Living In Sin

"A thousand years is but a day..." so a couple of months? Well, here's another installment, and, as intended, the topic is sin. There is so much to unpack from just three letters. Part of the delay in posting is the question: where to begin? Not finding a natural place that doesn't require more background, I'll begin where I may, knowing there will be opportunity to post more later. This post introduces two directions from which to look at sin. They could be mutually exclusive, but they do not have to be. And note, that while sin has it's place as THE human problem, Marcus Borg draws attention in Speaking Christian to other pressing human problems addressed in the Bible that he would not call sin.

Christian tradition has looked at sin from a couple of directions (at least). From either of these directions, sin is alienation from God. For those, unaccustomed to God-talk, I'll frame sin this way, using language I have introduced elsewhere in the blog: Sin is our alienation (or separation) from that to which we ought to be loyal, the gap, if you will, between what we are loyal to and what we ought to be loyal to. But primarily, this post introduces two directions from which to look at sin.

Through many conversations, I gather that the most common way to think of sin is as a discrete wrongdoing - a bad deed, perhaps, like a breach of the Ten Commandments, or an action that can be categorized in the Seven Deadly Sins. This was certainly the only way I had thought about sin and sins before I became more familiar with Christian thought. We are alienated from God by each and all of our actions that are less than loving toward our neighbors. Sin is the gap in our actions between the "is" and the "ought".

There are benefits to this way of thinking. We are not infrequently alienated from our neighbors because of things we do. We understand in those cases that we ought to make amends and hopefully be forgiven by those neighbors in order to rebuild the breached relationship. And it is easy to imagine that it could be so with God. In addition, dealing with individual acts and omissions breaks the problem down into manageable chunks. We can feel that we are working to improve ourselves, and, for most of us, we could use a little improving. (This view can also be enlarged from the individual to the corporate level, although the chunks then become more difficult to manage). This is a strain of Christian tradition that accentuates righteousness as obeying commandments. It can be biblically inferred. Our sinful actions cause our alienation from God. Work on the actions brings us closer to God, closing the behavioral gap between the "is" and the "ought".

We can come at the question of sinful acts from the other direction. In this case, our alienation from God causes our sinful actions. This too has biblical support. The fundamental problem is not that we do bad things (although that is a problem for those who have to endure them), but that we are not loyal to God in the first place. In fact, our actions are quite appropriate in reflecting our loyalties to the idols of status, tribe, security, or whatever. Rather than piecemeal reform of actions, we need to bring God into the center of our lives instead of the idols, and allow our behavior to flow accordingly. Sin is the loyalty gap between the "is" and the "ought".

This is the call to repentance. The Greek for repentance, metanoia, means something like "thinking beyond ourselves", more righteous thinking, perhaps, and the Hebrew teshuvah means "to turn", a turning toward God. Thinking beyond and turning may include regret for actions or inactions, and may include making amends to those we have hurt, but primarily repentance is about a new, deeper relationship with God. We are closing the gap between that to which we are loyal and that to which we ought to be loyal.

The Roman Catholic sacrament of confession looks at first sight to be about asking forgiveness for sins as actions. Protestants tend to pray for forgiveness in a similar way. But it seems to me that the sacrament (as outward sign of inward, invisible grace) is in the forgiveness part. The power of the sacrament or the prayer lies in our realization of being forgiven and accepted. We may learn to love more deeply when we feel how deeply we are loved.

Enough for now, and I know that I am barely scratching the surface. When I first encountered the possibility that alienation from God causes sin, rather than sin causing alienation, I had much to reflect on before I moved on. And even now, in the writing, this idea sheds new light on old questions for me. May it be so for you.

Sick Souls and Healthy Minds

Conversations outside the blog have led me to back up a little. 

You may have been reading previous posts, and finding it difficult to follow my pessimistic assessment of human nature. This may not be the fault of my argument or of your ability to follow it, but a result of our respective religious temperaments. So, before I go further in describing Sin, it might not be amiss to reflect on the work of philosopher and psychologist William James (sitting at left above). If you are interested, his book The Varieties of Religious Experience is well worth reading, but I will give here brief descriptions of the religous temperaments he termed "healthy-minded" and "sick-souled"

William James well understood that people express religion in various ways, and that this had to do with experience and temperament. He noted that some speakers seem certain of the goodness of life, exuding confidence in human abilities to do the right and abstain from wrongdoing, who saw every setback in moral character as temporary and, in principle, correctible by piecemeal adjustments to our behavior and relationship with the world. He would use the term "healthy-minded" to describe their outlook. They were generally to be found in the liberal denominations of his day (and I would hazard in our own), and James thought that the Roman Catholic Church was generally amenable to the healthy-minded. For a healthy-minded preacher, think Ralph Waldo Emerson. Those sharing this temperament, we would call optimistic, and they certainly appear to live happier lives than the other grouping that James observed.

These he termed "sick-souled". Their assessment of nature and human character was much bleaker, not something to be remedied by piecemeal adjustments, but requiring wholesale conversion, understood to arrive "supernaturally", certainly from beyond the usual plane of human effort. These were often found in Protestantism (although, note the optimism of 19th century Unitarianism and Universalism). For a sick-souled preacher, think Jonathan Edwards. While the sick-souled live less happy lives, James considered they have something serious to offer us with respect to understanding the human condition.

James also understood that people lay on a continuum between extremes of healthy-minded and sick-souled. He held to a pragmatic philosophy, regarding as philosophically true that which was useful for our behavior. He was certainly not averse to searching for the true among alternative or opposing ideas, for which I consider him wise, since the sick-souled and the healthy-minded have much to offer to each other, if only we are willing to listen.

Our religious temperament also impacts on understandings of wrongdoing and evil. To the healthy-minded the problem of evil is the problem of "ills and sins in the plural, removable in detail". To the sick-souled the problem is "Sin in the singular, with a capital S, as of something ineradically ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never to be removed by any superficial, piecemeal operations."

Traditionally, Sin has been understood as alienation to God. In an earlier post (Between Gods and Idols), I suggested a definition of God as Ordering Principle, along the lines of "that to which our thoughts and actions ought to be loyal". This seems to me a useful way of encouraging conversation among the widest range of belief. Whether gods are imagined walking on Olympus or in Eden, whether understood as disembodied intelligence or set of ideals, whether the "believer" calls themselves Christian, theist, agnostic or atheist, as long as they value some attitudes and actions over others, they will find a place in the conversation.

The problem of Sin becomes the question of what prevents our thoughts and actions being in the service of or directed toward this Ordering Principle, which I call God, and the question of how this alienation from this Ordering Principle might be removed. We are also interested in describing the consequences of Sin, and the consequences of its removal. Those of us who are Christian will want an account of this in traditional and biblical language, while those coming from other traditions or none may want to reflect on how they describe these terms.

Which brings me back to comments. Be assured, I'd be interested in your impressions to this developing theology, and so might other readers. Theology is a conversation. Please submit comments.

Kandinsky or Klee?

The last post explored what I would call a sympathetic, liberal understanding of the Doctrine of Total Depravity, against traditional liberalism's affirmation of human perfectibility. I am not saying the former is true, while the latter is an incorrect way of describing the situation. One can view human nature in either light. But I am saying, it's worth exploring the hopeful pessimism of the dimmer view of human nature. After all, is it easier to do the right thing, or the most convenient thing? And how are we motivated to do the former in preference to the latter?

The second of our Unitarian Universalist Principles covenants us to affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations. One would like to hope that almost everyone would agree that we should treat people well and treat people fairly. And while the optimist can take cheer for the observation that, from day to day, people are often kind and fair enough to each other, there is plenty of room for pessimism. It's no surprise to survey, not just history, but the present, and observe how frequently people perpetuate cruelty and injustice. At the historical level, this can rise to the proportions of the Holocaust, while at smaller scales, for example, we easily excuse ourselves for buying products made in sweatshops.

Much psychological research has been inspired by attempts to understand the conditions that made for the Holocaust. Why did (and do) people perpetrate such cruelty? Until the work of Henri Tajfel, psychologists had put this down to either individual personality (some people are more inclined toward evil than others), or competition for resources. Tajfel's work in the 1970s implies that group loyalty and social identity may have much to do with favoring the in-group; and that it didn't take much to create in people a sense of group identity to which they could be loyal.

Tajfel set out to investigate the minimal conditions under which people act on a sense of group identity. In his first experiments, he showed 14 to 15-year-old boys a series of abstract paintings by Wassily Kandinsky or Paul Klee and asked which of the two they preferred. He then told them they had been placed into one of two groups based on this preference, when, in fact, they had been randomly assigned to one of the groups. He then gave them a workbook through which they would distribute a small financial reward to other participants in the study. They could not reward themselves, and all they knew about the other participants was which group they had been placed into. Tajfel found that the schoolboys tended consistently to reward those in their own group more than those in the other group.

Further work has demonstrated that this result is generalizable to adults, that we will show group loyalty even if our group assignment is based on a coin-toss, and that we will disciminate against people ,we are told, transferred from the other group into our own. We will even prefer to assign less to our own group as long as we can assign even less to the others! (For example, we would give our own group 11 coins against 1 for the other group, rather than give our own group 15 and the other group 10).

Tajfel found that in-group favoritism does not require us to have much in common with our group. We need have no future accountability toward its members, and no personal interest in resources. So how much more might we act on prejudice, when we have connections with others in our group of culture, language, blood and affection, along with reciprocal favoritism from them in the future.

Before Tajfel's work on group identity, Stanley Milgram had demonstrated that more than two thirds of his subjects were willing to administer remotely what they believed were lethal electric shocks, as long as they were ordered to do so by a white-coated scientist in the belief that it was "all for the good of science". It is heartening that almost one third of the subjects refused to continue, although they were placing themselves at no risk in doing so. I wonder what the proportions would be if the disobedient could be summarily executed.

And before that, Solomon Asch demonstrated that subjects were willing to acquiesce in a group's obvious misjudgment. Briefly, the experimental subject was shown three lines of different lengths on one card, and then on another card a single line matching one of the three. The task, as the subject believed, was to match the single line to one of the three. This was to be done as part of a group, but unknown to the subject, the other members of the group were part of the experiment, having been briefed beforehand whether they should unanimously give the correct answer or the incorrect one. The room was so arranged that the subject would be the last or penultimate one to respond.

Asch found that a surprisingly large proportion of subjects would conform to the group's obviously incorrect answer. About three-quarters of subjects went along with the group at least once, while, overall, participants went along with the group a little under one third of the time. Although acquiescing in incorrect assessments of line lengths is of little moral importance, the subjects were not under much pressure to conform. In circumstances where going along with the group is immoral, there is often coercion to conform and danger in dissent. At the very least, there is the possibility of breaking existing relationships.

All of this research is conducted on "ordinary" people. They are not what we might think of as especially evil people; indeed, they are good like you and me. I imagine that, as social animals, we are deeply programmed for loyalty and trust. It's certainly not difficult to imagine evolutionary grounds for our tendency to trust authority or be loyal to our group; people who willingly gave loyalty to their group and trusted their leaders likely prevailed over other groups. That it was once successful, doesn't mean that it is now good behavior - or that it ever was.

None of the above settles whether, by our own means, we can climb out of this state of affairs; or alternatively, we need prompting from something beyond us. Here's how I see it. The depth of programming in us for group loyalty and trust makes it very difficult - impossible maybe - to know whether our social motivations are good. And if we separate from groups and leaders, then we are left on our own, and, as individuals, I don't believe we are any better off. How can we tell if we are being selfish or not? Or if we are rationalizing instead of reasoning?

Given my pessimistic description of human nature, a cynical response might be to go along with the survival of the fittest; and a despairing response might be to give up altogether on working for justice, equity and compassion.

Rather, I would choose a hopeful response. There are resources that can tip the balance, that help us to do the right as we discern it, rather than the merely convenient, even in the face of possible hardship. And this is what religions should provide. These resources don't make us perfect, and they don't make us better than other people. But perhaps they can transform us to grow toward being in ways we could not previously have imagined. And while, no doubt, these resources exist elsewhere, I have found hope and Good News in Christianity among Unitarian Universalists. Not that we're all pessimists about human nature; some, maybe most, disagree with me. But God is the ground for our debate, not a weapon.

Next time: What happens when we miss the mark, and how we might be saved from it.

Naughty or Nice?

Are people naughty or nice? This is a question that comes up whether we count ourselves religious or not. We cannot avoid seeing people acting both well and badly toward each other, and, as long as people often behave badly, some account of it must be had. If we are hopeful, this account will offer some way out of complacent acceptance of our own wickedness or acceptance of the suffering of some at the hands of others toward a future where love and justice are the arbiters of decision making. It sounds like the "Reign of God" to put it in Christian language.

As I write, I don't want to give the impression that the account given here is the only possible account; it is not. I will not even warrant that I can express it as accurately as I should wish. I present this account of human nature - part of theological anthropology - because this was for me an important element of thinking my way into Christianity, when I encountered it in a systematic theology class. The question of human nature is really the question of Sin and its antidote. Or in other language: What do we need to be saved from? And how?

My thinking over the next few posts comes from Mark Heim's presentation in that class, my reading of Reinhold Niebuhr (in particular, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume One), and from the scientific insights of evolutionary psychology. But all this has a biblical basis as well. Christian readings of Genesis 1-3 present the story of a good creation subverted by the Fall, as the prelude to eventual redemption. The apostle Paul wrote:

For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. (1 Cor 15:21-22)

Augustine and Calvin developed this idea, and it is to Calvin's Doctrine of Total Depravity that I now turn. And I would frame the question as not whether people do wicked things, but the extent to which we can prevent ourselves from doing wicked things by our own efforts. Calvin's Doctrine of Total Depravity is not popular in Unitarian Universalist circles; I have heard said on several occasions that the doctrine is incompatible with affirming the first of our principles: the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

What follows is an attempt to look more positively at this doctrine.My aim is less to convert anyone to my particular point of view, but to provide resources that encourage justice, compassion and hope. In summary here is the Doctrine of Total Depravity (hereafter "Total Depravity"). It might better be called the Doctrine of Pervasive Depravity. I break it down into three parts.

   First: Humans have a propensity to sin, inherited from the fall of Adam - Bad News
   Second: This affects in some part all our thoughts and actions - Very Bad News
   Third:  We are saved from this state of affairs by God's grace - Very Good News

To be fair, one might argue from Calvin's doctrine that being so wicked, humans are worthy of little consideration, especially in conjunction with other Calvinist teachings of Double Predestination and Substitutionary Atonement. Some have no doubt experienced such an attitude from Calvinistic churches. And Calvin's own behavior around the trial and execution of Michael Servetus does not suggest that Calvin cared much about the inherent worth and dignity of every person. I will leave this to Calvin's biographers, and return to the three-point summary of total Depravity above.

Even in the absence of negative experiences I can see why many Unitarian Universalists do not like "Total Depravity". In the absence of conviction concerning part three, there are dangers in holding only to parts one and two. We are left with only bad news and no way out. In fact, the third statement opens the way, not only to hope, but also to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. If we have worth in God's eyes (because God desires to save us), then we ought to treat each other accordingly.

Although the "us" to be saved may not have gone far in the eyes of Calvin (he taught Double Predestination), it did to our Universalist forebears. Early American Universalists like John Murray were steeped in Calvinist theology and accepted "Total Depravity" in its entirety. Whereas in traditional Calvinism, God has determined to save only a remnant, Calvinist Universalists declared that God has both the will and the power to save us all. They taught that God loves us all not because of how good we are (in fact, in spite of our wickedness), but merely for being God's creation; what we might call our inherent worth and dignity. Once we are convinced of God's unconditional love for us, goodness is our only possible response. God does not love us because we are good; we are good because God loves us.

In opposition to "Total Depravity", traditional liberal theology affirmed human perfectibility. Unitarians of the 19th century called this "salvation by character". In part, it represents a reaction against the supposed and experienced gloominess of the whole Calvinist package of total Depravity, Substitutionary Atonement and Double Predestination. "Human Perfectibility" does not deny the human capacity for evil, but differs from "Total Depravity" in points two and three. Here is a summary:
   First: Humans have a capacity to sin.
   Second: There is a God-given place in our psyche from which we can judge ourselves.
   Third: We have the will to act on this self-judgment which will save us from the deathly consequences of sin.

This raises us from the status of persistent wrongdoer to being on the path of righteousness. The affirmation is noble if we understand the "us" here to be universal. It opposed the gloominess of traditional Calvinism with optimism in human abilities, which, by Victorian standards, seemed eminently justified. It led to the quip, related by Thomas Starr King, that while the Universalists believed God was too good to damn them, the Unitarians believed they were too good to be damned!

Joking aside, there are dangers in holding to "Human Perfectibility". It fuels self-righteousness and hubris.It closely pegs our worth on our capacity for improvement, and undermines the very possibility of inherent worth. It may ultimately end in disillusion and despair when we have tried to be good and failed, for example, because of compulsion or addiction.

And in my view, while there is much we can do for ourselves, our grounds for adequate hope cannot rest with us alone. One Christian way of telling the story is that we inherit Original Sin from Adam. We do not have to take the Garden of Eden literally, to understand how Sin might be inherited. From an evolutionary perspective, humans have evolved along with everything else, due to selection pressures. This selection is for survival not virtue, and we ought to be aware of the likelihood that evolutionary behavior is deeply embedded in us. Depth psychology suggests that we are often not very aware of why we act in certain ways. Certainly we can have no assurance that we are completely aware of our motivations. More often that not, we rationalize our actions after our brains have determined what to do. The metaphor of us riding the elephant is quite apt: no really, I wanted the elephant to crash through the gate and go into that field!

Well, all this probably raises more questions than it answers - as I think theology probably should. What do we mean by Sin? What is Salvation? Where is the boundary between human action and divine gift? And what do we mean by God anyway? The next post will continue along this line of thought.

God is not a Billiard Ball

Many of my conversations with atheists feel like this to me:

Anelectronist: I don't believe in electrons, you know, little billiard balls of negative charge that whizz around circuits and make them work.
Electronist: But something must carry negative charge.
Anelectronist: From what I read, a single electron can pass through two slits at the same time and make an interference pattern on the other side, like ripples on water. Billiard balls can't do that, even really small ones.
Electronist: Well, physicists don't think of electrons as billiard balls anymore. They talk about wave-particle duality or "wavicles", which exhibit properties of both waves and particles, to describe really small entities like electrons.
Anelectronist: I don't know about that. I define electrons as billiard balls and many other people think of them that way. So, I have to say, in light of these paradoxes, electrons don't exist.
Electronist: So, what do you think carries negative charge? Something must carry negative charge.
Anelectronist: Well, maybe there's something to these wavicles, although it sounds kind of incoherent to me - I don't see how something can be a wave and a particle at the same time. In any case, you'll have to come up with a better word for them. I can't talk about electrons without imagining little billiard balls.

Of course, I have loaded this rhetorically. Nearly anyone who thinks about it would realize that not believing in electrons is absurd, and that scientists are at liberty to update their models of reality as the data come in. I don't know of any "electronist" fundamentalists, for example, who continue to maintain billiard ball electrons in the face of the evidence! Nor of "anelectronists" who refuse to talk about electrons.

I suspect this has more to do with the human psychology of identity formation than with the facts on the ground. No one I know regards the existence of electrons as important in their view of themselves, but religious (as well as those who identify themselves as not religious) people often respond to criticism of their beliefs as if they were attacks on themselves. From a rational perspective, electrons exist in some form whatever an electron fundamentalist or anelectronist tells me! But when our deeply-held beliefs, theist or atheist, are under attack, a rational perspective is difficult to bring to the fore.

From the religious side, when I'm not annoyed, I can identify with Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb:

And [the angels] said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." (John 20:13)

Whether the perceived attack comes from a fundamentalist or an atheist, it can feel as though something very close to me is being taken away to who knows where? Scripture reminds me that Christ cannot be taken from me anymore than he could be taken from Mary. The resurrected Christ may also appear quite differently from the Christ I had remembered, yet still feel deeply the same.
A wider theological objection than atheism or fundamentalism is a traditionalism that would proscribe new ways of thinking. In the "existence-of-electrons debate" the traditional electronists would argue that billiard balls have been and continue to be quite adequate for everyday purposes, so why confuse people with complicated and unconventional electronology, when it gets in the way of useful stuff like building circuits, or whatever.

Whether traditional electronism is viable I don't know, but we do, for example, teach Newtonian mechanics in school, which is adequate to navigate the solar system, in spite of Einstein's relativity. We even start by simplifying it to ignore air resistance in calculating the path of a tennis ball from a moving train. We certainly allow paradoxes to remain in science, as of the incommensurability of relativity and quantum mechanics, even as we attempt theories of everything. So there may be pedagogical as well as pragmatic reasons to use simplified models in theology, just as in science.

In fact, theological models beyond stale tradition exist quite widely. What we learned about God in childhood may well be outgrown as we experience life. Thus, if life is good for us, then it's rather easy to imagine that God works things for the good. As we see and experience pain and injustice we may come to question what we were told about God. Traditionally, for example, classical theism claims that God is omnibenevolent (possibly meaning: infinitely good) and omnipotent (possibly meaning: all-powerful). The existence of evil and suffering suggests that the God of classical theism is either unwilling or unable to prevent them. The inability of people to grow in their thinking within their church of origin leads many to leave the church, often at the high emotional cost of disrupted relationships.

While there are biblical passages that support an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God, there are others that place limitations on God. Thus, the Bible itself encourages healthy debate. In the field of theology, Open Theism and Process Theology are just two ways of rethinking the God of Christianity to help us make religious sense of the data of human experience. I will go into no detail here - another post for sure - because my only point in mentioning them for now is this: God is not a billiard ball.

The Bible Is Not A Book

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" 1 Thessalonians v.21

This verse was the text on which William Ellery Channing, Unitarian minister, built his Batimore sermon "Unitarian Christianity" in 1819. In the sermon he laid out a case for using reason in interpreting scripture, and in his opinion, that precluded such theologies as the Trinity, or the divinity of Jesus Christ. Most importantly, he wasn't insisting that we use reason for its own sake, but as the best tool for inspiring us to live righteously. We need a God, that inspires us in head and heart to use our hands. Or in other words, that which ought to direct our actions (Organizing Principle) must take hold of our whole person.

As with so much else, what we get out of the Bible depends on what we bring to it. The greatest advice I was given on entering theological school, wary of the biblical tradition and skeptical of Christianity, was to read with critical mind and open heart. There are many expressions of Christianity, and many ways of reading the Bible. In the tradition of which I am part, understanding literary and historical contexts are important in reading the Bible, and I got plenty of that in theological school. I have spoken to several ministers (in other denominations) who have told me they could not possibly teach their congregations what they learned in seminary. That is why I am a Unitarian Universalist.

In a more ecumenical spirit I would affirm that the purpose of our reading is to participate in and advance God's Kingdom of love and justice until the day when God brings it to fruition. If historical and literary criticism of the Bible get in the way of this, then there is something wrong. But, for me, reading the Bible in these contexts is a way into devotional reading.

The Bible is not a book. By this I mean, first, that the Bible is not merely a book, but holds a special authoritative status for Christians - even if we cannot agree on how to read it! And second, the Bible is not a single book, but a collection of books, each with its own genre and worldview.

The first assertion is likely to be agreeable to nearly all who would identify as Christians, but there is more to be said nonetheless.  The Universalist Winchester Profession held that "We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain a revelation of the character of God, and of the duty, interest and final destination of mankind" - an incredible statement for 1803.

In particular, the word "contain" suggests to me that the Bible is of indirect revelatory value. The Universalists are saying that the Bible is not a revelation from start to finish; indeed it is not itself a revelation, but contains a revelation. It is necessary to separate the contents of the Bible to seek the revelation. To me, this indicates that interpretation is key;  revelation is the scriptures interpreted (why we need Lenses to See By). The interpreter, and I would add, the interpreting community and tradition are important players. When all goes well, and the yield is good fruit, then we might be so bold as to say the Holy Spirit has spoken through scripture. However, just as in a preface, where an author frequently thanks friends who have influenced and edited the work yet takes responsibility for all mistakes, we might thank the Holy Spirit, yet take responsibility for our necessarily imperfect work.

Another remarkable word in the Winchester Profession is "a". That is, although the Bible contains a revelation, that does not preclude that revelation may be found elsewhere. Elsewhere might be reason, scientific observation, and maybe even in the scriptures of non-Christian traditions. There is much to say about the relationship between Special Revelation (i.e. the Bible, and, for some, the Church) and General Revelation. And I'll not say too much for now - only affirm that the Bible gives us, as Christians, a common reference point for discussion - argument even - as to how we should be, as well as inspiration to be as we should.

My second assertion is that the Bible is a collection of works, rather than a single book. This will certainly not meet with acceptance among Christians, who want to see a single and consistent message from Genesis to Revelation. I have been taught, and my reading confirms, there are many voices and strands of tradition within the Bible's pages. In the Old Testament, for example, we have prophets and historians, who maintain that when people misbehave, God responds with calamities. And then there is the Book of Job, which maintains that calamity has little relationship with righteousness. Or the need for cultic purity conflicts with the knowledge that King David was descended from a Moabite. In the New Testament, a tradition of salvation by works vies with a tradition of salvation by faith. Or between the leveling of slave and free and the need for slaves to obey their masters. All this is reminiscent of a dialectical process whereby the truth is somehow beyond the options, though not necessarily absent in either of them.

As a collection of works, the Bible contains law codes, proverb collections, hymns and poems, theological history, along with the words and deeds of prophets. There are probably plain factual accounts of happenings alongside prophetic rhetoric and performance art. In discerning how we should be, this variety of texts does lead to some very different understandings of what God wants for us - just look at the debate within the church regarding the legitimacy of homosexual marriage. But this kind of debate prevents us from becoming too attached to the idols of interpretation that we set up for ourselves.

Lenses to See By

Some time after the age of forty, I couldn't read as comfortably as before. The optometrist told me it was "presbyopia" (not to be confused with presbyterianism!), and that prescription reading glasses would help - which they do. Now, more than ever, I realize that we all need lenses to see clearly, even if they are the ones we were born with. How we interpret what we see depends on our cultural lenses, and the religious side of this is my topic here.

The cultural specificity of religions had always bothered me. Many religious practitioners make claims that theirs is the only True Religion, while the rest of us are deluded - or worse. Yet religions are clearly cultural products, and had I been born in Thailand, I suppose I would have been a Buddhist. Of course, science is in no better position in that regard, since whether we take science seriously also depends on our education and upbringing. Science, to be true, does not pretend to offer an exact description of the universe (science assumes that further data will modify or even radically change our understanding). However, the scientific method does claim to be the True Way (as it were) to better understand the universe, and, as a scientist, I'm inclined to believe that. My scientific inclinations are as culturally embedded as my religious ones.

In science, observational data support theories of the universe or its constituent parts. In religion, it's not so clear what observational data there might be. A biblical possibility comes from the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Anticipating multiple, and possibly self-serving, teachings within Christianity, Matthew 7:15-20 records Jesus' caution about "wolves in sheep's clothing", telling us, "by their fruits you shall know them". The Sermon is largely about ethical and religious Torah, and its summary (7:12), "in everything do to others as you would have them do to you: for this is the law and the prophets", suggests the nature of the fruits we should look for.

The turn to scripture here is religiously pragmatic; this is for me a fount of inspiration, and I'm not trying to slip in a claim that this is the only way to see the matter. Many religious traditions have some version of the Golden Rule, and it is not easy to choose between them. And even if you do, which version of a tradition do you choose? And how do you view that choice? For my part I choose what inspires me, and a community of which I am a part. So, here is a little to introduce where I am coming from, since not all readers of this blog know much about me. When asked my religious affiliation, I could reply, "Unitarian Universalist Christian." Which of course, doesn't make things much clearer for most people!

Most people I meet have heard of Christianity, and are aware that it has some variety. At the least, they have heard of Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic, or some of the many Protestant denominations. Among that variety, some are liberal, some conservative, and some more difficult to define. And all this makes Christianity hard to define. A Methodist minister once asked me if I believed that Jesus in the New Testament had been killed, and whether that Jesus was alive for me today. On my affirmative answer, he declared that was enough to be Christian for a start - although not a Methodist, mind! Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity suggests as marks of Christianity: the reality of God, and the centrality of the Bible and Jesus. While some want to draw the circle quite widely , others are more narrow in their definition of what it takes to be "true believers".

While there is an understandable desire to find once and for all a "true Christianity", stripped of all denominational pretensions, I'm not sure that it is desirable or possible. Even to take a stand on Bible alone is a stand that one must choose to take; the history of the wider tradition suggests that extra-biblical commentary has been the historical norm. Indeed, even the position of Bible-alone is an extra-biblical stand. We must at least be honest that each of our church communities has made a decision on how it interprets Christianity. Diversity of interpretation may actually be helpful, inasmuch as different churches are willing to engage in genuine, respectful and transforming dialogue.

This diversity of interpretation has probably been true ever since evangelists moved from their founding community to spread the gospel to other communities with different needs and expectations. Diarmaid McCullough's BBC series, The History of Christianity stresses divisions among Christians from the very beginning of the movement, and also emphasizes some of the strands of Christianity that we in the West tend not to recall. Each Christian community (indeed, each Christian) views the tradition through a lens, shaped by experience, teaching and temperament, among much else.

The lens I have chosen is that of Unitarian Universalism, a liberal religious movement that formed the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961 through the merger of Unitarians and Universalists, both of which have denominational roots in the USA that go back to the founding of the nation. Unitarians grew out of the established church in Massachusetts, insisting on a rational understanding of scripture (in which they could see little evidence for trinitarian doctrine). Universalists made their name preaching universal salvation (which they also derived from rational interpretation of scripture) against the prevailing belief that many - in fact, most - would endure eternal torment in hell after death.

Starting out as liberal Christian denominations, Unitarian Universalism has come to include Humanists, Pagans, Buddhists, Christians, and others who tend not to think of a particular religious affiliation. (This list is by no means exhaustive, but merely those I've met in some numbers). With such wide latitude for individual religious opinions, we are not bound by a creed, but by common values as expressed in these Principles and Purposes.

I wrote above about Christianity being viewed through a lens. By the same token, each Unitarian Universalist sees Unitarian Universalism through a lens. In my case, that lens is a recognizable religious tradition - Christianity. But Unitarian Universalists are not under an obligation to define or identify with any particular tradition. Indeed, many would say they were just "Unitarian Universalists", although I question whether any such thing exists; we all see through lenses, even if those of a rational humanist, or a syncretic Pagan-Taoist.

I have presented a couple of the choices I have made: Unitarian Universalism and Christianity. The choices, however, are not entirely free. And here I am referring to choices as embedded in culture, education, experience and what have you. One criticism of Unitarian Universalism is that we can believe anything, which just isn't true.

Here are three possible constraints on what we can believe (and there may be more). First, from a scientific and logical perspective, some things are just false; we cannot simply believe what is falsifiable or illogical, for example, that two plus two equals five, or that cats can breathe underwater. Second, as Unitarian Universalists, we are covenanted to affirm and promote certain principles and purposes; we ought not believe that people can own one another, or that heretics should be put to death. And third, we cannot believe contrary to experience, teaching and temperament, any more than we can like music or visual art that we detest. We cannot believe anything. Our choice is not entirely free.

Which brings me to this conclusion. It matters which lenses we see through. The lenses I have chosen (or perhaps, they chose me) allow me to see the world more clearly, as best I can tell. They allow me to discern what to do and how to be. What I see through these lenses inspires me to do and to be. It comforts me when doing and being are too much. And it's not just about me and my lenses; it's actually about lenses we share in community, and how our being and doing affects the world. That will be a topic for another post.

In the meantime, I invite you to consider the following questions. What lenses do I see through? What do I see that is inpsiring? Comforting? Transforming? How does that benefit the world? How do I ensure that my lenses aren't misleading me?

Between Gods and Idols

Once upon a time, people believed that the gods walked on Earth and any suggestion that they lacked material bodies would have been greeted with uproar. More recently, it has been held that God is something like a disembodied spirit, and has attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. Other theologians have offered other ways of understanding God which critique some of these. Process theologians nuance omnipotence, preferring a God who lures us toward right actions, while the existential theologian Paul Tillich would argue that God is not an existing being, but is Being itself. My point being, that people who are interested in such things have never agreed on a definition. No doubt they never will; and it will always be in transition as our experiences change.

It's not just theological words that do this. Consider the word atom. I am fairly sure that atoms exist. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus supposed that one could minutely divide matter until one arrived at something that could not be further divided, an atom. Then we found even those could be divided further with components of positive and negative charge. How we imagined atoms made of positive and negative charge has changed from plum pudding to electrons orbiting a nucleus to orbitals and wavefunctions... We don't have to understand all this, but even scientific words change their meanings and embody evolving concepts.

Language is never static. I will be using a broad definition for the word "God", as I will for other words with religious connotations - including "religious". For example, when I think "idol", I do not merely imagine a thing carved and painted and worshiped. I think of how we worship our own creations; our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes speak of "idolatries of the mind and spirit". Now I realize that using definitions like this will not make everyone happy. People on both sides of the religious divide ("believers" and "unbelievers") have their interests in particular definitions, rather than the broadest ones. The broad terms bring the greatest number to the conversation, and allow us to examine traditional authorities in a modern (post-modern) light.
What to me seems essential about the term God, is how beliefs and faith concerning God have served historically as an ordering principle to people's lives, whether they understood it to be corporeal or spiritual, and whatever other attributes gods have been thought to possess. In his essay "A Faith For The Free", Unitarian Universalist James Luther Adams uses this line of thought as he asserts that everyone has faith in something.

“The question concerning faith is not, ‘Shall I be a [person] of faith?’ The proper question is, rather, ‘Which faith is mine?’ or, better, ‘Which faith should be mine?’ for, whether a person craves prestige, wealth, security, or amusement, whether [they live] for country, for science, for God or for plunder, [they show] that [they have] faith, [they show] that [they put their] confidence in something.

“The faiths of the twentieth century have been as powerful and influential as any that have ever been. They have created its science and its atom bombs, its nationalisms and its internationalisms, its wars and its 'peace,' its heroisms and its despairs, its Hollywoods and its Broadways, its Wall Streets and its Main Streets, its Gestapos and its undergrounds, its democracies and its Fascisms, its socialisms and its communisms, its wealth and its poverty, its securities and its insecurities, its beliefs and its unbeliefs, its questions and its answers.

“We must not believe every ‘pious’ [person’s] religion to be what [they say] it is. [They] may go to church regularly, [they] may profess some denominational affiliation, [they] may repeat [their] creed regularly, but [they] may actually give [their] deepest loyalty to something quite different from these things and from what they represent. Find out what that is and you have found [their] religion. You will have found [their] god. It will be the thing [they get] most excited about, the thing that most deeply concerns [them]. But speak against it in the pulpit or in the Pullman car, and [they] may forget what [they call their] religion or [their] god, and rush ‘religiously’ to the defense of what really concerns [them]. The veins on [their] forehead will be distended, [their] eyes will flash, [they] will begin to raise [their] voice. What moves [them] now is more important than [their] creed or [their] atheism; it gives meaning and direction to [their] life...”

This rings true for me. I particularly like the phrase "you will have found [their] god", because it suggests to me a commonality through which we all might be able to talk about gods and Gods, even people who would say they believed in no god. Many conversations begin with an assumption that God is very particularly defined, and then proceed to demolish or provide proofs of existence from there. I do not find this a useful approach. I am interested in the role of god or God in people's lives - this is my pragmatism speaking here. From that perspective, the only important attribute is that god directs the believer's life. In fact, this suggests a good working definition for god: that which directs and gives meaning to a believer's life is their god or gods. To the extent that everyone lives to some kind of purpose, it makes sense to talk about this common experience of seeking and living purposeful lives, of following god. I would have no trouble with calling this entity, one's ordering principle (or even Ordering Principle), except that it conveys nothing of the history of its potential meanings - and is nearly six-times longer!

How this god is related to God is also suggested by the Adams passage. God (upper case G) is that which we should have faith in, as opposed to what we actually have faith in, which would be god (lower case g). I would suggest that there are of necessity some gaps here. First, between what we really should follow and what we actually follow, and second, between our ideals and how we actually live. The first would be a measure of idolatry - in the sense of worshiping what we have made. The second is a measure of something, but I'm not sure what to call it, living below our ideals.

At first sight, the inevitability of idolatry and living below our ideals might seem discouraging. Usefully, though, it is a call to humility, recognizing that there is no completely right opinion, and allowing for a heuristic pursuit of theology. And although there are surely limits to acceptable degrees of idolatry and a point where our behavior becomes hypocrisy, we might want to be cautious about using such labels of others.

Addressing the question of living below our ideals, only low ideals are easy to attain. Thus, the gap between ideals and actions can reflect well on the ideals we are striving for. Striving may be the operative word here. As long as we are stretching toward the ideal, not much more can be asked of us. Adams seems more concerned with those who claim one allegiance for appearances, but actually live for less noble ends, which hypocrisy really is about - play acting. And he may also be thinking of those who sincerely profess one creed, but live another.

Those religious traditions which do use images for worship stress that the image itself is not worshiped, but the divine is worshiped beyond the image. So we might say the same about god and God - that we aim to discern God through our god. I might also temper my skepticism with the thought that even if we cannot know exactly, then maybe we can know well enough for the purposes at hand.

In summary, from a pragmatic perspective, I am thinking of God as Ordering Principle, that from which a person ought to derive purpose and direction. I am making no other claims for that entity; it may or may not be corporeal or spiritual, have particluar powers, or be encapsulated in any specific creed or tradition. My claim is based first on my experience of people - they appear to live with purpose - for good or ill, they put their trust in something; and second, on the intuition that some purposes really are better than others. For example, that living for greater love and justice is better than living for plunder or prestige.

Toward which God (Ordering Principle) do you reach? What kind of life purpose do you have faith in? What thoughts, words and deeds align with that purpose? And why (to each of these questions)? And then, what inspires you to live and be that way? These are the kinds of questions in the field of faith and theology.

In the Beginning

A few years ago, when I first tried writing a theology blog, I'd had few conversations outside seminary, and I had difficulty imagining an audience for the blog. It didn't get beyond a couple of posts. As of today, I've had many theological conversations in Unitarian Universalist congregations, and several years of exploring Unitarian Universalist Christianity. I think I have some idea of a likely audience. There will be other liberal Christians trying to make sense of traditional affirmations in a modern (post-modern?) world; there will be atheists trying to understand how this Unitarian Universalist can call himself Christian; and there will be seekers, not quite sure what they believe, but looking for something. On a more contrary note, there may be atheists concerned that religion (as they understand it) is encroaching on a secular (as they understand it) world view; and more traditional theists concerned that secular (as they understand it) ideas are encroaching on their religious (as they understand it) values.

Welcome, one and all! I encourage comments (which are moderated, by the way), so long as they are civil, and aimed at fostering understanding. Hey! You may even change my thinking. Another line of comments I would appreciate are those pointing toward writers, who have already explored points I raise in the blog. There is always more reading to do, and, even if I've read them I may not remember how they influenced me.

Why, More Than Theology? In part, because "More" refers to something deeper than we see at first glance of the world. William James, I think it was, used the term to describe the sacred. This describes well how I think of the religious: there is more to life than death; more to ethics than enlightened self-interest; more to our inner purposes than survival. As I investigate that "more", it seems to me beyond any finite formulation, which at least gives it some sense of transcendence.

Also, More Than Theology, because our words of faith are more than theological discourse. St Anselm of Canterbury famously described - although in Latin - theology as "faith seeking understanding". Theology is the more or less systematic description of what we believe. For example, in Christian language, to say that Christ is our Lord and Savior is a devotional declaration. To explain what we mean by the terms "Christ", "Lord"' "Savior" is theology, which may be dogmatic (i.e. believe it this way and you're in), or apologetic (i.e. when I/we use the phrase, this is what I/we mean). There may not be an entirely clean break between devotional language and theological language, since historically theological language has turned into devotional language (just look at the early creeds).

Programatically, I am interested in how devotional language may be understood in philosophical and everyday terms; also in how devotional language inspires action or gives solace in ways everyday and philosophical language do not. I am interested in what keeps people out of churches; and what might bring them in. And I am interested in diffusing the barriers to conversation across faiths and with those who say they have no faith.

My theological temperament - at present - requires understanding theologies in terms that are experiential, skeptical, pragmatic and pluralistic.
     Pluralistic: while it is obvious that some worldviews are clearly wrong, it is not obvious that only a single description of religious ends is correct. I use the analogy that a religion is like a language. there are many languages, and nobody would say that English is right and everyone else is wrong; it is possible that some concepts are better explored in some languages, and that might be true of religions as well. This is primarily why I am a Unitarian Universalist.
     Pragmatic: I mean this in the philosophical sense, that what is important to me is the usefulness of theological description in shaping behavior, rather than in describing the universe "as it is". This is the influence of William James. But I also understand the appeal of philosophical realism, so I'm not abandoning it entirely!
     Skeptical: skepticism is most commonly exercised today against faith, but I am thinking more generally than that. In the seventeenth century, skepticism was also directed at science and human ways of understanding as a bolster to faith. My skepticism originally came from a scientific perspective. But now for me, the two kinds of skepticism go together; whatever is transmitted to us as faith (and science) has been transmitted by other people who are fallible. I want to see evidence of and for faith (and science), and be aware of its limitations.
     Experiential: theology must make sense of our experience. It cannot simply touch us in some spiritual realm that is only tenously linked to reality. I am influenced by the writings of Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr on account of this kind of grounding, also the Unitarian Universalist James Luther Adams.

As for recent authors, I could cite as influences are Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, NT Wright, and Mark Heim. There are certainly others, and they will become apparent as I write more.

So, there you have it! As Luther declared: "I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen."
(Although, I would add, I reserve the right to change my opinion!)