1 Building Your Own Theology The Rev. Benjamin Maucere First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati 536 Linton Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45219 513.281.1564 October 1, 2017 From William Stafford: The Way I Write In the mornings I lie partly propped up the way Thomas Jefferson did when he slept at Monticello. Then I stop and look away like Emily Dickinson when she was thinking about the carriage and the fly. When someone disturbs me I come back like Pascal from those infinite spaces, but I don t have his great reassurances of math following along with me; so somehow the world around me is even scarier. Besides, the world on fire of Saint Teresa surrounds me, and the wild faces Dante awakened on his descent through those dark forbidden caverns. But over my roof bends my own kind sky and the mouse-nibble sound of now. The sky has waited a long time for this day. Trees have reached out, the river has scrambled to get where it is. And here I bring my little mind to the edge of the ocean and let it think. My head lolls to one side as thoughts pour onto the page, important additions but immediately obsolete, like waves. The ocean and I have many pebbles to find and wash off and roll into shape. What happens to all these rocks? They
2 become sand. And then? My hand stops. Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Pascal, Dante - they all pause too. The sky waits. I lean forward and write. (from Passwords, Harper Collins, 1991) Building Your Own Theology. How do we do this? What is the nature of the task? Isn t that something best left to professionals? (You know, don t try this at home. ) Or, an even more fundamental question: why do it at all? After all, think of how H.L. Menken described theology: an effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing. This is, of course, the same H.L. Menken who described Unitarianism as not really Christianity, but a mattress for skeptical Christians to fall on. Sometimes newcomers to Unitarian Universalism try to get a handle on our faith by asking the usual questions. What do Unitarian Universalists believe about: the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, baptism, and on and on. The dogma on these questions is what many people think of as theology. In these conversations, I respond that Unitarian Universalism is not a creedal religion, but rather a covenantal one. The church doesn t tell people what to believe. After several attempts to pin us down, the questioner will resort to the final question: well, you believe in God, don t you? And again I will have to say that we have many individual beliefs about God, but no church dogma. This central fact of Unitarian Universalism the fact that it is not based on a creed or a dogma either delights or dismays the newcomer. Some folks just walk away, shaking their heads in frustration. Other people s faces light up when they understand that this is a place where their own experience, their own conclusions are honored and respected. There are religions that teach that one can be saved by dogma. By belief. They offer one savior, one statement of faith, one scripture. This is not our way. For liberal religion isn t about conformity of belief. Was Jesus divine? Was Mohammed the last prophet? Was the Buddha the greatest exemplar of virtue? Well, it s your call. Liberal religion does not rest on whether we agree that the holy be called God or Goddess; or if we agree that the number of Gods is zero, or one or three or thousands. We need not think alike to love alike. Our way in theology is to encourage each individual to identify the holy and to release it from the bonds of dogma. This is the essence of BYOT. Of course, for Unitarian Universalists, when so much is open to question, there are some who challenge the very use of the term theology. Doesn t theology presume theism? Can an atheist have a theology? Wouldn t philosophy be a more useful term?
3 Yes, the Oxford English Dictionary defines theology as The study or science which treats of God, His nature and attributes, and His relations with man and the universe; the science of things divine (Hooker) And it cites John Locke, writing in the year 1638, that theology, which, containing the knowledge of God and His creatures, our duty to him and our fellow creatures, and a view of our present and future state, is the comprehension of all other knowledge, directed to its true end. Philosophy, however, is defined, (in the original and widest sense,) as the love, study, or pursuit of wisdom, or of knowledge of things and their causes, whether theoretical or practical. They both certainly sound worthy. But there are significant differences. The tension between them was addressed by Francis Bacon: Certainly a little philosophy inclineth to Atheisme, but depth in Philosophy bringeth [Us] about to Religion. (OED) Why would a little philosophy turn one toward atheism? One perspective on this statement is that at the time Bacon was writing, much of what they called philosophy was what we now call science. Since the church seemed to believe that Christianity required adopting and maintaining the worldview of the authors of the Bible, a worldview from thousands of years in the past, science seemed to contradict faith. And since there was no provision to develop one s own view of the divine, the choices were simple: God as defined by the Church or atheism. Atheism used to mean a repudiation of the Supernatural God of the Bible and for some professional atheists it still does. But those who have kept up with theology in the second half of the twentieth century know that the concept of God has been changing. Emerson once said that the gods we worship write their names on our faces, be sure of that. And we all worship something have no doubt about that either. We may not call it God; we may call it gain. For most of us, there is some value that we serve. It might be an ideology, or a social cause, or nationalism. We may not name it at all, but most of us live our lives in service to something. If we do not, then we are in serious danger. As the poet Russell Davenport reminds us, Let us not fear Man: let us fear Only what he believes in... It is Nothing that we must fear: the thought of Nothing: The sound of Nothing in our hearts... The belief in nothing.
4 A little philosophy might bring us to belief in nothing, but going deeper, Bacon asserted, brings us to religion. This assertion is why I use the term theology believing that philosophy, or love of wisdom, brings us back to theology. By theology I mean the identification of what is holy, what is worthy of reverence, what is of ultimate worth and value. Wisdom brings us there. It brings us around to loving and serving something larger than ourselves. Unitarian Universalists, when we speak of BYOT, usually mean theology in this sense. Metaphysical theology, hidden knowledge, first causes, are not the primary concern of most of us. We tend to the shaping of a theology that matters in our daily lives. To build our own theology is to take up the challenge of Erasmus, that disciple of the free spirit, that we stretch the heavens and, like tanners with a hide, make something useful, something serviceable, something functional. But where do we fit in this realm, populated by the shades of Erasmus, Locke, Bacon, not to mention St Teresa, Pascal and Dante? Who are we to dare to embark on a theological undertaking? Soon after I arrived at seminary I experienced grave second-thoughts. I questioned not just my beliefs, but myself. It was a time of intense doubt, compounded by too much therapy, too much strong coffee, and too much talking, reading and thinking. Who was I to think I had answers, or anything at all to offer? Right about then I was scheduled for my first donrag. The donrag was an annual meeting of each individual student with the assembled faculty of the seminary, where they consider, counsel, or confront the student. I entered the meeting with trepidation, knowing they could see right through me, expecting them to agree with me that I was wasting my time there. But surprisingly, they were overwhelmingly supportive and affirming! It totally threw me off I felt so unworthy of their trust and support! Then one of the faculty, Ron Cook explained it to me. He looked me in the eyes and said to me, very simply, You know something. You know something. I was taken aback, confused for a moment, and then the truth of his words hit home. Yes! I know something. My life and my unique experience are valuable and worthwhile. I do know something about life and living, something important. Something of value. My qualifications to do this work are not based on where I went to school or the clubs I ve been a member of or my bank account. They are based on how I ve lived and how I ve felt and how I ve struggled to create a life of love and meaning and connection. This is why I can dare to build my own theology. This is why you can dare. Because you know something. Something you ve earned by your sunny days and by your absences, something you ve made from the times joy has swelled your heart to bursting and the times you have felt strangled by grief. You know something. All of us have stared into the abyss,
5 or danced at the edge of it, and come away with something of value. We know something of the beautiful, the good, and the true as well as their opposites. This is why we can t leave to professionals to tell us what to believe. To do that would be to abdicate the most holy of tasks, that of finding the meaning of our own experience. Part of our task as liberal religious people is to live the examined life. And to affirm, in Emerson s words, that life passed through the fire of thought has yielded to us something of profound worth a bedrock of faith that offers us strength. And hope. And compassion. Something that gives us the strength to roll away the stone from our bedroom doors when we must go out and face the world; the hope to believe in life when we are struck down by the world s cruelty; the compassion to reach out to others in need. This is what I mean by building our own theology to examine and articulate the values and assumptions and conclusions that govern our lives. To ask the hard questions and wrestle with the answers. We have said that our questions are not those of traditional Christian theology. The nature of Jesus is not paramount. Baptism and communion are not central. Who am I? That s a theological question. To whom do I belong? How shall I live? Is there a God, and if so, what kind of God? What do I believe about human nature, and how does this affect my actions? Why have I suffered, and why do others, and what, if any, is its meaning? How should I work, and what is the meaning of my work? How can I learn how to love? To come to terms with life? To make peace with death? All these are theological issues. They are questions we think about and deal with all our thinking, feeling lives. And, while our conclusions may change with time, we have come to at least tentative conclusions in these questions. The challenge of BYOT is to take our implicit values and beliefs on these issues, and to make them explicit. To interrogate them, you might say, to clarify them, to criticize, to discern their influence on our behavior. To be able to articulate them, to ourselves and others. How do we do this? Now, the Gideon Bible you find in a hotel room has a helpful guide, directing you to particular passages. Some of the categories are: if you are in trouble or
6 discouraged, and if you are lonesome and restless. And there is if you desire peace, power and plenty, and, of course, the ever popular if you are losing confidence in men. (I don t know if that last category is supposed to be gender inclusive or not.) This Gideon Guide wouldn t be all that helpful for most of us. Our sources of guidance, comfort, and inspiration, our holy scriptures, might include the Bible, but they would not be confined to that one, or any one book. We would draw from many streams: the holy writings of other religions, from the arts: from poetry, literature, film, music, among others. We might draw from nature, from particular places on the earth that move us and inspire us. The acquisition, over time and travail, of our particular and unique scriptures helps to define our theology. In addition to scripture, an essential aspect of BYOT is spiritual discipline. Prayer, or meditation, in this case, directed toward clarity in these questions. Keeping a journal is a particularly helpful exercise to help us clarify and articulate our theology. My hand stops. Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Pascal, Dante - they all pause too. The sky waits. I lean forward and write. In addition to the spiritual work we do alone, there is work to be done with others. Conversation, particularly in a religious community is an important source of support and assistance in our task. Of course, there are some folks who would rather appear naked in public than discuss their views on God or the meaning of life. But it is one of the functions of the church to be a place of support; a safe place for such exploration. The period of history we call the Reformation was marked by a struggle regarding the question of the source of religious authority. Catholicism claimed the authority of the Pope and the church councils. Protestants claimed that ultimate authority rested on the Bible. Our Unitarian forebears claimed the authority of individual conscience. Today, we affirm authority of the individual, but we realize that our faith is also in the gathered community. In the conversation. In the covenant we make with one another to seek and speak the truth with love For ultimately, the goal of building our own theology is that our lives reflect our highest aspirations; our best intentions. All knowledge, to paraphrase Locke, is directed to this one true end: that we might know what is holy what matters above all else, that we come to a view of our present and future state, and that we might know and fulfill our obligation to the holy and our fellow creatures. Which sounds like a paraphrase of another teacher: that we might love what is holy with all our soul, and all our heart, and all our might, and love our neighbor as ourselves. In this aspiration, we need all the help we can get. May we help one another toward building, and living our theology. AMEN