What does it mean to be a person of faith?
Some will say that faith is about trust. Trust in the teachings of the church - teaching how to live your life as a spiritually inspired person, trust in the promises of redemption and salvation, trust in the way to make a better world. Trust in the power of prayer. Trust in the power of God
Christian faith communities will say that faith is found through study of the scriptures and belief in God. Muslims will say the Qu’ran and Allah, Hindus the Gita and Shiva. All require a submission to their own teachings.
Such faith communities often claim that the only way to make a better world is for them to be the sole rulers of it, albeit the spiritual rulers.
If we could make everyone a Christian, said the church, there would be harmony everywhere and god's purpose would be fulfilled. Onward Christian soldiers and fight the good fight.
But what is faith for? Is it to conquer the world? There are also those who have no desire to conquer anyone or change anything. Their faith is that personal connection to God. Faith is coming to church to worship, faith is private devotion, faith is enriching the spirit. Faith does not have to involve changing the world, only living life as close to the image of God as you can.
This is about religious faith, trust in a guiding God, but there is another type of faith. Not a religious faith but often connected to it or connected with it.
It is the faith that is a trust in humanity - altruism. Trust in the worth of all human beings as individuals and as people. For many it is a deeply held faith.
Once upon a time it was the guiding faith of politics, making the country or the world better for everyone. Governing the country for the benefit of everyone. It was the guiding faith of philosophy.
The faith of altruism is about loving your neighbour as yourself, caring as much for their welfare as your own.
The Ten Commandments of socialism are all about altruism. there is no call to faith in these.
- Love your schoolfellows, they will become your fellow workers and companions in life.
- Love learning, which is the food of the mind; be as grateful to your teacher as to your parents.
- Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions.
- Honour good people, be courteous and respect all, bow down to none.
- Do not hate or offend anyone. Do not seek revenge, but stand up for your rights and resist tyranny.
- Be not cowardly, protect the feeble and love justice.
- Remember that all good things of the earth are the result of labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the worker.
- Observe and think in order to discover the truth. Do not believe what is contrary to reason and never deceive yourself or others.
- Do not think that he who loves his own country must hate and despise other nations, or wish for war, which is a remnant of barbarism.
- Help to bring about the day when all nations shall live fraternally together in peace and prosperity.
To my mind these are two different faiths, religious faith and the faith of altruism, caring about your neighbour. They are not one or the other but often both together like a double helix.
I was set thinking about this especially in this election week, as I look for signs of altruism.
Those of us who look on Facebook will have seen pictures from several of our Unitarian congregations standing outside their churches last Sunday with placards that said, 'Migrants are people'. It was a Unitarian response to the drowning of so many people in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe.
Is it practicing the faith of altruism? Or simply practicing religious faith?
These Unitarian congregations have decided to stand as communities and be counted against what they call the trend of dehumanising people and against describing them in terms of categories. They say migrants are people not categories.
Sometimes it is asked ‘What do Unitarians believe in?’ One simple answer could be that they believe in Altruism. That goes with their religious faith.
In this country, as in so many others we have so easily slipped into this usage to describe people in dehumanised terms - we read about 'immigrants' as if they are aliens come to invade us.
We talk about Asylum Seekers not as people, not as individuals; People on benefits are collectively labelled as the dehumanised lowest common denominator - scroungers, work shy.
It is easy to do, you take the worst minority in any group and then push everyone else down into it, then you can punish them all. Of course there are a minority of people who do watch TV all day behind closed curtains and there always will be, but there are many more who are seeking a way out of this poverty trap, but it is hard when you are fighting against that ‘label’.
There are people in work struggling to make ends meet, it is called part time poverty, or part time unemployment. But they are all lumped together - they are all ‘on benefits’. Maybe we senior citizens should begin to worry. The pension we have earned by contribution is being referred to as a benefit these days.
I sometimes wonder how I would feel if our little terraced house in Bolton was blown up by a bomb, all our treasures gone, nothing left, or if we had to run the gauntlet of rifle fire just to get to Morrisons and find that they had been blown up too and looted. There was nothing to eat for anyone in the district of Harwood and Bradshaw. And then coming home there was a road block - Unitarians stand over there.
The bravest of us, those with a little cash would try to get out of it, go somewhere where there was no fighting and no bombing, make a fresh start. How sad to achieve all that and then be treated as a scrounger, an alien, then locked up in a detention centre with your children to be sent back to where you came from.
Or maybe we would just give up and head for a refugee camp. It would be a one way ticket and many years living in a tent donated by Oxfam.
Every single person stepping into a boat from Africa is a human being, a person who has taken extraordinary risks to get to that boat.
But for us it is a dilemma. When we take a reality check, we feel a conflict between altruism and the selfish gene.
Yes we feel anguish for the suffering of people trying to escape violence, some just seeking a better life. Yes we feel anger against those who exploit the vulnerable, taking extortionate sums of money off them and then pushing them out to sea in unworthy boats.
But we also feel fear. Fear that we will be swamped by hordes coming from Africa and the Middle East. Fear that our way of life will be changed for the worse. We even fear that the refugees, will be given resources and homes which our children can't afford to buy.
It is these fears which are emphasised over and over again by a popular press. We become conditioned. People dehumanise the suffering just as the press does. They do not see the suffering in any other way - So people say, ‘Let them stay in their refugee camps, over there !’, That is the general un altruistic way.
Dehumanising is a means to kill altruism.
Faith, is a means to restore it. It comes from religious faith and it comes from altruistic faith.
Unitarians are criticised for not being religious enough. That we do not stick to one particular faith, such as Christianity but embrace people from all religious faiths, and none.
Unitarians are criticised for having no ten commandments of their own.
The difference is that we accept we are not an organised religion with a mission to convert the world, we are an assembly of individuals, we are connected by our personal faiths. The glue that holds it all together is acceptance of one another and support for one another, practically and emotionally.
It is here with us that religious faith and the faith of altruism meet and coexist. And what we do is learn from each other, and in many cases a person is a mixture of both these faiths.
Sometimes we do feel challenged. We can become complacent about ourselves. Especially when see other congregations standing with banners outside their churches, supporting this or that cause. Do we have to do that too?
The answer is yes, if we feel stirred to agree, or no, if we don’t. The challenge is to consider the situation both from a personal religious faith view and from an altruistic view.
If we are asked to hold a placard for someone or some people, it might come as a challenge to a long held personal belief. Then we might have to reassess why we hold the views we do.
Sometimes we feel we have to take actions further and engage as a community, or engage as part of the community, there is nothing wrong with that.
I would like to think we can develop faith in our religious beliefs and faith in altruism together, both individually and as a church community.
Sometimes we should discuss our two faiths, religious and altruist
Should they be separate, or are they really one?
That is the question.
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