Radical Grace
Jul- Aug 2007

Inherent Dignity

by Richard Rohr, OFM

As the Latin word dignus reveals, our English word “dignity” seems to speak of some kind of “worth” or “worthiness.” It is a deep inner need that seems to be felt from our earliest years till our dying moments. We seek it through human touch and affirmation, through roles, titles, achievements, through competence, through knowledge, and we even seek an assurance of a transcendent and lasting worthiness through religion and from God.

We project worthiness onto objects, countries, other persons, religions, offices, and institutions. It draws forth our allegiance and our admiration, even though such worthiness might well be a product of our own idealization or imagination. The outer object might objectively be worthy or unworthy, but if we deem it to be worthy it can exercise the most generous and sacrificial gestures on our part. If we think Grandpa has dignity, then his life will call us forth in ways that make us more “dignified.” If we judge he does not have dignity or worthiness, it will draw forth pity, cynicism, or disdain. In other words, worthiness or dignity is almost entirely a “moveable feast”, a construct of our own mind and heart, for good or for ill. It does not need to be objectively true.

Yet why does the search seem to be endless for most people, and often unsatisfying? Why do so few people feel they have lasting and solid dignity? Why do we look for it in places and ways that are so inherently unstable? Fame, that needs more fame to believe in itself? Money, that needs more money to satisfy—and then still doesn’t? Admiration, that needs constant and deeper reassurance? Power that only feeds on different forms of power? Careers, roles, and titles that leaves one still lonely and doubting when one is alone at night? Even lovely sexual intimacy that afterwards only deepens ones sense of aloneness, separateness, and unworthiness, because the feeling cannot be maintained. Where does this all come from?

Addiction has been defined as “needing more and more of what is not working.” In that sense, we are indeed an addictive society, because we have not found a solid source and ground for our dignity. We always look for it outside of ourselves, and thus it is intrinsically based on a model of “scarcity,” where the source can be taken away, where “I” am “not enough,” and where “it,” whatever it is, is never enough.

So the question, of course, is how we come to an inherent sense of value and abundance? How can we find a worthiness that is substantial, inherent, unstoppable, and indestructible? I suspect that the perennial return of concepts like nobility, royalty, the divine rights of kings, and legends of descent from gods, were all ways to find and to validate some kind of inherent worthiness. The church did the same thing with the creation of the idea of clergy (“the separated ones”) and apostolic succession. It was probably inevitable, and not all bad.

Anything found so ubiquitously in culture after culture, as is the nobility or priestly class, is surely answering a very deep archetypal need. Higher ups not only wanted to assure their lineage, but lower downs seemed to need some kind of “objective” worthiness to look up to, whether it was true or not. The concept of nobility, or inherent dignity, serves as a kind of “lure” that invited barbarians and philistines into rivalry, imitation, and various forms of upward mobility (according to Rene Girard). The noble classes and clergy might well be social constructs that have surely directed much of history toward an idealization of manners, education, and many forms of spirituality and culture. (I will overlook for now, their negative effects).

Every culture seems to deem different things to be symbols of dignity. I visited a tribe in Africa where for a man to sit on the ground was to be without dignity, and so every man carried a little carved stool with him, as essential to him as food or clothing. America thinks that success gives one dignity, Switzerland thinks that order and cleanliness gives one dignity, Japan thinks that ritual and restraint gives one dignity. Who is right?
But we still have not addressed the central question. Is there an objective dignity, a substantial worthiness, an indestructible inner source of abundance that cannot be either given or taken away? And if so, who has it? And who gives it?

As a Franciscan priest and a Christian, I, of course, believe that the revelations called the Bible do reveal and announce an objective and inherent dignity. Although, after saying that, I also believe that most of Christian history, Catholic and Protestant, has not taught it very well at all, much less has it given people a practice and process whereby they could experience that dignity and worthiness for themselves. If taught at all, it still remained primarily an external belief, but not an inner experience. Largely, our Western mind was too dualistic to access inherent dignity or worthiness. It could always find reasons why not!
The initial basis for that inherent dignity is found in the beginnings of the book of Genesis, where it says that human persons are actually created in the “image and likeness” of God (1:27)! I always say that, if we really believed it, we could save most people $10,000 in therapy bills! The Judeo-Christian tradition thus begins on an extremely positive foundation, “original blessing” you might call it. But it has seldom been taken seriously by the later Christian tradition. Too much to believe! Too good to be true!

“Managed” Religion, which somehow needs to create co-dependency (“learned helplessness”) among its members, preferred to emphasize “original sin” instead. This has kept us united but disempowered in inferiority instead of empowered and united by dignity—which is our only real future. The negative result, however, has been the immense self doubt, guilt based, and shame based society that we have in Western society, even to this day.
So what is the Biblical response to this immense human self-doubt and lack of self- confidence (lack of dignity), and even self-hatred that we experience everywhere? Hoping you do not turn this off as a predictable priest response, I still must say it. It is the objective and universal gift of what we call the Holy Spirit, starting with the second verse of the Bible where God’s Spirit is “hovering over the chaos” (Genesis 1:2). Let me explain.

A “Word that is in your mouth and in your heart” (Deuteronomy 30:14), or the promise of a “law written in your heart” (Jeremiah 31), is a gradual realization that God is the one who overcomes the gap between divinity and humanity. It becomes the full- blown realization of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-13), and then the frequent statements of an “Indweller,” an inner gift, a promise, a presence and guarantee, a stable witness, a total gift that has nothing to do with worthiness, attainment, or performance, throughout the letters of Paul, but especially in Romans 8. The Christian Scriptures assure us that we are not “left orphans” and that an inner “defense attorney” (paracletos) has been given to the human soul to “remind” it (John 14:26) of its divine identity. “The Spirit and our spirit bear common witness that we are indeed children of God” (Romans 8:16).

Without trying to make this into a theological commentary, I want to say that this Biblical teaching—which is also a deep and universal spiritual intuition—is the only hopeful and substantial response to the human need for inherent dignity. Such dignity is not dependent on anything having to do with class, money, control, education, race, religion, or any earned worthiness; it is a dignity that is not external to the self, or dependent on culture, education, or even religion (some will want to disagree with me here!). I believe the divine indwelling is intrinsic (2 Peter 1:4), essential, universal and absolutely given. This is indeed very good news.

Both Catholicism and Protestantism, in different ways, still made this gift of the Holy Spirit dependent on some kind of performance principle, even if the performance principle became “faith” itself, as we see in Martin Luther. A free and total gift is just too humiliating for the human ego to accept. It was not seen as inherent to human nature, in creatures whose DNA was clearly divine, and who came forth from God without exception, as the creation account makes clear. I think this is what is illustrated in the first account of Pentecost, as related in Acts 2.

As a Christian committed to both the Biblical revelation and an inner contemplative life, I believe that in-depth-God-experience is still the most solid basis for a sense of one’s own inherent, essential, and substantial dignity—which is simultaneously a revelation of the dignity of everybody else! That is its miracle and authenticity. When I find it in myself, I automatically see the same gift in everybody else too, because it has nothing to do with attainment of any kind. It has nothing to do with my private or personal worthiness. That is why it is so stable, substantial, and salvific. It is total gift, which becomes the Christian concept of grace. It is either everywhere, or it is nowhere. Dignity is inherent to creation, and cannot be portioned out by any mental construct, cultural agenda, moral or religious practice.

But I tell you, this is a “contemplative knowing” (the non-dualistic mind), and maybe that is the reason why it is taking us so long to recognize inherent and sacred dignity. The dualistic mind that both religion and culture prefer, will always divide the world into the worthy and the unworthy. Minds like Jesus’ will read it very differently. He says that God’s sun “rises on good and bad alike, and his rain falls on the just as well as the unjust” (Matthew 5:45)
True Christian holiness, and human wholeness, is precisely the freedom to see, own, and honor a dignity that is intrinsic, unearned, and universal. In that sense, there has not been much Christian or cultural seeing up to now, because its sight has almost always been on the extrinsic, earned, and exclusive. We are ready for, and in need of, the full vision if our humanity and our planet are to survive

Fr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan of the New Mexico province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, NM.

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