Honor
September 16, 2016 § 1 Comment
Created in God’s image, each of us is worthy of honor.
Our Torah portion reminds us that we need to be mindful of the humanity of others, particularly those who are vulnerable: “You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pawn. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment.”[1]
We may well be owed money, for example, but we still have to let the widow keep her garment. Her very humanity is deserving of honor, because she is a creature of God.
Yet the objection may be raised, and rightly so, that you don’t have to believe in God to honor the humanity of others. And, more to the point: if you can honor others without invoking God, then why invoke God? God, it would seem, is superfluous to this conversation.
For example, you might be someone who objects to all the usual names for God, seeing them as idolatries. You may have the sense that there is something out there, perhaps, that is bigger and grander than what the Bible might hold. If that is the case, then, you might be willing to extend your belief that the world has purpose to include the idea that we are here for a reason. You might use this belief as the basis for honoring others.
Or, alternatively: if you cannot believe in God, then you might conclude that our tradition provides a basis for honoring others. That is to say, our tradition is organized around a set of rather demanding ethical commitments. Our tradition argues that each human being, by virtue of being, is worthy of honor.
Or, alternatively: you might conclude, along with the great French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, that we must extend this sense of honor in God’s place. Levinas argues that we are expected to fulfill the role of God for each other and extend this gracious honor to others without limits or conditions. If God does not do it, then we must act in God’s place.
In other words, we can reach this end-point of honoring the humanity of others, regardless of whether or not it is grounded in a belief in God. What is most important is the idea that all of us, every one of us, is worthy of honor.
But perhaps you might rebel at that suggestion. You might be offended. What of the abusers, the sociopaths, the murderers, the hostage-takers? How can we find it within ourselves to honor these individuals? And is it not an outrage to even suggest that we ought to honor them?
It is, of course, one thing to suggest that we should give people the benefit of the doubt, or to adopt a non-judgmental attitude regarding the people we meet. But it is another thing entirely to use this approach to excuse the behavior of known killers.
Some might argue that there’s always a hope for redemption, a possibility for repentance. This position, by the way, is very well represented in our High Holiday liturgy. God waits until the very last moment for sinners, hoping that they will repent, calling to us: ‘return, O you wayward children, return.’ As we intone: ‘Lord, it is not the death of sinners that you seek, but that they should turn to you and live.’
But what of the scoundrels, and those whose misdeeds are so great as to outweigh half-measures and simple apologies? You might argue, like Maimonides, that it is possible for a person to behave so badly that they no longer can achieve true repentance. He suggests that the sinner must acknowledge so much wrongdoing and make such great changes in his or her character that the goal becomes nearly unreachable. As Maimonides explains: “It is possible that a man might commit a grave iniquity or many sins so that the sentence of the Judge of Truth might be that the doer of those wrongs, done intentionally and deliberately, would be denied repentance.”[2]
“Consequently it can be said,” he writes, “that the Lord did not decree Pharaoh to do ill to Israel, or Sihon to sin in his country or the Canaanites to act horribly or the people of Israel to be idolatrous. All these sins were their own doing and consequently they deserved no opportunity to repent.”[3] In these cases, the magnitude and multitude of the person’s sins has eliminated the possibility for repentance. The pattern of behavior may have become too ingrained to renounce.
You should know, by the way, that this situation is very rare. Maimonides is speaking of tyrants and other forms of extreme behavior.
Even so, we still must ask ourselves: are these individuals ineligible for honor? Have they gone so far that it is no longer possible to extend that sense of humanity to them?
At this point, we might want to argue for a distinction: there is honor, and there is respect. It is possible to honor the humanity of a person but not respect their deeds.
Many of us have family members or friends who might fall into this category: people who have treated us or others badly, who have abused their power and position to dominate others, or who have created endless drama in their lives and the lives of the ones who try to love them. We know of alcoholics and wife beaters and child abusers; we are aware of thieves of all kinds; we know of those who are untrue.
Honoring someone is not the same thing as cooperating with them.
Sometimes the best way to honor someone is to refuse to be a codependent in the bad behavior. Sometimes the best way to honor someone is to say no: you and I both deserve better than that.
One of the most difficult parts of the approaching High Holiday season, in fact, is this process of self-inspection. Have I acted honorably? Have I respected those worthy of respect, and honored the humanity of all? Have I acted in a way that magnifies the image of God in the world? Have I sought to enlarge the realm of the holy? We should treat each other as holy: ‘you shall be holy for me, as I, the Lord, am holy.’
We all fall short, of course: that is what it means to be human. We should make use of that awareness to grant honor to others as well, graciously, whether or not it has been earned.
Be gentle, forgive easily, and treat everyone with honor — everyone, including you.
[1] JPS translation.
[2] Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, Shlomo Pines, transl. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 6:3, p. 124.
[3] Ibid., p. 125.
Godtalk 
Thank you for this wonderful message. Often we are harder on ourselves than we should be.