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THE Answer to Every Question A Sermon by Rev. David Bryce |
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Good morning! My write-up for today’s sermon promised THE answer to every question. Let me begin by giving you the answer immediately. What is the answer to every question? Well, it depends. Ah, the groans go up. Some of you are thinking that I just “copped-out” on the issue. Others will recognize that I have, indeed, just given you the answer to every question, which is: It depends. That response works for a variety of reasons, and I want to speak to some of them today. One of the things I want to keep in the back of my mind, and suggest you keep in the back of yours, is the dictum of Socrates that every statement should be treated as a question. The first reason that the, “It depends” response “works” is that it is true. Think of almost any question: Is the sky blue? Is the ocean deep? Does life have meaning? Do welfare programs work? Should we establish a colony on the planet Mars? Are human beings inherently evil? If I respond with an immediate “Yes” or “No” to any of those questions, I cut off further exploration of them within my own mind. In doing so, I threaten to terminate ongoing learning for myself and possibly miss the opportunity for a depth understanding of the issues involved. Is the world flat? At one time, everyone would have answered, “Yes” to that question. Only because some people did not is our world what it is today. So, not only is the real, true, actual answer to all of those questions, “It depends”; but that response allows me to remain open to new understandings of the world, of myself and of life. But first, a caution: Does the answer, “It depends” work in every single circumstance? Well, it depends. There are, in fact, a few instances in which I would not use it. I give you one example: Honey, do you love me? But I suggest to you that other than in a few select circumstances, this answer, “It depends”, works, and it works because it is true.
There is another, more important reason that it is a good response, and that is what I really want to focus on today. It is a good response because it works within. What do I mean by that? I mean that I for one have a tendency to react quickly and judgmentally to certain questions. So if someone asks the question, “Why should we spend government money on helping the poor?” I typically become angry. I quickly pass judgment on the person who has asked that question; I judge them as cold, callous, even immoral. And I have to struggle within myself to “lift” that judgment, to call it back. And because I react that way internally, I sometimes do not react well externally. I become angry, short and intolerant. And there are other questions that cause me to react with emotion rather than with reason: Is that bad, ought we not sometimes react with anger or other emotions? Well, it depends. Do you want to use that moment as a teaching moment, an interaction moment, as a time to express valid reasons for YOUR position; or do you instead want to alienate both the person who has asked the question and anyone else who may be listening. If internally I hear the question and respond with the answer, “It depends”, then I am better able to respond to the person who has asked the question, and I am better able to respond to the issue they have raised. And I feel better. Inside, I feel better. Now it is not always easy to respond that way. That for me is especially true where human rights or human safety are involved; those are the issues that tend to touch upon the deepest emotions within me. But two important points: First, one can be passionate in a positive sense rather than yielding to anger, and that is more likely to sway people to your point of view. Second, one can always become angry later. Let me point out that during the buildup to the Iraq war, I began with a strong ambivalence about whether the invasion of Iraq was justified. I listened to what the administration had to say, weighed it carefully in my own mind, and only after some inner struggle decided that war in this case was not justified. Now that we know nearly beyond doubt that this administration manipulated information, intentionally inflated the threat of Iraqi weapons and link to terrorists and knowingly misled the American people, now I feel a strong and justified anger. I feel betrayed. Nearly 500 American soldiers are dead. An estimated 14,000 Iraqis are dead, some 4,000 of those civilian casualties. So anger is always a later possibility. And is often justified. But let me say that I am not just talking today about anger, I am really talking about any immediate reaction, whether emotional or intellectual. I am more at ease within myself, and more present to others, when I can let the answer to a question be open. Let’s think about some spiritual and theological questions. Is there a soul? Is there life after death? Is there a God? Is there a Goddess? If I respond with an immediate “Yes” or “No” to any of those questions, I cut off dialogue and searching within myself. “Oh, but I’ve had that dialogue before.” Well, maybe, but when I did so, I was a different person than I am right now, even if that dialogue took place Just yesterday or just fifteen minutes ago. Let me take one of the questions I asked above: Is there a God? Whether I insist that there is or insist that there is not, that very insistence makes me a literalist fundamentalist, something I personally wish to avoid. But I don’t have to insist, as such. Even if I simply give the quick, ready answer; that is, if I answer by rote from the “tape” within, I lock myself in to whatever that answer is. If you ask me to state my faith in a positive sense, I will tell you that today I am a Humanist, and that today I define that as one who is spiritual, who has a deep faith in the human spirit, who strives to lead a moral life and who does not believe that there is a God. But if you ask me whether there is a God, I hope that I will allow the question to be MY question, to be a question that I am answering within myself as if for the first time, at least momentarily. Because if I immediately answer that question by saying, “No” then I have refused to allow the possibility that new growth and revelation can and may have taken place within my own soul. Let me answer the question; but let me do so only after I have been open to my own search. Karen Armstrong clearly showed in her book, A History Of God, that the question “Is there a God?” has no meaning until you know what the questioner means by the word “God”. Usually the person asking the question has a very specific, finite, limited vision of God in mind. The corollary to that is that usually the person who says, “There is no God” also has a very specific, finite, limited vision in their mind of the God that does not exist. Is there a God? It depends. What do you mean by “God”? What do I mean by “God”? When I am saying, “Yes” or “No” within myself, what is it that I am saying, “Yes” or, “No” to? When I say, “Yes AND No” within myself, what God or aspects of God am I saying, “Yes” to and what am I saying, “No” to? How many of us accept God simply because that is the explanation we have been given? How many of us reject God because we have been hurt by God or by the manner in which others have used God? So no matter what my immediate internal response can I say within myself, “It depends”? What I am talking about here is entirely internal. If all of this processing takes place within, then in a sense it really doesn’t matter what response I give externally now; the fact is that I leave open a space for growth and change within. I remain spiritually open and I renew my spiritual quest every time someone asks me the question, “Is there a God?”. Or uses the word “God” in a reading; or chooses a hymn with the word “God” in it. Because each time I come upon the word I refuse to quickly reject it—or to quickly accept it. Spiritual openness need not keep me from clearly having, stating or sharing my current spirituality. Spiritual openness does keep me from the twin “sins”, if you will--sins against myself--of either concretizing my current belief into Absolute Truth, or of falling into spiritual laziness—of saying to myself, “I have already found my answer, I can stop now”. I am now 54 years old. I would point out that if I stopped my search when I was, say, thirty-four years old (it could be any age), then I have the answers given by my thirty-four year old self, and I have the spirituality of my thirty-four year old self. Now there is nothing wrong with the answers a thirty-four year old gives to life’s questions. They were my answers twenty years ago. They may simply no longer BE mine. They MAY; but they may not. I hope to remain on the path of spiritual search, of spiritual growth. For me, one way to do that is to avoid the immediate response to any question. May I remain open; may my spiritual quest continue; may growth and ongoing revelation live within me. So let it be. |
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