The current political divisions tearing through the political and cultural landscape of Western democracies have not become fissures overnight. The subterranean pressures and forces have been building for a long time, weakening the protective layers of decency, trust, the common good, love of freedom, mercy and care for the vulnerable, inter-cultural co-operation and understanding. In the past few years those fissures have opened and out of them have poured some of the most damaging substances for our human future. The normalization of lying; the prevalence of divisive speech; building cruelty into systems of assessment for social benefits; the acceptability of "othering", that is emphasizing differences and instilling negative emotions towards those we consider "other"; economic policies that fail to control the concentration of wealth and which hardens the social structures that give permanence to poverty; each of these, and much else erodes the common good and corrodes the moral purposefulness of a genuinely democratic and socially responsible society.
Tikkun Olam is the moral opposite of such destructive principles. To live with the daily intention of repairing the world requires a different set of motivational triggers; truth instead of lying; words that heal division rather than cause them; compassion and understanding of people, rather than enforcing a system that frightens, humiliates and robs of dignity; welcome and respect as default responses to the stranger who is other than us, but who by befriending would become one of us; generosity, kindness and honesty about money, rather than greed is good, self-interest and making money the primary life-goal.
For a while now (since my undergraduate days) I've lived with this phrase, Tikkun Olam. It fascinates me to think of human community being constructed with the goal of promoting these two nouns, humanity and community. All around us in daily life situations are going wrong, relationships break down, hearts get broken and people damaged, there's waste and damage to our planet on a scale that threatens the future, social media and all kinds of communication technology call the tune on what we are to think, and algorithms confirm what we like and close out wider choices and tastes. None of this is small stuff.
And yet. Tikkun Olam is a disposition to repair what is broken; to heal what is wounded; to give rather than take; to listen as well as speak; and then to speak truth into the darker corners of our own and other hearts. However it is a Jewish phrase, not a mere cliche from some pop psychology or self help manual. Its fuller version is to repair the world under the sovereignty of God. God is Creator; humans are stewards. To repair the world is to work under God's management, and to do the work characteristic of God -- creative, purposeful, compassionate, and rich in possibility and the freedom to be.
Over the next couple of months there will be occasional further explorations into the dynamics and inner levers of this phrase.