by Rod Debs, February 17, 2008
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I would like to reflect with you on three Unitarian Universalist values which, I believe, are greatly needed in the 21st Century.
Years ago, Universalist Christians reflected on Jesus’ stories of God as a loving Father and on Scriptures which portrayed God as damning his children to eternal torment for rejecting him. These Universalists knew that no loving human father would damn his child to eternal suffering if it were in his power to do otherwise, no matter what our child might do. How could a divine Father-God be any less loving? They became convinced that their all-powerful Heavenly Father would find a way that all God’s children would be saved: Universal Salvation, Universalism.
Today, as you read our UU Principles on the back of the Order of Service, Unitarian Universalists “covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” no exceptions. Universalists do not believe that there are good people and evil people, just people who sometimes do good and sometimes evil things. It’s so much easier when you’re not having to judge everyone you meet, dividing them into “good guys and bad guys.” We are all brothers and sisters, doing the best and sometimes the worst we can based on the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Mother used to reflect on others saying, “There but for the grace of God go I.” When we think about Nazi soldiers, the Taliban, and Darfur militia, isn’t there a lot of truth in saying, there but for the accident of birth go I?
Consider our perception of humanity another way: Have you ever been watching a movie and come to a particularly violent high-point and found yourself cheering as someone was brutally murdered—a bad guy? Mel Gibson movies are really skilled at creating such dynamics: Braveheart, The Patriot and most recently, Apocalypso. In the early minutes of the movie, character is created. A good and innocent person you identify with is suddenly brutalized—often women or children or peaceful men. The movie goes on to display the depravity of the bad guy and the long-suffering of the good guy, until at the highpoint we find ourselves cheering as one human being brutally kills another. We were all set up when the writer created character in the opening scenes. Good guys and bad guys. We feel justified brutalizing bad guys! This is the cycle of violence.
Wars are mobilized by such nationalist rhetoric, even by “false flag” claims of atrocities falsely credited to the enemy of choice. Peacetime economic injustice is even more insidious in justifying global economic advantage based upon glorification of the hard-working-smart-successful good guys (our nationals) as opposed to the lazy-ignorant-bad-guy losers whose resources we confiscate. After all, if we don’t, somebody else will! Oppression and destitution of nations—well, it’s their own fault. Then when extremism emerges, we ask, “Why do they hate us?” “We are so good.”
I’ve got a bumper-sticker that says, “We are making enemies faster than we can kill them.” From the time of the Babylonian Exile when the Hebrews who had only one God in the world, were exposed to a religion with competing cosmic deities, absolute good and absolute evil, since then Abrahamic religions have been influenced to divide our fellow humans, friends and enemies into two separate categories, those who serve the Good and those who are Evil.
Unitarian Universalism is not ideologically rooted in such cosmic dualism of God and Satan. When we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person, we challenge the cultural brainwashing we have suffered from our early days, learning to judge people as good guys or bad guys, learning that any atrocity even by us good guys is good and noble as long as we can make a case we are doing it against really bad guys.
If the 21st Century is to avoid total earth-devastating war, the world needs this Unitarian Universalist message that we are all brothers and sisters, that we all do bad things as well as good, that all are worthy of humanistic conditions of dignity and worth, no exceptions. We UUs need to challenge the good guy bad guy ideology we Americans have been raised on— from the first cowboy and Indian Western to modern cop-show to high-school football rivalry to national and international politics.
The way to do this is to show ourselves to be brothers and sisters to Baptists and Muslims and Christians, brothers and sisters to the poor, to those in prison and to the homeless, brothers and sisters to Republicans and Democrats and independents, brothers and sisters to whose-ever path we cross. The 21st Century needs “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”
Let me confess to you: I have come to see great value in some other religions besides Unitarian Universalism. I’ve come to see that Baha’i communities have many of the same values of world peace and respect for diversity, and their communities world-wide seem to be more successfully multi-ethnic than ours!
I’ve come to respect Muslim communities for their day by day, hour by hour living of their faith, far more committed to the good of their fellow-humans in the “umma,” the community than I have seen among Americans outside of Amish and Mennonite communities. Individualistic Americans would do well to learn from Muslims.
I have come to respect those Christians who commit themselves to living like Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, loving their enemies, giving to the poor, judging no one, reaching out to the outcast, and generous to the least of these our brothers and sisters.
From my sabbatical when I visited Theravada Buddhists in Thailand, and from my practice of meditation, inspired by Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Sumedho and Thich Nhat Hanh, I have come to believe that simply breathing and observing “the way it is” in meditation is a religious practice that can transform a nation from violence to peace.
So many religions. So little time.
But I am a realist. The whole world is not going to become a follower of Jesus, nor Buddhist, Muslim, nor Baha’i. Those who argue that religious extremism, religion itself must be gotten rid of for people to live rational and humanistic ethics—do they really think religion is so shallowly-rooted in human culture? The reality is that people have cultural tastes and religious stories that create their conscious worlds. Though many in modern society seem to have abandoned the religion of their childhood, I can tell you from my own experience that the values of my childhood religion remain the roots to whatever language of religious community I have grafted onto those roots. The acorn does not fall far from the tree.
Among our Principles, Unitarian Universalists covenant to affirm and promote “the right of conscience and the democratic processes in our congregations and in society at large.” We are realists when we say to one another that we will create a safe place for each and every individual to have their religious integrity among us. If you love Jesus, if you are inspired by the Tao, whether you grew up Muslim or Christian or Jewish or pagan or secular atheist, it would be neither realistic nor humane to expect you to conform your religious sentiments to another creed. We affirm the right of conscience.
Many of the founders of our nation were Unitarian. Benjamin Franklin was a member of Joseph Priestley’s Unitarian Chapel in London; Thomas Jefferson described himself as Unitarian in his private letters; John and Abigail Adams, and John Quincy Adams were active life-long Unitarians. The reason this is important is that these American Founders believed in “the right of conscience.” Our Founders separated from England because they didn’t want any bishop, priest or king telling them what to believe or how to run a country.
Today, we Unitarian Universalists celebrate, not one religious perspective, but the right of conscience and the pluralism of religious integrity that emerges from such religious freedom. Across the globe in this 21st Century, it is unrealistic to expect people to change their religious culture to another, however wonderful it might be. Rather, the world needs our Unitarian Universalist values to honor and find common cause and to promote the best in other faiths. Our Principles declare in the final paragraph: “Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision.”
Though it may seem exotic among world religions to have a covenant rather than a creed, though it may seem strange that we promise behavior of mutual trust and support rather than mere beliefs however noble or divinely revealed, the 21st century needs people who have open hearts to gratefully celebrate others’ religious integrity and to grow deeper in doing so.
Finally, the 21st Century, we are told, will either see humankind make a great turning to global sustainability or, we are told, we will find ourselves in spiraling environmental crises and social catastrophes.
Here at the Fellowship, I know, there is a lot of energy for the Green Sanctuary group, but also for the Afghan relief project, a social catastrophe when many people are stranded in tent cities, winter mud and snow. UU social and environmental activism is an expression of our covenant to affirm and promote “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”
I would, however, draw your attention beyond our covenanted Principles to the Sources of our living tradition. The values we offer the 21st Century global community include attention to “direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder… and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” Rather than attending to ideology as our source of truth, though we learn from prophetic, Jewish and Christian, and also earth-centered traditions, we have a reality-based, experience-based, yes, a scientific approach to truth. What this means is that, no matter how convincing or authoritative or reasonable our beliefs, it is the test of real experience which bears real authority. It’s a humble posture, paying attention to the evidence of reality though culture and tradition might council otherwise.
The evidences of reality and the ever-changing conclusions of science may seem pedestrian and mundane compared to the absolute claims of revealed religion and of supernatural authorities. Yet if we are to find real solutions to the real problems that plague the global community, then we must be open to the correctives of real evidences. Though wisdom and meaning may certainly be found from many sources, ancient and revealed, Unitarian Universalism invites attentiveness to the wonders of the natural world and to its amazing dynamics as worthy of religious awe and wonder.
The healing of human community and of the earth is certainly the pressing need facing us and our children and our children’s children in this new 21st century. This is our day. This is our religious tradition. May we invest our energies and our financial resources in it so that it does not remain invisible or, worse, irrelevant. That is the choice before us and a very real possibility.
I hope you feel with me that we are very fortunate to have a religious community that finds no divisions among people, a religion that celebrates each person’s right of conscience and religious integrity, and a religion that finds this sweet earth sacred and worthy of our global attentiveness.
Grateful for those who have gone before to provide the blessings of religious community for us, we now, in our day offer our commitment to support our UU mission of “service, spiritual growth and caring fellowship” in the year ahead.