Introductory Reading: Yesterday, January 8, 2011, New York Times op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow wrote:
“Years ago, my oldest son told me that he thought those in our small Baptist church had all been brainwashed. How else could they believe in the unbelievable? At the time, I was shocked.
“He later softened that position. Although he said that he couldn’t accept all things biblical, he explained, quite eloquently I thought, that he “wouldn’t want to live in a world where a God didn’t exist.” I was impressed.
“Then, a few months ago, he told me that he was a deist. I was confused. This time I had to turn to the all-knowing and omnipresent — Google.
“Through it all, I’ve been very sympathetic about my son’s spiritual quest, in part because my own religious beliefs are evolving. I have gone from the most devout born-again Christian to a more nebulous, non-doctrinal set of beliefs that do not necessarily align with organized religion. When people ask about my faith, I often reply, “unresolved.”
“This is increasingly the face of religion in America — fluid, fluctuant, questioning, nonconformist and in many cases unaffiliated.”
He goes on to say that 16.1 % of Americans are not affiliated with any particular religious group and that they are the largest group without representation in Congress.
Only six members of the 112th Congress did not specify a religious affiliation, and one member, Pete Stark, a democrat from California, who listed his affiliation as Unitarian, said he does not believe in a Supreme Being.
“I don’t for a second believe that all those members are religious. I believe some are trapped in the religious closet of American politics where non-belief is a nonstarter. It’s not only seen as unholy, it’s also seen as un-American.”
Sermon: Credo Quia Absurdum
To believe, in the religious sense of the word, is to have confidence in the truth of some assertion without absolute proof.
To believe, in the religious sense of the word, is to be persuaded of the truth of that which is not provable or explainable in the scientific, rational sense.
Religious beliefs are faith statements.
Most of us have known someone whose faith feels like a wonderful gift – they go through life with a sense of humble confidence, a sense of inner peace, having come to terms with the big questions; and we can’t help but admire and even envy their sense of confidence in their beliefs – beliefs which we find it impossible to embrace.
My maternal grandmother had that kind of simple faith, and I was fortunate to have had her influence early in my life, and I’ve never lost my sense of appreciation for the precious gift she was, and ‘is.’
She was Catholic, but she never tried to persuade me to believe anything in particular about religion – simply to try to live a good life, and even that was a message delivered mostly by her example.
We never talked about what she believed, but it was crystal clear that she had a deep and abiding faith – perhaps it was the result of having had such a difficult life – her first child died at birth when she was 17 and she lost a leg as a result of birthing complications; she had six children, only three of whom (daughters) lived into adulthood. She raised them through the great depression in extreme poverty.
I mention this at the beginning of this sermon to let you know that I respect and appreciate those among us who have that kind of faith — a simple, uncomplicated, humble system of beliefs that works for them, and not many among us would ever want to take it away from them.
I don’t have it. I think I had it when I was a child, but since my teenage years I’ve wrestled with the big questions, and though I’m still at it I don’t expect to have a major shift in my thinking or in my personal belief system.
Long ago I came to terms with that aspect of my life, and I feel very fortunate that I found a spiritual home among the Unitarian Universalists where I’m not alone in my wrestling, nor do I have to pretend otherwise; I wrestle in good company – yours!
Part of my preparation for ministry involved three years of seminary at Boston University, where I was introduced to a lot of interesting theological ideas that never would have captured my attention except that they were part of the requirements for the graduate degree I needed to qualify for Unitarian Universalist ministry.
I want to tell you about one such person with some interesting ideas…he was one of the most influential church fathers, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, (born about 160 AD – died about 220 AD), whose name is anglicized to Tertullian. He said something I found quite provocative, and it’s the title and text for this sermon. He said Credo quia absurdum, a Latin phrase that translates, “I believe because it is absurd.”
Tertullian had a major influence on the early development of Christianity. Church historians say he was the first one to use the word Trinity – he wrote about what he called ‘three persons, one substance.’
At first his idea and description of the Trinity was rejected, but later became the keystone of Christian orthodox teaching about the nature of Christ.
In his explanation of the Trinity he used the word Homoousios, which a century after his death was hotly debated at the Council of Nicaea where the Trinity took a strong hold on the development of Christianity.
Indeed, our Unitarian forebears traced their religious roots to that debate – they insisted that Jesus and God are not of the same substance, but are separate, different from one another. They said that they did not believe that Jesus was God, but was sent by God for the salvation of humankind. They used the word homoiousios, which means ‘similar substance,’ as opposed to ‘of the same substance.’
Eventually our Unitarian and Universalist forebears described Jesus not as the Messiah, not as the Christ, but rather as a fully realized human being – an example of what each of us could be or even should be; what we are at our best.
As I understand it now, Tertullian’s assertion, Credo quia absurdum, is simply saying that religious belief does not rely on the use of reason, or the rational mind; religious belief denies the power of unaided human reason to reach certainty and therefore affirms belief as an act of faith.
Statements of faith, like the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed, need not stand the test of reason. Quite the contrary – a faith statement needs to be believed precisely because it so far beyond our rational capacity to grasp…it is absurd – which is to say it is unreasonable, irrational, illogical and inconceivable, as it must be…or so Turtullian asserted. Where reason ends, belief begins.
Faith, or religious belief, comes from a different part of our evolving brain than the rational part. If it was logical, or rational, or reasonable, or conceivable, it would not require belief, or a leap of faith, a phrase that suggests crossing the dividing line between reason and faith.
If faith statements could be proved they wouldn’t need to be ‘believed.’ Tertullian’s assertion, ‘I believe because it is absurd’ can help us in a couple of ways. First of all, we would realize how absurd it is for those of us who require our beliefs to be rational to try to convince believers that they are wrong.
They’re not wrong, anymore than it’s wrong to be deeply moved by a magnificent sunrise, or to be emotionally swept up in a performance of Bach’s concerto for cello and orchestra with, Yo Yo Ma on cello.
Imagine you are moved to tears by such beauty and someone tells you that you are wrong to be so moved. Absurd.
Religious belief, or more specifically religious faith, is located in the same part of the brain as is music. Various parts of the brain serve different functions. If you try to analyze why you feel moved by a beautiful sunrise you’ll lose the benefit of simply feeling moved. The same goes for the appreciation of music, art and architecture, or a poem that feels like an epiphany! Or staring at a new-born granddaughter and feeling something move in the depths of your very being.
Sigmund Freud argued that a religious belief requires a “…sense of spirituality (that is) developed enough to provide for non-rational belief…”
He pointed out that those who profess to have this well-developed sense of spirituality sometimes “…take great pride in this achievement and consider it an accomplishment that makes them superior to others who have mere sensory beliefs.”
There’s the rub, as Hamlet put it in his famous soliloquy.
The governor of Pakistan’s powerful Punjab province Salman Taseer was shot dead in the capital last Tuesday by one of his own guards, a religious fanatic, who later told interrogators that he was angry about the politician’s stance against the country’s blasphemy laws – laws which call for the execution of anyone who says anything that can be taken as a criticism of Islam.
Here’s the point: while we ought to be respectful of one another’s religious faith, there’s a limit to what we should tolerate, and unfortunately we see examples of it everyday. In Alexandria last week 21 Christian worshipers were murdered in the name of a twisted version of religion.
One of the questions with which I’ve been grappling for the past five decades or so is whether one can have a religious life without accepting absurd beliefs. That’s why I came to define religion in its most basic or ‘generic’ sense as any experience of feeling a connection to another person, or to your changing, aging self, or to Nature.
Can a person nurture a spiritual life that is grounded in and guarded by the rational mind?
We say we share a belief in the need for freedom, reason and tolerance, which sounds fine, but reliance on the use of reason on which to build a faith system may be impossible, since it feels like a contradiction in terms.
It’s possible to become so rational that an important aspect of life – let’s call it ‘the mysterious, or transcendental’ – is left out.
We don’t hesitate to say that we value ‘the free mind,’ as Channing put it, meaning the rational mind. The question arises: is it possible for the rational side of the mind to so dominate our lives that our insistence on the use of reason becomes a form of tyranny?
I think it’s possible to have ‘religion without revelation,’ as Julian Huxley, the English evolutionary biologist put it.
Huxley said, “There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion;… I believe that a drastic reorganization of our pattern of religious thought is now becoming necessary, from a god-centered to an evolutionary-centered pattern”.
Some believe the appropriate label for these views is religious naturalism.
He explained:
“Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct something to take its place.”
That, I think, is our shared task, today – and I mean that literally – it’s why I struggle to construct a sermon and why you bother to try to understand what I’m saying. Together we’re attempting to construct something that will sustain us through our losses, our changes, our fears, our disappointments – a kind of faith system or belief system that does not require us to sacrifice the gift of reason but does not allow the use of reason to tyrannize us and lock us out of the thing that faith provides.
It’s not about religious belief or disbelief; it’s about our need to construct something in our personal and collective lives that satisfies the religious need – the need for a kind of faith system that allows us to marry science and religion, that allows us to cultivate a spirituality that does not require us to believe that which we know to be absurd.
Our country’s current poet laureate, W.S. Merwin, provides an appropriate poem that suggests such a construction: (from The Shadow of Sirius)
I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me
I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me
It extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me
it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me
there is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me
the only presence that appears to stay
everything that I call mine it lent me
even the way that I believe the day
for as long as it is here and is me
As part of my preparation for today’s sermon I looked into beliefnet.com and took the test , responding to twenty questions. The test result tells you what religion, among the 27 they list, with which you are most compatible, and the religions with which you are least compatible.
The top of my list was not Unitarian Universalist – I scored 98% in that category, but scored 100% with secular humanism, something I’ve known about myself for nearly fifty years.
I scored 89% compatibility with liberal Quakers and 66% with the Theravada branch of Buddhism, and 50% with Reform Judaism…but only 18% with Catholicism.
I’ll put just two of the twenty questions to you today.
Q1. What is the number and nature of the deity (God, gods, higher power)? Choose one.
- Only one God–a corporeal spirit (has a body), supreme, personal God Almighty, the Creator.
- Only one God–an incorporeal (no body) spirit, supreme, personal God Almighty, the Creator.
- Multiple personal gods (or goddesses) regarded as facets of one God, and/or as separate gods.
- The supreme force is the impersonal Ultimate Reality (or life force, ultimate truth, cosmic order, absolute bliss, universal soul), which resides within and/or beyond all
- The supreme existence is both the eternal, impersonal, formless Ultimate Reality, and personal God (or gods).
- No God or supreme force. Or not sure. Or not important.
- None of the above.
What priority do you place on this selection?
- High
- Medium
- Low
Q2. Are there human incarnation(s) of God (or of gods/goddesses)? Choose one.
- God is (or gods/goddesses are) supreme, and no incarnations.
- One incarnation.
- Many (or countless) incarnations.No particular incarnations because God is all and all are God (or God is in all).
- No incarnations as there is no God. Or not sure. Or not important.
- None of the above.
What priority do you place on this selection?
- High
- Medium
- Low
Other questions touch on the origin of the universe; life after death; the nature of evil, etc.
I’ll close with a Reader’s Digest version of the Merwin poem…my condensed version:
I believe in the ordinary day…(this day)
that is here at this moment and is me
I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me
It extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me
…the unknown (is) all around me
everything that I call mine (is) lent (to) me
even the way that I believe…is me