Dignity for All

Today I joined several of my co-workers and attended a lecture by Dr. Robert Fuller called "Rankism: A social disorder Dignity: A universal human right." It was a fascinating presentation which I found very informative and thought provoking.

Dr. Fuller presented the idea that all people have a right to be treated with equal dignity and discussed ways we can be more self-aware of rankism both in ourselves and those around us. What particularly surprised me was that he used Darwinian evolution to support his claim. He explained that all of humanity is equal because we all came from the same core group of homo sapiens who knocked out all the competition and took over the world and that we have now developed beyond survival of the fittest to embrace equality. As interesting as I found this point of view I could not help by feel that his wonderful message would be much more powerful if he supported it with the eternal truth that we are all children of God and have uncompromisable potential and that we are not really in competition in this life.

For an hour an a half I listed to Dr. Fuller and he had great ideas and the world would be a better place for listening to him. Yet, to me, everything he said is wrapped up and even more powerfully expressed in this simple statement by C.S. Lewis:

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. "