Sermon Library
“Reverence for Life: Schweitzer’s Trip and Legacy”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
July 10, 2011
Service Theme: Pentecost IV - 2011-07-07
Pentecost IV - 2011-07-07 July 10, 2011
Reverence for Life
Schweitzer’s Trip and Legacy
The only time Albert Schweitzer came to the United States was to speak in Aspen at the Goethe Bicentennial on July 6 and July 8 in 1949. This became the origin of the Aspen Institute and Music Festival. Schweitzer thought Aspen was a suburb of Chicago and was surprised about the additional two day train trip and higher altitude. On the train, two young girls mistook him for Albert Einstein and asked for his autograph. Not wanting to disappoint them he signed, Albert Einstein by his good friend Albert Schweitzer.
Albert Einstein wrote about Albert Schweitzer “nowhere have I ever found such an ideal union of goodness and passion for beauty as in Albert Schweitzer.” Einstein added, “He is the only Westerner who has had a moral effect on his generation comparable to Mahatma Gandhi” In 1947 Life magazine called Albert Schweitzer, “the greatest man in the modern world.” Two years later Time magazine wrote that he was “one of the most extraordinary men of modern times.” Winston Churchill called him, “a genius of humanity.” I love this statement by two Schweitzer biographers George Marshall and David Poling who stated, “Albert Schweitzer is one of the personalities of this century who has almost become a myth.”
From Mental Daze to Mental Clarity
In his autobiography “Out of My Life and Thought” Albert Schweitzer explains how at the beginning of the summer of 1915 he awoke from some kind of mental daze, asking himself why he was only criticizing civilization and not constructing civilization. He always asked a lot of questions about civilization.
He writes, “The essential element in civilization is the ethical perfecting of the individual as well as society. At the same time, every spiritual and every material step forward has significance for civilization. The will to civilization is, then, the universal will to progress that is conscious of the ethical as the highest value. In spite of the great importance we attach to the achievements of science and human prowess, it is obvious that only a humanity that is striving for ethical ends can benefit in full measure from material progress and can overcome the dangers that accompany it. … .” “The only possible way out of chaos is for us to adopt a concept of the world based on the ideal of true civilization.”
Later he wrote, “For months on end I lived in a continual state of mental agitation. Without the least success I concentrated - even during my daily work at the hospital, - on the real nature of the affirmation of life and of ethics and on the question of what they have in common. I was wandering about in a thicket where no path was to be found. I was pushing against an iron door that would not yield.
In that mental state I had to take a long journey up the river Ogooue. Lost in thought I sat on deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal concept of the ethical that I had not discovered in any philosophy. I covered sheet after sheet with disconnected sentences merely to concentrate on the problem. Two days passed. Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses (or hippopotami), there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase ‘reverence for life.’ The iron door had yielded. The path in the thicket had become visible.”
In Awe of the Mystery of Life
The phrase Reverence for Life is a translation of the German phrase: “Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben” (which could also be translated as: “to be in awe of the mystery of life"). Schweitzer made the phrase the basic tenet of an ethical philosophy which he developed and put into practice throughout his life. He believed that Reverence for Life is a concept that develops from simple observation of the world around us. In his book, ‘Civilization and Ethics’ he expressed this in these words: “Ethics is nothing other than Reverence for Life. Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil. Affirmation of life is the spiritual act by which man ceases to live thoughtlessly and begins to devote himself to his life with reverence in order to give it true value. To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will to live.”
He came to the conclusion, “By itself, the affirmation of life can only produce a partial and imperfect civilization. Only if it turns inward and becomes ethical can the will to progress attain the ability to distinguish the valuable from the worthless. We must therefore strive for a civilization that is not based on the accretion of science and power alone, but which cares most of all for the spiritual and ethical development of the individual and of humankind.”
James Brabazon (Author of one the Biographies of Albert Schweitzer) defined Reverence for Life with the following statement: “Reverence for Life says that the only thing we are really sure of is that we live and want to go on living. This is something that we share with everything else that lives, from elephants to blades of grass—and, of course, every human being. So we are brothers and sisters to all living things, and owe to all of them the same care and respect, that we wish for ourselves.”
In Constant Quest
Albert Schweitzer was an incredible individual, a complete renaissance man. He was a minister, theologian, musician, physician, scholar, author, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He not only accomplished a great deal simply by being accomplished in three primary professions, but he pursued new ground in all of these areas of expertise.
For example, he was not only an organist, but he learned how to take an organ apart and put it back together. He not only played the music of Bach, but he analyzed the music and wrote about it for other musicians. He was not just a theologian, but he went behind the scenes of the biblical text to be one of the first scholars to be in quest for the historical Jesus. He was not only a physician, but he went further to specialize in tropical and African diseases. He always went further. He dove into life head first.
According to one of his biographers, when Albert was young and living with his parents, there was more than one occasion, in which Albert’s Lutheran minister father and mother would be invited over to dinner by people in the parish and they would just invite them with out Albert because Albert was always asking too many questions about everything. In a biography it is written. “As a teenager he had, on his own admission, become socially intolerable, through his insistence on asking awkward questions at friendly family gatherings.”
As a young man he was convinced that somewhere in the writings of the great theologians and philosophers there must be a concept that is universal, fundamental, elemental, to which he could give his assent, and he searched for it unceasingly.
Through his passion was driven by boundless energy, and all the surfaces of his room were covered with piles of books that he had read and were now gathering dust, he could not find it. It finally came to him not through books but through experience, in the heart of tropical Africa, and he called it Reverence for Life. If you dive deep down inside yourself, beyond the realm of reason (though not contrary to reason), you find solidarity with all of life. For him, the universe was made of life, and this was God. And to this he clung, in word and deed, all his life.
Deed was important. Not many thinkers and writers would be prepared to have their lives subjected to scrutiny on the basis of their pronouncements. But for Schweitzer this was crucial. He said, “A person’s life should be the same as one’s thoughts. I have made my life my argument.”
James Brabazon said that “Albert Schweitzer’s thinking was not that of a man who builds, but of a man who digs. In every area in which he worked he delved for the truth beneath the rubble and accretions of out-dated theories and opinions received without thought. He did this with a rare combination of the passion of an artist and the ruthless rigor of a scientist and scholar. Finally, after months and years of searching for the spiritual satisfaction that eluded him, he knew what he had to do to be fulfilled which was as he said ‘something small in the spirit of Jesus’”
Reverence for Life from Challenges of Life
Small indeed was the enterprise he embarked on in its beginnings: a converted chicken house on the grounds of a small mission settlement in the heart of tropical Cabon, Africa, where he began to treat the natives for their multiple diseases, all complicated by malnutrition. But this small beginning grew, like the mustard seed in the parable, into a great tree that spread would-wide, and not only could the fowls of the air nest in it, but every living thing could find a sheltered placed in its great shadow.
For it was here, surround by sickness and death, and nature at its cruelest as life fed indifferently on life, that the phrase “Reverence for Life” came to him. Nowhere else, he wrote to his daughter, Rhena, could he have found it. He also wrote, “I am life, that will to live, in the midst of life that wills to live.” Today that hospital is one of the finest in Africa and the leader in research and treating Malaria along with Tuberculosis and AIDS.
At the very moment I was writing this paragraph, I received an email from Ian Stevenson of the Schweitzer Fellowship at Harvard. I had not heard from him for awhile. Perhaps he was thinking of this time of year as he has been here for Schweitzer’s anniversary the past couple years. Anyway, included in his email was a letter and report from Dr. Lachlan Forrow of Harvard Medical School and chairman of the Schweitzer hospital in Gabon, Africa. The letter is about its past successes and plans for a major expansion for its 100th anniversary in two years. From a seed in a shed to an international hospital is incredible.
A Unified Theory
Albert Schweitzer and Albert Einstein were good friends, especially as they combined their presence and purpose calling for nuclear disarmament after the war. They were often called as a team or introduced together as the genius of science and the genius of humanity or the professor of science and professor of humanity.
Last Tuesday evening the Institute hosted a discussion with Brian Greene, professor of mathematics and physics at Columbia, on the deep laws of the cosmos. His area of research is superstring theory and a unified theory of all forces and all matter. As such, superstring theory has the potential to realize Einstein’s long sought dream of a single, all-encompassing theory of the universe.
What Einstein was seeking in science, Schweitzer was seeking in civilization. Call it the superstring unified theory of spirituality. This is what he was looking for and when he found it and labeled it on the Ogooue River his life became even more purposed and became his inner source of strength and service. It became known as a religion of the universe or a universal religion. In due respect to all the different faiths and people, this to me is evolving progress and a perpetual goal and purpose. What is universal is the compassion, care and service toward our neighbor as our self. Ultimately it is Reverence for Life. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel http://www.aspenchapel.org
End Notes
For Schweitzer, the ethic of Reverence for Life is identical to Jesus’ ethic communicated in the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:36-40).[75] For Schweitzer this is a perfect expression of “the ethic of love widened into universality.”[76] In experiencing the universal will-to-live he recognizes God’s creative will in the world. “Reverence for life means to be in the grasp of the infinite, inexplicable, forward-urging Will in which all Being is grounded.”[77] Thus, Schweitzer’s ethic is essentially religious. At the same time, while Schweitzer’s thinking and language tends to be theistic and mystical, his emphasis is humanistic and concerned with the preservation and fulfillment of life here and now. As a result, his concept of the Reverence for Life is practical and firmly based in the reality of this world.[78]
Albert Schweitzer hoped that the ethic of Reverence for Life would make its way in the world on the basis of his explanation of it in his books and talks, the example of his life and the force of its own argument based on the depth of fundamental thought. To some extent this is taking place as is evidenced by the growth of the environmental movement. (The book Silent Spring, by Rachael Carson, which is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement[1] was dedicated to Albert Schweitzer). Reverence for Life can also be seen in the explosion of ethical, charitable organizations of all kinds [edit] The origins of Albert Schweitzer’s Reverence for Life
Schweitzer believed that ethical values which could underpin the ideal of true civilization had to have their foundation in deep thought and be world and life affirming. They had to be compatible with an attitude of affirmation of the world and of life. He therefore embarked on a search for ethical values in the various major religions and world-views accessible to him, but could not find any that were able, unequivocally, to combine ethics with life-affirmation. It was not until two years after moving out to Gabon to establish the Albert Schweitzer Hospital that he finally found the simple statement which answered his quest
According some authors, Schweitzer’s thought and specifically his development for reverence for life was influenced by Indian religious thought and in particular Jain principle of ahimsa (non-violence) [2] Albert Schweitzer has noted the contribution of Indian influence in his book Indian Thought and Its Development:[3]
The laying down of the commandment to not kill and to not damage is one of the greatest events in the spiritual history of mankind. Starting from its principle, founded on world and life denial, of abstention from action, ancient Indian thought - and this is a period when in other respects ethics have not progressed very far reaches the tremendous discovery that ethics know no bounds. So far as we know, this is for the first time clearly expressed by Jainism.
The Will to Live
The word ‘will’ in the sense of determination or firmness of purpose, is rarely used today and therefore Schweitzer’s use of the word as translated from the German word ‘Wille’ may appear unfamiliar. However, it is a significant part of Schweitzer’s message. He held the view in the 1920s that people had largely lost touch with their own will, having subjugated it to outside authority and sacrificed it to external circumstances.
He therefore pointed back to that elemental part of ourselves that can be in touch with our ‘will’ and can exercise it for the good of all.
In “Out of My Life and Thought” Schweitzer writes:
“The most immediate fact of man’s consciousness is the assertion ‘I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live’,”
At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give to every will to live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own.[....] This is the absolute, fundamental principle of ethics, and is a fundamental postulate of thought.”
In his search for an answer to the problems posed by what was to him the obvious decline of western civilization, Albert Schweitzer was not prepared to give up the belief in progress which is so much taken for granted by people of European descent. Rather, he sought to identify why this ‘will to progress’ was seemingly going off the rails and casing the disintegration of European civilization.
“Standing, as all living beings are, before this dilemma of the will to live, a person is constantly forced to preserve his own life and life in general only at the cost of other life. If he has been touched by the ethic of reverence for life, he injures and destroys life only under a necessity he cannot avoid, and never from thoughtlessness.”
—Albert Schweitzer