other parts of the Statutes. Whatever changes would be made in the Statutes in the future, whatever interpretations of the Statutes would be necessary, the Preamble would be there to guide such decisions. So the Preamble talks about things critical to things that would govern the faculty’s relationship with the University - things like shared governance, academic freedom, and personal responsibility.
This idea of a Preamble is, of course, nothing new. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution lays out similar priorities, important to the foundation of the country.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
U.S. Constitution, Preamble.
In other words, just as mathematics has its axioms and the Faculty Statutes had their Preamble, the Laws of the United States have a Preamble to help guide its interpretation. The goal is a more perfect union. To that end, justice, common defense, domestic tranquility, general welfare, and liberty are prioritized. This is what the Constitution is for, what it is in service of.
Something to think about as we enter this election period. To what degree do politicians adhere to these fundamentals? Do they support a More Perfect Union - or do they work for Disunion? Do they support justice - or pervert justice? Do they insure domestic tranquility - or discord? Do they stand for the common defense of this nation - or do they undermine it for their own purposes? Do they promote the general welfare, to improve the lot for all - or only concern themselves with the welfare of a select few? And, finally, do they stand for liberty for all, or do they seek to curtail liberty for others?
The Heart Of The Matter
Which brings me to the last part of this.
Do religions have these same axioms?
I can’t speak to religions other than Christianity, but Christianity definitely has axioms. Please note: This next section will largely be Christianity-focused because of this - and I’m likely to get rather critical of some aspects of organized Christianity as a result.
How Christianity is interpreted varies widely from denomination to denomination. Going into the history of the Bible and how it came to be - as well as an analysis of the resulting interpretations - is an essay for another day. Suffice it to say that some people will interpret the Bible more literally than others, and some people will put more emphasis on certain areas than others.
Even worse, though, are those that would try to interpret Christianity for their own ends. History is, unfortunately, replete with humans using Christianity to support bad aims, from the genocide of various indigenous peoples to the support of American chattel slavery to the treatment of women as second-class citizens. I was genuinely horrified to read sermons from ministers in the antebellum South, arguing for the disgusting institution of slavery and cherry-picking parts of the Bible to support it. And the treatment of women in Old Testament law… horrifying. Unfortunately, this misapplication is not a tactic left in a bygone era; consider the Christian-based opposition to contraception or to gender-affirming care, or some churches’ adherence to what is known as the Prosperity Gospel. The more things change, unfortunately, the more they stay the same.
The problem with all of these complicated and convoluted arguments to bend Christianity to the will of man is that they don’t just break a commandment or two.
They break the commandments. All of them.
The Axioms for Christianity can be found in a couple of places, but here goes. First, from Matthew:
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:36-40 (NIV version)
(In case you’re wondering, that question of who your neighbor is was settled by the Parable of the Good Samaritan. EVERYONE is your neighbor. Even that person with an ethnicity or a religious belief or a gender identity different from your own. Especially that person.)
One more commandment, added in John:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34-35 (NIV version)
Some people will say that some law in the Old Testament should hold sway over this, or try to muddy the waters as to what Christianity is all about, or hold some quote in Chapter 1 as sacrosanct when Chapter 2 rips that first quote apart. But in the end, what is commanded of Christians is ridiculously simple, and ridiculously hard.
Love the creator; love one another.
That’s it. As Jesus himself says, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” And so much of his ministry was about thumbing his nose at the Law whenever it failed to live up to the needs of loving your neighbor.
So… I ask questions similar to those I asked above with the Constitution. How many Christians choose Love? Or by contrast, how many Christians choose to focus on the minutiae of, say, the Old Testament Laws written for a nomadic people thousands of years ago, or some individual quote they purposely take out of context? How many Christians look for an excuse to hate their neighbor?
History repeats itself. Jesus rebelled against the religious powers of his day, and paid the ultimate price. So many saints rebelled against the various powers of their day, and paid the ultimate price. Today… Some of us have no choice but to rebel against the religious powers of this day. And some of us are paying the ultimate price, casualties of religious abuse, casualties of propagated hatred, casualties of others’ bigotries, casualties of others’ greed.
Christianity is love. To act outside of that love is to fail in being Christian.
Please… if you are Christian, please… follow The Commandment. Act with Love. Love for the Creator and their Creation; Love for each other, in all of humanity’s splendor and variety.
I think, to end this essay, a bit of First Corinthians 13:1-8. Nothing I say could come close to these words, so I will end with them.
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
“Love never fails.”