Our social sciences need the guidance of faith

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT gospel episode about a fellow who, by insisting and disturbing a storeowner, finally got the bread he requested for a friend who arrived at his home in the middle of the night (cfr. Lk 11,5-13), reminds us that there is always a need for insistence and perseverance in requesting for God’s guidance in areas in our life which are most vulnerable to go wrong.

And among these vulnerable areas are those of the social sciences, like sociology, economics, political science, anthropology, etc. These social sciences are not exact sciences like math, physics or chemistry, since they study evolving human behavior and societies with the view of understanding and having an enlightened dominion over certain social phenomena, like cases of inequality, conflict and appropriate development.

Yes, our social sciences definitely need the guidance of our Christian faith if only for them to avoid going to the dogs. This may be hard to observe considering a strong tendency among people everywhere to think that for these social sciences to be credible, it should be based solely on empirical data and avoid being influenced by some religious faith.

That is, of course, a baseless presumption since we cannot avoid to do and interpret things according to some mindset, some philosophy and ideology. In the end, everyone is guided by their beliefs, whatever they may be.

We have to remind ourselves that it is actually our Christian faith that would give us the proper guide in doing and developing our social sciences, since it contains all the truth about man in all aspects of his life. God possesses the complete and exhaustive knowledge of humanity. We should never dare to do things simply on our own, relying only on our powers.

Our sciences, technologies, arts, our various systems: legal, juridical, political, social, business, etc., have laws that ultimately come from God. We only discover them, and use them to lead us to God and to glorify him which actually involves serving and loving the others.

This obviously means that we all should try our best to develop a solid and intimate relationship with God. Especially for the leaders in the different levels of society, this intimate relationship with God should be the first requirement for them to be truly qualified to lead. They should not depend only on some human or natural talents for them to lead. They need the guidance of God through the faith which God shares with us.

Our Christian faith provides the moral framework for considering issues involved in the social sciences. For example, the principles of love or charity, justice and compassion can help properly shape on how we approach issues like poverty, inequality or community development.

Obviously, it is in our Christian faith that provides us with the proper perspective on human nature, enlightening us on how we have to understand what proper human behavior is, what our true human dignity is, and how our relationship with one another should be.

It would be appropriate to integrate our Christian faith with whatever study and research is done in the social sciences. This Christian faith can offer us the proper values and motivations for engaging in social science research or practice. It gives us the proper perspective on how to interpret data or findings in the social sciences.

This does not mean that we have to do away with the principle of separation of Church and state and that clerics more than lay persons should lead in the areas of politics. This only means that all our human affairs, including what our social sciences study and manage, need to be guided in the end by our Christian faith, and not just on some empirical data that can be interpreted in any which way.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com