Logic Times

The United Nations - Essay Challenge

Posted by Benjamin Hieserich, 12/4/05. Comments (0)

Wow, Aslan, this essay seems to draw any hope away from even the principles that the UN was founded upon. I would disagree, however. Now is not the time to give up on the idea of the UN just yet. An organization based on morality, in theory, would work well, even if the perceived bases for such a morality are different. Allow me to present my theological thinking on what this morality is all about.

According to Aslan, a world organization based on morality cannot work because the basis for morality is God. Those who do not believe in God, therefore, will have a fundamentally different view of morality than those who do, causing irreconcilable differences in beliefs regarding human rights, morals, international law and other issues. Those of us who believe in God all know that God works in rather mysterious ways. So, who is to say that in the history of the world, God only revealed himself to one civilization of people, namely, the Jews? Yes, God revealed himself to the Hebrew people, made covenants with all of us through them, sent his son, our Savior, to this world as one of them and did all of the glorious things that are mentioned in the Bible through them. They are, definitely, without a doubt, God’s chosen people, and they always have been. That does not mean, however, that they were the only ones that God ever spoke to before Christ walked upon the earth. If God created everyone on this planet, why would he have only spoken or revealed anything through one group of people until only 2000 years ago? That’s thousands of years of history in which only one group of people ever had any chance of heaven or sense of morality. This, to me, is hard to believe.

I see it this way. God has revealed himself to all different civilizations, in different ways, to coincide with their different cultures. A morality does not produce a culture; a culture produces a morality. Somehow, though, if one looks at world civilizations, a vast majority seem to have understood similar things at around the same time in history; that murder, theft, rape, deception, and other human tragedies are fundamentally and morally evil; likewise, generosity, honesty, integrity, justice, and other virtues are fundamentally and morally good. If someone does not see this in practice, they can at least find these principles in the sacred (or honored) texts of that civilization. This similarity across cultures is not a mere coincidence. If one is to say that God is the basis for morality, then they could easily claim that God has worked through world civilizations to produce a basic human morality that writers such as Locke and Kant refer to as natural law or intuition.

If you read through such documents as the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other ground-breaking UN documents, you will find that these basic principles are there and understood. The problem is that too many government leaders in this world, in nations wealthy and poor, large and small, on most continents, are ruled by people who just do not seem to live up to those standards. The UN works through these governments and their will. In too many countries, the people do not have a sufficient voice to raise their concerns. It is automatically assumed, under the principle of sovereignty, that the will of the government is the will of the people. This is one flaw in an already controversial principle. The will of the people follows these principles stated above in a great majority of world nations; the problem is in two ideas:

We, as humans, cannot rid this world of evil, as much as we would like. There will be no such thing as a utopia without divine intervention.
Some government leaders have been corrupted by power, preventing the people from having a say.

Idea 1 is an explanation of why principally good governments and leaders run into problems. They try to achieve the greater good, but they must commit morally unsound acts to do so. If you believe that the US went into Iraq to oust Saddam and free the Iraqi people as one of their goals, the Iraq War is a good example of this idea. Theologically, it is a rather simple idea to digest. We, as humans, are weak compared to both God and Satan, or whatever your religion refers to as the ultimate good and evil beings. We cannot, therefore, rid the world of evil so long as Satan continues to bring evil into the world. It takes the work of God, who is more powerful than Satan, to come into the world and do that. We are still encouraged to try as hard as we can, even though we know it will not happen. Knowing this, sometimes we can even commit a lesser evil (going to war) to stop a greater evil (wholesale slaughter of innocents), so long as we remember what we are doing, stop when appropriate, and do our best to resolve the situation when the greater evil has been removed. Good governments, understanding this, may go against our judgment with this in mind. The relationship in this with the UN is that because certain means have been ruled out or deemed as unacceptable, even when they are necessary, the UN may wrongly judge a situation because of the means by which the solution will be achieved before understanding what the outcome may be and why such a means is necessary.

Idea 2 points to such things as the situations in Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq before 2003, and so many other oppressive nations. Governments keep the people down so that their voices are not heard. The moral will of the people is replaced by the power-corrupted will of the government, and the government’s will is accepted because of the principle of sovereignty. We can give the people all the aid we can, but when nobody does anything to actually solve the problem, we end up with governments getting away with such brutality as genocide. The moral writings, international statutes and tools are all there, but nobody has the guts to speak up on behalf of the oppressed. Even if we follow through with international legal proceedings (such as done with Pinochet in Chile) that take a long time, it is still better than the alternative, which is leaving such beasts in power. Once is too often to let these things happen when the authority can be used to make positive change.

It is a matter of pragmatics that prevents the UN from making good positive reform and sees despots sitting on the human rights council. Instead of taking into account the actual records of such nations, they see geography as more important; they would rather see countries from each continent sitting on the council, regardless of their human rights achievements, instead of good, sound countries that have the power and clout to get anything done. You can bet, however, that if the UN actually put the right nations in the right places, (and indeed, there are places where even despotic rulers may turn out to do some good), it would go back to being the powerful force in upholding human rights that it once was. Again, it does great as far as setting principles, providing humanitarian aid, and being an impartial observer in political elections, to make sure they are run fairly. Indeed, a strong case can be made to keep supporting the UN based on those things, but even though times are down for the UN now, if the right reforms are made soon, as this 60th General Assembly meets to take up such reforms, the UN could be an even brighter spot in a dreary world.

{Aslan: I applaud your thorough and well thought out Challenge to the U.N. essay. I like your optimism, but I still unfortunately do not share your perspective.

First, about natural law or innate morality. Indeed, Locke, Spinoza, Hume and Kant and many others have discussed this idea, but its deep origins were with the Greeks, with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. A great portion of their B.C. philosophical quest was a search for and insistence upon absolute morality. In fact, Plato despised the philosophy of the Sophists, who embraced relative morality. This ancient recognition of the need for absolute standards suggests, as you describe, a "basic human morality," but this natural law informs religion, not the other way around.

Why so? Here, I want to be very careful, because early on I decided to avoid Christian evangelism as a theme on this site. You suggest "God has revealed himself to all different civilizations, in different ways, to coincide with their different cultures." But this is fundamentally impossible because religions are mutually exclusive. You cannot reconcile the theology of Islamic Sharia law with reincarnation and the caste system of the Hindu faith with salvation by grace of the Christian faith. The centerpiece of the Christian faith is Deus Homo, the God Man, which refers to the necessity of the Incarnation and Substitution to reconcile Man to God. No other theology contains this element and any theology that rejects this element cannot be a companion revelation of the same Christian God. I will stop here except to reiterate that the common moral themes you observe in religion are evidence of the Architect – God’s design in our soul, our being – and this has helped shape the morality of other religions that are, in fact, devoid of revelation.

Next, onto the U.N. Rather than dissect your presentation, I want to clarify mine. The reason that a worldwide organization designed to promote morality must fail is that everyone is welcome and weighted equally. You allude to the problem with "if the UN actually put the right nations in the right places," but then that is the problem, is it not? There exists no mechanism for judgment about the fitness of the United States over Iran, for example, to sit in a position of authority on a matter of morality. And your critique of the Iran regime (and its ilk) as corrupt and "preventing the people from having a say," implies a standard of morality that is not agreed upon. You have, in your analysis, granted equal revelation status to Islam, for example, but people having a say in Sharia law, does not include women as "people." In fact, both you and the U.N. Constitution, which indeed abounds with good moral wisdom, cannot pass judgment on a nation’s representation in the U.N. because who is to say that Syria is not an ideal member? It claims to be a Republic. Bashar Asad was elected in 2002 with 97% of the vote! Fancy words are one thing, connecting that morality with organizational behavior is another. You, of course, discuss this extensively – I think the problem is one of an inability to judge, where you think it is one of a reluctance to judge. Either way, without maintenance of standards the organization cannot enforce standards. Part of that maintenance process is to exclude and "exclusion" is not part of an organization that includes all the nations of the world.}

Comments