Aphorism 3

Maxim 3

Divine Love

Love is so much more than the romantic sort. We have known this for a long time, but we tend to forget it. We have the love of family, of course, and that is well understood, but love without context generally refers to romantic love, or euphemistically to sex, as in physical “acts of love”. We have love songs, and love stories, and (more's the pity) Love Island.

Love is more than wanting to be with someone, more than caring deeply for some specific individuals. It is more than selfless devotion to a lover or a child. There is love in fast friendship, love in care for anyone. There is love throughout life, if we allow there to be.

Aphorism 2

Divine Justice

Justice is a primal drive. It finds many forms of expression – the desire to see good conduct rewarded and bad conduct punished, the reluctance to benefit from undeserved reward, and also the desire for revenge, to see people hoist on their own petard, and even, perhaps, schadenfreude.

Like any primal drive it can lead us to right action or to wrong action. What is just is not simple, nor possible to know in all circumstances. Indeed, even our basic urge to justice does not reliably lead to just outcomes, for while it is that drive that pushes us to vengeance, vengeance is rarely just.

Yet it also drives us to protect those who suffer unjustly, to stand against persecution and scapegoating. It causes us to wish to see credit given where it is due, and it drives us to let others know that we appreciate their work, their actions, indeed that we appreciate them as people.

Maxim 2

Ego, Inner Light, and the Individual Journey

One of the allegations made about theologically pluralistic liberal Quakerism is that it feeds ego; that if we all have our own path that may look dramatically different from another Friends, we may become dominated, each individually and the Meeting and wider community of Friends collectively, by the worst sort of individualism. If we are all following our individual leadings, at least in terms of our spiritual development, it is all too easy to be led astray by our subconscious (or conscious) desires. Where a regimented, hierarchical faith community with a central authority can be a check on individual development through doctrine and review by the clerical hierarchy, a levelled faith community such as that of Friends can only apply any such check through a sort of collective supervision.

This is, frankly, obviously true in a logical sense. What is less obvious is how much of a problem it is in reality, and – related to that – what level of supervision, or even collective control, is appropriate.