A Sermon by the Reverend Ellen Rowse Spero
First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church,
Chelmsford, Massachusetts
January 30, 2005
Ancient Reading: A Story from Buddhist Scripture (the Anguttar Nikaya)
Modern Reading: From Skeptics and True Believers by Chet Raymo
Copyright 2005, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
In "Advice to a Young Poet," Ranier Marie Rilke writes:
"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
And try to love the questions themselves…
Don’t search for answers,
They could not be given to you now,
Because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday in the future,
You will gradually, without even noticing it,
Live your way into the answer."
This is the spirituality of the Skeptic, loving and living the questions rather than seeking the safety and certainty of answers. I find the Skeptic’s response to be deeper, more faithful than that of the True Believer. I know that many would find my conclusion puzzling. Isn’t the faith of one who believes in a religious tradition more faithful than that of someone who questions everything, who doubts and wonders, who wrestles with their understanding and experience of truth, of humanity, of nature, and of the divine? Well, no. Or rather, it depends on how you define your terms.
Many people, particularly True Believers, use acceptance of certain beliefs as a measure of faith. But beliefs aren’t faith. Beliefs are an intellectual commitment to something we hold to be true, whether it be in the realm of science, religion, politics, philosophy, or the like. Beliefs matter. They are important. But when beliefs are challenged by the knowledge we have gained, their truth tested and found to be incongruent with the new data and learning that have come to light, then hanging onto them for their own sakes takes the life and faithfulness out of them. In Spirituality for the Skeptic, philosopher Robert Solomon notes: "…it has been argued that (many of) the beliefs of various major religions…are abstract metaphysical claims that would daunt even the most speculative philosopher--(and) can hardly be based on anything other than group membership…This is what is so very impoverished in those ’philosophies of religion’ that would reduce faith to beliefs, propositions to be ’proven’…Most religious beliefs are like club passwords or code words than propositions that can be explicated or defended (pp. 12-13). Beliefs in this case become security blankets. To able to say, "I know for sure" about God, life, death, good, evil, the universe, and truth is an attempt to control the great unknowns, to tame the Holy, to bind Mystery. It is choosing to live the answers, even despite evidence to the contrary, rather than risk living the questions.
So, if you define faith as unwavering, unquestioning belief, then yes, True Believers have faith. However, I see faith as something deeper. Faith is a form of trust: what Solomon calls "a passionate inwardness…a reverent way of experiencing the world and appreciating and feeling gratitude for its (and your) existence…" (pp. 13-14). Skeptics trust and value life for its own sake, rather than to please a supernatural being or to reap the rewards of a paradisiacal afterlife. Skeptics trust and value life in spite and because of all that we do not know. They are willing to trust the questions as a way to the answers rather than trusting only for the answers. Chet Raymo offers a wonderful metaphor for the faith of the Skeptic: "Let this, then, be the ground of my faith: All that we know, now and forever, all scientific knowledge that we have of this world, or will ever have, is as an island in the sea (of mystery)…We live in a universe that is infinite, or effectively so. Our brains are finite, a mere 100 billion nerve cells. Our mental maps of the world are therefore necessarily finite…(and so) two corollaries follow: (1) The growth of the island does not diminish the sea’s infinitude, and (2) the growth of the island increases the length of the shore along which we encounter mystery…We are at our human best as creatures of the shore, with one foot on the hard ground of fact and one foot in the sea of mystery" (pp. 47-48). What I find powerful in this metaphor is that it does not require us to choose between knowledge and mystery--what some might term science and religion--but to live deeply in both. We can grow in knowledge and still experience mystery. In fact, the more we learn, the deeper and more varied our encounters with wonders of creation, the miracle that is life, the depth of the connections that bind us to one another. The more we learn, the deeper and truer our experience of Mystery, of the sacred and the Holy. Faith is not choosing one or the other as the answer but taking the risk to walk in between, to live the questions.
When I chose this as a sermon topic, I was thinking about conversations I had with people who had become Unitarian Universalists because of their skepticism about religion and religious beliefs. What I learned from Raymo and Solomon is that the spirituality of skepticism is not simply the rejection of beliefs. It is about living of a life of faithful questioning, about risking the shore between the island knowledge and the sea of mystery. Before I delved into this topic, I had not thought of myself particularly as a skeptic. But I realize that I am. I realize that I don’t believe in God, at least in the traditional sense. I do not know what God is. I don’t believe in a supernatural being, a heavenly parent or a cosmic judge. But I do encounter moments at the shore between knowledge and Mystery with what I name as God or the Holy simply because it is unnamable, because it is Mystery. Some of those moments are comforting: surrounded by those I love and feeling a loving presence that is both of but greater than those gathered around me. Some of these moments come for me in the sense of wonder and oneness I feel with the creation, when I encounter its beauty and its wildness. Some of these moments are of a Holy otherness: when I have been with people on the edge of dying, walking with them as far as I can until they cross over a threshold where I cannot go. It is not a happy moment or a safe one. Yet, the sacred is present in it. One of these moments came when as a prospective candidate, I walked in to this sanctuary. I felt a connection and call so strong that I recognized I needed to pay attention to serving here as minister in a way I hadn’t thought about before. In these ways, I have faith in a presence or sense of mystery and connection I call God. I share these experiences with you not as the answer as to what you should believe or experience. Rather, to share with you some of what wrestling with the Holy, living the questions, walking the shore between knowledge and mystery has felt like to me and to invite you to reflect and share with me and with one another your own travels and encounters on these shores. To challenge you to experience the fullness and faithfulness of spiritual skepticism: not simply as a rejection of answers but an embrace of the questions.
As Buddha said to the Kalamas of Kesaputta who came before him troubled with their doubts: " It is a good thing that you do have doubt …(for) when you know from within yourselves that certain teachings are not good, that when put into practice they lead to loss and suffering, you must then trust yourselves and reject them." The test of a belief’s veracity is not grounded in whether it answers our questions the way we want it to but whether it stands up to our doubt, whether in practice in supports truth, justice, and compassion to the extent that we understand them. The true depth and breadth of Unitarian Universalist faith then comes not simply from accepting or rejecting answers but from our willingness to wrestle with our doubts, our questions, and our uncertainties in light of our own experiences and knowledge about what it means to be human, to embrace life for its own sake. As faithful Skeptics, we trust that questions, not answers, are what bring us closer to truth, to wonder, to the Holy and the sacred, to the meaning and fullness of life. Our task as a community of faith is not to tame Mystery with answers but to love and live in the questions Mystery offers us.
Sources:
Chet Raymo. Skeptics and True Believers. New York: Walker and Company, 1998.
Robert C. Solomon. Spirituality for the Skeptic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.