Unviolable Dignity ...

Monday, June 2, 2014. Sometimes there are sentences which seem to come out of nowhere, which struck you. They can influence you, they fall into your heart and then stay there, and start to grow. One such sentence struck me when I was walking along the Spree river in Berlin on Saturday morning …

Dignity …

While I was walking on a fresh and sunny morning, I read:

The dignity of man is inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all public authority. (Article 1)

The sentence is the first article of the German constitution. It is written on some glas panel on the river side of the German parliament in Berlin. There is more written, the whole first 19 articles of the constitution. But this one really struck me this time. Human dignity shall be inviolable. Point.

This sentence is more than just a sentence. It is binding law. And it is broken down into diverse parts in the following articles of the constitution. Dignity of mankind is in the centre of all of this. I love these articles.

You may ask yourself: what is the relationship between the worldly basic articles of a constitution and the biblical principles of faith. Here, I would say that the dignity of man is one of the key character features of God himself. He loves men and women. The story of Christ talks about him taking them so serious that he even dies for them. To acknowledge and live the dignity of every single human is one of the main goals of discipleship - and Jesus has practiced this dignity in a deeply moving way.

Challenges …

But of course, dignity is challenged. We have goals and challenges in our life, and the dignity of humans is violated broadly, even in our modern society. This ranges from public press articles which do not accept the dignity of men and women, to the personal relationships which we have.

In our constitution, the articles bind public authority. That is an important point. Of course, we need and have public authority on many layers of our social interaction. Civil service is active in towns, in states up to the federal level. We all are bound to the dignity of men! You might think that these are mere words - since the public systems often are rather stupid rule-based systems which do not give much space to the dignity of individuals. But the constitution goes much beyond this. It gives some vision to the whole state, to all parts of the state. The vision is freedom, it is development, it is dignity.

Sometimes, such sentences can help you a lot. For me, I am still highly inspirated and moved by the simple reading of the first articles of the constitution - and their deep relationship to discipleship within the New Testament. If we could live this respect and protection of the dignity of all humans on a day by day basis, that would definitely change our environment significantly! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts