THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young YOU BELIEVE WHAT ?!
Preached March 24, 2002, at the First Unitarian Church of HonoluluThis sermon was born some months back when I was invited by the Pacific Central District to do a workshop on theological diversity at the District Annual Meeting the last weekend of April. Despite our vaunted and much celebrated commitment to theological diversity, we Unitarian Universalists have a habit of heresy trials. During the 13 years that I was minister in Florida, there were only six of the two dozen churches in the Florida district that did not fire at least one minister for holding incorrect theological beliefs. And none of them saw anything inappropriate in this, at all.
It is worth reminding ourselves, especially in this congregation that does not have such a penchant for heresy trials, that we may be unusual.
What especially made me want to do this sermon right away was the conversation that I had with the Religion Editor of the Honolulu Advertiser in preparation for the article that appeared a few weeks ago in the Saturday paper. It was an absolutely fascinating conversation. I simply could not get her to let go of the assumption that Unitarian Universalists were ordinary Christians with just some strange and peculiar beliefs. Kind of like Mormons, only maybe less so.
That we come at the whole enterprise of being a religious community from a significantly different set of assumptions went right over her head. She simply couldn't make the adjustment. I used all the buzzwords. They didn't buzz her.
At times, we Unitarian Universalists would like to claim those first century Christian communities as a part of our heritage. They had all kinds of strange and diverse beliefs about what the significance of those events in Palestine in the first third of the first century of the Common Era were. The illusion that I had growing up was that, if somehow we could get back to the purity of first century Christianity, all of our divisions and conflicts would disappear. The truth is that there was probably more diversity of opinion within the Christian community in its first two centuries than there is even today.
A part of the reason for that is that in the fourth century of the Common Era, the people who won and became the establishment of Christendom won largely on the basis of one interesting gambit. They looked around and said, "Now, this is what is Christian and everything else is not; and we will get rid of those people who disagree with us."
In fact, much of what we know about the first few centuries of Christianity has been learned from the documents that were hidden because the religious authorities were coming to close them down. Among those are the Nag Hammadi documents that were literally found in a hole in the ground, hidden to keep them from the authorities.
Early in the history of Western civilization, a distinction was made between "natural" religion and "revealed" religion. Now I call your attention to the fact that the whole notion of "revealed" religion is an admission that we human beings don't get it and can't get it. If you decide "what's so" based on your own observations of how the world around you seems to work and seems to be put together, no matter how carefully you observe you won't get it right. Naive common sense is so far wrong so much of the time that it is almost useless.
Science is one of those ways of careful observations. Every new piece of information reveals new questions and calls old answers into doubt. I sat in the congregation once listening to a preacher carrying on about how horrible science was precisely because every time it found a new answer to any of the questions of science, all it did was to open up twelve more questions! "Now what kind of a lousy way of getting the truth is that?" asked the Preacher.
Given the nature of human knowing, there is no reason to assume that this process of every answer opening new questions is going to be anything but endless. It is an enterprise of improving the approximation to the way things are. But it is not, and cannot be, a way to capital T truth. One of the peculiarities of the human species is that we seem not to be able to resist the allure of capital T truth. So if it is to be available to us, God is going to have to provide it, to reveal it to us.
The concept of revealed religion, was actually arrived at the other way around. Doubters were saying, "You can't know that!" The established authorities said, "Well, but God revealed it. And, of course, we are the correct and proper custodians of that revealed capital T truth and God revealed that, too!" This means that your trust is finally not in God's revealed truth but in the authorities that have preserved and interpreted it. I would like to quote in opposition to that notion someone you probably rarely hear or expect to hear me quote. That is one Ronald Reagan who said, "Trust, but verify."
However, they are right. On most of the relevant issues, if certainty is what you want, you can't judge for yourself. You can only judge the trustworthiness of the authorities. What is the origin and purpose of the universe? Try running a double-blind experiment on that one. What is the meaning of life? What happens after death? What should I do? Revealed religious ethics is excellent at telling you after the fact what you should not have done. We preachers have never gotten very good at telling you ahead of time what you can do to stay out of that trouble, however. If you want the capital T truth, if you want certainty, trust the authorities. You'll have to take your pick of the authorities, of course. You pays your money and takes your choice. But, if certainty is what you want, that is the only route to it. Beware, however, the authorities who warn that accepting their version of capital T truth is so important that your immortal soul depends upon choosing their way.
Incidentally, yesterday's Star Bulletin newspaper contains Religion Editor Mary Adamski's analysis of the recent Gallup Poll on religious opinions and attitudes post-9/11. Unitarian Universalists should put one of the statistics in there on the bulletin board out front for everyone to see. More than 70% do not believe that their religion is the only way ! We are making inroads.
The problem, of course, with all of these authoritative answers to the big T truth questions are that the answers, the real answers, the certain answers, the absolutely guaranteed correct and for truth answers, are not available to you until they are irrelevant. You will not know what happens after you die until you get around to doing it. Oh, you're welcome to have your own opinion. However, if you're like me, your opinion is most likely based on what you wish were true; or the authorities that you "like;" or what is consistent with--or, at least, doesn't threaten--the rest of your equally baseless prejudices.
In order to believe that, one might say, "I would have to change. Well, no, thank you. I'm not interested in that." This is why we often describe changing one's opinion on these issues as "conversion."
Unitarian Universalists are fond of telling people, "Well, you can be a Unitarian Universalist and believe anything you want." Well, no, as a matter of fact, you can't. Not because we will throw you out of the church, or out of the Unitarian Universalist denomination. You can't, at least, if belief means anything. If, in fact, belief has something to do with how we actually understand ourselves, our lives, our relationships and the assumptions that are the basis for how we live our lives. If belief has to do with those basic wellsprings of human behavior, then you can't believe whatever you like. They are not something you can select like a change of T-shirts or, if you live on the mainland, necktie.
A more useful question is: What is it that you behave as if you believe? For most of us, that is likely to be an embarrassing question. We don't behave "as if" we believed what we say. We don't behave "as if" we believed what we say even to ourselves, maybe even especially to ourselves. And this is where my father's wisdom is especially appropriate.
When I was in high school I complained to my father about the First Baptist Church of Garden Grove. I said, "Dad, they're a bunch of hypocrites!" And my father said a very wise thing. I attribute a lot of things to my father but this one he actually did say, honest. He said, "You know, Mike, it's a funny thing. Hypocrites are honest people. They really do feel both ways about the same things."
There was a parlor game that was played back in the '60s and '70s; a conversational gambit that even became a Unitarian Universalist Religious Education curriculum. It was based on taking a whole bunch of interesting situations that might conceivably happen in your life and say, "What would you do if -----? How would you feel if ------?
Back then a good many of us played that game. Then, many of us actually found ourselves in some of those situations. Often, we didn't, in fact, do or feel what we thought we would. When the chips were down, our actual wellsprings were not those we imagined.
One of the shaping experiences of my ministry was being the first person on the scene of an automobile engulfed in flames in the middle of the night beside the freeway. I pulled over and went back. In the play of flames inside the vehicle, it looked like there were people in there. Having been previously trained as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), I knew a few things about cars on fire. I went around to the driver's side and opened the door. Then I went back around to the passenger's side and opened that door. The flames would be sucked out the driver's side. I would have a split-second of opportunity to get at the people inside.
Just at the moment where I was going to find out whether or not I was a hero, on the embankment above the freeway a voice yelled down, "It's O.K. We're up here."
Most of us have, in fact, no idea how we really will respond, with behavior, with emotions, until faced with the actual reality. When the chips are down, our actual wellsprings are different than the ones we imagined, told each other, told ourselves, that they were.
What do you believe in? The question keeps being asked of the minister. Usually when I answer that question in my favorite way, the response is to assume that I am somehow playing semantic games. People do not realize at first that I am serious. Ministers aren't supposed to say things like, "I do not believe in 'believing in'." I have not found "believing in" useful. All you get in return for "believing in" is fraudulent certainty. Who needs it?
Those who purport to have the "revealed answers" have seduced us into asking the wrong questions and into asking even those badly. Any God who is fooled by our attempts to believe the creeds in order to get to go to heaven deserves to spend eternity surrounded by obsequious worshipers. And given the number of times that 60+ years of life experience has forced me to change my beliefs, I have to assume that I am probably wrong now, too.
You can choose which wellsprings to drink from. But you can only do that after you have paid attention to where the decisions in your own life are actually coming from. And so much of what feels right and correct and persuasive is not. Every time I have been tempted by "believing makes it so" I have only conspired in my own failure to see; too often to my own hurt, even more often to the hurt of others. In my experience, spiritual growth has involved the discovering and weeding out of beliefs, not their acquisition. And each time, my attention is sharpened and my commitments--which are a different animal entirely--are deepened.
And I am still probably wrong, and that's still O.K., too.
The next time you are tempted to dismiss a hypocrite, remember Dad's aphorism: We hypocrites are honest people. We really do feel both ways about the same thing.