In search of wisdom

Whether and how we communicate such judgments requires even more care because of the profound impact our judgments may have on others.  Fools rush in where angels fear to tread! For however severe our judgments are about a person’s behaviour, a person is always infinitely more than his or her conduct.

It is crucial to keep in mind this distinction between judging the moral significance of behaviour, while still recognising the full intrinsic value of the person whose behaviour we are judging.  It requires, characteristically, the wisdom of mothers and saints, whose intuitive response to the person is kindness and a non-condescending pity, in recognition that “There, but for the Grace of God go I.”

Because our culture has become increasingly moralistic and condescending, Raimond Gaita has done us a great service in helping us to think about this issue more clearly.

In Romulus, My Father he pays moving tribute to the wisdom he learned  from his father, who was often severe in his moral judgments of other people's moral failings but never rejected them as people. In After Romulus Gaita says:

I learned from my father that we could, to a morally important degree, detach moral responsibility from the conditions of culpability and think of it, essentially, as a serious, lucid responsiveness to the moral significance of what we have done.

The only purpose of moral judgment should be as an invitation to moral responsibility. It should never be a statement about the value of a person as a human being.

As Gaita beautifully concludes:

No-one is underserving of love, not because everyone is really deserving of it, but because, unlike admiration or esteem, real love, deeper than both, has nothing to do with merit or desert.

Christian doctrine, if not practice, emphasises forgiving the person while condemning their wrongdoing. (Our great religious texts are full of practical wisdom which, when read in the right way, can still help us to live better. My early guide was existentialist theologian Paul Tillich’s profound meditations on the human condition: The Shaking of the Foundations.)

The difficulties of living out this wisdom in everyday life are many and varied.  Our struggle with blame and forgiveness is the subject of some of our greatest literature, from Shakespeare’s last plays to Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson’s recent novels about ‘normal’, intimate, troubled family relationships, Gilead and Home – extraordinary works of profound insight and wondrous love.

5.      Love more and allow yourself to be loved

There is a popular, sentimental song from my childhood which opens with lyrics containing the single greatest insight of wisdom: "To love and be loved is what life's all about". Cartoonist Michael Leunig says: “Love one another. It is as simple and as difficult as that”.