Moral Imagination
07/02/12 04:00
In 1790 Edmund Burke published a book titled Reflections on the Revolution in France. Among other things, he describes the destruction of civilizing manners by the revolutionaries. He recoils against the breakdown or order and doesn’t quite comprehend the thrust of revolution to make the world better. In that book, he coined the phrase “moral imagination.”
“All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.”
I am not sure that I understand Burke’s descriptions, but the term “moral imagination” has caught on. In 2005, John Paul Lederach published a book titled “The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace.” Lederach is internationally recognized as a leader in conciliation and mediation. He has provided direct conciliation services around the world from Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country and the Philippines.
His assertion is that resolving conflicts without violence requires creative action. The inspiration for creation is always imagination. Making a creation is always art. Peace begins with the ability to envision peace. This world requires a moral imagination – the ability to envision a world where justice is achieved without violence.
Achieving peace is not easy. In fact imagining peace is not easy. John Horgan is a professor in the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken New Jersey. He is a widely recognized author in scientific journals. For several years now, he has been informally asking people whether they think that there will be a time when war will end. He has surveyed liberal, conservative, female, male, affluent, poor, educated, and uneducated people. Over 80% believe that war will never end. The numbers are even less hopeful among young people. Students in his classes are about 90% in agreement that there will never be a time when people do not go to war against each other.
Many experts agree that war is inevitable. Even our President, Barak Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize believes that war is endemic to human nature: “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man . . . We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetime.” (From a speech given at West Point on December 1, 2009.)
The majority of the people in our country believe that war is a perpetual condition of human beings. We seem to be unable to imagine a world at peace. Perhaps we have lost our moral imagination. If indeed we cannot imagine a world at peace, what other elements of the prophetic vision are we incapable of believing? Have we lost our ability to imagine proper care for widows and orphans? Do we believe that we are condemned to a world where there is a class of people who live in perpetual poverty?
The stories of our people are filled with times when we forgot the path to which we have been called. Not long after God lead us out of the land of Slavery through the Red Sea, we began to operate out of fear. We had no experience in the wilderness. We wondered where our next meal would come from. We felt thirsty. We forgot to trust God. Even after God had demonstrated the great power and investment in the people to bring us into the land of freedom, we quickly forgot that we could trust. Even after our bellies were full and our thirst quenched, we continued to lose our ability to imagine what it was that God was calling us to do.
When Moses went up on the mountain, our people convinced themselves that a golden calf that they could see was preferable to a God they could not see. We wondered what God might look like. We didn’t seem to have the ability to imagine. And each time we suffered a failure of imagination, God gave us leaders to inspire us and to remind us that God calls us to imagine a world that is different than the humdrum of our everyday lives.
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After the establishment of a settled monarchy in Israel, the leaders and many of the people got caught up in the repetition of ritual acts. They even convinced themselves that if they said the right prayers and observed the right rituals that they could go about their everyday lives and retain their favor with God. In those days God sent prophets to remind all of the people of the simple truth that relationship with God is about everyday living as much as temple observance. The prophets pointed out the failure to share; the treatment of widows, orphans, and immigrants; and the failure to give justice to all of the people as moral issues – issues that threatened Israel’s relationship with God and the very future of the community.
It is no mystery that the prophets used poetry to communicate their message. Read any of the major Biblical prophets. Spend time in their poetic images. Simple language was insufficient to convey the deep concepts that were critical to the life of the community. God inspired the prophets to think beyond the normal bounds of language. It took creative imagination to create and to read the poetry of God’s truth. These days, thousands of years later, we are inspired to greater imagination through reading the words of the prophets.
Once again our people need a recovery of imagination. If we can no longer imagine a world of justice, peace and compassion, we cannot live in step with God’s call for our lives. God’s call is clear. The prophet Micah put it this way: “God has told you, O human, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
May God grant us a renewal of our moral imagination in this generation.
“All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion.”
I am not sure that I understand Burke’s descriptions, but the term “moral imagination” has caught on. In 2005, John Paul Lederach published a book titled “The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace.” Lederach is internationally recognized as a leader in conciliation and mediation. He has provided direct conciliation services around the world from Nicaragua to Somalia, Northern Ireland, the Basque Country and the Philippines.
His assertion is that resolving conflicts without violence requires creative action. The inspiration for creation is always imagination. Making a creation is always art. Peace begins with the ability to envision peace. This world requires a moral imagination – the ability to envision a world where justice is achieved without violence.
Achieving peace is not easy. In fact imagining peace is not easy. John Horgan is a professor in the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken New Jersey. He is a widely recognized author in scientific journals. For several years now, he has been informally asking people whether they think that there will be a time when war will end. He has surveyed liberal, conservative, female, male, affluent, poor, educated, and uneducated people. Over 80% believe that war will never end. The numbers are even less hopeful among young people. Students in his classes are about 90% in agreement that there will never be a time when people do not go to war against each other.
Many experts agree that war is inevitable. Even our President, Barak Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize believes that war is endemic to human nature: “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man . . . We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetime.” (From a speech given at West Point on December 1, 2009.)
The majority of the people in our country believe that war is a perpetual condition of human beings. We seem to be unable to imagine a world at peace. Perhaps we have lost our moral imagination. If indeed we cannot imagine a world at peace, what other elements of the prophetic vision are we incapable of believing? Have we lost our ability to imagine proper care for widows and orphans? Do we believe that we are condemned to a world where there is a class of people who live in perpetual poverty?
The stories of our people are filled with times when we forgot the path to which we have been called. Not long after God lead us out of the land of Slavery through the Red Sea, we began to operate out of fear. We had no experience in the wilderness. We wondered where our next meal would come from. We felt thirsty. We forgot to trust God. Even after God had demonstrated the great power and investment in the people to bring us into the land of freedom, we quickly forgot that we could trust. Even after our bellies were full and our thirst quenched, we continued to lose our ability to imagine what it was that God was calling us to do.
When Moses went up on the mountain, our people convinced themselves that a golden calf that they could see was preferable to a God they could not see. We wondered what God might look like. We didn’t seem to have the ability to imagine. And each time we suffered a failure of imagination, God gave us leaders to inspire us and to remind us that God calls us to imagine a world that is different than the humdrum of our everyday lives.
After the establishment of a settled monarchy in Israel, the leaders and many of the people got caught up in the repetition of ritual acts. They even convinced themselves that if they said the right prayers and observed the right rituals that they could go about their everyday lives and retain their favor with God. In those days God sent prophets to remind all of the people of the simple truth that relationship with God is about everyday living as much as temple observance. The prophets pointed out the failure to share; the treatment of widows, orphans, and immigrants; and the failure to give justice to all of the people as moral issues – issues that threatened Israel’s relationship with God and the very future of the community.
It is no mystery that the prophets used poetry to communicate their message. Read any of the major Biblical prophets. Spend time in their poetic images. Simple language was insufficient to convey the deep concepts that were critical to the life of the community. God inspired the prophets to think beyond the normal bounds of language. It took creative imagination to create and to read the poetry of God’s truth. These days, thousands of years later, we are inspired to greater imagination through reading the words of the prophets.
Once again our people need a recovery of imagination. If we can no longer imagine a world of justice, peace and compassion, we cannot live in step with God’s call for our lives. God’s call is clear. The prophet Micah put it this way: “God has told you, O human, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
May God grant us a renewal of our moral imagination in this generation.