The questionnaire above was handed out to help promote discussion at a Church workshop I attended on the subject of "Reconciliation in a Polarised World". I found it impossible to complete this questionnaire: It's one of those quizzes where one knows the moral ideal but one cannot mark one's own homework objectively. Self-praise, after all, is no recommendation. Well, I thought I had better respond in some way, so I scribbled a comment on the bottom of the form, thus...
The above sounds like a description of the human condition - the separation of humanity into sub-cultures; the Babel Syndrome (*3). Cultural distance is not wrong per se: It's what we do with it that's the challenge. Jesus has shown us what to do with it!
That comment is the doorway to the pandora's box of human relationships, the first principle of which is that making relationships consumes human resources, resources which have upper limits. To name four of them: Cognitive resources, contact time, patience and the energy and time needed to serve across dispersed locations. These are just some of the resources I can think of, all of which have their very human limits. The social fragmentation of industrial societies puts a lot of strain on our limited socializing resources and therefore our ability relate. The zero sum game here means that the consumption of those resources when forming relationships with one set of people necessarily entails less resources for other sets of people.
Complicating the matter further are those very real human epistemic and moral challenges. There is the considerable epistemic challenge of getting to know people, people whose behavior we only ever sample in small doses. This means that our conclusions about their inner nature are often pro-tem and should be treated with epistemic humility (*1). But of course morally challenged human beings may find epistemic humility a big ask. Short cuts which reduce the demands of relationshipa are sought for. e.g. points 3, 5, 8, 9 above represent the attempt to economize on the burden of relationship; such short cuts may involve passive sins of omission rather than proactive sins. Tribalism may explain 2, 4 & 10, and this can involve a pretext for unbridled animosity & anger towards outgroups. (*2)
The epistemic distance between human minds is a natural part of our relations and very much a given of the human condition. This is, in fact, the challenge we face in relating to both God and (wo)man. My guess is that the task of overcoming the epistemic and moral challenges of rightly relating is the whole purpose and meaning of life.
Of course humanity is beset by sin and pride, the two words which so appropriately have the "I" in middle. Putting "I" first is the tempting reflex we so often fail to overcome. Jesus, being in the form of humanity (Phil 2:8) likely had the same limited human resources and epistemic challenges; that his relationships were layered into The 3, The 12 , The 40 and The Great Crowd is evidence that he partook of our same human condition with its accompanying limitations and predicaments. And yet Jesus came out of it not only without sin (Phil 2:1-11), but at the same time was both the expiation and propitiation of our own sins.
Footnotes
*1 Epistemic problems, especially in the socio-politico-economic realm leads to a lack of a base of common priors and common knowledge thus invalidating the assumptions of Aumann's agreement theorem. Viz:
Informally, the
theorem implies that rational individuals who start from the same assumptions
and share all relevant information—even just by knowing each other's
opinions—must eventually come to the same conclusions. If their differing
beliefs about something are common knowledge, they must in fact agree.
Most common sense people believe there is one truth to discover. Therefore if we accept Aumann (which I do) it remains our epistemic challenge and duty to work towards common priors and common knowledge. But I doubt that's going to happen in this world!
*2 Tribalism is a way of outsourcing epistemic challenges and widening one's common knowledge base by untrusting it to a trusted "in group". However, the pit falls with that are obvious!
*3. cf. Meaning = text + context
Notes
1. Not really relevant here, but nevertheless v. interesting....
2. Also very interesting:
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