THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation

"In Praise of Chaos, Sin and Other Mistakes"
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
(Preached February 4, 1996, at
The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu)

Once upon a time a man died and found himself standing before the bar of judgment. The case was sufficiently peculiar that God himself stepped in. As the angels responsible for these things informed him, this one was kind of strange. You see, as far as they could tell, the man had never sinned. Never made a single mistake. God looked down at him and said, "We're a little at a loss here. According to all the records, you never committed a sin."

The man stood quite proudly before God and said, "That's right. From my childhood I have very carefully obeyed all of the moral law. I have done everything I was supposed to do."

God looked at him and said, "You're right. You have. And you liked to bored us to tears. You have not taken a single risk in your whole life. You are condemned to go back down there and try it again!"

This is the way in which reincarnation was invented.

The very first technologists were probably the ancient shamans. Technologists, you say? Yes, for they discovered something absolutely fascinating: The world is orderly and predictable. If they paid close attention they indeed could control much of it. As it turned out, magic was a relatively inefficient manipulator of order, and human beings began to find additional, more effective ways.

The Greeks and the Arabs discovered mathematics, which they saw as the key to order. Here, after all, was the language of the universe itself. They were right, too; but not quite. You may recall that the Pythagoreans were embarrassed to the point of trying to conceal the fact that Pi (P) wouldn't quite divide out evenly. We've been trying to do that ever since and no matter how large a computer we use there just keep being more of these digits there to the right of the decimal point.

Along came Copernicus. Now, he was more right than his predecessors, but interestingly enough, he too was wrong. If you had tried to aim a spacecraft using Copernicus' model of the universe they would not have gotten there. He, too, thought that the human notions of perfection must certainly apply to this ordered universe. His planetary orbits were nice, neat circles. Only when it was discovered that they were somewhat chaotic ellipses did we find that we can aim our spacecraft. Even then we have to keep looking again to clean up our numbers.

Niels Bohr and the Copenhagen group, just after the turn of the century, discovered a level of order that no one had suspected. It's called "quantum mechanics." There's something really strange about quantum physics. It involves randomness; it involves chance. In fact, using that theory, we can't pin things down with anything like the precision the human desire for perfection keeps demanding. As a result, Einstein said, "God does not play dice with the universe." But, in fact, it turns out that he probably does.

We still don't know for sure whether quantum physics is right. All we know is that when you behave as if it's true, make predictions based on that hypothesis, it works. But then, that was true of the shamans, the Greeks, Copernicus, et al., within their limits. But the pattern is fascinating. Order, the more we understand it, has been getting messier and messier. Even chaos, that apparently most random of processes, has a peculiarly fascinating, tantalizing order within it, too, with those interesting strange attractors.

Make the shift over to theology -- this is, after all, a sermon.

Two Maine farmers were sitting on a front porch one day. The visitor said to his host, "Haven't seen you in church lately." "Nope," said his neighbor. "How come?," said the visitor. "Don't need to," said the host. "How's that?" said his neighbor. "J'you go to church last Sunday?"

"Eyeah."

"Minister preached about sin?"

"Eyeah."

"Agin', warn't he?"

The Greek word for "sin" means, literally, "missing the mark," as if you had shot at the target and missed. We generally assume that sin is a bad thing. After all, people have a tendency to get hurt. I think most will agree that is a bad thing. But we are so prone to it. We do it all the time; sin, I mean. And even if we haven't the courage to do it ourselves--and let's be honest, what keeps most of us moral most of the time is nothing more sophisticated than cowardice. Even if we haven't the courage to do it we are absolutely fascinated with sin. Sin, after all, keeps a whole soap opera industry thriving on television. The fascination with sin is the reason why the job of moralist never goes wanting.

In Tampa we have a gentlemen who is the head of his own right-wing religious group. He has achieved what I think is one of the most fascinating sexual adjustments. He has found a way of wallowing in sin, of thoroughly enjoying immorality, with complete moral righteousness by opposing it . . . in wonderfully salacious detail.

But what if the problem is not that we makes mistakes, not that we are insufficiently perfect? After all, anything that humans do that much of must have or have had survival value. I know, it's very popular to decry the fact that we have developed the technological side of the human spirit and neglected the moral, social side. But that leaves totally unanswered the question of why we evolved that penchant for making mistakes in the first place. It would appear that it serves some useful evolutionary purpose. We have certainly had no lack of moralists trying to get us to stop, and yet we have persisted.

What if the problem is not that we make mistakes but that we make such poor, stingy, useless, dumb, lousy mistakes ?

Our culture has a very strange attitude, in fact, toward making mistakes. The assumption is you're not supposed to make them. You are supposed to be perfect, and if not, you are supposed to be striving very hard to become perfect. You're not going to make it, of course, but that's not even expected. If, in fact, you think you've made it --become perfect, that is -- that's one of the biggest mistakes you can make. On the other hand, if you should display anything like blithe acceptance of making mistakes you are looked at as downright weird, if not positively immoral. To be seen as approving of mistakes is virtually unthinkable. And yet, how do we feel about someone who makes no mistakes, who is apparently perfect? We are certainly not comfortable in such a person's presence. We may be sure that such a person will be watched with great care. A general sigh of relief goes around when an imperfection is finally found. Then an interesting thing happens. That no-longer-perfect-one is pounced on like a sick chicken and pecked to death.

Not making mistakes is not only not respected and admired; approaching that perfection is viewed as threatening and responded to with anger. While not trying to be perfect is responded to with righteous indignation. It's all very confusing.

What if someone were to go through life totally ignoring all mistakes, passing out green stamps, brownie points, thank you's, and compliments to non-mistakes, paying attention only to successes. Would such a person be seen as a very clever and effective individual, rewarding and calling forth the best in people and encouraging them to their best performance? No! Such a person would be seen as approving of mistakes. Our cultural attitude toward mistakes is indeed very strange. Any mistake that is not condemned is seen as approved of. You see, mistakes are dangerous and powerful things. Those not pounced on, condemned and corrected immediately, we fear, will grow and multiply like crab grass or weeds; they are virulent and insidious and will take over unless mercilessly pulled up by the roots. So anyone for whom we are responsible must constantly be warned against the dire consequences of making a mistake. Never mind the overwhelming data that positive reinforcement is the more superior tool for facilitating learning and behavior change, POUNCE on those mistakes! Never mind the fact of how our minds work. Having a thought is a kind of interior rehearsal of the behavior associated with that thought. When you tell someone, "Don't make a mistake," you cause them to do a little internal rehearsal. Of what? Of making the mistake.

"Don't pick your nose!" "Oh, that."

Ever notice how often your child spills his or her milk immediately after you tell them not to. "You little brat, I just told you not to do that. You did it on purpose!"

"No, I didn't, Daddy. I did it on accident."

Never mind all that. We must prevent people from making mistakes lest haply we seem to be approving of mistakes. If that happens to produce people who are obsessed with mistakes, who are constantly rehearsing making mistakes in their heads, who are eternally vigilant for mistakes, and who therefore, well-practiced in it, make a lot of them -- well, that's the price you pay for trying to be perfect.

Never mind that making mistakes is an absolute necessity. "What," you say, "Making mistakes is a necessity? If you're going to learn to do anything right you've got to avoid making mistakes." And I say, "No."

If I should design for you an air conditioner so that when you set it on the proper setting it always keeps the temperature at that setting, know what you get? You get an air conditioner that sits there, turning itself off, turning itself on, turning itself off, turn-ing itself on. Click, click, click, and gets nothing done. But if you give your air conditioner permission to make mistakes--to be somewhere between, oh, 68 perhaps and 74 --the air conditioner, making a few mistakes here and there, will manage to keep you quite comfortable.

Most of you have been walking for so long that you have forgotten that this human bipedal method of locomotion is nothing but a controlled fall. You let yourself tip over and fall and rescue yourself, and tip and fall and rescue, mistake after mistake. It's very efficient. Besides, it leaves your other two limbs free to make even more imaginative mistakes. But if you insist on walking without mistakes you could end up standing a very long time. Even that is an endless string of small mistakes, caught and corrected. If you don't think so, try standing up in a body cast.

The year Babe Ruth hit his record number of home runs he also led the league in strike outs, but then you knew that. Did you also know that hitting a home run requires a calculated intentional mistake? If you hit the ball perfectly, center of gravity of ball catching perfectly the center of gravity of the bat, you do not hit a home run. What you hit is a line drive. In order to hit a home run you have to hit that ball just slightly off center of the ball with just slightly off center of the fat of the bat. You have to make a mistake.

For all the brouhaha of the disciplines of the scientific method, a very large number of the discoveries that we human beings make in that realm are serendipitous consequences of mistakes.

My friend Stan Nazian who is a scientist, a researcher in the area of human physiology, says that his basic research method is to throw a monkey wrench into the works and see what happens. Oh, the working out of the details takes careful, precise work. But the new idea, the innovation, the breakthrough often comes from trying something that shouldn't work, that flies in the face of the known or often just from puttering around aimlessly. If you always do it RIGHT, the way it's always been done, you constantly reinforce what you already know.

I love Bach fugues, those complicated lines of melody woven together around and within each other. For a Bach fugue to have its full power, it really does have to be played correctly. But, I also like jazz where making mistakes is what it's about.

I'm not a perfect flute player. My playing my flute here is an advertisement to everybody that you don't have to be a concert quality musician to share your music with us.

Many people can draw or paint well. A genius can give you the impression that you are there seeing what the artist saw. So why hasn't photography put an end to painting? The photograph is perfect, or nearly so. But a Van Gogh makes mistakes, distortions, imperfections that lead the eye to see more than what was there for the camera.

No, no. We are supposed to be perfect, never make mistakes. And a religion more obsessed with mistakes, more self-righteously and gleefully dirty-minded than our western Judeo-Christian heritage never assaulted the sensibilities of humankind. Why, human history, according to them, began with a primal, original mistake. Eve's fault, of course. But then, women are so delightfully imperfect, don't you know? Can't help themselves, but we men will eventually shape them up. Harumph.

"Be ye perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect, for he makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike."

What? God is indiscriminate? He does not measure his blessings in perfect proportion, calculating precisely who has made exactly how many mistakes? But that would be chaos, madness. God make mistakes? Well, I am uncertain as to whether that father in heaven exists or not, but if he (or she) does, make no mistake, that God makes mistakes -- no, glories in making mistakes.

If this planet, on which life of almost every conceivable size and shape blossoms with such profusion, did not make mistakes you and I would not be here. We are founded upon and emerged from the most marvelous cascade of mistakes. If human engineers and scientists had labored to create life on this planet, with our usual foolish insistence upon doing the job perfectly, and if by some miracle they had succeeded, this planet would be covered with a soupy layer of green slime-like moldy goo. And that would have been that. ( from Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell.) If those molecules of amino acids precipitating in that primordial sea with its lightening and ultraviolet stirring the eroding earth-soup; if those amino acids, I say, had lined up in perfect ladder rungs on the forming bases of the double helix polymer so that when that DNA molecule reproduced itself it did it perfectly every time -- there would have been no evolution. No mistakes, no mutations, no change, no trilobites, no platypuses, no purple blossoms, no winged flight of bird or imagination. No mistakes, no evolution, no man and woman awed by the mystery of knowing and loving.

If that first wiggle of life had been perfect, it would have replicated exact copies of itself endlessly, like some original Xerox. Monotonously. Perfectly. But it made mistakes. Praise God, our God is a klutz. How great is his, her, its name and greatly to be praised. Hallelujah for mistakes.

Knowing that, I'm absolutely certain that the BIG BANG was an accident.

"OOPS!" --God

Martin Luther said, "When you sin, sin boldly." No prissy, nicey-nice, play it close to the vest perfection. MAKE MISTAKES! Unfortunately, most of us are so damned careful that we commit such piddling little sins we almost envy the full-blown psychopathic criminal who has the audacity to sin a sin worthy of a little forgiveness. To ask forgiveness for our mistakes seems almost trivial.

No wonder we have such difficulty with forgiveness. The blessings of God, the blessings of life itself are not given contingently, only upon the completion of your perfection. They are fore-given, given ahead of time. You were not put here to be perfect. You were not even put here to become perfect. The human obsession with doing good has always fascinated me. Some would have you believe that we are here on trial, to be tested. Those who get it right get to go to heaven, where everything is perfect. Those who believe in reincarnation believe that you have to keep coming back until you get it right, so of course those of us who like it here can make just enough mistakes so we have to keep coming back.

It does not appear to me that we are here on trial. If there is a God who is at all concerned about our mistakes, such a God is more interested in the quality of the things we risk making mistakes at than in our perfection. The full irony is that the attempt to be perfect may be the most useless mistake of all. The whole thrust of our history, from accident-prone replicating strands of deoxyribonucleic acids busily mutating in the primordial sea to homo sapiens launching rockets into space to wrench knowledge from the stars; the whole thrust of our history, the threat of thermonuclear holocaust or ecological gridlock notwithstanding, the whole thrust of this marvelous, painful, doomed and joyous adventure called LIFE -- what it's all about -- is mistakes. And we will be judged, if judged we will be, by the imaginativeness of the mistakes we have risked.

The unfolding of our potential, as individuals and as a species, lies not in playing it safe, not in the old ideological games of "we're doing it right and they're doing it wrong." Just as we do not know what mistake it was that led those bipedal hominids into the evolutionary leap that produced us, we do not, cannot know what mistake it may be that prompts us into the next leap of evolution. We may already have made that fortuitous mistake. Maybe you made it, or will.

But since we do not and cannot yet know, let us learn to be gentle with one another and our so human mistakes. Perhaps even in our forgiveness we may learn to encourage in one another more imaginative and useful errors. For that. is our perfection.

"Be ye perfect, as the Source of all life is perfect; lavishing changefulness on just and unjust alike."

A bud is perfect.
A flower is perfect.
A seed pod, after the petals have fallen, Is perfect.
Each seed cast abroad To find its own way is perfect.
Each is different and yet one;
Giving forth all that it has to give,
Being all that it is given to be.
He or She who cannot see that these are perfect,
And are not different from every child Born of man and woman,
Has not yet seen enough.
[--Mike Young]

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