On the first day of school, the kindergarten teacher said, “if anyone has to go to the bathroom, hold up two fingers. A little voice from the back of the room was heard saying “How will that help?”
A mother and her young son returned from the supermarket and were putting away groceries. The boy got a hold of a box of animal crackers. He began spreading the crackers across the table. “What are you doing?” asked his mother. “The package says not to eat them if the seal is broken. I’m looking for the seal.
The teacher did not make her request clear to the kindergartener. The boy looking for the seal had misunderstood the instructions on the package. When I was a young adult attracted to Jesus, I was hoping it would be like that considering Christian doctrines on salvation and damnation. These made no sense to me. But maybe, I thought, I was like
the kindergartener and the boy searching for the seal. Maybe I just didn’t understand.
As a person raised Jewish, I thought that people who believed that Jews were going to hell were just ignorant, prejudiced folks. But Jesus didn’t seem like that. To me Jesus seemed to be a total hippie, all about peace and love. He spoke out against the corruption of the establishment. As person with 3 much older brothers, I wanted in on everything hippie.
Another reason I was attracted to Jesus was that my mother’s side of the family was very large and Catholic. As a troubled adolescent and young adult, I turned toward Jesus hoping to find some understanding. I knew that he wouldn’t have any problem with my being Jewish.
For a while I was making an effort to be both Jewish and Christian, but Christianity’s hell was too horrible for me to believe. My first UU minister talked about Jesus all the time and yet repudiated the doctrines of eternal damnation and substitutionary atonement. Rev. Pontier was also against war and for reproductive rights. I followed Ray and Jesus here. “Hallelujah!”
From what I’ve read many Unitarians and all Universalists two centuries ago or more had the same kind of ethical and cognitive dissonance about dominant Christian notions of heaven and hell. The Unitarians and the Universalist denomination grew out of the protestant movement which acknowledged corruption in the Catholic Church. Protestants rejected the authority of the church and placed it instead in the bible. In this age of enlightenment protestants began studying and debating scripture. The Unitarians reading Xtian scripture heard Jesus consistently pointing not to himself but to God. The Universalists read scripture and found the idea of eternal damnation inconsistent with the loving God of which Jesus spoke. Universalists asserted that human’s frailty and weakness were no match for the infinite powerful and opulence of God’s love. All would be reconciled with the one who created us.
The Universalists argued that God was too good to send his children to Hell. Unitarians it has been said thought themselves too good to go there.
The Unitarians and the Universalist denominations rose and had great influence in this so called “new world.” It was a time when Christianity here was dominated by Calvinism, the idea that God had predestined who would be saved and who would be cast into a sea of fire, for an eternity of suffering. The prevailing doctrine said that Jesus had taken on the sins of the world and been crucified so that a select few would have eternal life. The Universalists shared their good news that God’s love and forgiveness of sins would come to every person without exception! Universalism spread and for a time became the 9th largest denomination in the US. Religious conservatives saw Universalism as dangerous. Why
would people be good if there were no hell and no eternal reward?” Without the threat of damnation people would succumb to the lure of sin and Satan.
Universalists responded that “virtue was its own reward and sin its own punishment.” Reading this in seminary, I was shaken deeply. It was a different way of thinking than anything I had known. It was not how I thought. It was not a societally supported idea. It sounded good. Doesn’t it sound good? But could it be true?
The notion challenged assumptions built into the very structures of our society. How would society be structured differently if we collectively recognized that virtue is its own reward?
Several of you have told me that you rejected the doctrine of eternal damnation many years ago. Can I demonstrate the relevance of this history and theology to us today? Some of you have shared that the fear of hell was beaten into you at an early age. Some have confided that the residue of this fear still resides in the deep crevices of their consciousness.
This is where sing praises for our UU way. I am not saying we are anything like perfect. I’m claiming that there is value in discussing, reflecting and most of all being willing to look at our own behaviors, and examine our consciousness to find out what we are worshipping. Even those of us who identify as atheist or agnostic don’t get a pass on this work. Emerson wrote: “A person will worship something- have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts – but it will out. That which dominates our imagination and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character.” Elsewhere Emerson said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Our tradition asks us to explore and question our beliefs, discover our prejudices, the places where we practice scorn and contempt prior to investigation.
The notion that virtue is its own reward, sin its own punishment is, I think, at the center of the difference between conservative and liberal religion. Liberal religion encourages examination and choice. Conservative religion emphasizes obedience and submission. Religious conservatives believe that scripture is the literal word of God. We tend
to look upon sacred texts as repositories of cultural wisdom, poetry, values and understanding about life. Liberals may see the bible as divinely inspired. We may believe that many books are divinely inspired. Liberal religion differs from conservative religion in its view of nature and humanity. Conservatives see humans as basically wicked and
sinful in nature. God is presumed to exist as separate from and not a part of nature. In a conservative’s view, humanity’s only hope lies in obeying rules and instructions literally given as scripture by God long ago.
Religious liberals see nature, including our human nature as good or at least with an inherent capacity for good. Liberals may believe in divine influence or in human potential for realization of all qualities known to us.
From a Universalist perspective, the source of life that created us did so out of love. According to Universalism, the Universe is rigged for our fulfillment. People can connect and grow in our capacity to know the fullness of this love. Given a taste of love, a glimpse of understanding, an experience of justice and knowledge of interconnection, we want more.
Virtue is defined as what brings us closer to that divinity, the kingdom of heaven, the beloved community, understanding and experience of oneness. Sin is what moves us away from an awareness or consciousness that enables love and peace and right relationship with all of life. While studying Buddhism during seminary, I came across a similar idea from an Eastern perspective. Buddhism and the Upanishads which preceded it, are concerned with karma. As westerners we have heard and probably misunderstood karma as reward and punishment. Said in popular vernacular, what goes around, comes around. If you sin, you will be punished. That punishment might come quickly or in a subsequent reincarnation.
My Buddhist monk professor taught us that the word karma means conditioning or consciousness. What you do, how you act affects your worldview or consciousness. When you steal, you tend to develop the consciousness of a thief. When you act from kindness, you are more likely to cultivate a consciousness of kindness. The teaching doesn’t state it as a direct causal relationship from action to resulting consciousness. It’s a bit more complicated than that. In the same way that westerners tend to oversimply karma as meaning that we are punished for our bad actions, we can oversimplify and believe that action is the sole cause of what we learn. The prime driver of consciousness is consciousness. To a large extent, our current consciousness inevitably influences our learning and the development of our next consciousness.
In the west we tend to assume that matter is the origin of all things. If we think about consciousness at all, we think it grows out of material. That is how we tend to treat dis-ease. When people experience suffering in their body including in their emotion, and thoughts, western medicine tends to assume that the symptom arose of out a faulty or defective body. We treat the body as a mechanism. We are quick to remove faulty parts. We assume that there is a chemical imbalance caused by defective matter. We treat this problem by injecting or ingesting different chemicals.
Eastern people have had a different worldview. Rather than assuming that consciousness or life arises from matter, they have often suggested that matter arises from consciousness.
More to the point of this sermon, our behavior arises or is greatly shaped by our thoughts, beliefs, and our worldview, how we look at a situation.
The first definition of virtue yielded by my search stated: Virtue: moral excellence and righteousness and goodness.
In conservative religion, virtue and good are defined as adherence to God’s will as it is stated in scripture. God’s instructions for cultivating virtue are seen as absolute and unchanging. The influence of interpretation of these instructions is denied.
When Universalism became popular in the 19th century, religious conservatives viewed it with contempt. Some said that without the fear of eternal damnation, humans would not follow God’s will but would succumb to evil and Satan’s bidding.
When UUs believe in something, or practice something we do so not because it was stated by Jesus, or Mohammed or Lao Tse, not because it is written in a sacred text. We do so because its merit is apparent, can be understood or experienced. We decide if someone’s directions are good after we’ve taken them. Then we have a better idea if the directions gave us the journey and destination that we were hoping for. Rather than coercing members to obey or conform to religious authority, UU faith asks us to consider its living tradition, and other traditions. More importantly we ask each other to consider, reflect, and become honest about how well we are keeping our covenants with each other.
Participating in the religious and spiritual journey of this congregation means developing authenticity. This requires us to notice how things sit inside us. Are we being true to what we say we value? We encourage each other to become virtuous, not so much by chasing extrinsic rewards or by avoiding extrinsic punishment. We ask us to examine our thoughts, beliefs and actions to see if they are supporting us to develop virtue.
Here’s another “from the mouth of babes” story. This one from the 20th century: A mother was telling her little girl what her own childhood was like: “we used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods.” The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this in. At last she said, “I sure wish I’d gotten to know you sooner!” If G*d or the sacred is everywhere, can we find them inside ourselves? Can we find the sacred, connecting with whatever we have glimpsed and experienced in this existence as good, virtuous, beautiful, worthwhile, and meaningful? Can we discover the holy in others? Even when we don’t like them? Can we find truth in a time rife with illusion? Can we remember or discover what is truly valuable? Can we bring our heart’s delight out into the open here in this congregation? Can we bring love into this world? This town? This moment?
That’s what I’m talking about. Is that what we are talking about? Is that what we believe in? Is it what we are doing?
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