Wisdom
of Niebuhr
“The
stupidity of the average man will permit an oligarch, whether economic or political,
to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his followers and to withdraw
his activities from effective control. Since it is impossible to count on enough
moral goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for
the good of the whole, it must be destroyed by coercive methods and these will
always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those
abolished.”
Reinhold
Niebuhr
Yesterday, I dreamed that I was on a date with Reinhold Niebuhr, an American Reformed theologian of the 20th century. You may remember it was he who penned the Serenity Prayer used by 12-step groups. I figured I’d better find out what Niebuhr wanted to tell me by entering my dreams, and I found his quotes particularly current. He died in 1971, but his commentary on the political and faith issues could have been written today.
Not all his teachings
were as cynical as the one above. He admitted this: “There was a time when I
had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that the questions for
which I had the answers were not the important questions.” I think he may
have written that for me. Do you remember when you had all the answers? I do. I
was about twenty-two. That was a long time ago.
What I find with age, is that not only do I not have all the answers, but more and more, I don’t even know which questions to ask. The world has become so complicated and utterly veiled, that it’s hard to know what to believe, and even harder to sort truth from fiction. But I guess that is by design. Niebuhr said, “It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponent’s errors, and the error in our own truth.” We have the first part of that down pat, but the second one seems to evade us.
There is a redeeming feature to Niebuhr’s thinking. Here is one of his quotes that I found especially uplifting:
“Nothing
that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved
by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful makes complete sense in any
immediate context of history, therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we
do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone, therefore we must be saved by
love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or
foe as it is from our standpoint, therefore we must be saved by the final form
of love which is forgiveness.”
Most of all, we must be buoyed by determination to make better that which can be made better, and spread our concern from ourselves to our community, and beyond. The results may not happen in our lifetime, but maybe our children and grandchildren will reap the benefits. Reminds me of the stories about Johnny Appleseed that I read as a child. He went about the country planting apple seeds to grow trees, even though he would never see them bear fruit. Let us be about the business of planting seeds.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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