Meditation: a poem by Virginia Hamilton Adair entitled “Games with God”
I played, a child both wild and meek,
with God at games of hide-and-seek.
I searched in vain the usual places
and found a thousand saddened faces.
"Your God is hidden in heaven," they said;
"You'll see him only when you're dead."
How could I make them understand
God often took me by the hand?
Then as my tears began to fall
I felt his touch and heard his call,
"I never hid from you at all."
I played with God a game of tag,
his mantle flying like a flag.
I gave my God a good head start
but caught him running in my heart.
I played with God the game "I Spy,"
but lost him with my fading eye,
till playmate God in his pure kindness,
printed his image on my blindness.
Reading From For the Love of God - Writings by Spiritual and Psychological Leaders edited by Benjamin Shield and Gerald Jampolsky
I cannot remember a time in my childhood when I did not know of the existence of God. But my image of God now is not my image of God then. (Howard Murphet, p. 45)
As a child I went to Sunday School with my father, an evangelical, fundamentalist Presbyterian. There, I learned certain things: that faith in God is essential to a good life; that God is somewhere in heaven, a place located beyond the clouds; that God watches everyone on earth and whacks you when you’re bad. If you keep on being bad, you will go to hell. (Ken Keyes, Jr., p. 21)
I have had a relationship with the Great Spirit for as long as I can remember, long before I met my shaman woman teachers. It was always a feeling of the sun; a warmth I woke up with every morning that carried me through the day. (Lynn Andrews, p. 35)
When I first experienced an awareness of God, at about age eighteen, I didn’t call it “God.” I was raised as a materialist agnostic. I only knew, at the time, that I felt a magnetic attraction toward something that was pulling me out of my life pattern. (Barbara Marx Hubbard, p. 79)
I used to think of the divine as “God.” Now, if I think in terms of a personalized deity at all, I think more of the Goddess than of the God. (Riane Eisler, p. 13)
God is the life force that creates everything, including us, and continues to flow through us and keeps us alive. That life force contains total wisdom and power. (Shakti Gawain, p. 121)
To me, God and compassion are one and the same. (Mother Teresa, p. 151)
Reading: by Huston Smith from The World’s Religions from the chapter on Hinduism
(p. 73)
To claim salvation as the monopoly of any one religion is like claiming that God can be found in this room but not in the next, in this attire but not another. Normally, people will follow the path that rises from the plains of their own civilization; those who circle the mountain, trying to bring others around to their paths, are not climbing…
It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge. At base, in the foothills of theology, ritual, and organizational structure, the religions are distinct. Differences in culture, history, geography, and collective temperament all make for diverse starting points. Far from being deplorable, this is good; it adds richness to the totality of the human venture. Is life not more interesting for the varied contributions of Confucianists, Taoists, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and Christians? “How artistic,” writes a contemporary Hindu, “that there should be room for such variety - how rich the texture is, and how much more interesting than if the Almighty had decreed one antiseptically safe, exclusive, orthodox way. Although he is Unity, God find, it seems, his recreation in variety!” But beyond these differences, the same goal beckons.
Reading: by Stephen Prothero from God is Not One (p. 2, 3)
The Dalai Lama affirms that “the essential message of all religions is very much the same.”…
This is a lovely sentiment but it is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue. For more than a generation we have followed scholars and sages down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world in which all Gods are one. This wishful thinking is motivated in part by an understandable rejection of the exclusivist missionary view that only you and your kind will make it to heaven and Paradise… But the idea of religious unity is wishful thinking nonetheless, and it has not made the world a safer place. In fact, this naïve theological groupthink - call it Godthink - has made the world more dangerous by blinding us to the clashes of religions that threaten us worldwide. It is time we climbed out of the rabbit hole and back to reality.
The world’s religious rivals do converge when it comes to ethics, but they diverge sharply on doctrine, ritual, mythology, experience, and law. These differences may not matter to mystics or philosophers of religion, but they matter to ordinary religious people... Muslims don’t think a pilgrimage to Mecca is inessential. Catholics don’t think baptism is inessential… Religious differences have real effects in the real world. People refuse to marry this Muslim or that Hindu because of them. And in some cases religious differences move adherents to fight and to kill.
One purpose of the “all religions are one” mantra is to stop this fighting and this killing… But this sentiment, however well-intentioned, is neither accurate nor ethically responsible. God is not one.
Bring Many Names
A Sermon Delivered on October 3, 2010
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
Yesterday morning, just as I was settling down to write a sermon, there was a knock at our door. I went downstairs to find two formally dressed women on our front porch. Even before I opened the door, I had a hunch as to the visitors’ agenda. When I spied the title of two magazines the older of two held in her hand (The Watchtower), my suspicions were confirmed. These were Jehovah’s Witnesses doing their part to spread the Good News, as they see it, on a windy Saturday morning.
I kept the conversation short, both because I had work to do and because I am quite committed to my own religious approach, and am not in the market for conversion. I thanked them for their visit, and in way of wrapping things up quickly, told them I am familiar with their beliefs, and - by the way - I am minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Green Street.
“Ah well, as long as we all read the Bible - that’s what counts,” the elder said with a smile that seemed a little strained, but struck a note of tolerance and inter-faith acceptance. I appreciated her effort to respect my religious commitments. But as the two visitors walked down the front steps and headed off, I was left wondering whether she would have been quite so accepting if she knew more about Unitarian Universalism.
Clearly she was unaware that on most Sundays of the year we do not read the Christian scriptures. Reviewing services from recent months, I see that we have had readings from psychologists, theologians, comedians and philosophers. We have heard storytellers and journalists, neurologists and historians, economists and poets from a variety of traditions and ages. But we have not had a single reading from the Bible. She didn’t know that.
Now, to be fair, I am also no expert on the beliefs and practices of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
* * *
Sociologists tells us America is a remarkably religious country. Church attendance and religious belief are more widespread here than in any other industrialized nation. But despite our well-developed spiritual inclinations, most Americans are surprisingly ill-informed when it comes to the specifics of religion. As an article in the New York Times put it last week, “Americans are by all measures a deeply religious people, but they are also deeply ignorant about religion.” (“Basic Religion Test Stumps Many Americans,” NYT 9/28/10)
Last week the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published the results of a study based on 3,400 phone interviews. The study reveals that 53 percent of Protestants don’t know that Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation. And 45 percent of Catholics don’t know that in Catholicism the bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ. It’s called transubstantiation.
People were asked 32 multi-choice questions about religion. Questions like:
What is Ramadan? 1) The Hindu Festival of lights. 2) A Jewish day of atonement. 3) The Islamic holy month.
Which Bible figure is most closely associated with remaining obedient to God despite suffering? 1) Abraham 2) Elijah 3) Moses 4) Job
Or how about this one: What is the religion of most people in Indonesia? 1) Buddhist 2) Christian 3) Muslim 4) Hindu. The correct answer is Muslim. 178 million Muslims live in Indonesia, more than in any other country, and three times as many as in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Only about one in four respondents got it right.
One last question: According to rulings by the United States Supreme Court, is a public school teacher permitted to read from the Bible as an example of literature? 1) Yes, permitted. 2) No, not permitted. Less than one in four Americans knows that the correct answer is “yes.”
On average, people got half of the 32 questions wrong. Among believers, those who scored highest were Jews and Mormons. But the highest scoring groups of all were atheists and agnostics.
This is good news for us. A substantial portion of Unitarian Universalists are atheists and agnostics. Informal surveys of this congregation show that we are pretty evenly divided between atheists/agnostics on one side, and theists on the other.
It would seem that while atheists and agnostics don’t know God the way theists do, they know more about God.
* * *
As Unitarian Universalists, we like to believe that we are informed not only about our own tradition, but about all the world’s great religions. Just look at the wall hangings in our sanctuary (which depict symbols representing the great world religions). The silent message these hangings convey, is that there is room for all the world’s religions in this congregation. They say there is something all these traditions share in common, and that we affirm this common ground. We say, our living tradition draws from many sources, which include wisdom from the world’s religions. We draw not only from sacred sources, but from the secular science, as well.
Historically, Unitarianism affirmed the oneness of God, as opposed to the Christian notion of a trinity. And Universalism affirmed a loving God who would provide salvation for all people, not only the small circle of those who considered themselves the elect.
The 16th century Unitarian minister Francis David said, in this world there have always been many opinions about faith and salvation. You need not think alike to love alike. He said, God is indivisible. God is one.
Today, many understand Unitarianism as an expression of the belief that across all the world’s religious traditions, we ultimately direct our devotion toward the same divine reality. And many understand Universalism to mean that our faith excludes no one.
The image of religious seekers on different paths, each finding their own unique course up a mountain, at the top of which they will discover religious truth, is very compatible with UUism. At the top of the mountain our diverse paths will converge, and we will reach the Ultimate Reality - the goal shared by all religions, and yet given so many different names - whether Jehovah or Allah, whether Brahma or Great Spirit.
* * *
And yet, is it really accurate to say all religions share the same goal?
Stephen Prothero makes the important point that the statement “God is one,” is not a statement of fact, but of faith. Imagining all the world’s religious practitioners as wanderers, each traveling a different path to God, but all heading for the top of the same mountain - this is not a description of the world’s religions as they exist today. It is an image of our wish that all religious people might live in peace and harmony.
Now, there is a place for religious respect and tolerance. After all, for most of world history our ancestors considered their religious rivals as inferior to themselves. Unfamiliar religious customs were dismissed as empty rituals based on bogus miracles and fanciful myths. During the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, the idea of religious tolerance was popularized, and that was surely a good thing.
But what we need to today - in a time in which religious conflict and religious violence are alive and well - is not a dreamy eyed wishful thinking, and well-meaning entreaties that everyone should just get along. We need a clear-eyed analysis of the very real differences that divide religious practioners.
Prothero tells us,
“a lack of understanding about the differences between, say, Sunni and Shia Islam produces more rather than less violence… So while we need idealism, we need realism even more. We need to understand religious people as they are - not just at their best but also their worst. We need to look at not only the awe-inspiring architecture and gentle mystics but also their bigots and suicide bombers.” (p. 7)
In our efforts to be inclusive and accepting, it is tempting to focus on lofty religious ideals, and to emphasize only the good things about the world’s religions. Many of us do this because we don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes, which are often rooted in a history of missionary polemics that have portrayed Islam as sexist, Hinduism as obsessed with idols, or African religions as satanic. But Prothero says, we need to grow out of this reflex to defend. He says, “after 9/11 and the Holocaust, we need to see the world’s religions as they really are - in all their gore and glory. This includes seeing where they agree and disagree, and not turning a blind eye to their failings.” (p. 17)
It is a mistake to assume all religions share a common goal. Though the word “God” does appear in many ways and many places around the world, it is a mistake to assume that this implies worldwide agreement on who are what God is - and more importantly what God asks of us.
“One of the most common misconceptions about the world’s religions is that they plumb the same depths, ask the same questions. They do not.” As Prothero points out,
“Only religions that see God as all good ask how a good God can allow millions to die in tsunamis. Only religions that believe in souls ask whether your soul exists before you are born and what happens to it after you die. And only religions that think we have one soul ask after “the soul” in the singular. Every religion, however, asks after the human condition.” (p. 24)
What all people share is not an essential belief about transcendent reality. What we share is our common experience of being human. What we share is not the goal of our religious venture, but the place of departure. What we share is not the finish line, but the starting point.
The starting point of all religious pursuits is the existential human experience of life - a life that is filled with experiences of suffering and joy, of grief and rapture, of despair and bliss - experiences that touch us more deeply than we can fathom, and which we struggle to understand.
Religious people around the world agree on this. We part company, however, when it comes to describing what the challenges of life are. We diverge sharply when we move from diagnosing the human problem to prescribing how to solve it. For Christians the problem is sin, and the solution salvation. Buddhists see suffering, and the solution is to let go of craving. In Islam the problem is pride, and the solution is submission. In Taoism the problem is convention, and the solution is a more natural way of being.
If practitioners of the world’s religions are all mountain climbers, then they are on very different mountains, climbing very different peaks, and using very different tools and techniques in their ascents.
Religion matters, Prothero tells us.
“People act every day on the basis of religious beliefs and behaviors that outsiders see as foolish or dangerous or worse. Allah tells them to blow themselves up or to give to the poor, so they do. Jesus tells them to bomb an abortion clinic or to build a Habitat for Humanity house, so they do. Because God said so, Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe that this land is their land, so they fight for it in the name of [Yahweh] or Jesus or Allah. … If we want to live in the real world rather than down a rabbit hole of our own imagining then we need to reckon with it.” (p.337)
* * *
We are fortunate to live in a country in which people of differing religious convictions can live in relative peace. But our peaceful co-existence is easily disrupted if it is based only on superficial acceptance that disguises deep ignorance and a cultivated indifference. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” is a poor policy for real understanding. If this is our guiding principle, real peace and harmony will forever elude us.
May ours be a faith that looks beyond superficial similarities, and honors deeply held difference.
Every one of us is on a religious journey, traveling separate paths, some of which may lead us up mountains, and others down rabbit holes. May we forever strive to learn from one another, cherishing our differences as the precious opportunities they are, to lead us toward greater insight. May we remember that it is through gaining a deeper understanding of others that we will gain a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Amen.
