Sermon for October 31, 2004
“The quest of truth is its sacrament.” This
statement, of course, is part of our
affirmation of faith. It is part of
what we are about as a church.
But
as simple and innocuous a phrase as “the quest of truth” is, it is a
phrase
that is loaded with difficulty and one that has occupied my thoughts
over the
last few weeks.
It
has occupied my thoughts because it provokes a number of questions. The first of these is whether or not it is
possible to find the truth. By truth, of
course, we don’t mean mundane truths but truths about the very
structure of
reality, the purpose of our lives, the nature and reality of the
spiritual.
Is
it possible to know such things? Is it
possible to do more than make hopeful guesses?
For
most religions this is not a problem.
They see the truth as a body of beliefs that is passed from
generation
to generation. For them, truth is a
settled matter. It’s received. Somebody else got it, and their only
responsibility is to accept it as a matter of faith.
We,
on the other hand, reject the notion that some other generation could
discover
truth, but we cannot; that certain special people could find it, but we
cannot. As Ralph Waldo Emerson asks,
“Why shouldn’t we have a religion by revelation to us?”
But
let’s be honest. We have put ourselves
in a rather awkward position. We say
we’re looking for something, but we are not entirely certain it can be
found.
Of
course, the real question here is whether humans have the capacity to
learn the
truth about spiritual things or have we been left in a universe that we
are
unable to explain, without guidance for our behavior, without any
knowledge of
our ultimate purpose or destination? Is
there any evidence that we do have a capacity for truth?
Karl
Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, may help us here. He
speaks of three layers of the human psyche- the conscious
mind, the personal unconscious (the things we have forgotten or
repressed), and
the deepest layer, the collective unconscious.
By collective unconscious he doesn’t mean that we all are
mysteriously
connected to each other, but that there are certain basic ideas and
patterns
inscribed upon the human mind. These
patterns or motifs emerge in myths and stories all over the earth. They are not learned but are more akin to
the nest-building behavior of birds.
They are innate; we just have them.
These
patterns or motifs produce myths and stories that serve an important
purpose. They enable
us to understand our lives and to live life more fully and
more authentically. They tell us about
the nature of reality, the purpose and goal of our lives.
They tell us about the spiritual principles
that underlie reality, that shape our world and effect the way life
unfolds and
develops. In sum, they give us insight
into the very moral and spiritual order that guides our world.
According
to Jung, we need these myths and stories.
We need the principles they teach.
To ignore these principles is to risk neurotic and even
psychotic
disorders. Remarkably, according to
Jung, we all have some sort of unconscious sense of these principles;
of the
structure of life; of how this universe unfolds; of what moral and
logical
rules seem to guide it.
Joseph
Campbell gives a good example of this in his famous work, The
Hero with a Thousand Faces.
As Campbell searched through the myths and stories of heroes and
heroines in hundreds of cultures, he discovered that they all shared
the same
basic features. Our life is a quest. We
are all called to that quest. We have
what we need to succeed in this quest.
As we proceed we will find unexpected help along the way and the
prize
we win is always for others. Campbell
also points out that we can refuse the adventure but we then will lead
an
impoverished existence.
Like
Jung’s principles, the story of the hero is a story about how we are to
live
our lives. It is a story we know deep
within ourselves. When we see its
principles, embrace them and live them, we become fully alive. We discover our purpose and we discover
ourselves. The story of the hero also
tells us something about the way the world is structured.
When we give ourselves to the adventure to
which we have been called, we discover that the universe itself has
equipped us
for the adventure and actively helps us on our way.
The
story of the hero is a story of the hidden structure of reality; of the
intersection of the spiritual and the material.
It
seems then that we do know some things; that there is at least some
capacity
within the human soul for discerning the truth, and that truth is
expressed in
a thousand ways in a thousand stories and traditions.
So
how would we go about searching for the truth?
The work of Jung and Campbell suggest that we should look at the
various
mythological and religious traditions in the world.
We should examine them and see the basic principles they
present. We should fit them together to
give us insight and direction. We
should try to create a synthesis of insights from various religions. We could also draw lessons from psychology
and philosophy, from anthropology and mythology. We
could try to discover the spiritual principles that influence
our world, that can guide our lives, that are the hidden side of
reality. We can do this by listening
carefully to the
human soul.
From
these we could try to construct a theology.
Not some cold anatomical analysis of the divine.
We would not be looking to dissect the
divine, but to discover its footprints upon the world.
We would seek a theology that explains life,
that gives us a way of understanding our place in this world and help
us to
live more fully in it.
This
will be a new and unique thing. It will
be an attempt to not just nibble around the edges of various
traditions, but to
forge a new one comprised of the insights of many traditions and that
draws
upon the broad richness of human experience.
But
how would we know that what we find is in fact the truth?
How would we know that we are not merely
making arrogant guesses about the nature of the spiritual?
Let me offer a few possible criteria and an
example or two.
First
of all, truth must match our experience.
For example, the Christian concept of a God who controls
everything and
at the same time is absolutely good simply fails to meet the test of
reality. The truth is, terrible things
happen. Evil does exist.
And Christian apologists, who claim that God is good and in
control of everything, ultimately are left saying that things only look
evil to
us; that if we only had a better perspective we would see that
everything that
happens is really part of some mysterious plan. Events
like the holocaust make it rather clear that God cannot be
both good and in control of everything.
The popular Christian idea of God is simple inadequate.
At
the same time, to take the existence of evil as proof of the non-
existence of
God is to ignore the spiritual
experiences of millions; experiences that have transformed individuals
and have
no explanation unless there really is a spiritual realm.
So
perhaps it is better to understand the spiritual as influencing our
word, yet
not controlling it. It may be better to
see the spiritual as touching our lives, not running them.
I like to think of the spiritual as seeping
or bleeding into the material. It’s
there, it has an effect, it provides some guiding principles, yet
remains
apart. It may put ideas in our hearts,
it may inspire and even help us, but ultimately our world stands on its
own. We make the choices and our
choices can do great good or great evil.
A
second criteria we might use to determine whether something is truth is
by its
effect on us. The theologian Roger
Haight wrote a book some years back called The
Language and Experience of Grace in which he analyzed various
people’s
religious experiences and discovered that for every one of them, the
result of
their experience was personal liberation and growth in their ability to
love
and care for others. If the world is
influenced by the spiritual, and if that power is good, then the
discovery of
those spiritual principles should free us.
We should live lives that that more complete.
We should be better people.
A
final criteria is our own reaction to the truth when we hear it. Truth should resonate within our
hearts. We should recognize it when we
hear it. There are times in each of our
lives when someone has said something to us and we know, “Yes. That’s
right!” A few weeks ago one of our
guests told how she was working as a volunteer with some homeless youth
and one
of her successes told her that he wouldn’t have made it without her. Suddenly knew that this was her calling,
this was her adventure. She left her
job and devoted herself to the work full-time.
Truth
has that effect. It’s call is
clear. I’m not sure how that happens,
but I know it happens and I suspect it happens because our hearts are
designed
to recognize the truth.
Her
story confirms something about life and the world that we’ve already
said. There are principles that we can
discover,
that there is purpose and direction for each of us, and that there is
within
each of us the capacity to discover truth.
Of
course, we don’t always recognize
truth. We can get its way.
We can already be so sure of what is true
and be so sure we know the ways things really are, that truth is unable
to
reach us. As Chuang Tzu, the Taoist
master says, sometimes what you unlearn is more important that what you
learn.
The
quest for truth will not be easy. To
explore various traditions and disciplines, to try to draw insights
from them,
to see below the surface of things to those spiritual principles that
seep into
the world, that influence it, will be difficult. Yet
it is a task that I think is worth doing.
We
may also have disagreements along the way.
But that’s okay. UU churches
are supposed to be a place where people can have different opinions,
where they
can talk about them and walk away still disagreeing yet be committed to
come
back and talk about them some more (and disagree some more). In fact, UU churches are places where we
never have to agree, but where we are committed to listen and to think. I would invite you to use our coffee time to
talk about these things, to express your agreements and your
differences. The dialogue we have
with each other is an
important part of the quest for truth, as is our willingness to
honestly and
respectfully listen to each other.
