The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

Publications

Religion: A Curse or a Blessing?

by Reverend Rick Davis

Undated Sermon

A month ago a very distressed woman left a message on my office voice mail.   She said she had heard some things about Unitarian Universalism which upset her greatly, and she could not believe that such a religion as ours could actually exist in this community if what she had been told was really true.  She wanted me either to confirm or deny what she had been told. 

Exactly what she had been told will probably remain a mystery because when she tried to give me her phone number she said “O, I’m so upset that I can’t even remember my own phone number.   I’ll call back tomorrow.”  She never did call back, and I’m sorry for that.  I really wanted to have a conversation with her because I was and am prepared to defend my faith in free and honest dialogue.

Perhaps this good woman has heard that we are a cult, and I would have liked to talk to her about what a cult really is and how we are as far from that as any religion I can think of. (Cults are characterized by strict uniformity of belief and authoritarian leadership, and that’s sure not us.)   Or maybe she has heard that we welcome and affirm gays and lesbians, and this upsets her.  I would have liked to have had a pastoral conversation on this topic, too.  Or maybe she has heard that we don’t believe the bible is literally true, or that we think other religious traditions have great wisdom to offer us or that we are a bunch of misguided pagans – and I would also have like to have had an opportunity to talk about these things because I feel good about our religious tradition and I take special pleasure in setting the record straight. 

I do admire this woman for making this attempt to get the facts, for not forming an opinion through hearsay, but rather, being willing to engage in a challenging conversation about a subject that most folks avoid like the plague – religion.   Most everyone else says that you should stay away from religion and that other volatile issue, politics – especially at family gatherings - because you’ll be walking through a minefield and you just might set off an explosive confrontation.  I understand.  I’ve been there, done that and don’t want to go there it again.

And yet we must figure out a way to have honest and open dialogue on the subject of religion in the public domain.   We (all of us, as a society) have to be willing to go out into this treacherous terrain in new and open ways, because the times demand it.  One very controversial writer who persuasively argues this point is Sam Harris in his two recent books “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation.”   Harris says that we have a social taboo against really discussing religion in a substantive and challenging way, that we walk around on eggshells because, as he notes:  “religious beliefs are beyond the scope of rational discourse.  Criticizing a person’s ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics is not.”  

Now if people kept their religious beliefs to themselves and did not aim to convert me or have our entire society structured according to their beliefs, then we could probably let the matter lie.   Yet when people feel that their beliefs are absolutely, beyond the shadow of a doubt true, and say that everyone else must accept them to be saved and that all of society should order itself according to these beliefs, then we really have no choice but to have some honest discussion about those beliefs – we need to examine the source of the beliefs, their validity,  and their vast implications for good or ill.  

The problem, as Sam Harris points out, is that the principle of religious tolerance is misconstrued and misapplied here.   Surely, we want to honor one another’s faith as much as possible, but we have to be willing to engage in challenging, give and take discussions as to the truthfulness of our beliefs as far as we can.  The stakes are too high to do otherwise.   

I certainly don’t mind if people want to question me about my faith and even  challenge me.  I could very well gain new insight through this process, and that would be a plus.  Or, the other person might gain new insight in such a discussion.   This seems a better way to go than to ignore such challenging discussions in the name of tolerance of  religious diversity.  Religion, at its best, is concerned with the quest for truth.  Yet in American public life it is the big elephant sitting right in the middle of the room – we don’t talk about it – we don’t really discuss the content of our beliefs or challenge one another in a rational and reasonable way. 

This is not to suggest that we have to arrive at one single perspective, boil all faith down into one common religion, that we should discuss matters until we achieve complete agreement and that there is no more religious diversity.  But it would be good to begin distilling down religious ideas into life affirming elixirs, free of deluded, debilitating, noxious, and poisonous elements that lead people to disdain, damn and destroy others.   We’re at the brink of great potential calamity and need to find a better way.

But how could we conduct such a discussion on religion?  What might be the guidelines?   In this type of discussion I would hearken to the ideas of the insightful 20^th Century Unitarian minister A. Powell Davies who noted: “There has always been a contradiction in religion.  This is because there is a conflict in the two chief sources from which religion springs.  Simply stated, one of these sources is fear, and the other, for want of a more inclusive word, we shall call yearning.”

Religion that springs from fear originally served a practical function in ancient times – it was conceived to placate unseen powers through magical rites and rituals and to insure survival and security by enforcing social conformity.  From the religion of fear came creeds and a priestly caste who were seen as having the unique authority to interpret higher realities that believers were not to question.   In other words, the religion of fear gave birth to superstition and subjugation to authority.  That’s problematic for humankind because superstition denies truth and subjugation denies human freedom.  Such religions of fear flourish today and adversely affect us all.

Religion that springs from yearning arose not, as did the religion of fear, to protect people from the nightmares of existence, but to awaken people to our greatest dreams,  born of our human yearning to understand and appreciate existence in all its vast dimensions and to align ourselves and our societies with universal principles of truth and goodness.  The religions of yearning liberated people from superstition and subjugation and have enhanced spiritual growth and the humane evolution of society. 

Of course, it’s not all so simple.  Most religions have some elements of fear and yearning  and it can be hard to tell the difference – yet all faiths should have to face this blunt, searching question:  Are you rooted in fear (and superstition and authoritarian subjugation)? Or are you rooted in life affirming principles of freedom and compassion for all?  

Another angle could be to ask of a religion these two questions:  is what you preach true, as best as human minds can discern?   And what are the practical social consequences of your religion – does it bring more goodness and compassion into the world, or more prejudice, discord and hatred?   We have a right and a responsibility to ask any religion these hard questions.  After all, religion asks people for their undying loyalty, so we should have the right to discover if it is worthy of such loyalty.

Of course all religions claim to be grounded in truth.  But here’s the problem.  When you ask some religious groups if there claims are true they say that they are indeed, for they are based upon the very word of God as revealed through scripture.  So scripture is cited as the ultimate standard which cannot be questioned or refuted.  “God said it and I believe it, and that’s that.”   Well, what can you or I say to that?  A lot, in fact, and scholars have been saying a lot about this big subject for the past couple of centuries or so, but their discoveries and insights have generally been kept from the general population. 

Here’s what we do know about the bible, for example:  through painstaking, diligent, archeological and scholarly research over the past two centuries it has become abundantly clear that the Judeo Christian scripture is a human creation – often one of humankind’s most glorious creations through which shines the transcendent light of truth and beauty and goodness.   But this scripture was written by people, not God.  The spirit of the sacred may have inspired this scripture  – I personally think this is true, sometimes – but to claim that any scripture is the inerrant, literal word of God is an indefensible argument.  Scripture often contains deep spiritual, psychological truth expressed in mythical forms, but it also contains ancient prejudice and ignorance. 

Were the general populace to know of what bible scholars have learned about the origins of the bible the power of the religions of fear would be greatly diminished.    Consider that in earlier times the church did all in its power – which often included burning violators at the stake – to keep people from translating the bible into vernacular languages people could understand (instead of Greek, Hebrew and Latin) because the church hierarchy didn’t want the people reading and interpreting the scripture for themselves.  Why?   Because authoritarian religion is undermined when people have such freedom.  The authorities wanted to maintain their monopoly over the pipeline – the pipeline to the divine. 

Today, a more subtle, insidious and largely successful ploy has been to conceal or deny the findings of credible biblical research from the general population, and this has kept many people in arrested states of spiritual development.  The result is that many, if not most people, have a fairy tale view of scripture, unaware of its historical origins and evolution. 

The implications of this are profound because the bible is cited so often as final proof for certain truths.  To cite two examples:  if people really knew how the bible came into being, they would be more likely to realize that it is not God who opposes homosexuality but rather some ancient desert patriarchs in a culture where procreation was a matter of survival who condemned same sex prostitution.  Or imagine if most people knew that virtually all bible scholars acknowledge that it was not Jesus, but some anonymous early Christian author, who wrote “I am the way, and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.”   Certainly that knowledge would change a few minds about some basic ideas on the need for conversion.

Now truth is one big slippery philosophical category, and wise and clever people can argue about this from different angles till the end of time, but we do know how scripture came into being, so those who claim that their scripture (never mind that there are competing scriptures that say different things that other people say is the word of God) is the absolute standard for truth are in denial – they are in denial of our human responsibility to discern, as best we are able, the truths that can guide us in our lives.  We cannot turn to any scripture and say, God said this and that’s it.  People wrote every word of scripture, and we have to discern whether those words still have meaning for us, and whether they convey the spirit of love and truth and goodness or not.  We have to decide such matters.  We can’t pass the buck up to God.  Above all, we should beware of those who cite scripture and thereby claim to know the mind and will of God.  This brand of monumental arrogance - that presents itself in the guise of humility – lies at the root of most of the evil committed in the name of religion. 

One final thought regarding the big question “is a religion true?”   Religion cannot  be reduced to only that which is measurable and observable.  That is too reductionistic and purely materialistic.  A religion so confined would deny mystery, awe and wonder, and it wouldn’t feed many souls.  I believe there are sublime and profound and sacred realities that transcend our human perceptions and our mental conceptions.  Yet I also believe that human reason is a great gift that can steer us safely through difficult passages in our journeys, and that any religion that mocks or denies what we can learn through human reason will not serve us.  Which is to say that a healthy religious faith can surely be trans-rational, but not irrational.   As the Sufi mystic and poet Rumi noted centuries ago:  “Your science, your philosophy, and your religion, must agree, or else you’ll be in conflict.” 

Then there is the question regarding the practical social consequences of a religion – does it bring more goodness, compassion, understanding into the world, or more prejudice, division, discord and hatred?  Religions that do cause real harm should be challenged.   In particular, religions that emphasize eternal damnation need to be challenged, for no theological idea opens the door to more harm than this one.   This idea can be challenged effectively challenged on several fronts.  The primary basis for this most draconian and divisive of beliefs is scriptural - yet scripture is a human creation and no human being is privy to knowledge of our eternal fate after death.   Not to mention, there is absolutely no scientific or other evidence for this dreadful teaching that induces untold fear and loathing.  In fact, such a shocking, fear based doctrine – this idea that any being would suffer eternal, never ceasing torment - is an affront to the laws of love, compassion and simple decency.  Not challenging such teachings in the name of religious tolerance is similar to not challenging racist or fascist teachings on the grounds that you are respecting social and political diversity.    

Even as I say this I feel somewhat shocked at myself.  We are so accustomed to saying that a person’s faith is off limits to criticism that I feel as though I were violating some social taboo.  Yet we must take such challenging steps in religious dialogue.  The world is too small now for us to countenance hateful ideologies that estrange and embitter us toward one another – whether they come packaged as political or religious dogma.