The Inherent Worth and Dignity of Every Person©
September 16, 2001
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland
Jane Thickstun, Celebrant

Reading:
Today’s reading is called "Stupid, Stupid Me", by Jane Rzepka, and is from her meditation manual: A Small Heaven.

A woman in Rochester, New York, I read somewhere, mistakenly sold a cookie tin containing thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry at a garage sale. "I’m losing my mind," she said. "Stupid, stupid me."

The quotation, "Stupid, stupid me," caught my eye for two reasons. First, I’m forever on the lookout for useful quotations. This one has already proved to be strikingly apropos on three occasions, and I’ve only had it an hour.

I circled the Rochester woman’s observation for a second reason, this one worrisome: I have always made much of the Unitarian Universalist party line regarding "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." The notion of "valuing one another" creeps into the service in one way or another just about every Sunday morning. But sometimes, quite often in fact, we don’t feel the least bit inherently worthy. At times we’re far from dignified. To put it plainly, frequently we feel we’re plain stupid.

The popular press is full of articles on low self-esteem. One would even think a half-alert minister would regularly acknowledge the condition and point out that people care about us even when we’re turkeys. Who knows how it escaped my notice, dwelling as I do on my own stretches of ineptitude. Oh well, stupid, stupid me.

The Inherent Worth and Dignity of Every Person

Jane Rzepka, whose words you heard in the reading, tells another story that is relevant to today’s topic. She says:

I performed a wedding not long ago, and had a little trouble with the marriage license: it blew away. That’s right–in all its signed, stamped, sealed and ready-to-go splendor, it, hoping no doubt to avoid eternal life in a file drawer, just sailed into the heavens on that windy wedding day and was never seen again.

So I went to Boston City Hall. Having had previous trouble proving conclusively that I was a "man of the cloth," I had my ordination certificate along. Having occasionally been suspected of I never knew quite what, I thought to bring the actual wedding ceremony, the couple’s check, our parish register, church letterhead, and my driver’s license. (I had a few nice wedding pictures along too, just in case.) But the woman said, "No dice. I have to see the ‘church records.’" It did no good to point out that this hefty stack of offerings was the church records–she wasn’t budging. Neither of us, it turned out, could imagine exactly what kind of "church records" would suffice. In fact, none would. She concluded that this was a problem that couldn’t be solved.

I hated to go to jail, which is what I always figured happened to ministers who didn’t properly file marriage licenses, so I kept at it. After a couple of hours, I, too, began to doubt that I’d ever performed the wedding, become a minister, or been born and given a name, though eventually the evidence did suffice.

As an adolescent, when I sometimes doubted my existence or my place in the universe, I turned to the existentialists if only to confirm the legitimacy of the doubt. But the actual healing came from the love, or even the nonchalant acceptance, of folks around me. May we remember to do that for each other." ("The One that Got Away", by Jane Rzepka, from her meditation manual: A Small Heaven.(p. 23))

Was Jane Rzepka’s worth and dignity dependent on her credentials? Was her existence dependent on there being a birth certificate? For that matter, does the marriage of that couple depend on there being a marriage license? (But that’s a whole other sermon) Have you ever doubted your place in the universe? Wondered if you really deserved to take in the air around you? Have you ever felt that your stupidity disqualified you for membership in the human race?

The first principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association is to affirm and promote "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." This is no lightweight assertion. It is not something easily achieved. It is something to shoot for, to strive for, something that can challenge us and engage us and even frustrate us. It is not a creedal statement: if you don’t agree with it or can’t accept it, or can’t put it into practice, that doesn’t mean you can’t be a Unitarian Universalist. But a good portion of Unitarian Universalists do happen to believe it is something worth striving for, and it is fair to say it represents what our faith has been and continues to be about.

Historically, Unitarians have affirmed the value of human life. In demoting Jesus from god to human, they didn’t necessarily believe they were doing him a disservice. Unitarians have traditionally lifted up humanity because they saw the divine principle in human beings. This has been a trademark of Unitarian thought. It is an affirmation of this life as opposed to an afterlife, of this world as opposed to a heavenly sphere, that has led to the Unitarian affirmation of human worth. For this reason I see it as an easy step to extend the belief in inherent worth and dignity to the non-human world as well — but that’s next week’s sermon.

The defining belief of the Universalists, of course, was Universal Salvation - they believed that everyone would be saved. It doesn’t matter what you or they have imagined salvation to be - the fact that everyone gets equal treatment is what is important to this discussion. Now it’s true that they believed this because they believed in the absolute goodness of God, not because they thought human beings were such great shakes, like the Unitarians did. But if they believed we were all going to meet up again in heaven and spend an eternity there together, don’t you think they probably treated people better while they were still around in this life?

It is important to note that this worth and dignity we seek to affirm is inherent. It is inseparable from our being, from our existence. It has nothing to do with what people DO, it is what they ARE.

In spite of the best intentions of the best of parents, most of us growing up were taught that our worth depended on our good behavior. Then we spend the entirety of our adult lives in therapy unlearning it. And for those of you who haven’t gotten to therapy yet, let me proclaim it to you: YOUR WORTH DOES NOT DEPEND ON YOUR BEHAVIOR! You are of value no matter what you do. Some call it God’s unconditional love. God still loves you even if you have made yourself pretty unlovable in the eyes of most humans. And the realization of that should be enough to redeem you, to enable you to find the way again, to enable you to love and so to be loved again.

There are human beings who push to the limits our ability to live this principle, or even cause us to doubt it. The classic example has been Hitler, but he has competition now. In the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks on America, Unitarian Universalists, like everyone, have been talking about the evil man, Osama bin Laden. Does our first principle require us to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of even people like him? Doesn’t he forfeit his worth and dignity by such heinous actions? Don’t Hitler and bin Laden by their deeds and by their intentions cut themselves off from humanity? Don’t they lay their humanity aside when they do such evil things?

No. The worth and dignity belongs to every person. It is inherent. It is not something that can be laid aside, no matter what anybody does. This doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be stopped when their behavior is destructive. By all means, stop them. And if the only way to stop them is to kill them, then perhaps that is justified. But they still have inherent worth and dignity.

I am bothered by the way the word "evil" is being thrown about these days. I don’t deny the existence of evil, but I don’t think it can be compartmentalized so conveniently as I hear in the media. It is all too easy to absolve ourselves by declaring the other to be "evil" and so outside the pale. It is all too easy to break the world down into good and evil -- so black and white – and of course the ones who do so are always on the side of good. It is the other who is evil. And in declaring the other to be evil, we deny them their humanity, and we justify our own violent reactions to them.

But the fact is that good and evil exist side-by-side in all of us. We all have the capability for goodness, and we all have the capability to do evil. In the bible story, when the people were about to stone the woman who did something awful, like adultery or prostitution–I can’t remember-- Jesus says to them, "Let he who is without sin throw the first stone." Nobody throws a stone. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that we have desires that our more noble side advises us not to act on. It is a constant struggle to obey the voice of the higher principle within us, or even to identify it and its message. To assign evil elsewhere and deny it exists in us is what modern psychology calls "projection," and there is a real danger in doing that. When we don’t acknowledge our own stuff, we can’t control it. Unacknowledged power gets abused. And if we are incapable of seeing the potential for evil in ourselves, we are more likely to act it out. The balance of good and evil in any individual is merely a matter of degree. It is not an either/or; it is not black and white. Furthermore, we cease to try to understand the other once we write them off as evil. To declare another evil and then justify withdrawing their rights is self-righteous. It is the position of the terrorists. It is the position of the Jerry Falwells of America. It is incompatible with a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

I am aware that there are Unitarian Universalists who support a death penalty, but I find it incompatible with our first principle. If we truly believe every person has inherent worth and dignity, how can we justify taking a life? If we truly believe that our value is not dependent on what we do, then nothing we do can take it away. Nothing. Of course we have to protect ourselves. But if we have captured the evil-doer and put him or her into custody, we are safe. If we don’t believe we are safe from our prisoner, then we need better security. The point of capital punishment is not to protect society. It is to satisfy a desire for revenge. The desire for revenge, while perfectly natural and understandable, is not one of our nobler instincts, and not one we should feel good about acting on. Violence is justifiable to protect from harm, and only to the degree that protection is achieved. If a child is poking you in the eye, you hold her hands so that she can’t do it; you don’t throw her across the room.

Sometimes killing may be needed to stop more killing. A more interesting question than capital punishment is the issue of our current bombing of Afghanistan. Is it justified? Are we affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person in doing it? Or are we at least not violating that principle? I’m not sure myself; I’ll let you address that during the congregational response time.

I’ve talked a lot about what it means to have inherent worth and dignity, but what does it mean to "affirm and promote it?" In a book called, Our Seven Principles in Story and Verse, UU minister Kenneth Collier says, "Sometimes affirmation and promotion require nothing more than listening and agreeing, or no more than a friendly disagreement, an intellectual conversation. Sometimes it requires me to hold myself in respectful opposition to someone and to speak truths that are painful to others or myself. Sometimes it requires me to hold people accountable for their actions, and sometimes it requires me to do things that are difficult and painful but ultimately healing. Sometimes it requires that I go in harm’s way and take risks for myself and others. Sometimes it even requires me to hurt someone. And probably more often than I like to admit, it requires me to change my behavior, my way of living, my way of thinking about things. It requires me to admit that I have been wrong." (p. 17)

Our recognition of the inherent worth and dignity of others is intricately tied to our recognition of our own inherent worth and dignity, and vice versa. If I can’t see it in myself, I will have a hard time seeing it in others. And much of the time – oh, stupid, stupid me! – it is hard to see it in ourselves, hard to feel worthy. And if our childhood training has been really thorough, it may be very difficult to believe we have inherent worth and dignity. It can be one of those things that we may accept and believe at the level of thinking, yet find hard to really believe at a deeper, more gut level. In that case I recommend good, old-fashioned faith. We can to take it on faith, or in the language of modern psychology, act as if we believe it, even if it feels funny.

It is also easier to see it in ourselves if we can see it in others. In the words of Ken Collier, "I cannot recognize the worth and dignity within myself unless I also recognize it everywhere I may look, even in people within whom it is dark and hidden, rejected and forgotten. . . . As far as I fail to recognize the Profound Beauty in another, I fail to see it clearly in myself. As far as I deny it in another, I deny it in myself. The extent to which I affirm it in myself, I must affirm it wherever I look, for, as every religious genius who has ever lived has affirmed, the center of the universe is everywhere, not least in the hearts of every human being." (p. 19)

The first principle is demanding. Do we always live up to it? Of course not. Is it something to strive toward, an ideal, a belief that can guide our actions. When Jane Rzepka was doubting her existence or her place in the universe, she says "the actual healing came from the love, or even the nonchalant acceptance, of folks around me." By affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of others, by behaving toward others as if they matter, recognizing and honoring their worth, we can facilitate healing. We can help others see their worth and realize their potential, and in the process we see our own worth. We can make a difference in the world. May we remember to do that for each other.

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland is recognized by the Unitarian Universalist Association as a Welcoming Congregation. We welcome, affirm, promote and celebrate the full participation of all persons in all of our activities without regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, race or any other such category of exclusion.

Please feel free to contact us with any feedback, corrections or questions at jaham@delta.edu