Do No Harm

Welcome to the weekly Dulin Podcast, a ministry of Doolin United Methodist Church in Falls Church, Virginia. Each week, we share a short reflection on faith and life in community, exploring how God's grace moves among us and through us. We're glad you're here.

Hello, Dulin Church. It's me, James, your pastor here Doolin coming to you for another weekly moment. This is the second weekly moment. Perhaps you got to watch last week, and last week I talked a little bit about some of what I think are the fundamental principles of who Jesus was and what it means to practice faith. What I see in him, and what I try to reflect in him.

So if you want to review that, I encourage you go back. It is on our YouTube page for you to watch if you choose. Now, this week I thought I would pick up with a little bit about our United Methodist roots and practicing faith. Now, as soon as I start talking about United Methodist roots, that might say, I don't know if I'm ready to talk about that. What I want to focus on for the next three weeks is what are called the general rules of the United Methodist Church.

And before you hear the word rules and start to walk away, oh goodness, those rules are fairly simple and straightforward, because John Wesley, sort of the founding father, if you will, of United Methodism, thought that faith ought to be something we practice. In fact, that's the very core of what it means to be United Methodist is that faith is not just something we have and we hold in our heads what we believe. Not that that's not important, but it's what we do about it. And when John Wesley was looking at sort of the way that he saw the church in his day, the Church of England in his day in the 1700s practicing faith, left something to be desired. And actually the roots of our name Methodist were derogatory terms used related to John Wesley, because they had a method that they followed.

But we're not going to go into all that depth. That's way more information probably than you even want it today. What I wanted to do is take each one of the three general rules, one per week, and talk about them. So the first general rule is do no harm. Do no harm.

Now, seems pretty straightforward, doesn't it? But it's an invitation for you to be more intentional in the way you live your life every day. It's an invitation for you to ask that question within yourself, does this thing I intend to do do harm? Does it create harm? And if it does, you know, the very first rule is do no harm.

So, it's an invitation to actually take our own actions very seriously. It's not it doesn't invite us to judge everybody else's action and say, oh, that was harmful. Oh, that was harmful. Oh, that was harmful. What it does invite us to do is to look at our own actions and begin to ask the question, what is harm?

Is it harmful for me, and to whom does the harm, you know, precipitate? Who is harmed by what I do. Sometimes we're harmed. So at the very root of this do no harm, if you tend to speak to yourself negatively, saying things like, oh, I'm so stupid, or I wish I had done better, or well, wishing you'd done better maybe is not so much negative talk. But if you say negative things about yourself, that's harm.

That's harm. So that's a first place that you can note to yourself that you don't want to do any harm. I don't want to harm myself. I don't want to use words that rob me of my personhood, that dehumanize me. I don't want to do that to anybody else, but I want to start with me.

I need to start with me, not using words, Oh, that sermon today was terrible. I might say that. You know, as a pastor, I preach every Sunday. So, I had an opportunity to do it. If you ask my family, that is one way I do harm.

Come home, rehash my sermon, talk about how I really messed up this section or did this other thing. Not every week, but enough that they would say, I do harm. So they'll watch this video and they'll say, dad, James, depending on who they are, you need to practice what you preach. So I'm trying to be serious about it. And I do try to practice that, doing no harm by not speaking any negatives about myself.

So, I'm working on it, and I invite you to work on that too. But then once we get past the harm we do to ourselves, you know, what are the harms that we do with our lives? Perhaps there are things that we say to other people that are harmful, that rob them or dehumanize them, even if they're not here to hear us. I would suggest to you it might be harmful for you to even be a part of gossiping about someone else, using sort of a judgmental tone about someone who's not even in the room to be a part of the conversation. Those are ways of doing harm because it affects, if you're talking with other people, it affects you and everyone else who's in the conversation when we say negative things about one another.

This is before we even do anything beyond what we say. When we say harmful slurs against people because of their race, their creed, their religion, because of their sexual orientation, or the way they identify sexually. When we say negative things about folks like that, we rob them and dehumanize them. When we say something like that, we are doing harm, whether we want to admit it or own it for ourselves or not, it's absolutely true. We're doing a kind of harm.

So watching our mouths is a way to avoid doing harm. Perhaps there are things that when we purchase them, they are produced in such a way that it negatively impacts the planet, it negatively impacts the people who are producing it, or it negatively impacts our community in some ways. Perhaps we would see that as harm. Now, here's where we get to areas where you have to kind of define for yourself what you might see as harm. Where is there a lie?

Because as you get more and more serious about being intentional about doing no harm, the more ways you might begin to discover that unintentionally you are doing harm. So, for instance, just a simple for instance, we do a lot of our shopping. We're very fortunate. We're in walking distance of a weekly farmer's market. So, we prefer to buy from those farmer's markets, which are generally locally or fairly closely regionally produced.

And we feel like that's reducing the amount of harm we do as opposed to buying something that's shipped over a long distance and the amount of energy that's used to get it from place to place. So perhaps the way the laborers are treated who pick the product and make sure that we get the product. All of those things may add to the harm we do implicitly or complicitly with those who sell us those products. So we are fortunate to be close enough to a farmer's market to be able to make those purchases for ourselves. And so we do.

Maybe that doesn't bother you and you don't feel like that's a harm, and if you don't, I'm not here to try to tell you what is harmful. I'm hoping that in your conscience and as you try to be intentional about what causes harm, that you be careful. Certainly hurtful words, hurting others physically, inflicting pain emotionally or spiritually, which the church has done over centuries, but we don't have time to probably address that completely. The kinds of ways we speak to people make them feel about themselves sometimes. So mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, any kind of harm.

So let it be your intention as you enter your day. Each day, first do no harm. First, I'm going to be sure not to do harm in the way I speak about myself, in the way I act towards myself, in the way I speak and act towards others. I'm going to try to do as little harm as possible, you know, preferably no harm, but we begin to find the little subtle places sometimes where we do harm without intention. And then now that we know, we have to be careful about those things.

So start maybe with the big things in your life. The big things, where can I do no harm to my family, to my friends, to strangers on the street, the way that I drive, the way that I shop, the way that I interact with other people in the shop where I am shopping, the kinds of things I say to people that I know, that I don't know, the things that I shout at the television set when I'm watching a football game or a basketball game or a soccer game? Are there ways to step back and realize that perhaps in subtle ways we haven't been paying attention to, we are making we are doing some harm? So that's the very first rule of the general rules. Do no harm, do no harm.

So I encourage you, give it a shot. Try to pay attention to it in your life. It's a spiritual practice worth doing. And as you enter into your life every day and you think about doing no harm, at the very least, you begin to become more and more aware of perhaps the ways that you do harm. It's an opportunity to practice your faith.

If it's helpful, that's great. As always, please email me, Dulan Church, or anyone who watches one of these videos if you have questions, thoughts, responses. If you have something you hope I will talk about in the next few episodes somewhere down the road, some spiritual question that's at the heart of what you think or wonder, please do so. I'd be happy to. The email for me at Dulin is pastor@dulinchurch dot org.

If you have questions, thoughts, responses, or otherwise want to invite some kind of question for me to respond to. Otherwise, always remember you're infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. It's been a joy to talk to you today. I wish you all the best. Do no harm and I'll do my best to do the same.

Until the next time.