To design a socially sustainable Christian religion requires us to return to the creation of our species. This is the beginning of all else that follows.
God The Creator.
We have already established the fundamental belief that our species was brought into existence by God. It is not relevant whether this act of creation was evolutionary or by fiat accompli, instantly. It is sufficient to know that God brought us into existence. We also believe that in doing so, God knew what It was doing, and created our species with all the “tools” to build an ever-improving personal relationship with the Divine Fragment that resides within us, and to become more perfect through our decisions.
Those “tools” are a set of values that have
1) sustained our species for over 8,000 generations;
2) motivated us individually and collectively to improve the quality of our lives that has resulted in social and material progress; and
3) are the values that allow us to become more perfect through moral, ethical, and service decisions.
The result has every possibility of providing for the social evolution of our civilization, while also providing each Father Fragment with the experience of living, as Its mortal child aspires to become more like The Creator.
The seven values —
The Values that Sustain Families, Societies, and Civilizations
Copyright Daniel Raphael 2017 USA
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries Without them humanity cannot survive.”
— Dalai Lama
LIFE, the Ultimate Value.
LIFE is the ultimate value. It provides the pivotal element for the existence of the other six values as a system of values. Decisions made about life are qualified by the other six values that become the criteria for human decision-making, to express the highest values of human existence and our humanity.
The three primary values.
Quality of life, growth, and equality are organic to our species and are the original cause of human motivation. This motivation has resulted in material and social progress while also giving us the capability to sustain our species over thousands of generations.
The three secondary values.
Empathy, compassion, and “love” are also organic to our species and share the same characteristics as the three primary values. They exist in us as an impulse to do good. They are proof that people are innately good, and created that way! For example, we want peace for others as much as we want peace for ourselves because we are wired with the values that make us human – humane.
These seven values give us the capability to choose to grow into our innate potential in the seven spheres of human development: physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, social, cultural, and spiritual.
An integrated decision-making system of values.
Because these two sets of values are innate to our being, they provide for a holistic, integrated system of decision-making, an organic morality for decision-making that is based on the values that are organic and innate to our species. They motivate us to progress individually and collectively, while also reaching out to others who are less able or capable of doing so for themselves. These seven values create a oneness of humanity that is only violated by willful decision-making.
When applied consciously, they can be used by anyone in any situation, whether personal, social, or organizational, whether religious, secular, corporate, political, or governmental, to provide positive answers to difficult social problems and situations. As individuals and in organizations, through our decisions, actions, words, and thoughts we define our selves as being either one with all people, human and humane, or separate and apart.
Quality of Life.
While life is fundamental to survival and continued existence, it is the quality of life that makes life worth living and gives life meaning. In a democracy, access to a better quality of life is provided when a person not only has an equal right to life, but that person also has an equal right to growth as anyone else. This is what makes immigrants so excited to move to a democracy — they seek freedom to experience a quality of life that makes life worth living — to control their own destiny and to explore their innate potential with the opportunities that a democratic nation provides.
Growth is essential for improving our quality of life. To be human is to strive to grow into our innate potential. Our yearning to grow ensures that our innate potential becomes expressed and fulfilled, and collectively encourages an improving quality of life for everyone that results in social progress.
This value ensures that the inherent potential of individuals, societies, and a civilization becomes expressed and fulfilled, which encourages an improving quality of life for everyone. Without growth, there would be no possibility of social evolution and social sustainability. Once the population of our global civilization is balanced with our planet’s natural resources, then growth has everything to do with improving the quality of life of individuals, rather than the quantitative growth of populations to support economic growth. Until then difficult moral decisions will have to be made that move our communities and societies toward that balance.
Equality is inherent in the value of life. We give equal value to each individual, and we would seek to provide more equitable opportunity to every individual to develop his or her innate potential, as we would our own. Even those with less potential than others have equal value and a right to live life to explore, develop, and express the potential they do have. Without equality, life is a competition where the resources of one’s living-potential are squandered in competitive warlike existence. Then there is no moral equity available.
The reason that we are so sensitive to issues of equality is that we have the innate capacity of empathy – to “feel” or put our selves in the place of another and sense what that is like, whether that is in anguish or in joy. Feeling that, we want to act with compassion 3 – to reach out to the other and assist them in their plight.
Our motivation for equality is stimulated when we compare our own life to that of others and see that the quality of their life is “better” or “worse” than our own. Our sense of inequality then rises within us to motivate us to seek equality for us, and equality for them stimulated by our empathy and compassion for them.
We generalize empathy and compassion toward all of humanity with the term “Love” – the capacity to care for another person or all of humanity, as we would for our self.
Characteristics of these values —
Self-Evident — The self-evident nature of these values is only one of several characteristics that have obscured their presence while in plain sight. These three primary values are self-evident and similar to those stated in the famous sentence in the United States Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths (values) to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The proof of this becomes evident when people around the world are asked whether they would like to enjoy an improved quality of life, as they define it.
Universal — These values are also universal to all people of all races, cultures, ethnicities, nations, and genders. Ask anyone, whether they live in Bangladesh or Baltimore, Houston or Hanoi, or any other city if they would like to develop the innate potential they brought into life … to improve their quality of life with an equal opportunity as anyone else would or could. The answers are universally the same, whether a poor person is asked or a multi-billionaire. Everyone I have talked to as a holistic life coach has chosen to improve the quality of his or her life, and grow into their potential.
Irreducible — The three primary values are the superordinate values of our species and are not subordinate to any other values. The pursuit of an improving quality of life, growth, and equality provide the foundation for human motivation, as interpreted by the individual, and expressed in a personal hierarchy of needs. Together, these seven values provide us with a unified, values-based theory of human motivation. Eponymously, it becomes the Raphael Unified Theory of Human Motivation.4 (See page 115.)
Organic / Innate / Timeless — Even though I cannot prove it, evidence seems to suggest that these seven values are organic to our species and have been embedded in our DNA from our earliest beginnings. They have motivated us, everyone, to yearn for the improvement of our quality of life materially and socially. We can safely predict that these same values will continue to motivate our species to enjoy an ever-improving quality of life, and to grow into our innate potential in future centuries and millennia.
These values create an “organic” morality 5 —
Collectively these values provide a consistent means for making moral and ethical decisions. They provide a code of “organic morality” that is based on the values that are organic to our being, individually and universally. In the social context of a world that is changing rapidly, predictability of the future is becoming less and less certain. A timeless, universal organic morality such as this is essential for sound policy decision-making with predictable outcomes.
An evolved morality such as this accepts and promotes the individual as having an intrinsic value to society. Such an evolved morality demonstrates the necessity of improving the quality of life for each individual to become a more valuable asset who can aid the progress of society. This is a proactive morality that adds value to the community as the individual proactively makes decisions that add sustainable value to his or her own life and community. The same applies proactively when organizations make decisions in accord with these core values.
Cultures that understand this symbiosis will be well prepared to engage social sustainability because these values are integrative in nature, where the individual is seen as capable of influencing the whole as much as the whole influences the individual. This type of thinking values the circular systems integrity of the family, community, and society. The individual exists in a relationship of connectedness, integration and inclusiveness, rather than separation and exclusiveness.
Quality, value-based thinking offers individuals the option of giving organic interpretations to their world. People are valued because they have the capacity to add quality-value to their community and society. Being valued, the community and society provide services to the individual and family all along the “continuum of life” to improve the capability of their social decision-making. With the above in mind, it becomes easier to see how this morality acts not only to preserve the quality-value of everyone, but proactively provides a more supportive social environment that adds value to the individual as an asset to his or her communities and societies. To increase the value of an individual’s contribution to society that individual must be seen as an asset whose value to society can be increased. The individual is an investment, an asset who can develop a “return on investment” for his or her family, community, and society.
By investing in the social sustainability of the family as the primary socializing and enculturating social institution in every community and society, the child-becoming-adult is prepared to use a code of sustaining morality. Investing in the social sustainability of individuals, beginning even before conception and continuing through the age of separation from the family, will assure the family, community, and dominant society of becoming socially sustainable. In this case, society must take on the vision of inventing and creating itself as socially sustainable through a new socially sustainable morality. Where better to teach a universal morality such as this than in Christian churches?
Our planet is now in the throes of incredibly rapid global social change and the specter of rolling political, military, social, economic, and environmental calamities. A morality for this New Era of our planet now exists for guiding all decision-making by citizens, national leaders, and international leaders with the common goal of social stability that makes global stability and peace possible.
For Christian religions to survive, they must take on the values that God incorporated in our species’ evolutionary creation. That statement may sound “pushy” until we realize that our species was created by God, but all Christian organizations are man made and highly fallible. To counter that fallibility it would seem intuitive for organizations to adopt the values that were invested in our species, as an intentional attempt to emulate The Creator’s investment in us and carry Jesus’ message forward with greater credibility. I truly believe that God knew what It was doing, and that has proven very successful. Maybe Christianity can do the same?
There are many obvious blank places that will need to be filled in, such as an organizational infrastructure, ceremonies, rituals, creedal or belief statements, and educational programs. Church organizers may examine the following belief system and fill in the blanks as they choose.
A socially sustainable Christian morality —
With a morality that is based on the values that have sustained our species, we know that Jesus’ message and morality becomes—
- Universally applicable to all people of every nation, culture, race, ethnicity, society, and gender;
- As relevant and applicable 5,000 years from now as it is today;
- An ideology that would be easily accepted by all people, without the implicit or explicit implication of an organizational agenda;
- A positive, constructive way of thinking, speaking, and acting by every individual at all levels of society or position of authority;
- The hope of improved quality of social relations between individuals, organizations, and governments;
- Easily understood and useful to almost anyone, literate or not;
- Proactive to promote peace, social stability, and the social evolution of individuals, families, communities, societies, and nations to become socially sustainable.
3 http://ccare.stanford.edu/stanford-compassionate-university-project/
4 Raphael, Daniel 2015. Social Sustainability Handbook for Community-Builders. Infinity Press.
ISBN: Trade Book: 978-0-692-41640-2 e-PUB ISBN: 978-1-4951-6048-6, p 28-30
5 Raphael, Daniel. ORGANIC MORALITY, Answering the Critically Important Moral Questions of the 3 rd
Millennium. (Available as a downloadable PDF at https://sites.google.com/view/danielraphael)