June 29, 2003
Living Without God
Richard Venus
God is
a puzzle I wrestle with and I understand those who cannot find a place for
what has traditionally been called the idea, the promise, the place of God
in their life. For some, they have just given up on the notion that
God exists. When life presents us with Buchenwald and six year olds with
cancer, and children murdered in their classrooms, it is hard to believe
in a personal, loving god who cares, as Jesus once put it, for the sparrow
and the lilies.
With science presenting us with so much information about the origins and
nature of life, with answers to so many of life’s questions, god or the goddess
become irrelevant. When we face the complexities and quandaries of life,
and look at the scientific views of the universe the notion of a personal
God becomes problematic. The world presents us with so many contradictions,
so much pain and suffering, that it becomes hard to know God, or to find
a god who cares.
There are many much wiser than I who have a deep and abiding faith in their
God, and I know many of you also find a personal God accessible and a guide
and helper in times of need. Certainly, the very things that turn some away
from God are the same things that bring others toward the ground of being,
or the Creator, or the god beyond god. For many there is a god that comforts,
guides, loves and provides.
Perhaps I am not wise enough, or too skeptical, or perhaps just too stubborn
to understand the nature of God, and so I remain am left with the question,
why bother with God at all.
I am open to the possibility that there is a God that I do not yet understand.
I suspect that if I could be shown a God who can stand up to my experience,
my sense of science and reason, and the importance of love, then I might
understand what God might be. I also realize that it is unreasonable to expect
that in order to believe in a God’ such a being must somehow fit my personal
understanding. It is just as true that just because I find God a problem,
he or she does not have to fit my criteria in order to exist.
Which brings me to a story: A priest always brought his cat to the small
village chapel he served, and tied the cat to the altar during the service.
This went on for many years, and when the priest and his cat moved on and
a new priest arrived, someone brought a new cat to tie to the altar so the
service would have all its essential parts. They’re now on their seventy-eighth
cat, with many more still to come.
Religion may have nothing to do with cats tied to altars, but we do often
live by things because they were part of our lives in our early years. What
we think about God, or Jesus, or Heaven and Hell is the way we have been
taught. As my friend Davidson Loehr puts it: “Once you have been taught to
say the Rosary, the Lord’s Prayer, once you have been taught that there is
a God, or that there is not a God, something important seems to be settled.
There are major areas of life you don’t need to think about again.”
This is, however, a terrible place to stop growing. What religion offers
is so fragile. It is maintained only if we continue to question and not become
tied to assumptions that may or may not be true. I often find myself in a
skeptical phase, a time of questioning, doubting, exploring. We live in a
time when the rules and assumptions we make about life and religion can no
longer be taken for granted. It is a time epitomized by modern science and
the spirit of humanism, the source from which we gain much in our Unitarian
Universalist tradition.
The Humanist
Manifesto, which gave form to modern notions of humanist philosophy,
can be credited in some measure to a Unitarian. Edwin Wilson, minister of
First Unitarian Church in Dayton, was an editor of The Humanist, a newsletter
he and several others published to spread the humanist word. In that manifesto
and elsewhere, Wilson and others argue for the use of reason in human affairs
and give us a renewed sense of the majesty, the genius, the power, the potential
of humanity and human good, without the need for supernatural assistance.
Humanists argue that reason replaces religion, and the use of reason is by
far a better way of life than the use of formal religion or intuition or
authority. Many are quick to point out, however, that they believe in a religious
humanism, a spiritual realm without a supreme being in charge.
According to one of the most noted of humanist writers, Corliss Lamont, “Humanity,
the earth, and the universe make up Nature and Nature is our home; In it
we ever live and move and have our being. Yes, we humans possess the glory
of mind and the power of freedom; we know the grace of body and the splendor
of love. We are grateful for the many simple pleasures that are ours, for
the manifold enjoyments which art and culture and science bring . . .. Yes,
this life is enough; this earth is enough; this great and eternal Nature
is enough.” 1
We humans are enough, many would argue, and they add that a genuine altruism
among human beings is a moving force for good. Human happiness is its own
justification and requires no sanction or support from supernatural sources
. . . Human beings using their own intelligence and cooperating liberally
with one another, can build an enduring citadel of peace and beauty upon
this earth.”
The need to find answers, to discover the truth for ourselves, is a way to
move from the dogmas and creeds of religious development and a transition
from the assurance of authority, from the truths we learned at an early age,
to the uncertainty of doubt and disbelief. We are often left with holes needing
to be filled. We not only reject teachings, but teachers, and the communities
in which we were nourished and raised, which no longer fit our new understanding
of life.
There is the story of three traitors who were to be guillotined for treason.
The first was a Jesuit revolutionary. He was led to the guillotine with the
kind of ceremony such occasions demand, and asked if he had any last words.
“Viva la Revolution! Praise the Lord,” he shouted. Then he was asked to kneel,
his head was laid in the notch, and the executioner pulled the release mechanism.
The heavy blade began its slide down the channels towards the man’s neck.
Then the unexpected happened: just a few feet above the man’s head, the blade
jammed and stopped in its track.
After some confused embarrassment, the most authoritative of the authorities
pulled his wits together and, after a brief whispered consultation with the
other authoritative ones, announced to the crowd that it was clear that this
man should live. Then, with an awkward kind of ritual flourish meant to deny
such gaffes, they released the Jesuit who lost no time pushing his way out
of the crowd.
The authorities freed the blade, cranked it back up the top and brought out
the second prisoner, who happened to be an Anglican priest. Again, the ritual
went through its moves, ending with the invitation to offer any last words.
The condemned cleric, head held high, cried out in his best pulpit voice,
“I die in the service of God, wishing only to do his will.” He was led over
the guillotine and put in the kneeling position the machine demanded. Again,
the release was pulled, again the huge blade fell--and again it jammed in
the same place, about three fee above the priest’s head. Now that there was
a precedent, the authorities acted more quickly, and with a bit more aplomb:
Fate had spoken, the priest was released.
The final prisoner was a Unitarian Universalist who had carefully observed
the experience of his two comrades. He too was led to the platform, taken
over to meet the guillotine, and asked for any last words. The UU looked
up at the huge blade, studying the mechanics of the thing with much curiosity.
Finally, he turned to the executioner and said, “You know, if you put some
oil up there, you could fix that thing.”
Needing to have the scientific answer may not always be the best way to know
the truth. While skepticism is a necessary and vital part of fulfilling our
religious lives, it is not the only place to remain in our religious pilgrimage.
I point to the variety of religious traditions and sources that we UUs draw
from on our journey, because we know that no one place is adequate, but we
can grow and learn and prosper from many different ideas and belief systems.
It is important for religious liberals to keep up with what science is telling
us about life, to remain relevant and speak to the issues of the day, but
remaining relevant does not mean we have to give up ideas of mystery, or
transcendence.
Dr. Loehr reminds us: “The question, ‘What is the meaning of all this?” is
not a scientific question but a yearning for a deeper sense of connectedness.
The question ‘What will happen to the things that I love after I die?’ is
not a request for data either. It may be a cry of anguish, a search for values
which endure, or just a deep sigh. And the needed response to these questions
is not a list of facts. What’s needed is a feeling for the whole of reality.
We need a sense of a whole, which includes us--which knows us, to put it
poetically.
“You suspect that the poets and prophets of the world’s great religious and
literary traditions might have been on to something after all. It is this
ability to take a second look, to replace childish naiveté with adult
naiveté, to wonder and trust again.” 2
There is a need, perhaps, for what some would call “integration,” or what
I prefer to call “integrity,” because it includes the idea of wholeness,
or completeness, or complexity, a stage that includes a reuniting of head
and heart, of logic and longing.
In realizing that we need truth and meaning from several different traditions
and expressions and sources, our goal is to learn to care for those who need
it most, to satisfy those who cannot fill themselves, and fulfill ourselves
as well. It is not that we are after something that is not there in another
world, but a bridging between our different parts, between our past and our
future, our hates and our loves, between our friends and our enemies, between
things that promote life and things that restrict it.
There is a place for mystery, for feelings that are not facts but fancy,
not reason but wonder. “The most profound religious answers are often delivered
in silence, because they are not answers at all, but a kind of peace which
passes all understanding.” 3
1 Lamont, Corless. The Philosophy of Humanism. Ungar Pub. 1982.
2 Ibid. p. 7
3 Ibid. p. 8
©2003 Richard
Venus
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This Page was last updated on July 15,
2003
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