Episode 3.2: Ethical worldviews

The title of the second chapter of the class readings was “tools for ethical thought” and it was not clear to me for a long time what that meant or what we were supposed to do with these tools. But indeed, with time, the darn things have proven pretty useful. One of the “tools” is a “mini-typology of ethical worldviews,” which goes something like this:

People’s worldviews related to ethics fall into one of three categories.

1. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, and things were better before. 
2. Things were not better before, and in fact we are in the process of replacing our outdated values with a set of more evolved ones – for example, from exploiting earth’s natural resources to understanding sustainability and how we can live in harmony with nature. 
3. There is a whole diversity of different and sometimes competing value systems in the world. This is not inherently a bad thing, but it necessitates that we learn to navigate them. 

I did wonder at first, doesn’t this just simplify things way too much? But of course that’s the point, our brains naturally simplify things all the time, and the basic worldview we have absolutely influences what evidence we’ll accept and remember, and what conclusions we draw when faced with new facts. The point of the categories isn’t to put everyone into bins, but rather to help us contemplate the other options out there – what do I think? What does that mean about my natural biases? Where is that other person coming from?

Among other things, this turns out to be useful for explaining why I often feel out of place in church. In short, there’s a great deal of (1) around. And naturally, if you believe things were better before, you will hold tight to the things that are slipping away. I think many churchgoers think that one of our primary duties as a church is to defend our beliefs and traditions against the relentless onslaught of self-centered consumerism. And I can’t deny the real dangers of self-centered consumerism. But my own worldview lies somewhere between (2) and (3). Perhaps I’m too young to remember when things were better? And consumerism is, for better or worse, what puts food on our table. I feel like it's possible for the us to celebrate and take pride in our traditions without building walls around them; that we as a Church could approach the rest of world with more curiosity and humility and less defensiveness.

On a church field trip (the benefits of being a church employee, who knew?!), we visited Kloster Ilanz, a convent built in the 1960s. The church there has a series of 12 windows, one for each article of the Apostles' Creed, designed by the Swiss artist Max Ruedi. Check them out here on Wikipedia. I love their simplicity and joy. (Also, the idea of someone building a convent in the 1960s sort of blew my mind? My knowledge of history needs a lot of help...)

"Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." (Revelation 22:1-2)