The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

Publications

Buck Stops Here (Sometimes)

by Reverend Rick Davis

Undated Sermon

A little over two centuries ago some of our religious forebears turned up their noses [at] an unpalatable religious doctrine that was being force fed to most Christians of that era – they rejected the teaching that they, (and all humankind) were depraved, guilty sinners, indelibly tainted with Original Sin, and that there was nothing THEY could do about it, that it was only by the grace of God that they could be saved and that any dreams of self improvement and spiritual growth were egotistical delusions. These doctrinal doubters – our forebears - questioned such a fatalistic, debilitating notion. They said, in so many words, “We don’t think we’re THAT bad. In fact, we see a lot of goodness in human nature, and we think that we can exercise willpower to set ourselves on the path of spiritual growth through prayer, self reflection, studying the scripture and through works of charity, goodness and peace and justice making.”

They were so certain about this that they rejected the traditional Augustinian/ Calvinistic doctrine of Original Sin and formed a new religious movement, which eventually became officially known as the American Unitarian Association. (A century and a half later it would merge with the Universalists to become the Unitarian Universalist Association.) So these early Unitarians removed the heavy yoke of guilt and shame and struck out on a different spiritual path from most Christians – and thus they were branded as damnable heretics. Henceforth we would be a religious movement that would not encourage wallowing in guilt but rather willing in growth. It was a good shift – certainly we can play a role in our self transformation, we can choose a path that leads us toward greater wisdom, compassion, commitment.

This was a path that, judging by their morally exacting personal journals, led early Unitarians to put a great deal of energy into moral self improvement. Alas, they got carried away by their perfectionist tendencies, which often meant that they unwittingly put on the yoke of guilt and shame again because they felt inadequate for falling short of their impossibly high ideals. Eventually, though, Unitarians learned not to focus so much on personal guilt, shame and sinfulness but rather to look at the bigger societal picture and look at the harm that social injustices and inequities inflict on so many. There is great wisdom and goodness in this path. After all, the sins of society – the greed, corruption, oppression and indifference that diminish the lives of many are of greater consequence than one’s personal peccadillos.

And yet…. human nature being what it is, there a pitfall here, as there is in any path. So be careful.

My awareness of this pitfall became more acute a few years ago when I began volunteering with a wonderful organization I often commend to others – Neighbor to Neighbor (N2N) – a community mediation service. They do a lot of unheralded peacemaking behind the scenes.

I was trained as a volunteer mediator and got called in a number of times with other volunteers to help people resolve their conflicts (which often began as small incidents that had burned out of control into major conflagrations). Briefly, the ingeniously structured process of mediation begins with each party describing its version of the conflict to the three volunteer mediators. While one person speaks to the mediators, the other party in the conflict sits and listens and cannot interrupt. Instead of being spoken to directly and confronted, each person gets to “overhear” the other person describe their perspective or their grievance to a neutral third party. Paradoxically, it’s often easier to listen when you’re overhearing than when being spoken to directly.

A bit later in the mediation process the people having the conflict are invited to face one another and – here comes the most challenging part – say, in their own words, what they have heard their adversary say. In other words, they have to look at the conflict from the other person’s point of view.

Sometimes, when tensions are not so high this works quite well. But other times, when emotions are intense, it doesn’t. Sometimes people are so full of anger and self righteous indignation that instead of looking at things from another perspective, they dig in their heels and re-assert the points they have already made: “I’ve been done wrong, maligned, mistreated, mistrusted, misunderstood, and misjudged.”

I remember one such instance when a young woman was asked to repeat, in her own words, what she had heard her adversary say. She tentatively began to do this, but immediately slipped back into her own aggrieved state of mind and began pointing out all the wrongs the other woman had committed. I gently interrupted, saying, “Yes, I know you feel that you have been wronged, but just for this moment, could you please say, in your own words, what you just heard this other woman say?”

It didn’t work. The young woman simply launched once again into her diatribe. Again I repeated my plea and again it was ignored. She would not or could not acknowledge the other woman’s perspective – and this other woman wasn’t a sociopathic axe murderer – she had her own legitimate concerns and perspective. This caused this other woman to dig in her heels, and the conflict was not resolved. (Let me hasten to add that most mediations are successful.)

Yet this one episode lodged in my memory because it epitomized a troubling feature of human nature - our propensity to focus on the flaws of others while being blind to our own. In our religious movement we generally foreswear the option of wallowing in guilt and shame (a good thing), and focus on the structural flaws of society (another good thing), but the pitfall we face is in allowing this to degenerate into rituals of finger pointing – “aren’t they (the religious right, the corporations, the politicians, etc.) awful!” while being blind to our own shortcomings.

Read the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and you get the distinct impression that this propensity of human nature pretty much caused Jesus to pull his hair out in frustration, driving him to resort to a bizarre, hyperbolic image. In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount he pointedly asks: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”
Well, speaking on behalf of many – perhaps most – members of the human race, let me respond to Jesus’ query: “It’s a heck of lot more fun taking the speck out of our neighbors’ eyes than removing the log from our own; it’s more perversely pleasurable to see the fault in others rather than acknowledge our own shortcomings – it’s easier to imbibe the intoxicating brew of self righteous indignation than it is to take a dose of the strong medicine of honest moral introspection; it’s so easy to lash out at others during times of stress and don the mantle of victimhood. Plus, we get to feel superior when we cast the chilly eye of judgment on those we deem lesser mortals than ourselves.”

To which I can almost hear Jesus respond: “Don’t get seduced in by such cheap and easy thrills. Ultimately, you will find deeper satisfaction in taking the harder path – the path that challenges you to search your own heart and soul and see yourself as you really are. For until you recognize who you are and where you are, you will be stuck, you will not advance on the path of growth.”

“Unless you see yourself as you really are.” – that’s a phrase pregnant with implications. There’s something to that. But it’s hard.

There are simple visual experiments you can do which shows that each of our eyes has a real blind spot – it’s not obvious, though, because one eye may see what the other doesn’t, and also, the human brain fills in the blind spot with its own images. In other words, we may think we see the world as it is, but we don’t. Scientists say that our own brains actually create part of what we see.

This physiological fact is a good reminder of a psychological, spiritual, moral fact. In regards to our vision of ourselves, most of us, I believe, have blind spots, yet we fill them in with our rich imaginings. Of course saying that you have a blind spot is a strange assertion – it’s claiming to be aware of something which by definition you’re not actually aware of. Simple visual experiments will show us that we have a blind spot, but there is no easy test for detecting psychological, spiritual, moral blind spots. Yet there are ways of detecting them – the opinions of trusted friends and counselors who can see us in ways we cannot see ourselves can be helpful; the haunting mysterious images that come to us in our dreams may provide important clues; and perhaps most important, we may surmise that we have blind spots by virtue of repeated patterns of painful experiences.

Oftentimes I have looked back on a painful part of my life, and I can clearly see how another person’s shortcomings may have played a role in this, but my own complicity was not as apparent - although I suspected that in some subtle, unconscious way my own weaknesses, shortcomings and blind spots contributed to the situation. Yet I have noticed, again and again, that when I first acknowledge my failures and shortcomings, this alters the dynamics of relationships and others will often follow suit.

It’s so hard to do this because we are afraid that others who may share blame will get off the hook. But shouldering your share of the blame doesn’t mean a pardon is being issued to others. It simply means that it’s better if each person willingly takes on this load rather than having someone else dump it upon them. Yet it’s amazing how when you acknowledge your own faults and mistakes, this can alter the dynamic of human relationships. It shifts from finger pointing defensiveness to honest self examination. Which is to say, when someone sees that we really are trying to remove the log from our own eye, they are more likely to do that same thing for themselves.

It’s not so easy or much fun to recognize our complicity, mistakes and shortcomings, but all healthy and balanced religious traditions encourage practitioners to do this – to engage in searching one’s conscience, in observing one’s past words and deeds and patterns of behavior to see if these square with the vision and values that religion embraces – not for the purpose of wallowing in guilt but for purposes of becoming more aware and making whatever positive changes might be in order.

There is a widespread cultural assumption that acknowledging your own complicity in some problem means that you need to beat up on yourself and feel wretched to appease the unseen powers that be. I’ve indulged in such psychological self flagellation plenty of times, but lately, I’ve begun to doubt virtue of that. In fact, this type of self abusive branding – “I’m a jerk, a failure, a weakling, a horrible person” often serves to entrench the behaviors that lead to such harsh judgments.

One of the great virtues of our religious tradition, as I mentioned at the beginning is that we recognize that growth and change is possible, that as we become more aware we can make better, wiser choices about how we think, believe and act – in a word, to accept responsibility for shaping our lives. A Zen Buddhist proverb says: “There are no mistakes. You just do it differently the next time.” This may not be absolutely true, but it’s a good proverb in that it reminds us to remove the onus of blame and self castigation that so often go with personal moral inventories and focus instead on the change that comes from heightened awareness – changes that lead to a richer, more fulfilling life for you and those around you.

One of the possible pitfalls in our liberal faith is that in dismissing guilt and shame (which is often nothing but socially conditioned feelings that have nothing to do with truth and goodness) we might forget to do some honest soul searching, some honest confession - acknowledging how we may have contributed to misunderstanding confusion and suffering in the world. Actually, this is so important that I wish we had a regular ritual and time for doing this.

Some religious traditions make sure its practitioners don’t forget to do such moral self inventories by observing a time for this. We are nearing one such time for the Jewish tradition: Yom Kippur (October 2 this year) – the day of atonement (at – one – ment) – a time for a moral self inventory and repentance. The actual day of Yom Kippur is reserved for repairing one’s relationship with God. The days leading up to this are for repairing one’s relations with other people in your life.

This is a good tradition, and this is a good time for such reflection – a time to look deeply at myself and wonder. A host of relevant questions comes to mind: How am I stuck? Am I sometimes too self-centered and preoccupied? How might I be oblivious to sides of my character that inhibit my growth? What kindness and understanding and simple compassion might I be failing to exercise? What acts of courage and generosity and commitment am I neglecting to do?