There was good Methodist mother who took her children to church every Sunday and paid close attention to their religious instruction. Her oldest son, as they often are, was a rebel. In high school he read Darwin's, The Origin of the Species, and decided he didn't believe in God. He was so vehement in this new views, teasing his Christian classmates and dominating the science club, that the principal called his parents in for a conference to deal with his trouble making. During the conference, his mother broke down crying, saying to her son, "I thought we raised you right. I never thought it would come to this--our son an atheist."
The next year, the boy went off to college and fell into debate with some fundamentalist Christians. In particular, there was one fetching young Christian woman who played the strings of his Godless heart. You guessed it, he was enthusiastically born again. On his first trip home from college, he sat down excitedly at the kitchen table with this mother. He told her of his conversion to true Christian faith and of his decision to become a minister of the Lord. Tears came to her eyes and she said, "I never thought it would come to this--my son, a religious fanatic!
Living life without answers is difficult, especially for the young like this new true believer. Our world is not as completely ordered as we might wish it to be and contains a profoundly disturbing amount of uncertainty and randomness. Tornado funnels reach down and destroy churches and holy shrines. Earthquakes shake down the houses of the holy and the profane alike. The wicked rule and prosper while the good and just earn no reward and are punished. Living in a world like this is difficult without rosy colored glasses to filter out what we'd rather not see; a terrifying and spectacular world where mothers eat their young and the beauty of a spring morning after a cold front has cleared the air can lift the spirit beyond the stars
Rather than face the uncertainty of life the way it really is, many follow religious paths which give them all the answers.
In the religious world, the most extreme way to shield oneself from the ambiguity of reality is becoming a follower of a cultic religion. These groups have all the answers and charismatic leaders who believe they have personal revelation of what is true.
Cults give definite answers to undefinable questions. Definite answers provide the illusion of peace of mind. For cult members this delusion works. That explains why all 39 people [in the Heaven's Gate cult] died so peacefully. They really believed they would join the space ship following the comet. And the problem for the rest of us is that we cannot definitely prove there is no space craft out there. Of course, we do not believe they are right. But we have to accept the ambiguity of not knowing for certain, or we are also in cult mentality. It is not easy living without answers. And so, people create answers that other people accept as truth. There is a thin line between believing you will join a space craft after death and believing you will wake up in heaven after you die[1].
The most familiar group with all the answers which I'm sure would reject the cult label are Christian fundamentalists. In my research this week for this sermon, I found a wonderful book on-line titled Beyond Born Again: Towards Evangelical Maturity written by Robert Price, an evangelical Christian who lost the light, so to speak, realized the errors of his ways, and moved toward a more liberal Christian perspective. As we seek to understand how to live without answers, it may be helpful to see that living with all the answers, isn't exactly easy either.
Growing up Unitarian Universalist, I was particularly drawn to his book because I have an unsatisfied childhood need for certainty. Emotionally, I'm attracted to the unswerving conviction exuded by these young crusaders for Christ. Secretly, I'm sure many of us would love to have all the answers laid out for us and then march out to save others from eternal suffering. Fortunately ,my mind, my trust in critical inquiry and my politics have always prevented me from getting seduced by their easy answers. Yet seeing the error of their ways hasn't prevented me from envying the power my holy roller competitors radiate on TV as they hypnotize their audiences. Even though I know that kind of power and real religious faith have little to do with each other, I'm tempted by the seductive power of certainty. Honestly admitting from the pulpit, "I'm not sure..." or "I don't know" doesn't get people jumping up and down and dancing in the aisles like proclaiming, "Hallelujah... I BELIEVE!"
Fundamentalists build a fortress of faith which begins with the conversion process and making a decision for Christ. In their belief system, once one accepts Jesus as one's personal savior, the process of redemption is accomplished and salvation is granted by God. It would seem the work of salvation is finished at this point and the sinner may not fear anything in the future. It doesn't take long, though, for the new convert to realize that even though they are saved, their old sinning self hasn't been vanquished. Looking around at others who have been saved will quickly reveal sin is right at home with the sanctified. Some believe the devil pays extra attention to them trying to weaken their faith. Baptism may theoretically wash away past sins but doesn't prevent future sinning. It may help someone make a new start toward living a better life but it doesn't perfect that individual. The world would be a far better place than it is if Baptism really did magically change us into saints.
Since the impure inner self cannot be trusted to be free of sin even after Baptism, there is a need for an external source of guidance untainted by sin. The Evangelical answer is the literal word of God revealed in the Bible. The Bible is the anchor of Christian faith. So important does this revealed document become for them that many evangelicals assert that either it is completely true in every jot and tittle or it must be a lie.
Whether or not the Bible is literally true or historically accurate, the Bible does not do a complete job of literally explaining how to deal with living in a post-modern, technologically driven civilization without a lot of interpretation. While some of the situations encountered today have 2000 year old parallels, many do not. There are also many different voices and attitudes in the Bible, some of which conflict with each other. While a wonderful source of insight and inspiration, the Bible is hardly a unified user manual for modern living.
Bridging the gap between a literal interpretation of the Bible and modern living is challenging. The solution you will hear from the fundamentalists to these questions are two-fold. The first is to pray on a problem and seek an inner response through one's personal relationship with Jesus. The danger with this personal piety is recognizing just who is speaking to you--is it Jesus or Satan or your own sinful desires? Satan is very crafty and can engage the ego to imitate falsely the Holy Spirit. This is why the external source of authority is so crucial to the born again person who cannot fully trust his or her inner light.
The second way to receive divine guidance is seeing signs, called divination. Those who believe in this way are constantly interpreting what ever happens to them as a sign from God. These divination experiences are also quite vulnerable to manipulation by the ego's agenda. Fundamentalism, even embracing the Bible and Jesus as anchors of their faith, ends up being subject to the same forces of relativism, subjectivism and human frailty as the rest of us. No matter how many barriers they set up against apostasy, they cannot escape the uncertainty and self-delusion we all must struggle with. Whether Satan, sin, or uncertainty, tragically, a great amount of suffering results from the struggle to be holy.
When the externally centered solutions break down, the individual is forced to move to a larger, more expansive understanding of their faith. This doesn't happen for everyone. Many are quite at home in a faith which provides simple straightforward answers and requires no critical reflection. Many are satisfied with a faith which encourages conformism, dependency on authority figures and do not desire much self awareness.
Unitarian Universalists are different. We need a larger faith which encourages developing an internal source of authority which is built on critical thinking and taking responsibility for one's life. This kind of faith understands that truth is multi-dimensional and cannot be adequately encompassed by one prophet, prophesy or answer.
For an individual's faith to grow in these ways from a fundamentalist perspective to a liberal religious perspective, one must become gradually aware of the complexity of life in which either-or categorical thinking does not cover the rich variety of what is true. One must gain an appreciation of and begin to cherish the paradoxes and apparent contradictions in life discovered in the process of truth seeking. Rather than needing to resolve the cognitive dissonance uncovered, one appreciates it in all its terrifying splendor.
The liberal religious perspective requires us to look past the literal meaning of mythic stories and begin to see the symbolic meaning. Thus, the Bible can remain true, whether or not it is historically accurate. Myths and stories can speak symbolically revealing and illuminating great wisdom. This willingness to receive meaning symbolically stretches the liberal religious person's imagination to appreciate the messages of truth found in many traditions and communities. This ability to go outside one's own cannon of faith comes from the realization that Ultimate Truth is much larger than any one religious tradition can surround.
In searching around for an exemplar of this kind of liberal religious thinking, I rediscovered someone who the liberal tradition has cherished for thousands of years. He was a man who loved to learn, lived in poverty, took no money for his instruction and taught using conversation and dialogue. Yes, if we are looking for a model of a person who lived life without answers, let us spend a little time revisiting the life and wisdom of your favorite ancient Greek philosopher and mine, Socrates.
Even though his questions revealed just how wise he really was, Socrates never made claims he was an expert in anything. He did confess only one area of expertise--which was love.
Socrates was a deeply religious man devoted to the conventional Greek Gods of his era. He genuinely believed that his students knew more than he did but just didn't have access to their inner oracle. Socrates believed that all knowledge and wisdom came from the Gods so it was foolish to believe oneself as its source. The process of questions and answers, what we call the Socratic dialogue, helped the student move away from their incorrect and mistaken ideas by disproving them, gradually peeling back layers of thinking and allowing the hidden divine wisdom already inside the student to be revealed. Through his loving relationship with the student, the student could be turned toward the good, stimulating the student towards wisdom and virtue. In Socrates words,
"...though I have no science with which I could help a man by instructing him in it, [ I ] nevertheless felt that by being with him I could make him better through my love for him."
The most worthy way to make someone a better human being for Socrates was to encourage him or her to seek what is good, what is true and what is beautiful in loving relationship. Because any wisdom of these is given to us, one must make the pursuit of truth a lifelong endeavor since we can never possess it. The attitude of the student must be unlike the attitude of the expert. The student of goodness, truth and beauty must be forever modest and humble, for they are forever exposing their ignorance as they seek greater truth. On this odyssey, the student must practice self control and not become a slave to the appetites of the senses. The greatest pleasures are not transitory sensual pleasures but rather the pleasures which come from the resources of the soul.
As a student, Socrates was always even tempered and kept close control of his moods. In the records we have of his discourses, his manner was always polite. Commentators could not remember many times he was ever angry, fearful or depressed. What was well noted was his sense of lightness and humor as he engaged his dialogue partners.
Lightness and humor are probably the most important qualities to cultivate if one is going to live life without answers. For if we become too serious in the pursuit of truth, we will lose our perspective. In the end, we cannot possess the truth, as it is grander than our wildest imaginative fantasy. Even though we cannot possess truth, we can be in the presence of the truth as it reveals itself to us. And being in the presence of unfolding truth is satisfaction enough.
So when we Unitarian Universalists speak of a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, we are not merely speaking of looking something up in the dictionary or taking classes at the university. We are not merely speaking of acquiring, digesting and integrating facts and knowledge with the goal of producing answers. In other words, living life without answers is quite a different experience of being human. It encourages a lifelong search that does not have a destination but follows the ever expanding path of wisdom.
Thankfully, we are not the only ones who have followed this path of wisdom. Many others, famous and unknown, have walked this path and left us many useful guideposts. The Bible is a great source for guidance. So are the Socratic dialogues. So are the Greek philosophers. So is the Koran. So is the Bhagavad Gita. So is our holy book, the Dictionary. The literature of the world overflows with useful guideposts in the responsible search for truth and meaning. Yet we must not confuse these guideposts for the end of the journey itself.
Richard Price has a wonderful quote from his book which I think captures the difference between having all the answers which must be constantly defended and having no answers and seeking them. He writes of his liberation from hard line evangelical thinking:
I felt like a college freshman, thinking through important questions for the first time. The anxiety of doubt had passed into the adventure of discovery. It was like being born again.
The liberal faith is born again as we embrace the adventure of discovery in our free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
May all of us be fearless students of truth, goodness, beauty and meaning.
May all of us be energized in our search by the adventure of discovery.
May all of us feel at home and accepted in this religious community as we support each other in practicing this liberal way of wisdom.
Closing Words
A traveler in Ancient Greece had lost his way and, seeking to find it, asked directions of a man by the roadside who turned out to be Socrates. "How can I reach Mt. Olympus?" asked the traveler. To this Socrates is said to have gravely replied, "Just make every step you take go in that direction."
Let us leave this place this morning,
walking in the direction of goodness, truth and beauty.
Go in peace, make peace, be at peace.
Copyright (c) 1998 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.
[1] Martin, Stephen, Cult mentality and mass suicide, Half Moon Bay Review, April 2, 1997 found on the web at: http://www.montara.com/HMBReview/Features/97.04.02.feat.martin