A couple of weeks ago, with the help of Karen Armstrong, I talked about “touching the face of God” – finding a way of connecting with the divine that I believe lies within each of us and within Life Itself. To me, trying to be in touch with this Spirit is a part of the religious quest. At the same time I don’t believe doing so has much to do with how to make choices in our lives. At least as I interpret the theology that informs our faith – a theology that has its base both in religious tradition and in common sense – Whatever It Is That Has Given Us Our Lives, let’s call it Life Itself, has set us free to make choices. And if ever anyone believed this it was Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday we celebrate this week. Although Lincoln wanted the Divine to be with him as he made his decisions, he was under no illusion that God was telling him what to do as he decided to take the nation to war to avoid division and to ensure that everyone in this country would be able to enjoy the rights our forebears declared should be available to everyone, including all those who had been brought to this country in chains.
What’s interesting about Lincoln’s actions in regard to slavery is they were based on a document, the Declaration of Independence that that makes no claim to have been written under the authority of the Divine, any more than does our Constitution. Our forbears wrote our founding documents they way they did because they wanted our rights and freedoms to be based on an ethical, rather than a theological, basis. The only theological word in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution is the Declarations affirmation that all human beings have been “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
In a recent book, Good without God, Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, argues that the way these documents are worded is but one of many proofs that one can take an ethical approach to life without believing in God. I suspect a lot of us would agree. In fact, it was the claim of a Unitarian minister that one could be religious without God that first attracted me to our movement. Our faith centers on how we should live our lives much more than it does on our theological beliefs. It’s one of the things that makes Unitarian Universalism unique.
In talking about the ethical base for religion Epstein cites the “Golden Rule,” the most universal of all religious moral perspectives. In UU language, the Golden Rule might go like this: “We should love Life with the whole of ourselves, including caring about our neighbors as much as we care about ourselves.” In Taoism it’s put this way: “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.”
Epstein then talks about the Ten Commandments, another of the religious dictums some believe should apply to all of us. To give them a more universal meaning Epstein translates them into more human terms.
For not worshipping false Gods, someone with a humanistic approach to life would say: Pursue honesty in all you do; and be wary of allowing power, status or possessions to substitute for moral courage, dignity and goodness.
For not misusing the name of God, that is, for attaching the notion of what’s Sacred and Holy to something that’s not, a humanist would say: Be positive and constructive, rather than negative and disrespectful. Seek the best in yourself and in others, and believe in your ability to make a positive difference in the world.
For keeping the Sabbath holy, a humanist would say: To be healthy, you should balance work with play and rest. Without being refreshed neither our bodies nor minds work very well.
For honoring your mother and father, a humanist would say: All the members of a family – including the family that is our human community – should respect and care for each other so we won’t pass the dysfunction of one generation to another.
For not committing murder, being unfaithful, stealing, or speaking badly about others, a humanist would say: What’s good is behavior that enhances human dignity and the wellness of the world. What’s bad is that which does the opposite. In other words, we should try to add something positive to the creation of which we are a part.
Finally, for not being jealous of other people or lusting after them or their possessions, a humanist would say: When you see the nice things others have, or how good looking they are, be happy for them. If they have something you want, work hard to get something similar, but don’t think your life’s a bust if you can’t. The same thing goes for how people look. There’s beauty in all of us. Who you are, not what you have, is what really matters.
My wife faults me for getting my ideas a bit too much from “dead white guys,” but the American who first accepted and then defended the title “Unitarian” was a dead white guy named William Ellery Channing. Channing was a diminutive preacher in Bostonian who Gary Dorrien calls the most important liberal theologian of the first part of the 19th century. Channing said that the essence of being a religious person was not accepting some creed or taking part in a particular form of worship. It was living in the sort of way Epstein described. Channing called it developing one’s character. It was this, rather than believing Jesus had come into the world to save us from our sins, that made one a religious person. Channing and our other forbears didn’t believe we had been inflicted with Sin by being descendents of Eve and Adam – those primordial ancestors who conservative Christians believe were cursed, along with those who followed them, for trying to find out what life was like, instead of just accepting what had been created for them. Ever since, “damn your knowledge,” have said such Christians. “Believe what you’re told.”
Not so, said Channing. Find out all you can know, about everything. Be a good person, develop compassion and care about the world in which we and our neighbors live. Not all the Unitarians of Channing’s time were as virtuous as he wanted them to be, but many of them, like Theodore Parker – another of those dead white guys – believed that the ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence had not been extended to everyone in this country and wrote a sermon about it that was passed on to Lincoln by his law partner, Thomas Herndon.
Parker’s sermon, and many of the other things he read or experienced led Lincoln to believe that what God expected of him, even though a lot of Christians didn’t agree, especially since slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, was to not try to appease people with such beliefs. He said that even though people in the North read the same Bible, what a god worthy of that name would want him to do was not what someone centuries ago in another place might do, it was to choose to do what was right – and allowing the Union to be dissolved and slavery to continue in the South wasn’t right.
It wasn’t God that told Lincoln this, it was his own moral sense – his response to that inner voice of conscience Emerson called the “Ought.” A person with a similar perspective, though He had gone beyond Lincoln to no longer believe in God was John Dietrich. Dietrich, a defrocked Dutch Reformed minister who found a home among us in spite of his rejection of theism. Dietrich was our country’s first great radio preacher – broadcasting his sermons on a clear channel station from Minneapolis in the 1920s and 30s. He went on to became a leading figure among a group of Unitarian ministers who called themselves “Religious Humanists.” It’s out of this group that came the Humanist Manifesto, which, even though it was written almost 80 years ago, remains one of the favorite targets of the Radical Religious Right because of its assertion that one can, indeed, be good with God, as were the authors of the Manifesto.
The authors of the Humanist Manifesto were philosophers, ministers, psychologists and scientists who did not didn’t believe there people had to be threatened with Divine wrath in order to be good. Instead, they believed that although there may only be so much we can do to make our’s a better world, we can, as Epstein puts it: “grow tremendously in our abilities to understand and to feel and give love and affection and empathy” and that basing our behavior on such feelings will make our collective lives better than they it otherwise be. This, says Epstein, is: “Humanism in a nutshell.”
Such a belief has always been a part of our Unitarian Universalist approach to life, whether or not we believe in God. We agree with Epstein, who says: “We have the potential for strength, wisdom and love inside ourselves. But by ourselves we are not enough. We need to reach out beyond ourselves – to the world that surrounds and sustains us, and most especially to other people.” As the Rabbi Hillel put it centuries ago: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
In looking at the ethic that follows from this ancient wisdom, Sherwin Wine, a rabbi who, like Dietrich, believed one could be religious without God, developed a perspective that, according to Epstein, was: “a kind of stew” with “equal parts love, friendship, reason, justice and self discipline.” Wine believed we need to develop the sort of character talked about by Channing. Important to this, said Wine, are five things:
The first is self-awareness….
The second is a willingness to assume responsibility for one’s own life….
The third is a refusal to find one’s identity in any possession….
The fourth is a sense that one’s behavior is worthy of imitation by others….
The last is understanding that we have at least three moral obligations:
First, an obligation to strive for greater mastery and control over lives.
Second, an obligation to be reliable and trustworthy.
Third, an obligation to be generous and to care about more than just ourselves.
And, said Wine, we don’t need God to tell us this or to threaten us with eternal damnation if we don’t behave this way. Our Universalist ancestors believed that a God who was worthy of that name would never put in place a creation in which everlasting pain would be anyone’s fate. God created in love, they believed, so we should behave in ways that show that love. And we should do this not because we’ll be punished if we don’t, but because caring about Life, each other and ourselves in a way that’s just and compassionate is essential to what makes us human – and living this way is what gives our lives their meaning.
At least this is what I concluded after all I learned in college and from experience suggested that what I do with my life, rather than what I believed about God, was what mattered. It’s not that I don’t have a sense of there being Something That’s Sacred and Holy in and about life; it’s that I believe that the Creative Force out of which our lives have emerged has left us free to live responsibly. And, even though we make mistakes – who doesn’t – we’re condemn because of it. Whatever It Is gave us our existence calls us into Life, not away from it. This is the idea of humanism – and most of the world’s religions, at their bests, are humanistic in this sense. In fact, the Christian historian, Martin Marty, once told me, “You can’t take my humanism away from me, just because I value Jesus. My humanism – my human concern – is what Jesus wants from me.”
The Unitarian Universalist approach to life, with or without God, is based on the idea that we have been given the most precious gift we could ever have, our lives, and it’s up to us to make something of them. As Eva Goldfinger, who’s far from being a dead white guy, puts it: “the most important purpose of human life is for every individual to strive for and attain self-fulfillment – to become what each is capable of, and to help others do the same.” It is, as Epstein puts it, to be: “passionate about things that are worth being passionate about.”
The philosopher, Schopenhauer, once said: “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” He’s right, even if you might not like his language. But even if there is a lot in life that’s difficult, we don’t have to going around like that companion of Winnie the Pooh,Eeyore, who was always taking a negative view toward life. In Winnie the Pooh Eeyore is standing by the side of a stream, looking at himself in the water:
“Pathetic,” he said. “That’s what it is. Pathetic.”
He turned and walked slowly down the stream for twenty yards, splashed across it, and looked slowly back on the other side. Then he looked in the water again.
“As I thought,” he said. No better from this side. But nobody minds. Nobody cares. Pathetic, that’s what it is…. That’s all there is to it.”
Of course A.A. Milne, whose birthday we celebrate this time of year, along with Lincoln, wouldn’t have written Winnie the Pooh if believed with Eeyore that life was pathetic, and: “That’s all there is to it.” After all, think of all the rest of Christopher Robin’s toy box friends – like Pooh, who, when asked by Piglet why they should go somewhere, said: “We’ll go because it’s Thursday… We’ll go to wish everybody a Very Happy Thursday. Come on, Piglet.” And Piglet went.
So it should be for us. What Unitarian Universalism tells us is that to be human in a way that gives our lives meaning and adds something to the world of which we are part means approaching life in a way that’s positive and assuming there’s always something we can add to it, even if it’s just a wish for a “Very Happy Thursday” – or Sunday, in our case. I needed to hear this message years ago when, for me, traditional images of God lost their meaning. I need to hear it still, and I’m glad there are places like this church where, in the spirit of Winnie the Pooh, it’s proclaimed proudly.
Call to Action taken from Good without God
by Greg Epstein
In his book, Good Without God, Greg Epstein, who is both a rabbi and the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, says he wrote the book as a call to action, though he wasn’t trying to convince anyone they should give up their belief in God, if they had one. He says:
If you are not a Humanist, please go in peace. You have my respect…. And if you are a Humanist … please know that that in itself brings me no especial joy, especially if Humanist” to you means merely one who denies the existence of God. Humanists must be known for their actions.
We must act together for our own good and for the greater good. We are fortunate to have evolved and been nurtured to possess reason, compassion and creativity. It is what we do with those qualities that will determine everything. The fact that we live without God is, in a sense, not up to us. It’s not really a choice. We see the world around us. We use our amazing human ability to think and believe with all our integrity that there is only this one natural world. But goodness is a choice. It is the most important choice we can ever make. And we have to make it over and over again, throughout our lives and in every aspect of our lives. We have to be good for ourselves. We have to be good for the people we love. We have to be good for all the people around us, be they friend or foe. We are forced to be good without God. If we can accept that reality and act with courage, we can be very good indeed….
So, let’s be it.