In 1492…
In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue…
So began the ditty that most of us (children in U.S. schools) learned about Christopher Columbus, who (we were taught) “discovered” America. I remember making little replicas of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria out of walnut shells, play dough, and toothpicks. This was great fun because we had to perfect our walnut cracking strategy to get an intact hull, and then got to eat the nuts. And who didn’t like to play with play dough? I remember stories of bravery on the high seas, storms, and hardship, which had special meaning to me because my father was a naval officer, often at sea (as I would also be in adulthood). It was also novel, and seemed somehow grown-up to learn as a first or second grader that the Pilgrims weren’t the first Europeans to make it to the “New World,” as we had been taught as early as we can remember eating Thanksgiving dinner at the kid’s table (and for which we also made walnut boats, but usually with adult help in the cracking).
I don’t remember when I learned that even Columbus wasn’t the first European to land in North America (presuming the Bahamas are considered North American soil. I’ve been there, and it’s very different, but close enough, and seemed to suit Columbus just fine). Tales of Vikings landing in Newfoundland centuries earlier were much more exciting. Those horned helmets rocked!
The other thing I remember about these stories is my grandfather’s delight is telling us every Thanksgiving that most “American” ancestors came over on the Mayflower, but our ancestors met it! Although I am mostly of European descent, I have Cherokee ancestors on both sides of my family, recent enough that it is apparent in the facial features of most of my family. Had I chosen to affiliate with a tribe, I could have received access to special scholarships for college.
And so, even though I received the same education as other children in the U.S., I always questioned the idea of discovery. At best, to discover something is to be the first person to realize its existence or witness it first hand (I’ll concede to being anthropocentric here). Columbus, the Vikings, and the Pilgrims no more discovered this continent than I discovered the joy of cracking a perfect walnut.
Anthropologists still don’t have indisputable evidence of when humans first migrated from East Asia to North America. It could have been anywhere from 40,000 to 16,500 years ago. That changes our little song altogether…
In the year… oh never mind.
Heres the thing. The victors always get to write history. And so the history of North America has been told for generations from a Eurocentric perspective. My ancestors met the Europeans (who were also my ancestors), and whether or not there really were instances of friendship and cooperation as all such stories include, they were over the ensuing decades, slaughtered and corralled. I grew up mostly in South Carolina, where nearly 50% of my high school classmates were of African descent. Their history was told for centuries from the master’s perspective, at least until Alex Haley wrote Roots and we all later watched the mini-series in amazement.
Here’s the other thing. As societies and the individuals in them, we mature, we learn, we grow. As we do, we can “put aside childish things,” as Paul writes in I Corinthians. One of the tenets of Unitarian Universalism, articulated best (but not discovered) by minister and theologian, James Luther Adams, is that revelation is not sealed. There is always something new to learn. We can even re-learn, as I did in childhood about my ancestors.
I read another blog this morning that talked about the misguided nature of political correctness and white guilt. The blogger suggested taking a “balanced” approach of recognizing the bad, but not throwing out the good. I sometimes (but not often) wish life were that simple. And so, it is time to lay to rest our celebrations of Christopher Columbus’s discovery. He and others will remain in the history books. Their travels indeed shaped the course of humanity, but our study should be from a more holistic, mature perspective.
As Maya Angelou writes in her poem, On the Pulse of Morning:
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Prejudice is Part of Human Nature
We human beings have many times many different prejudices. I’m not trying to make a value statement in saying that, just naming something
that I believe is an inherent aspect of human nature. We are deeply prejudiced beings. The primary difference I have seen among human beings was whether or not they were aware of their prejudices.
Why is it impossible for us to not be prejudiced? Because we are beings of infinite yearnings and finite knowledge. We feel called to make decisions and judgments, even though it is impossible for us to have perfect knowledge of all that is around us.
At the base of my argument on this issue is a theme I’ve turned to many times before, and that is that while objective reality and objective truth do indeed exist, it is impossible for human beings to ever comprehend, grasp, or access it. Each time we seek to define any objective reality, or any objective or ultimate truth, we are prevented from doing so through our own limited perspective as a single human individual, and by our incapacity to grasp all knowledge that can be related to any given subject.
And yet, even with the incapacity to achieve objective reality or ultimate truth, many human beings inherently yearn for it. While objective reality and ultimate truth do indeed exist, we human beings do not have the capacity to discern or conceive it. We spend our lives in our own masses of perceptions, preconceptions, prejudices, and assumptions. And as I do not know all of humanity, even my statement that no one can access objective truth must itself be a subjective statement, no matter how objectively I frame it.
Religions have long realized this tension between the human desire to encompass ultimate truth and objective reality, and our near complete incapacity to do so. Some theologians have even proposed this tension as the ultimate source of all human religion… the attempt to address this tension by designating an ultimate truth a
Judge Not…
Toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to those gathered, “Judge not, that you not be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it, will be measured to you.” He then goes on to illustrate this nugget of wisdom with the well known analogy of noticing the log in your own eye before taking the speck out of someone else’s eye.
I experienced a moment of grace a few weeks ago in which I relearned this important message. While on vacation, I was staying in a hotel near Richmond, VIrginia. I came down to the hotel lobby for their complimentary breakfast. Also getting breakfast was an attractive, well-dressed, young woman, probably in her early 20s. She seemed to be alone at first, but after a few minutes a young man arrived for breakfast as well. He was dressed in a tank top shirt, had many tattoos on his entire body, and was wearing a ball cap tilted to the side. I didn’t take much notice of him until he started talking to the young woman in a low mumble. They sat down together, and I thought to myself, “she could certainly do better than him.” At that moment, he took off his cap, took both of her hands in his, and asked her to to say a blessing for the food they were about to eat. They both bowed their heads and prayed aloud together before they ate breakfast.
I was humbled and embarrassed that I had judged this young man based on his appearance and manner. And yet, don’t we all do this? Each of us makes some judgment, positive, negative, or neutral about everyone we encounter. Sometimes we may not even be conscious of it. As we learn in Matthew, we will also be judged, and maybe rightly so. We have to recognize our own issues, prejudices, and fears (the logs in our own eyes), before we can worry about the speck in our brothers’ or sisters’ eyes.
When we judge someone negatively, the first question we should ask ourselves is, “What is it about me and my experiences that brought me to this judgment?” Our concerns and prejudices say more about us than the person we are judging. The way to overcome this is removing the log from our own eyes first.
The next question we should ask ourselves is, “What if I’m wrong?” Chances are, unless you know someone very intimately, your judgments and preconceptions about them are at least partially wrong. How could they not be? The way to overcome this is to get to know someone better. If they are a stranger, as in my case, then that may or may not be possible. Either way, we should reserve judgment, assume goodwill, and afford each person the worth and dignity that they deserve. If we have judged someone we already know, then we don’t know them well enough, and should make the effort to better know them, which can only be done in direct relationship.
This is difficult work, but it is the essence of building a beloved community.
Worship as Emotive Experience
This past Sunday, I became emotional in the pulpit… again. Ok, truth to be told,
I’m always emotional in the pulpit. It’s part of why I never schedule anything for Sunday afternoon, because preaching a good UU sermon will wipe me out, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. I usually maintain enough reserves to make it through the coffee hour, but afterwards I have to go home and sleep for a few hours before I will be able to be worth much at all… and then it’s usually best for me to sit in front of the television and watch a movie.
It’s also why I tell anyone who has anything to talk to me about after the service that they should email me about it. I will listen during coffee hour, I will nod my head and I will even respond somewhat intelligently… and the chances of my having anything I would call “good recall and follow through” are slim. I’m simply operating in what I call my “coffee hour fugue”, a kind of emotional afterglow from the experience of worship, of preaching.
One thing I have noticed is that it was less emotional, less exhausting, and less “coffee hour fugue” inducing when I was mostly travel preaching as when I am regularly presenting worship in a congregation I know, and that knows me. The five years I spent travel preaching, the emotional content I was aware of was mostly just my own. While that was draining, I usually maintained enough energy to make it through the coffee hour and the multiple-hour drive home.
Yet in serving churches in Evanston IL, Midland MI, and now Ventura CA… that is not true. In each case, I believe I am becoming “in-tune” enough with the congregation that I am feeling more of what they feel. When, from the pulpit, I see a congregant with tears in their eyes, I know them well enough to have a fuller appreciation for what all those tears might mean. When I see a congregant laugh, I know them well enough to know some of the parts of their lives that might make laughing difficult. When a congregant comes up to me passionate and energized after the sermon, I now know them well enough to sense where that passion may be coming from (‘cause it is never actually my “wonderful sermon”).
I have said before that I believe we human beings are far more emotional creatures than we are rational creatures. Our ancestors on the evolutionary chain felt emotions far, far longer than we have had anything remotely resembling conceptualized rational thought. Our emotions have had many times many the centuries of development and opportunities to embed themselves into our nature, character and psyche than our capability for rational, symbolic thought has had. I believe that the primary purpose of reason is not to suppress or replace emotions, but rather to allow us to make some order and meaning out of our emotional lives. This understanding of reason accepts that our emotional lives remain the primary influence over who and what we are, and that reason just operates upon that primary influence.
Yet human emotion is often perceived by that reason, and by the outward society that reason reflects, as dangerous. As such, our society has created ways in which emotions can be “safely released”… Think of a football game, where emotions such as aggression, excitement, and anger can be safely released in a controlled manner about a topic that does not truly threaten our survival. Horror movies do the same for fear. Roller coasters do the same for both fear and excitement. Daytime talk shows such as Jerry Springer provide a safe experience of and release of some of our more shadow-filled emotions… jealousy, greed, superiority, etc.
At its least, congregational worship fills a similar role. I know, a shocking thing for a minister to say, to compare what we do on Sunday morning to Jerry Springer. There are some key differences… the first, and most obvious is the emotions that are brought forward in the congregational worship experience. Now, different traditions and different denominations of religious faith work with different emotions on a regular basis. I know that I experienced worship during my childhood in a different faith tradition as a regular emotional flow between superiority and shame. Superiority over all of the “sinners” who would be sent to hell when the judgment day came… and shame over my inability to save them all, and for the ways in which I too was one of those sinners. I know that when I have attended the Pentecostal churches of my mother’s tradition, there was some of that… but there was also the ecstatic emotions of joy, excitement, and connection.
The second key difference between our experience of many other societally sanctioned expressions of human emotion and congregational worship is that, at least in my understanding of the Unitarian Universalist tradition, those emotional experiences are to be shared communally. Experiencing and expressing these emotions is not a solo act. Worship should be a time where we allow the barriers that society creates around our emotional experiences to come down, just a bit… so that we can see one another as emotional creatures. And in seeing that, learn to accept our own emotional selves as normal, and beautiful.
I remember a time after a particular service where I became emotional in the pulpit, and the congregation became emotional with me. After the service, a fairly new member who was a social worker came up to me, quite disturbed. She was concerned that such an expression of emotion in a public way was unhealthy, and that it might even be unethical. Remember, this was after a sermon, so I was in my “coffee hour” fugue… but I think I responded along the lines of that congregations had been experiencing emotions together for thousands of years, and we just needed to be careful of and supportive of one another as we learned to be our emotional selves with one another. Later, that interaction helped me to develop a lens of being more aware of the emotional space of the congregation during the sermon, and to realize that some of the most important pastoral care work a congregation does happens in the Sunday Morning worship service.
Yet, I dream of something more for our time of Worship together than just an expression, even a collective expression, of our emotional selves. I dream of something more than creating a space in the lives of our congregants where it is okay to cry if you are called to cry, or laugh if you are called to laugh. I dream of something more than creating a space in the lives of congregants where it is okay to laugh with someone else, or cry with them. I dream of a space in the lives of congregants and in the life of a congregation where we can come together and not only express our emotional selves, but use the gift of our rational faculty to explore what those emotions mean for our understanding of and connection with life, the universe, and everything.
I want worship that is not only inspirational, but gets at why and how we feel inspired. I want worship that is not only deepening, but gets at why and how we feel deepened. I want worship that is not only challenging, but gets at why and how we feel challenged. I want worship that not only brings us to tears, but gets at why and how we are brought to tears. Not alone… not in a way that diagnoses what is wrong with us or makes us feel inadequate… but in a way that is simply about our learning to trust and care for our emotional souls… together.
I can dream…
Yours in faith,
Rev. David
Hating Hateful Haters
Last week, advertisements began appearing at commuter train stations in the county where I live that, it would seem, blame all of Islam for the actions of violent extremists who are Muslim. Debate over the ads here in Westchester, including in the congregation I serve as minister, has centered on the question of “hate speech.” Similar debate is happening elsewhere around other current events as well, including senseless violence against our Sikh siblings, the denial of equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, and the persistence of misogyny in our political arena.
What, we’re asking ourselves, is “hate speech,” and what is the proper response of moral, loving, spiritual people to it?
I should be clear at the outset that I am not seeking a legal definition of hate or hate speech. Im not a lawyer or a judge. Rather, I am asking for a spiritual definition of it. Whether something is right or wrong has little do do with whether it is legal. (This is, interestingly, something on which the religious right and the religious left can agree–even if we differ on what is right and what is wrong.) What is acceptable in a compassionate society is a smaller set of things than what is not punishable by law.
To me, demonizing an entire group for the actions of a few is the epitome of hate speech. The impulse that leads some to vilify all of Islam because there are Muslim terrorists who justify their actions with a misunderstanding of their religion is the same impulse that makes communities protest the building of mosques and deny some among us their freedom of religion. The more we accept dehumanization, stereotypes and lies about groups of people, the more likely we are to accept violence against them–or people who look like the stereotypical images we have of them stored in our narrow minds.
Recent public debate about rape is another example of speech that, frankly, should be unacceptable to all people who seek to shape our society in an image of love and compassion. If we deem it acceptable for anyone to create a category of “legitimate rape,” we are implicitly condoning a culture in which survivors of sexual violence are stigmatized, doubted, and shamed. Women who live in fear of violence should not be verbally assaulted by those seeking to make political points with their “base.”
Finally, if we use our freedom of speech to block another from having the same rights we enjoy, have we not crossed a line that no religion should accept? I believe so. My impending marriage here in New York has no impact on your relationship or relationships with your past, current and future partners. Don’t blame me for the moral decay of our society–blame our increasing tolerance for hate. Take the twig out of your eye before you reach for the speck in mine.
Unitarian Universalist congregations covenant to affirm and promote, among other things, a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” in my faith, freedom comes with responsibility. It should be so in our society as well.
Just because certain speech is protected by the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution does not make all speech responsible speech.
If you’d like to engage in a meaningful dialogue about Jewish-Muslim relations with respect to Israel and Palestine, you’re not going to get there by calling everyone who disagrees with you a terrorist.
If you’re trying to instruct your followers on the specific ways taught by your faith to lead a moral life, you don’t need to violate my freedom of religion or make me a second-class citizen to do so.
If you’d like to open a dialogue on the sanctity of life, denigrating the lives of women isn’t an appropriate place to begin.
Those of us who believe in compassion, equality and love cannot remain silent in the face of such unacceptable hate. Our goal should not be to silence the haters, but rather to drown out their hate with our love. Where ten people show up to call a group of people nasty names, a hundred others should be present with a message of love and acceptance. Little by little, those who choose to hate will get the message.
Dancing with Scripture
One of the aspects that I believe defines the religious liberal is the acknowledgement that we
encounter the world and everything in it through our own lenses. These lenses are shaped by years of experience… by the people we meet, what we have read, and the journeys (literal and metaphorical) that we have taken. Religious Liberalism is often spoken of as a “Faith of Meaning Making”. At its best, Religious Liberalism is guided by principles, developed together and shared in covenant. At its worst, Religious Liberalism becomes a formless relativism. In either case, it is a faith practice that requires comfort with uncertainty. As I said in an article a few years ago, Religious Liberalism is the faith practice of living on the shifting sands, because such sands are all there are.
This aspect of Religious Liberalism has distinct implications for our encounters with anything in the world, but perhaps the difference is seen most clearly in how Religious Liberals encounter anything recognized as “scripture”. Such scripture may include the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures, the Buddhist Sutras, the Koran, the Baghavad Gita, the Popul Vuh, or even some of our own “scriptures”, such as the writings of some of our theological forebears (Francis David, Emerson, Parker, Channing, and so many more). The experiences of our lives can be understood as living scripture. It might be poetry or fiction, it might be science or art. What counts as scripture for those of Liberal faith is, unsurprisingly, liberal… and often very individualized. For myself, scripture consists of writings and experiences that have had a profound impact upon my life, or have had a profound impact on the lives of countless others. The philosophical writings of Mark Twain have had a profound impact upon my life, and so I include “What is Man?” and “The War Prayer” in my personal canon. Though I am not much moved by the Gospel of John from the New Testament, I recognize that millions have been so moved, so I also recognize its scriptural authority and seek to dance with it.
As I have encountered it in myself and others, the metaphor of a dance is the best I can find for how I and many other Religious Liberals (though perhaps not all) encounter scripture. In taking classes with non-religious liberals studying scripture of varying kinds (from transcendentalism to Christianity to Buddhism and more) I found the questions they most often asked were: “What meaning can be authentically derived from this scripture (exegesis)?”, “What is the context of this scripture?” and “What does this scripture require of me?”.
In encountering some of these same classes and scriptures with my fellow religious liberals, I found a different set of questions being asked… and I think this difference contrasts how religious liberals and others practice faith. Instead of asking “What meaning can be authentically derived from this scripture?”, I found Religious Liberals far more likely to ask “What meaning is there for me in this scripture, in this moment and in my context?” In other words, I found myself and many of my fellow Religious Liberals called to an eisegetical approach to scripture (reading meaning into the scripture) and not purely an exegetical approach (reading meaning from the scripture).
Now, there is a broad divide between how exegesis and eisegesis are viewed in the academic approach to scriptural reading and interpretation. That divide can be stated clearly… exegesis good… eisegesis bad, bad, BAD! Every class studying scripture I have ever encountered (save the one on Buddhist scriptures) understood the purpose of the class in part as purifying eisegesis out of the student’s engagement with the scripture. Students are required to write exegetical papers, and are chided by professors when they make what are interpreted as eisegetical statements. Papers are graded in part for the amount of eisegetical content that might be found in them.
There are two main problems I wish to highlight with this approach. The first is to ask the post-modernist question… Can we ever achieve objective exegesis? Is it possible to encounter a scripture (or anything for that matter) and leave all of the other experiences of our lives out of the encounter? Does not a poor black woman and a rich white man encounter a certain metaphor about camels and eyes of needles in different ways? How do you decide which of these ways is more valid or objective?
One of the answers to this problem of the variability of exegetical work that has gained traction, not in the academy, but in the encounters with scripture by many Conservative Christians, is the “Common Sense” approach. It is the belief that the biblical scriptures of the Christian tradition can be understood with “common sense”, and that you do not need any particular training or skill at interpretation… because there is no interpretation to be done. The meaning is plain and the same to everyone… and that if you do not agree on a scripture’s meaning that is because either you are being deceived by Satan or you are over-thinking it (or both).
Both the academic search for an exegetical objectivity and the “common sense” answer of many of my Conservative Christian friends share the same problem… they often seek to define the scripture as having one meaning, one interpretation, and one purpose. At least in the Academy they invite dialogue and conversation between different interpretations, however the purpose of that dialogue is often (in my opinion) is to convince others of your position. There is similar variability of interpretation among those who follow the “common sense” approach, with much less dialogue. I do find my “Common Sense” Christian friends to be a bit more strident on what will happen to you if you do not agree with them than my friends in the Academy. Failing a class seems so much less scary after listening to descriptions of hell and damnation.
I highlight these two different approaches to interpreting and finding meaning in scripture not to put them down, but to highlight the difference that I see between these approaches and the one I believe we are called to practice as Religious Liberals. Both the academic exegetical approach and the “common sense” approach have value in that they provide a basis for meaning for those who practice them, and each provides a larger base of thought on the scripture for the Religious Liberal to encounter and dance with. My concern with the academic exegetical approach comes when it does not make room for the validity of any other way of encountering and understanding scripture. My concern with the “common sense” approach comes when it seeks to enforce such an individualized interpretation of scripture upon others (for I believe that the common sense approach is actually a mask for doing eisegesis while pretending it is exegesis).
As Religious Liberals, I believe that we are called, as a spiritual practice, to “dance” with the scriptures that we find move us and have power for us in our lives. I believe we are called to “dance” with the scriptures that others find moving and powerful, and that we have yet to find the same within. I believe we are called to “dance” even (and perhaps most importantly) with those scriptures that we find disturbing, that challenge our basic assumptions, but that others see as authoritative. Our encounters with scripture (of all types) should be fluid and dynamic, an interplay between that which makes up who we are and the scripture.
Let me use a section of Christian scripture as an example of one part of my own personal dance. As a teenager in a Southern Baptist Church, I remember a day when a scripture reading seemed to contrast strongly with the practice of my church. I had long begun to believe that for many of my fellow Church members, they came to church mainly to be seen coming to church. There was always a show of how much each tithed to the church. Some people seemed to want to be noticed in prayer during the service. Some seemed to compete for who could say “AMEN!” first. I had accepted that trying to show your piety publicly was a part of what it meant to be a Christian. We had regularly been told that we should “wear our crosses on our sleeves”, so that we could better witness to others. Everyone we met should know that Jesus had saved us, and that he could save them too.
Then one day the Pastor read to us Matthew, Chapter 6. At first, I thought I had heard him wrong, as he said “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them”. I was flabbergasted when the scripture told us not to pray in the temples and synagogues or on street corners, but rather to “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”
‘God is in secret?’ I thought. ‘Since when?’
I had been trained in the “Common Sense” school of understanding the Bible, and the common sense meaning of this scripture told me that I should get away from this church as fast as possible… something I eventually did. At that moment in my life, this scripture became part of why I asked my parents to quit making me go to church (there were other reasons, many of them not so religious). It was then that I really began developing the idea of an individual understanding of my relationship to God, and seeking a private understanding of prayer. By twenty, I was a Christian Deist.
Years later, as I was studying with a Zen Buddhist Roshi and practicing Zen meditation, I encountered this scripture again. I remembered how important that verse had been to me in my teens, but now my dance with it had new steps. I had found a way to “pray” behind closed doors, if not always alone in a room then in silence, seated on the floor and facing a wall. I realized that part of my practicing Zen was a public form of piety… I was given credit by many of my fellow Unitarian Universalists for being “pious and spiritual” because I spent some time every day sitting and facing a wall, even though a spiritual piety was not necessarily my internal reality. I used my connection to Zen to foster that image however, because it was useful to be seen that way in seminary. And when I prayed as a minister in public, I found myself at times “heaping up empty phrases”, and realized there was a disconnect between my private prayer life and the public prayers that were a part of my understanding of the role of “minister”.
Encountering Matthew 6 was a part of my re-evaluation of the places that Zen, Unitarian Universalism, and prayer were playing in my life. That evaluation eventually led to my stepping away from Zen (among other reasons), and focusing again on my own personal practices of prayer and meditation. Eventually I will seek a re-encounter with Zen, but at a time when I am not seeking it for reasons of public piety and ministerial formation.
Two very different encounters with the same scripture… what was different? The scripture was the same, but the meanings I found at each time were very different, and in each case they were transformative for me. What was different was me. The scripture spoke to me differently because I had changed. I had different lenses, different needs, and different experiences. The ability for something, anything, to speak in different ways to different people at different times in their lives may be the unifying definition of what is scripture for me.
The dance with scripture is an interplay, across experience and time, between an individual human being and a fixed point of wisdom, story, experience or thought. I do not have to agree with the wisdom for it to be scripture… I do not agree with John 14:6, (I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the father except through me). Yet each time I encounter that scripture it teaches me something new about myself and what I do believe.
The exegesis, the context of the scripture, the criticism of the scripture and other interpretations, and the meanings the scripture has held for others… these all form the dance floor. To truly be dancing with a scripture, you need to be aware of these… what others have claimed the scripture objectively means, how it relates to other scriptures and to the whole of the religious system, what meanings have been regularly found within the scripture. This is the setting for the dance, and you cannot dance without it. But they are not the dance…
The Dance is the interplay between your sense of self and the life you have lived with this fixed point of wisdom we call scripture. The interplay and interconnection between myself and scripture is one of the places where I see the Holy Spirit within my life. The transformations and inspirations from that dance are primarily for the individual who experiences them. My purpose as a Religious Liberal Minister is not to teach others my dance, but to help others discover their own. Perhaps then I might also be inspired and transformed by how they dance with scripture.
I invite you to dance.
Yours in faith,
Rev. David
Every Jot and Tittle
Yesterday was my birthday, so I thought I’d explain how I came about my name Matthew Tittle.
In the Christian Scriptures, in the King James Version of the Book of Matthew (5:17-18), during the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is recorded as having said:
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
In English, jots and tittles are best described as the cross of a t and dot of an i, respectively. In the original written Greek of the Christian scriptures they were iota and keraia, the smallest letter of the Greek alphabet and a serif or accent mark. In the spoken Aramaic of Jesus’ time and place, they were probably the yodh (the smallest letter in the Aramaic alphabet) and small diacritical marks, hooks, and points that help to distinguish one letter from another. The point in all three cases is attention to the smallest detail. I could say that my study of linguistics and credentials as a language teacher, combined with my theological training are my credentials for explaining jots and tittles, but I would be misleading you….The real story is this…
My parents, Mr. and Mrs. Tittle, bestowed upon me the biblical name of Matthew. They were, at the time, churchgoing folks, Presbyterians, my mother with perfect attendance for many years. So, they certainly knew that the passage in the King James Bible that read, “one jot or one tittle,” came from the book of Matthew. Hence my name Matthew Tittle is inherently biblical. That is, as long as you’re reading the King James Version of the Bible. My parents would not have overlooked this detail, especially since I know my family was focused on the gospels. You see, my older brother was Mark. My older cousin was Jon. I came third as Matthew, but my mother’s youngest sister rebelled, when her son was born, she refused to name him Luke. So we had Matthew, Mark, Jeff, and Jon. If I had been a girl, I would have been Mary, I don’t know if the intent was mother or Magdalene. So, being especially qualified to do so by virtue of my name alone, I am writing on what it means to attend to every jot and tittle in our spiritual lives! (written tongue-in-cheek for those who might think I’m serious…)
Unitarian Universalist minister Edward Frost says, “liberal faith in the perfectibility of humankind is tested to the breaking point by the daily demonstrated truths that human beings are capable of just about anything.”
We need to think deeply and attend to every detail in our practice and understanding of religion. We all encounter much that requires us to understand every jot and tittle of our own religion and that of others.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
When Jesus explains that he hasn’t come to destroy the law and the prophets, he is referring specifically to Jewish law and the teaching of the many prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. Remember, Jesus was a Jew, and was preaching to those who knew the Jewish law and scriptures, both Jew and Gentile. He had to explain himself in this way because he had just seconds earlier done something incredibly risky by saying, in what we call the Beatitudes, that the poor, those in mourning, the meek, the hungry, the thirsty, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, and the falsely persecuted are those who are blessed. He raised them up over the rich, those without feeling, the bullies, the well-fed, the merciless, the deceitful, the war makers, and the persecutors. He also told them, the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, and so on, that they were the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and that they needed to let their light shine. This was heretical, dangerous stuff. And so, he felt it was necessary to explain himself.
Jesus’ disciples asked him later why he hung out with such low lifes as tax collectors and sinners. He responded that those who are well don’t need a physician, but those who are suffering…
Again, he said he wasn’t trying to destroy the law. He even told the people to specifically obey and not break the Ten Commandments. But Jesus was very much an activist and even subversive. I think he was trying to change the law. He promoted nonviolence, but he also promoted active resistance. He told the people to turn the other cheek, effectively offering an oppressor the chance to take another shot, which may very well land them in trouble. He said go the second mile. Soldiers could enlist citizens to carry their gear a certain distance, but no further. Jesus suggested going the second mile, not to help them out, but to get them into trouble. He said give them not only your shirt but also your cloak. A debt collector had to leave something for people to be afforded basic comfort. The cloak was both a coat for warmth and a blanket for sleeping. It couldn’t be taken, but if you gave it to them, again those charged with protecting the law risked breaking it. And even if these measures are interpreted as gestures of good will to the authorities, the result is additional suffering on the part of the poor, the meek, the pure of heart, the peacemakers. The result either way is that the weak are really the strong. They are the blessed. To invoke a phrase from Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church across town, “the victims are the victors.” Or as he says to his congregation “Be a victor, not a victim.” A sound soundbyte.
I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
What was he fulfilling? I think this is the key to the whole passage. Traditional interpretations suggest that the meaning here is nothing short of eschatological– the end times, the fulfillment of the apocalypse, and final judgment. I think that modern Christianity would be a wholly different and even more appealing religion if the book of Revelation had been left out. Which it almost was. Some even tried to have it removed as recently as a few hundred years ago.
If we separate the wheat from the chaff (to invoke another biblical nugget), we find that the heart of Jesus’ teachings (the wheat in this case), was almost exclusively devoted to the theme of love and care for one another, neighbor, and enemy alike. It was for the creation of a beloved community. His message was one also of personal empowerment of those who were considered the least among us. He told them time and again that faith would heal them. Faith comes from within. Faith is the very hardest thing in the face of truth, which is why he spent so much time trying to empower them to overcome adversity through faith.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
This first phrase, “For verily I say unto you” in the King’s English (I’m sorry I don’t have the Greek or Aramaic on the tip of my tongue) is universally interpreted by biblical scholars to be an attention getter. “Hey folks, listen up, you better believe me when I say…” My own paraphrase of the rest of the passage goes like this: “Hell will freeze over before even the smallest detail of the law changes, until all is fulfilled, until you do something about it. Don’t go breaking the law, but change it so that this beloved community can be formed.”
After going through a few examples, he told these underdogs that until their righteousness exceeded the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, until they became victors and not victims, that they would not enter the kingdom of heaven. The scribes and the Pharisees were the recorders, and the interpreters and the enforcers of the political, social, and religious law. Jesus was saying that those who suffer, those who care, those who are oppressed, those who look out for the world, are as well and even better equipped for the task of interpreting the rule of law, than are those charged with doing so.
The kingdom of heaven that he refers to isn’t in the hereafter as many would have us believe. It is here and now. We can create heaven or hell here on earth. Human beings are capable of almost anything. Nothing is going to change until we change it. We need to attend to the details of our spiritual lives. We need to challenge the status quo, as Jesus did, so that we can bring about heaven here on earth. We can sit back and watch and do nothing and feel sorry others, or feel sorry for ourselves. But this would be the worst sin of all.
Over the past few years in the United States many have been criticized and ostracized, and persecuted for doing just what Jesus did–for dissenting–for being critical of the status quo and of those in and with power. But this is our task. This means speaking out, and more importantly, acting out in the world. It means knowing who you are spiritually, and being as certain and secure in that faith as are the scribes and Pharisees of our times. If we shy away from this moral imperative, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law.”
The Meaning of Faith
Faith is not about belief. Faith in fact has very little to do with what beliefs you hold, 
other than that it allows you to hold them. Faith is a sacred, deep, emotionally involved kind of trust. Faith is the kind of trust that you enter into with your whole being. Faith is the kind of trust that, when it has been broken, it hurts deep inside… but faith is the kind of trust that finds a way to trust again despite the hurt.
We are all people of Faith. Faith is a basic aspect of human nature. We live in a universe that is so awe inspiring, so infinite, so grandly complicated that all of human knowledge amounts to only a tiny fraction of reality. Indeed, much of human perception about reality is pure construct… because the whole of infinity cannot be understood by finite human minds.
The realization of just how little about the universe we actually understand exists in all of humanity, both consciously and un-consciously. That realization is one understanding of why humans created religion (but not the only one).
Faith is what allows us to function despite knowing or sensing how little we actually know about all that surrounds us. This is where beliefs come into the definition of Faith. Faith does not equate to beliefs… but it is possible to hold faith in some of your beliefs.
We can have faith in (or sacred trust in) beliefs, in principles, in people, in religious traditions, in community, in systems and institutions, in ourselves, and in the universe as a whole. This last is sometimes referred to as “Faith in God”, “Faith in Dharma”, or “Faith in Creation”. As I have found faith in the universe as a whole, that it is not conspiring against me, not indifferent to me, but rather conspiring on my behalf and that I am a part of it… I have found something to have faith in… but that is not my faith.
My faith is the ability to trust something from the very core of my being. When we are bound together by trust that touches the deepest aspects of who we are… we are living in Faith Community.
A Crisis of Faith is not when a belief is questioned, but when we sense that a deep trust has been broken.
Someone has been Faithful, a Faithful spouse, a Faithful friend, a Faithful person, when they hold not only the sacred trust they place in others, but the sacred trust others place in them as one of the most important aspects of their human existence.
A Religious Faith is not a collection of people who share beliefs, but a community of people who have made the commitment to trust one another to care for each other’s spirits and souls, and who join together for a Faith filled purpose.
Blind Faith is a trust that is not examined, not understood, and of which requires only body and soul, neglecting the mind and the spirit.
Pure Faith is the kind of trust that you hold even when your rational mind says you should not. This is a two edged sword, because at times the ability to hold a pure Faith is a blessing, at other times it is simply Blind Faith in disguise.
Click here to read the rest of the Defining Religious Language essay series
Yours in Faith,
Rev. David
A Response to “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?”
In yesterday’s New York Times, op-ed columnist, Ross Douthat, published “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” My first reaction upon reading the article was to launch a strident refutation. Other people of liberal faith already have. But as I thought more deeply about Mr. Douthat’s indictments, I found more truth and realized that my own reaction was just that–a reaction to some of the unfortunate realities that liberal religion has brought upon itself. I’m not in complete agreement with all of Douthat’s criticisms. His final premise that liberal churches, “often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism,” is painfully accurate. However, I think Douthat misses the mark on why this is. There are, at least, other possibilities to consider. The foundation of Douthat’s concern seems to consist of liberal reforms, primarily in the Episcopal church (although he makes the connection to other liberal faith communities). I’m just not sure when reform became a bad thing. The slower moving Catholic Church certainly hasn’t been winning any awards for it’s resistance to and failure to adapt to the modern world. When I read Douthat’s words that the Episcopal Church:
is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths…
I wanted to swell with pride. These are bad things? I think where Douthat misses the mark is somewhere in his concept of “traditional” religion, which he mentions at least twice. He seems to equate “traditional” with conservative and unchanging, but doesn’t ever define the word, except to invoke foundational practices mentioned by liberal theologian Gary Dorrien. As a person of liberal faith, I have come the understanding that “conservative religion” is an oxymoron. To be religious is to be generous, especially in the Christian context of Jesus’ teachings. There was nothing conservative, traditional, or status quo about what Jesus taught. Quite the contrary, he challenged the religious and political authorities and laws of the time repeatedly and stridently. Jesus taught generosity. Jesus challenged tradition.
So which “traditions” is Mr. Douthat holding up as more sound than the liberal reforms that have been the norm in societies and religions across the globe since human history has been recorded and preserved? I don’t think he meant the tradition that Jesus taught or that his immediate apostles followed, or their followers in the early centuries of Christianity, which was a time of oppression from without and debate from within. The earliest traditions of Christianity were to be counterculture. I imagine, from his own words, that Mr. Douthat means the traditions of the Catholic Church, which rejects the reformations that have been challenging the church for at least a millinium, which still dogmatically calls itself the one true Christian church. I wonder if he also means the fundamentalist interpretations of Jesus’ teachings that have infiltrated many corners of Christianity and subsequently dictate that there is only one path to the divine, through Jesus as lord and savior, all others being damned?
I find none of this “tradition” in Jesus’ teachings, in the early church, or in the liberal faith that I practice today.
Nonetheless, as Mr. Douthat accurately describes, liberal Christianity has moved uncomfortably close to a secular liberalism, and liberal faith communities are declining. But as any good social researcher knows, correlation does not equal causation. The claim in this article that the decline and imminent death of liberal Christianity is inherent in liberalism itself, is unfounded.
So what do liberal faith communities need to do to survive and thrive? I believe, like Mr. Douthat, that we need to offer religion again. Not conservative, traditional religion that is unchanging and uninviting, but the inclusive, radical religion that Jesus taught in his first sermon. A religion that binds together all people in a single garment of destiny. A religion that does not change the law, but fulfills it by holding it accountable, and by breaking the status quo. A religion that invites and creates social change, not because it is becoming more secular, but because change is human nature (thank God), and because social issues are moral issues first, not political.
We also need to reintroduce discipline into our faith practices. As liberal faith communities have progressed we have lost focus, not so much of our history and traditions, but of our discipline. Religion is ultimately grounded in practice. Practice requires discipline. Discipline creates disciples. Not blind followers, but informed, radically-prepared change agents.
This week, I promoted increased discipline in the faith lives of my Unitarian Universalist congregants using the example of the coming month of Ramadan and the five pillars of Islam. Even modern adherents of Islam practice the discipline required in the five pillars. I asked my congregation how they could introduce a regular, practiced, discipline of more reverence, more restraint, and more responsibility in their lives. None of this is counter to the ideas of religious liberalism. All of it will be necessary for us to get back on track with being successful reformers.
So, I absolutely agree with Ross Douthat when he says, “What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence,” we just see different paths toward that goal. His are grounded in an undefined tradition and conservancy, mine are grounded in an unabashed liberal spirit and generosity within a healthy practice of religious discipline.
There are many paths…
The New Face of Courage
Courage comes in many forms and it wears many faces. We often think of those who put themselves in harms’ way for the sake of others as being courageous. The firefighter who rushes into a burning building. The soldier who risks life and limb to save a buddy who’s been wounded. The mother who shields her baby from imminent danger.
This past week, I saw another face of courage. It was worn by a young woman who lives in Arizona, whose mother brought her across the border when she was an infant. All her life she lived in fear. In fear of the knock on the door in the middle of the night. In fear of the police who patrol her neighborhood. In fear that when she came home from school her mother would be gone, taken to a detention center to be deported.
This young woman, now in her twenties, has declared her freedom from fear and has become an advocate for the rights of undocumented people just like herself. She has attended and spoken out at immigrant rights’ rallies. She has “bucked the system” and achieved both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from Arizona State. She has started a “language exchange” in Phoenix, where undocumented youth from her community can come and teach Spanish, thereby earning a little cash to support themselves while they also learn to speak English from their students. (See the video here: Spanish for Social Justice ) She is, in all aspects of her life, proclaiming her heritage, her identity and her status in the face of frightening, brutal and repressive forces. And she’s doing it with joy and love. The face of courage that I encountered last week wears a big smile, and it is beautiful.
After hearing this woman’s story, I’m called to ask myself where courage comes from. Not the “run into a burning building” courage (which, while certainly admirable, often is more a reaction to circumstance), but the kind that says “I’m in this for the long haul, no matter what.” The kind of courage that enables and empowers us to get out of bed, day after day, to face a world full of risk and danger. I have to believe that this kind of courage is grounded in love. In the love that we receive from others and in the love we have for the world.
We need a community of love around us to provide the foundation for all that we do. Knowing that we are loved, no matter what, by our family and our friends gives us the courage to venture out into a hostile world. It also forms the basis of our self-esteem, the basis of our belief that our lives matter and that we can make a difference. This kind of love empowers us to declare our own worth in the face of those who would deny it.
A love of the world calls us to engage with it, in all its beauty and all its horror. When we love the world, like a parent with a troublesome child, we acknowledge its imperfections, yet we cast our gaze to the horizon of its potential. Love for the world allows us, in the words of Bobby Kennedy, “to dream things that never were, and say, why not?” And it creates in us the commitment to do what we can to make those dreams a reality.
As I move through the days ahead, I will carry the image of this young woman with me. She is, for me, the new face of courage.
Peace,
Peter