As ethical people, we strive to act in accordance with our values. But what do we do when honoring one value contradicts another? Some values come into conflict only in certain circumstances. Other values, like the value of equity, (in our second principle) and the values of freedom and liberty (in our fourth and sixth principles) are always held in tension.
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Throughout this church year, from September to June, we are looking at the three areas of faith that combine to create a complete faith life: beliefs, values, and actions.
We began in September looking at some of the important questions of beliefs. Our beliefs are our worldview, what we see when we look out at the world. Our beliefs are our description of reality, the way things are, including both the material and immaterial parts of existence.
From our beliefs, we then derive a set of values, which is the second part of a complete faith. Because the world and human beings and human society is the way it is, some principles are important. For Unitarian Universalists, our shared principles form the core of our shared faith.
With beliefs and values as our foundation, now we will turn to looking at the third part of a complete faith: actions. Actions are the way we live our faith into our lives and the world, the choices that we make, in line with our values, and with the purpose of making the world look more like our ideals.
Today, as a bridge between our discussion of faith values and as an introduction to our discussion of faith actions, I want to look at the question of what we do when our values conflict.
What do we do when one important value leads us toward one action, while another important value encourages us in a different direction? We can only choose one path, one life. How do we decide?
Although values lead to actions, values don’t lead directly to actions.
Values are general and abstract. Actions, though, are very specific, and concrete.
We looked at this, for instance, when we spoke of the value of love. Love comes in many forms. People who value love can be moved by love to many different actions.
We looked at this, for another example, with the value of kindness. It would be easy to fill a museum full of pictures of kindness, with every picture illustrating a different example.
So, holding a set of values isn’t alone enough to determine our actions. Acting on our faith requires choosing between and among our values and sometimes that means choosing one value over another.
Though everyone in this room, and Unitarian Universalists generally, all share the same values, our actual lives look very different. Values alone don’t determine actions. Though we share values, we’ve all made different choices about how to express our values in the world. Some of our choosing is based on our individual skills and abilities and interests and circumstances. And some of the difference is based on how we interpret an abstract value. What does justice mean, for instance. What does justice demand, in this particular circumstance? What does compassion look like, in this context?
It would be nice if a clear value always led to a clear action. That would give us an ethical rule book would could follow like an owner’s manual for living. But life is more complicated than that.
And moreover, values often come into conflict with each other, where honoring one automatically means denying, or at least incompletely honoring, another.
We have all experienced this in our lives. Any time you’re faced with a difficult decision you’re forced to choose between two values. In fact, the definition of a difficult decision is when two or more important values come into conflict.
Should I take that job that pays a higher salary, or should I take the job that allows me to spend more time with my family?
Should I stay with my husband, or try to work it out? Is it better for the kids to have married parents, or separated but happier parents?
Should I move to be closer to my elderly mother, or stay where I’m close to my friends?
Read any advice column in the newspaper and it’s always these kinds of dilemmas. Should I be honest, even though it might hurt a friend’s feelings? Should I look out for my own interests, or sacrifice myself to help someone more needy? Should I protect my health and safety, even if that means denying myself pleasure, or should I risk a life of adventure?
The last advice column I read in the New York Times was from a woman who has a neighbor who loves gardening and the neighbor had started coming over into her yard uninvited and secretly doing her yard work. The woman felt violated, and a little insulted by the implication that her neighbor didn’t think she was doing a good enough job. She was asking the advice columnist how to have a conversation with her neighbor. Two values in conflict: the value of personal autonomy and feelings of self-worth, opposed against the value of neighborliness and compassion for a neighbor’s feelings.
Frankly, I would have just felt gratitude if a neighbor volunteered to do my yard work for free!
Values conflict internally when we need to make difficult personal decisions.
We also face values conflicts between people in the external world.
Every fraught political issue is at root a conflict of values.
Do we support Ukraine with direct military action and risk escalating conflict, or do we limit our support to economic sanctions and sending supplies and risk that Ukraine will fall to Russian domination?
High gas prices cause hardship for vulnerable people who don’t have access to transportation alternatives. But high gas prices also encourage us to develop alternative and less-polluting sources of energy. What to do?
We want children to be protected from hearing messages about sex and sexuality that aren’t appropriate until they’re older, but we want to help children struggling with feelings of being different know that they are whole, and worthy of love and respect just as they are.
You may not agree with the values upheld on the other side, or you may think those values are less important than the values on your side, but in any of the intractable issues our society struggles with, it’s a conflict between values.
Sometimes values conflict only when they are brought together in certain circumstances.
Other values always conflict and must always be held in tension.
Consider the value of equity, for instance, named in our second principle: “Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.”
Compare equity with the value of freedom, and liberty, named in our fourth and sixth principles: “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning” and “The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”
Equity is related to the word equality. The meaning of equity has changed somewhat over recent decades. At the time the second principle was written, equity probably meant something like treating all people equally.
But many people have come to doubt that treating people equally will really be effective in achieving the goal of an equal society. People who begin from a disadvantaged place might need more help in order to succeed than people who already have social privilege. If what’s important is equal outcomes, then we might need to treat people differently, that is, unequally, in order to be more equal at the finish.
So the word equity has shifted in meaning to refer to equal outcomes, equality as the end goal, rather than equality as the present method.
You can see right there that we have a values conflict just within one word!
But add to that value, now, the value of freedom, or liberty, and you have an even deeper conflict.
Because guaranteeing an equal society, where everyone has the same outcome, in terms of social, political, financial power, and education and safety and so on, will require a lot of heavy manipulating of social circumstances in order to force that desired outcome.
If people are free, some people are going to make good decisions and some people will make bad decisions. If people are free, some people are going to make risky choices. Some of those risks taken will succeed and others will fail. Meanwhile, other people will make safe choices and neither win nor lose in a big way. Some free people will prioritize life goals like education, or large families, or wealth, or power, or fame, and other free people will prioritize life goals like simplicity, beauty, adventure, respect of their peers, and so on. And all of those different goals can have either good or bad outcomes measured against more basic goals like personal health and happiness, let alone measured against social goals like civic health and a sustainable future for the planet.
Freedom leads naturally to a radically diverse society. If you let people live freely, they will not be equal. If you want to force equity you will need to curtail people’s freedom.
I’m not trying to argue one side or the other of that conflict, but simply to raise this interesting problem. Values don’t lead discretely and politely and in orderly fashion toward discrete, specific actions.
Instead, holding a set of cherished values, we find our values wrestling among themselves making choices difficult in our personal lives.
And values conflict in our decisions about the larger world, too. Sometimes we feel the conflict internally, making it hard for us to decide which side of a political argument we should support. Other times our values clearly support one policy position but our position is opposed by a different group of people upholding a different value.
And sometimes, important values are inherently in tension with each other. No resolution is ever completely possible. Freedom will always lead to unequal lives. Forcing equality will always demand limiting freedom.
So what do we do?
Here are some strategies for resolving values conflicts in our personal lives and in our political discussions.
In our personal lives, where the conflicting values are both “our values” held inside ourselves, the first strategy is to decide whether there’s really a conflict at all. For instance, instead of posing a dilemma as making a choice between two values, see if you can combine them into one solution. Instead of asking “Should I take this well-paid job that requires I work long hours, or should I spend more time with my family?” You might try asking, “How can this well-paid job that requires long hours help me spend more time with my family?” Maybe by working from home, or affording longer family vacations.
If the values conflict is real, the next strategy is to rank values. Values are not equal. Some values are more important than others. To resolve a conflict, you might be able to decide that one of the relevant values is more important. In fact, it would be a good exercise, when you’re not in the middle of a difficult decision, to spend some time thinking about your personal values. What are your most important values? Create a ranked list. And then you have the list to refer to when a situation gets conflicted.
If you are forced to honor one value over another in order to resolve a conflict, see if there’s a way to deliberately honor the defeated value in some other context. In other words, instead of making the decision narrow about choosing a job or not, expand the field so that there’s room for both values to find their place. If you know the new job is going to take away from family time, then you can get creative in prioritizing family time during the hours you aren’t working.
In the realm of politics, the first step is to remember that political conflicts are also values conflicts. I suppose there are some legitimately faithless actors who just want to create chaos (i.e. they are honoring their value of chaos). But for the most part the person opposing your policy isn’t evil, or stupid, they are simply supporting a different value. Work to identify the value motivating their position and be clear about naming your underlying value that’s leading toward your position. This will create sympathy and respect, at least. And it may be that you can identify a shared value and the disagreement is only about strategy, not goals. Then you can work to persuade that your position is actually the better means to the value you both support.
Or maybe not. Sometimes you really are working toward different goals and opposing values. In that case, resolving the conflict will require ranking values, choosing the top value, and denigrating the losing value. In a democracy that’s called voting. The losing side might try honoring their value in some other sphere, or they might have to wait until they can convince enough voters to support their value in the next election.
In a democracy, in our personal lives, and in international affairs, ending all conflicts is never possible. Values simply do conflict. People do hold different values. And some values, like the values of equity and freedom, conflict among themselves even if held by the same person.
In life, we must make choices, for ourselves, and for the communities we are part of, and the world we share. Our choice-making must follow our values. I wish I could say that following the path of our values will lead to a world beyond conflict. I don’t think it will.
Conflict is natural and inevitable. Conflict isn’t enjoyable, but we should try not to think of conflict as a failure. In fact, because values conflict, and we will always value our values, ultimately we must come to value conflict, too.
Conflict is a problem, but a good problem. Conflict is interesting. “Ok,” we might say. “I wonder how I’m going to make this decision? I wonder how this will get resolved?” Conflict is curious. “I wonder what value he’s trying to promote? What can I learn, here?” Conflict doesn’t have to mean fighting, it can mean questioning and exploring. “You know, maybe we’re actually on the same side, just advocating for different strategies to reach the same goal. Wouldn’t that be interesting?” Conflict is an invitation to learning and growth. Conflict is exciting. Conflict means that now we’re getting to the really important stuff.
Conflict occurs because people hold certain values to be important. Our faith teaches us that it’s good to have strong principles. It’s good to be passionate about the values that we hold dear. Experiencing conflict means that we are living fully and meaningfully. Conflict is telling us that how we live and the communities we make are important to us. And that’s good.
That’s valuable.
CLOSING HYMN, #1018, “Come and Go With Me”
CLOSING WORDS, #578, “This Great Lesson” Olympia Brown
We can never make the world safe by fighting.
Every nation must learn that the people of all nations are children of God, and must share the wealth of the world.
You may say this is impracticable, far away, can never be accomplished, but it is the work we are appointed to do.
Sometime, somehow, somewhere, we must ever teach this great lesson.
EXTINGUISHING THE CHALICE, #456, “Extinguishing the Chalice” Elizabeth Selle Jones
We extinguish this flame
but not the light of truth,
the warmth of community,
or the fire of commitment.
These we carry in our heart until we are together again.
DISCUSSION
FINAL WORDS, #471, Arranged by L. Griswold Williams
Love is the doctrine of this church, the quest for truth is its sacrament,
and service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace, to seek knowledge in freedom, to serve human need,
to the end that all souls shall grow into harmony with the Divine—
Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.