Pro-human contract is the vision if peace is to be effectively realized. Measured by the code unlocking the doors to allow access to achieving the fullness of purpose as creatures called human beings. Recognized to be constrained by the human need to both consume so as to survive and create to experience life. Both must be welcomed into the contract. The code unlocks the door to understanding the level of perfection required to fulfill the pro-human contract.
The question often asked is: What kind of perfection is desired and what is the code bringing under scrutiny the correct balance of law of consumption and the law of “the other” or law that preserves relationships, or law of love? Where on the “peace continuum” is the optimal location for living life together bearing the fruit of hope (future is secure), joy (purpose is fulfilled) and love (free to create)?
To help make the task more clear we must consider this three-fold nature. For example, the Hindus speak of three ways modally as Gyana Marga (mind or knowledge), Bhakti marga (emotion or devotion), and Karma marga (will or works)[1], and Christians understand these modes to be studying the mind of Christ, praying with Christ, and serving Christ. Thus it is safe to say that moral laws are born out of each religion’s acceptance of the divine nature and find themselves fulfilled somewhere on the continuum between base-consumption and sentimentalized creation. The above indicates there exists commonality across religious traditions. Perfection in the human contract is the locus of common solution sets as defined by the constants in the equation. Our grasp for the correct location along the continuum then is based upon our differing religious traditions and understanding of the nature of the divine or the mystery of the unknowable spirit.
If we are to seek a locus along the continuum then we must speak of the moral landscape as the moral universe and not a moral multiverse because based upon the above argument we can posit by all that God (or my higher power) requires of me, I can know that he himself must be[2]. What is called forth here is a level of perfection not in infinitude or quantity but a perfection of quality where from such quality is born fruits of hope, joy and love. These three are the fruits of a disciplined character worked out of each faith tradition. What must happen is a wringing out the faith within each tradition.
We must accept however that our moral task not be held hostage by our differences in understanding the end of perfection if we desire to experience the liberation of life to be realized day-to-day.
Peace as a discipline of the spirit of the human enterprise becomes a central focal point to take hold of the possible solutions required for peace. Why? For the human spirit to be whole, all three (mind, heart, and body) must be exercised. Exercise understood in this context is the need for each of the three to feed on the moral laws of the faith (mind or knowledge), feed on the joy of life found in devotion to what are the life-sources of the faith (e.g. prayer, worshiping, fasting, etc), and feed on regular practices of the faith. This kind of discipline is key to finding the correct balance. If can be assumed here that the continuum is best represented by love of law on the one end and love of the power to create on the other. To connect the dots then, we will learn that we first must have hope before we can experience joy, and before there can peace there must be joy. Together these three equal love.
In this context I want to direct our attention to two doctrines: the doctrine of retribution and the doctrine of reconciliation. In the first, doctrine of retribution, an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth “presupposes that the universe is grounded in legal justice.”[3] True, there are laws that govern the order of creation, but often overlooked is the law of love. In this later doctrine, doctrine of reconciliation, it is presupposed that human beings are “governed not by legal attitudes but by love attitudes.”[4]
Any maturing society goes through three essential experiences or stages of progress: unlimited revenge, for example, guns equal justice or make for peace; limited vengeance where crimes against the person equal crime against the collective and one gets what one deserves in like kind; and finally unlimited goodwill, or active love where the focus in not on the law but on the one the law is called to serve.
Still today, society is caught in stage two where penalties fit the deeds and legal focus is on the deed committed and not the doer of the deed. In some way this feels like we have chosen to create the law to serve the process of adjudication when the law is given to guarantee hope, joy and peace. Even so, attempts are being made to reach for this third stage.
In the mean time, the legal system approach restrains the deed and barely touches upon the surface of any attempts of transformation; whereas stage three acts of love seek to restrain the doer by going to the heart (or center).[5] The role of stage three is to break the hearts of doers and not heads. It is to affect people in such a way that they would rather go to jail than violate the heart of another, and until the world catches up with stage three we continue to live between two poles: the pole of force restraint (deed) and the pole of love restraint (the persons).
[1] Jones, E. Stanley, Christ of the Mount: A Working Philosophy of Life, 104.
[2] Ibid, 43
[3] ibid, page 171
[4] ibid, page 171
[5] ibid, page 171
