The Almighty: Images of God

While far from unanimous, the Western world has largely settled on the idea of Monotheism, or at least that is what the majority would currently profess to, if you asked them. Most of the people on Earth, the world’s Christians, Jews, Muslims, and followers of many other religions with fewer believers, are monotheists in dogma and doctrine.

The trick to monotheism is the idea that there is one creator, who oversaw, designed, or even hand-crafted the universe according to a plan. There is much disagreement about the intent, and whether this being remains “hands on” in the operation of the universe is certainly up for debate. The essence, though, is in the creation and the idea of a design or plan for the universe. As we try to understand this force of creation, our main focus and most valuable tool is our ability to understand what was created.

Thus, there are, even within monotheistic religions, many different views of what this creator wanted for creation and why there is a creation at all, and most importantly how we are supposed to react to the creator and the rest of the creation. Each person, even in hearing the same words, even those who internalize the same stories and doctrines, must shape their perception of God around their experience with creation.

For many of us, our understanding of God is, at the most basic level, the idea that God is almighty and powerful. After all, isn’t the creation of the universe enough to indicate the absolute power over the universe? We shape our idea of God based on our idea of power. The things we see as “Powerful” and “Capable” become the things we ascribe to God.

This is why many depictions of God give the creator a masculine body, and generally one that is elderly, with white hair and a beard, but also physically fit and imposing. God, of course, would have none of these traits, inherently. If the creator of the Universe is still in existence, then our concept of age clearly does not apply, and even if, as Genesis tells us, man and woman are both created in the image of God, then God must not conform to our gender roles or sexual characteristics.

What we are left with, then, in my opinion, is an image of God that mimics our image of power. The people in power in the Middle East and in Europe were mainly older men, and that became intertwined with the idea of power and authority. Being the ultimate in both power and authority, God, in those cultures, took that form in their collective consciousness. Whether this was God’s intent, or just the only way that certain people or groups could relate to the idea of The Almighty, we may never know.

Many ancient peoples and pantheons held that the creation of the universe was the act of a primordial mother, or a primordial “couple” forming Earth and Sky. The primary Greek creation myth was one of the Feminine Primordial Gaia, who created her own mate and birthed the Titans, who gave birth to the Gods, who created the world as it was known to the Ancient Greek people, who understood on some level that the planet was much older than their civilization, and incorporated that into their mythology. Ultimately, though, the world of the Greeks was ruled by men and by Gods who took the power for themselves, making it theirs by right of strength. In a way, this mirrors the progression of theology through most of the world: masculine figures taking prominence, and eventually displacing any divine feminine figures more or less completely.

Clearly, then, our image of the divine is shaped by our perception of potency and the essence of what makes something powerful. Many people see power in strength. Many see it in some form of magic or in the promise of technology. In reflection, some deities are strong, some wise, and some clever, but the monotheistic God is usually all three. Gods are born of ideas, and powerful ideas become powerful deities. Likewise, the attributes that you ascribe to God say a lot about what you value in leadership, in relationships, and in your life.

It is important, then, to consider what you really think  about God, and not just what you have been taught, or what you say in front of others. Is your true concept of the divine as loving as you say? If so, then how is that love manifested in the world? How do you emulate it? Is your vision of God vengeful? Does that make you vengeful, too? Does that improve your relationships? Is your God forgiving? Does that help you to forgive? Has that been healthy for you?

Another common and important factor in monotheism is that God is “good” and that the intent of creation was to give rise to life, and ultimately to intelligence, and that intelligent life was meant to have a relationship with God. We are meant to be “good”, helping to bring about what God wants in the Universe. Being like God is being good.

By really examining your view of God, and thus your perception of what makes one “good”, you can shape your whole being. If you know that God is vengeful, and live in fear, then you are likely to resent those who see God as loving, and live at peace with their place in the world. If you know God in absolute terms, then you will be distrustful of science, revelation, and even your own senses. If you know there to be no God at all, then it is possible to fall into arrogance and conceit, looking only at the world around you for your sense of purpose and power. Your image of God both often both dictates and mirrors your best and worst traits.

Robert Ingersoll once said that “There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.” This is the essence of what I am trying to say: As long as we value anger, discrimination, and vengeance as divine traits, it will be impossible to remove them as cultural institutions. We must examine our concept of God, and decide, objectively, if it matches our understanding of what is good in the world. If you wouldn’t respect your God as a neighbor, then you have to understand that your image is too small and too personal. We need a universal God, who is good without resorting to divine dispensation. We need a God willing to give us our curiosity and senses in order to use them, rather than one seen to tempt us with knowledge we are forbidden to seek. We need a God who loves all humanity, rather than picking and choosing based on situation of birth. We need to see God for what God must be, rather than for what our tribal ancestors had hoped was a champion for their way of life.’

It is said that most people have some instinct for good, and that this “conscience” is an echo of the voice of God in our lives. Whatever the origin, we know what good is. Our understanding of the Universe, both of what is true and of what feels right, must be applied to our understanding of the creator. What is wrong to do to one another in any other cause is also wrong to do in the name of God, or the name of God isn’t worthy of our worship and reverence.

 

Parades, Protests, and/or Prayer

“Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”
― John Piper

This is how I sometimes feel about the Unitarian Universalist involvement in Pride Parades, protests, and “volunteer opportunities”.

I went to Pride Day once before I joined my Congregation. It was fun, though I spent a good portion of the parade tying protesters up in discussion, telling them things they needed to know about their Bible. I enjoyed the festival after and got a lot of really great information at the booths. More over, I was there as an ally, and a person who wanted to be around other people who were, at least for the day, unashamed of who they really were and what their families look like. I wasn’t part of a group or movement; I was just a friend who wanted to celebrate their lives with them.

I’ve been to Pride Day 3 times since joining Horizon, and each time I was a participant in the parade, and I spent at least a little time in our booth, telling people about who we are and what we believe, and mostly handing out free water, because it is really hot in Texas in September. It is fun, and it does lead to some good conversation, but I’m not gay. No one in my immediate family is gay, or even bisexual, as far as they are telling. I’m not active in an outreach program. I’m not an official member of any kind of political organization. I just go to a church; a welcoming, Universalist, liberal church, but that earns me a place in the parade. We march, as a group. Why?

Are we really there for support? Are we there to tell the LGBT community that they aren’t going to hell? If they were worried about it, our simple presence in the parade isn’t likely to assure them. Are we there because LGBT church members want to show off their community? If so, why aren’t they our organizers, and why are they outnumbered? Are we just there as part of our ongoing membership drive? It certainly seems like this is at least part of the reason we are handing out fans with the 7 Principles printed on them.

Why do we celebrate civil disobedience? Is it solely because we want to see people moved to do brave things, or is it because it means a headline now and then? Headlines aren’t bad things, mind you, but they aren’t missional. They are sound-bites; the snack cake of wisdom: sweet, but void of nutrition. They don’t feed the intellect or the soul.

We do a lot of work, which is right for us. We are a humanist faith, as much as we are any other type, believing in the necessity of action. One of the 5 Smooth Stones, which form the bedrock of our faith, is the need to manifest goodness, creating it in the world around us. James Luther Adams tells us that a liberal faith, sincerely held, must “express itself in societal forms”, creating institutions to enshrine liberty, education, and justice in our nation. Still, he says of “individual virtue” that it “is a prerequisite for societal virtues.” I will go a step further, restating the theme of my last post, and say that sincere individual virtue obligates us to manifest social virtues. In short, if the church were helping us to be spiritually healthy, then the protests and the celebrations would come as naturally to us as showing up on Sunday or calling a friend on her birthday. It would be an obligation of the spirit and of our sense of community, rather than a commandment from the pulpit or the newsletter.

At what point does our mission to gather after service and carpool to the Parade simply mirror the pilgrimage of the fundamentalist group, where members may not have strong feeling about the LGBT community, but feel compelled to protest the calls for equality as a sign of their faith?

We don’t need publicized missions. We don’t need uniforms. We don’t need national campaigns designed around visibility. We need people, moved by faith, doing good in every part of their lives. If we can inspire that, then we will already have changed the world.

Universalism & Beloved Community: Being Good, For Goodness’ Sake

“Good works are not the cause, but the effect of salvation.”

–Rev. Pitt Morse, Sermons in Vindication of Universalism

There is a common question asked of atheists and Universalists alike: “If you don’t fear God, why bother being a good person?” I’ve heard many answers to this, but it mostly boils down to: if you need fear to keep you from killing people, you are not really a very good person. Penn Jillette is reported to have even answered that he does commit all the murders and rapes that he wants, which is none.

Honestly, though, my answer is less boastful. I know I am loved by my Creator. I, in return, try to honor my Creator. Just as I would respect the friends my parents would bring home, or the acquaintances I am introduced to by my friends, I try to look at other people and see in them the part that God loves. I look for the humanity in every person, seeing that their life, like mine, is a struggle for acceptance, love, and a sense of worth. There are people who are broken beyond understanding, but they are few and far between. Most of the time, even the people billed in media and in history as monsters are just people who find themselves in situations that they cannot abide, doing the unthinkable out of pride, frustration, or misplaced sense of purpose and belonging. Their motives are all too recognizable, even when we can’t stand to admit it.

What they lack, that hopefully we do not, is a sense of purpose that includes all of humanity. They learned to separate people into “Us” and “Them”, with the first category being their community, as large as a nation or as small as their own self, and the latter group being seen as something other than them. The bigger there community, the better off we all are. My community is the whole world, and my “other” is only those people who exclude themselves, and even I have to believe that even they are redeemable.

My salvation in omnipotent love, able to overcome any flaw we pick up in our time on Earth, forces me, if I am honest, to see every other person as an equal. My salvation by infinite and inescapable love requires that I look for the humanity and divinity in every other person, and indeed, in every living thing. We are all part of one beloved creation, and it is our responsibility to create, within it, a beloved community where all things are valued and respected and conserved for the future.

The love that I feel surrounding me must be reflected, because I cannot contain it. I cannot accept it without also feeling a duty to share it. My salvation is the salvation of all people, and it compels me to seek out the divine spark in them. I do not do good because I want to earn the love of God, or because I fear divine wrath, but because I know I am loved and it makes me feel good. Love makes me want to love more, and to connect with people. As Rev. Morse said, salvation gives me a need to be a better person. It is a love that I know I don’t deserve, as surely as any Southern Baptist knows his inherent sin, or the cultural guilt of the Catholics or Jews. I am loved, none the less, and I want to be worthy of that love. The only way I can hope to feel worthy is to try to love like that.

Loving the Hell out of the World

I was not alive, much less active, for the “Consolidation” that created the UUA. I have read a lot from those who were, trying to understand where we are heading. I may have some insights: The Unitarians won the culture war, but Universalists won the theology of the UUA. This is a terrible combination.

The Universalist theology is that God is a being of love, who would never create all of these living, breathing, feeling creatures to populate the Earth with the intent of punishing some of them, eternally, for thing they do in their short time on Earth.

Human power structures have been built on rewards and punishments for thousands of years, and the idea that the gods would also punish us for our transgressions seemed so very obvious for so very long, but it doesn’t fit with our concept of a god worthy of worship and reverence: powerful and all loving.

This has been rejected in the hearts, if not the heads, of most people. That is why it is so easy for evangelical Christians to believe that, while they know that their past actions are sins against their dogma, all they have to do is say that they are sorry and ask to be forgiven, and it will be done. To oversimplify: they know that God will not damn them to eternal suffering as long as they believe that he won’t. There is a gap there, though, in believing that God can do anything except forgive, and that anyone will be made to suffer eternally. Almost no one on Earth believes that they will be damned, including, I would bet, all the dictators in history.

This is the mission that the UUA needs to take up, then: Informing people that God loves them, just like they are, even as he wants them to be better and fulfill their potential. We need to convince our membership, and then send them out into the world. We need them to love, radically, and act on that love to change the world. When you love the world, you can’t help but be hurt by the pain of others. When you love the world, you won’t need to be part of the parade to be an ally. You won’t need dozens of other people dressed like you to feel brave in the face of injustice.

A while back, I found an image about Church being a hospital for broken people. That is partly true. We Unitarian Universalists need to take up the mission to literally Love the Hell out of the World. With this in mind, love really becomes a battle field, and we are fighters in a sort of war against fear, hate, and ignorance. It gets us hurt, to open our hearts to others. We really do share the pain of those who are suffering. Our churches need to be field hospitals. We need to focus on healing people, however large or small their hurts, and sending them back into the world to share love.

It is a radical mission, and one that we already pay lip service to. We need to embrace it. We need to make it personal. We need to focus on the people who show up on Sunday, or any other day, who are injured from loving too hard. When we heal them, they will be able to go out and love more, and when they hurt, they will come back. When they  find others injured in the act of love, they will invite them back, too. When we are doing the spiritual work, we will see the kind of growth that will really sustain us.

We don’t need creeds. Creeds do not save people. We need dedication and love. We need Principles that mean something in the hearts of those who embrace them. We need to be willing to let love guide us to justice and peace, because that is the only way those ideals will last. Love is how we soothe individuals, the salve that they use to heal others, and the salvation that we bring to the world.

This is our fight for the future. This is our world to minster to and make whole. Go, love the Hell out of it.

A Congregation is a Covenant

I had an interesting conversation this weekend about the workings of  Unitarian Universalist congregations, and my congregation specifically. It seems that, at times, people in positions of responsibility feel obliged to pressure members to do things, give things, or accept things that would be good for the Congregation. At other times, I have seen, people who have some authority forget how it feels to be a lowly member with some knowledge or skill that is under valued.

What bothers me about this is the idea that this is someone speaking to another person for the congregation, as though the Congregation is an entity that exists separately from them and is bigger or more important than one or both of the members in this conversation. Officers and staff have appointments, but they must answer to each and every member, because that is where the congregation’s true authority is.

It bothers me because the congregation, to my mind, only exists as the covenant between individuals. There is no promise made to “the congregation”, but the promises made to these people is what makes us a Congregation. If it seems like a small difference, then let me assure you that it completely changes the intent and the tone of conversations when members are addressed as equals by officers and as managers, or even customers, by staff.

If someone comes to me, as a person whom I share a covenant with, and tells me of a need in the community that they think I can help meet, it gives me a  chance to talk to them, tell them what commitments I have that might conflict, or reasons why I may not be able to do the thing that needs to be done. We can talk as friends, or at least as partners in a mission. If I come to them with a concern, and we see each other as equals with a common goal, even where we disagree on the means to move forward, we can operate out of love and respect.

If, instead, I am approached by an officer, letting me know that there is a concern that I am not giving my best to the Congregation, or that they simply need more from me, because I have made promises to this entity that we both serve, there is an uncomfortable pressure, as though the community may look down on me; as though my superior might dole out some consequence. This is how people are coaxed into giving too much, and are burnt out: The Congregation becomes an entity unto itself rather than being built on the covenant between people. When the Congregation is seen as bigger than the members, it becomes easier to forget that covenant must go both ways.

The Congregation is the community, and the community has shared resources that allow us to achieve things together that would be hard for any of us to accomplish alone. It matters that we articulate goals that we all agree to support. It matters that we support each other and that we work together to better our lives and our neighborhoods. The covenant to come together to advance certain goals, to respect one another, and to live out our values in the rest of the world are all promises we make to each other and to ourselves. They should not be pledged to an organization, be it the by-laws of the Congregation or the UUA. These are corporations, inhuman and unfeeling, and we cannot let them have power over the people they were created to serve. We need to remember that, and to treat each and every member as an equal partner, according them the respect and deference that they earn. If it is truly believed that they should give more, talk to them as partners in need. If it is simply that they have a talent or resource that no one else can offer, then negotiate with them to insure that they don’t feel put-upon unduly.

Covenant is a verbal contract. It calls on all parties to uphold certain duties in the promotion of an idea or the progress towards a goal. This is where the congregation should exist, serving to guide us in our covenant. Each person in the congregation needs to be encouraged to take ownership and to feel responsible for the outcomes of projects and fruits of our labors. We share in those outcomes, and we need to feel a call to give, to the best of our ability, to see our mission at work. This isn’t best achieved  through shame or directive, but by working as a community and living up to our covenants.

What we are, what we are not, and what we could be:

We have a name that has never, in our 52 years, spoken to who we are.

We have a dysfunctional claim to Congregational Polity, though some of the membership accounting and so much of the business is dictated from Boston.

We have congregational authority to ordain ministers, granting any sage or fool the title of “Reverend”, yet the UUA sets a high bar for “fellowship” that ensures that only the politically savvy and financially committed receive the blessing of medical care and the chance at a secure retirement.

We have several national campaigns with political focus that, while reflecting our values in general, take the focus off the congregations and the individuals and put them on “issues”.

We have 7 Principles that have no spirit in them, and sound like a UN resolution.

We have 6 sources, but no one cares if you ignore any of them, unless the one you ignore is the one they take personally.

We have 5 “Smooth Stones” which have depth and meaning, but aren’t all that accessible without interpretation and aren’t officially part of the bylaws the way the Principles and Sources are (though they are folded into the sources and they are cannibalized for the Principles.)

What we don’t have is an identity.

What we don’t have is unity of purpose. (Is it possible to be a Unitarian Universalist without “humanist”, “Christian”, “Pagan” or some other modifier?)

What we don’t have is a focus on personal growth and development.

We have a problem, and we keep trying to act as though it is the solution.

We claim to want to be “A religion for our time”, while failing, by most standards, to be a religion at all.

I love the promise of Unitarian Universalism, but it is a promise that is not being kept; potential being squandered.

I am not alone in being disillusioned by the traditions and momentum of our religion. Most young adults seem to share some of these concerns. Some are content to wait until we inherit leadership. A few are trying to work with the system. There have been Unitarian Universalist, even among our clergy, claiming that we have no future. I refuse to just watch. I refuse to simply wait for my turn. I refuse to “work with” a system that clearly doesn’t work.

I am evangelical about my liberal faith, grounded in multiple sources and aspiring to create a kind of heaven here on Earth; a bloved community of equals. My faith is not what Unitarian Universalism is today, but what we have today won’t last another 20 years if we don’t find and embrace a center. We cannot be “a religion for our time” if what we focus on is politics. We cannot expect people to come to us if we don’t focus on people. We cannot expect spiritual leadership from politicians and “organizers”. We need to be bold in our faith, so that we can find it again, if we ever hope to make it into something we can share.

Everything to Everyone: Defintions Mean Exclusions

This is something of a follow up to a previous post. In that post, I talked about how Unitarian Universalists have been much more vocal about their disagreements with my writing than have those of other faiths and beliefs. There is value in that, and we need to be having conversations about who we are, individually and collectively. Sometimes, though, the criticism seems to be reactionary, more than out of some concern for my personal search for meaning.

Last week I found myself being called out for “anti-Christian” remarks stemming from my assertion that Universalists were different from other Christian groups because they rejected the concept of eternal damnation. Now, this may still surprise a few people, but that is the definition of a Universalist, and it has a definition because it is contrary to the teachings of the majority of Christian denominations, both historically and today. Pointing out that I was proud of our theological heritage was offensive to a couple of people, and one person felt the need to lecture me on the topic. For the record, I consider myself to be a follower of Jesus, in line with my Unitarian and Universalist beliefs, but that is a post unto itself.

Now, I fully recognize that we Unitarian Universalists have a commitment to “encourage spiritual growth” and to help each other in our “responsible search for truth and meaning“. I understand that this means that we should discuss, question, and even debate ideas with our friends and fellow congregants, in a way that doesn’t detract from their own sense of worth or dignity. I tried very hard to live up to this with the strangers who have confronted me over the last few years of my personal ministry. I have attempted to remain civil and respectful to UUs, non-Us, and former UUs who have tried to inform me of some presumed deficiency of logic or contradiction in reasoning. I have learned a great deal from some of them, and I have been less successful in maintaining my grace and composure with others. The fact that most of them have been fellow UUs is still somewhat confusing to me.

We are different from other American religious movements, though. It is important to an understanding of who we are. Notice how little fuss we make about our belief in gravity? There is no page on the UUA website that talks about our acceptance of the heliocentric model of the solar system. Those aren’t crucial declarations for us; people who deny those facts are not going to be swayed by our reason and compassion. Instead, we write proudly of our Universalist belief that no one should be denied equal rights under the law or subjected to public ridicule and derision. We devote pages to our embrace of multiple sources of revelation and the right of conscience in creating a personal theology. We tell people why we are different, because it matters that we are different from the Catholics, the Hindus, and even other liberal faiths. We embrace a broader scope of human experience than most Western Philosophies, and many originating in Asia. We acknowledge an on-going revelation, which is a crucial part of our theological heritage, though not unique among faiths rooted in the teachings of Jesus. These differences matter. They are why Unitarian Universalism matters. We offer the world a rare combination of love, acceptance, reason, and honest searching for meaning.

This particular conversation turned from a general dislike of comparison to a concern that we should not be defining ourselves in terms of what we don’t do. That is important, and I can agree with that much of the argument, but every definition is also a limit that we impose on the word. If there is no limit, no distinction between what a thing is and what it isn’t, then there isn’t a useful definition. I’ve written about this before, if anyone is interested in further thoughts. Right now, I just want to say that, while we should aim to define ourselves in positive terms and by setting goals, rather than citing aversions, being proud of what we believe isn’t the same thing as telling others that their beliefs are offensive or the mark of bad people. I am a unitarian, too, but writing that there are those who believe that Jesus was/is God wouldn’t be read as an insult by those people; nor is my observation that universalism isn’t a universal belief.

We have to stop being so sensitive to our past, individually and collectively, if we want to have honest conversations about our future. Unitarian Universalists need to stop demonizing the humanists and the Christians alike. There are plenty of each who want to help move us forward; to help us stay grounded in evidence while exploring what science cannot yet map. There were people who held the Earth as a sacred whole long before biology and ecology proved them right, and there is a lot of other ancient wisdom that we ought to remember while science catches up to revelation. There are also a lot of clannish and parochial ideas that religion has codified that humanity needs to outgrow. We need to be willing to embrace all of our sources and to create our own identity as Unitarian Universalists. We might also consider creating a name that does the same.