Last Sunday, I got pulled into a Unitarian Universalist classroom to tell 11-year-olds about Humanism. As so often happens, attempting to simplify something for other people made it clearer for me.
I started with the New Testament story in which Jesus boils all the commandments down to two: love God and love your neighbor.
Just about every religion, I told the kids, has some version of that: Start by loving God, and then (because you love God) treat other people well.
The problem is that when religions start interacting, they get so caught up in arguing about God -- does God exist? is my God the same as your God? who was God's prophet? what book describes God? who can speak for God today? -- that they often don't get around to Step 2: treating other people well. At the extreme edge, you have groups like ISIS, who treat other people horribly on the way (they think) to establishing some perfect Kingdom of God that will eventually make all that suffering worthwhile.
Looking at that mess, Humanism says: Do it in the opposite order, and start at Step 2. Let's all focus on treating each other well, making the world better, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving hope to the hopeless, and so on. After we've worked together on that for a while, then some evening we'll be sitting around the fire talking about what motivates us to do this work. That would be a good time to tell me about Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha or the Tao or whatever else gets you out of bed in the morning.
From a Humanist perspective, even the hard-core atheists who want to start by explaining why God doesn't exist are still missing the boat. Start at Step 2. We can talk about God later.
I started with the New Testament story in which Jesus boils all the commandments down to two: love God and love your neighbor.
Just about every religion, I told the kids, has some version of that: Start by loving God, and then (because you love God) treat other people well.
The problem is that when religions start interacting, they get so caught up in arguing about God -- does God exist? is my God the same as your God? who was God's prophet? what book describes God? who can speak for God today? -- that they often don't get around to Step 2: treating other people well. At the extreme edge, you have groups like ISIS, who treat other people horribly on the way (they think) to establishing some perfect Kingdom of God that will eventually make all that suffering worthwhile.
Looking at that mess, Humanism says: Do it in the opposite order, and start at Step 2. Let's all focus on treating each other well, making the world better, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving hope to the hopeless, and so on. After we've worked together on that for a while, then some evening we'll be sitting around the fire talking about what motivates us to do this work. That would be a good time to tell me about Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha or the Tao or whatever else gets you out of bed in the morning.
From a Humanist perspective, even the hard-core atheists who want to start by explaining why God doesn't exist are still missing the boat. Start at Step 2. We can talk about God later.
