C3/CCC Sermon Transcript for July 22, 2007 If I were to stand before you and tell you that I believe in an invisible pink unicorn, what would you think? You'd think maybe I need a vacation. I’ve been working too hard. If I were to say that this invisible pink unicorn is something that I believe in by both faith and reason- I believe it's pink by faith and I believe it's invisible by reason. That is I can't see it. I believe this invisible pink unicorn is a supernatural being and I can prove that to you because it's invisible. I can tell you a bit about this invisible pink unicorn. I can tell you that it likes ham and pineapple pizza, but not pepperoni pizza. The followers of the purple oyster of doom, who are vehemently opposed to the invisible pink unicorn, are partial to pepperoni pizza. I can tell you that if some day one of your socks goes missing, you should rejoice and be glad because the invisible pink unicorn has raptured your sock up into the heavens as a sign of great favor upon you. You cannot argue with me about my invisible pink unicorn because it's invisible and in any case there are sacred texts confirming everything I have said. And so we go round and round in a circular argument. Following a Religion is like Believing in an Invisible Pink Unicorn Some of the latest atheists on the block, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, are suggesting that believing in God, and following a religion, is just as nonsensical as believing in the invisible pink unicorn. Well, they might have a point. Or do they? As people who are pioneers in the Progressive Christian movement, one that transcends and includes all that has gone before it, how might we respond to the new atheist challenge? This morning I will explore how reason and passion united is the essence of progressive religion, and that as we continue to enjoy being in community of open mind and as we continue to savor life in all its beauty and diversity, our religion can fill life with greater meaning without lapsing into irrationality. The tendency has always been for religion to be either reasonable OR passionate, but rarely both. Reasonable worldviews and passionate worldviews have often clashed, and I sense that we have a wonderful opportunity to unite both reason and passion. Is There Anybody Out There? We have two extremes here- reason, human progress and the intellect on the one hand, and passion or faith on the other. Khrushchev was a fervent atheist, who believed that the incredible progress made in Russia since 1917 had come about by ridding the country of superstitious religion. He followed on from Stalin and continued Stalin’s systematic persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. Khrushchev took the persecution a step further, by using the media to mount a systematic intellectual challenge of religion. The first space adventure was a wonderful symbol of Russian progress, and Khrushchev needed evidence that there was no God to confirm his perspective. On the other hand, the Russian Orthodox Church represents the ultimate in passion and faith. What could be more passionate than the Russian Orthodox Church, which had withstood the persecution of Stalin and, in more subtle ways, Khrushchev, and stood firm? There is something intangible about the courage and perseverance of the Russian Orthodox Church, that they could withstand such attacks and keep going. The God in the heavens symbolized their intangible faith. So we have the extreme rational perspective on the one hand. On the other hand we have passion, courage, perseverance; all intangible, dare I say irrational, qualities. What I want to suggest is that we can take the best from both. It doesn't have to be a choice. We can take the best of science and the best of reason, along with the best of passion, wrap it up in poetry and mythology, inspiring the imagination. When you bring the best of reason and the best of passion together you have the makings of progressive religion. Religion Without Reason Religion that is pure passion without reason is unthinkable in a world of space travel and scientific advance. Carl Sandberg said, “If God was the man upstairs; I'd be an atheist for sure. The man upstairs always comes in late, slams the door, kicks off shoes and makes noise--and I don't want to believe in that.” The man upstairs is not what I'm talking about. We’ve been to space and we know that there are no heavens up there, no God in the sky, and no angels. The new atheists seem to be fixated on critiquing this sort of God and this unreasonable religion. They fail to realize that so many religious people have left behind this sort of irrational belief long ago. The new atheists also assume that religious people believe in a cause and effect God. This is a God that many of us have also left behind. Germaine Greer came back after a trip to Africa, having experienced firsthand the devastation of children suffering and dying, and her comment was this, “If God exists, I hate him.” If we speak about the god of cause and effect, we are left with a huge existential crisis. How can we reconcile the god that allows children to starve, and does not have the will to change that situation? That's not the god I'm speaking about. The God in the sky, the God of cause and effect, is the God that Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens seem most offended by. This is the god that I believe is a straw man, an easy god to strike down, but it's not the god that progressive religion is interested in. It's too small and it’s too narrow. The god I’m speaking about is so much bigger. God as Pregnant Void Yuri Gagarin went to the heavens and came back and said what he found was a whole lot of nothing; a pregnant void. How beautiful! Because the same pregnant void that is space is the very stuff of human existence. Emptiness surrounds us. 200 years ago, Einstein declared that the natural plane is mostly space and motion. The hardest stone is very similar to space, for both are simply motion and wave patterns that create certain types of spaces. Both are mostly made of nothing on the physical level, as are we, and everything that exists. Space is not just "out there"; It is also all around and within us. The sky does not begin where the atmosphere leaves off; it permeates everything. Swedenborg said "God is in all space without being bound by space, and in all time without being bound by time."
The pregnant void is an appreciation that no-thing is the seed of all things. Genesis says that creation came “out of nothing”. Emptiness is beautiful and creative. It is the seed of all things. It is an attitude of non attachment to any particular form. Many centuries ago, the Babylonians marched into the temple in Jerusalem and ransacked the Holy of Holys and then came out laughing and saying, “your religion is a hoax! There's nothing in there!” It strikes me that Dawkins/ Harris and Hitchens’ critique is much like the Babylonians coming out of the Holy of Holys scoffing and saying that there's nothing there. The Babylonians missed the point. Jewish people had Torah in their hearts. They didn't need a particular place, a particular form for God, because Torah was written on their hearts. It's a wonderful metaphor for passion. Progressive religion is written in our hearts. It's built around both passion and reason, but not attached to a particular form of belief or God, nor on a particular feeling towards this God. You Don’t Need a Supernatural God I want to give God back to you this morning. I want to give God back to you, a God that will be bigger, more infinite than you could ever have imagined. The God you take back will not be limited by judgments, by bigotry, or by anger. It will be all possibilities. It will be the seed of all things that are connected to all other things. We do not need the supernatural external God. We have all that we need built into nature and our human brains. Dan Gilbert, the guru of happiness science, reported research that makes that point- A study was undertaken where volunteers were told that they would be working on a two-person task that required them to have a teammate whom they liked and trusted. The volunteers were shown four folders, each of which contained the biography of a potential teammate. They were told that they must choose a folder randomly, and that the person whose biography was in the chosen folder would be their teammate. The volunteers looked at the four folders, chose one randomly, and then read the biography they found inside. What the volunteers did not know was that the experimenter had put the same biography in all four folders, and that it was the biography of someone who was not particularly likeable or trustworthy. The human brain is a wondrous, creative, unexplored, meaning maker. It’s a story builder, and its stories are a blend of reason and passion. Agape as Love that Unites Reason and Passion
St. Paul comes to these words with a dual background- both Jewish and Greek. He brings the best of both with him, the passion of his Jewish background; the signs, the tradition, the stories, the wonders, the belief that religion is written on the heart. At the same time he brings the reason of the Greek world. He was well versed in Greek philosophy. He had an optimistic belief in humanity, that human beings are able to reason and progress. The word he uses for love is agape, which in this context is the summation of all else. It is a love that unites reason and passion. There are a couple of different words for love in the New Testament, one of them is eros, which is “pure passion.” The other is filia, which is a very reasonable love. Filia is the love we share with family or tribe. Agape brings the best of all three together with a love that transcends and includes both reason and passion. Agape seeks the highest good. It can be summarized as “will and grace.” It is will because you choose it- you make a conscious decision to love. It is grace because it's not dependent on circumstance or condition. Agape is seeking the highest good, the summation of all else. Faith and hope are qualities of passion but love is a summation and the fulfillment of all three. This type of love includes tough love and self-love, and transcends boundaries of friend and stranger. This type of love is the hallmark of progressive religion and you can only get there when you unite passion and reason. This is the God that I want to give back to you. This is the God that I want you to celebrate. This is the God that surrounds you on every side. Agape is everywhere. Agape includes all things and refuses nothing. The invisible pink unicorn has a symbol that goes with it, and it includes the mathematical symbol of a void- the circle with the line that goes through it. Nothing could also be described as the pregnant void. It is a beautiful quality of potential. It's the seed of all things. It's the connection of all things and all processes. God as the Creative Process A teacher took his class to the woods and said, “I saw something the other day. I wonder if any of you have seen it? I went out and saw it coming up from the ground, about 10 inches high, and on top of it was a little ball of fluff, and if you went ‘poof’ a whole galaxy of stars flew out. Now what was it like before a little ball of stars appeared?” One child said, “It was a little yellow flower, like a sunflower, only smaller.” Most of them said yes, but the teacher said, “No, you can’t pick a dandelion. That's impossible. A dandelion is all these things you mentioned and more, so whatever you picked, you got only a fragment of something or other. You can’t pick a dandelion, because a dandelion isn’t a thing, it is a process. Every living thing is a process—even you!”
I want to give God, who is the creative process, back to you. Take God and fill God with whatever meaning makes sense to your mind and your heart. Remember that God is not God's name; God is the name that we give to God. Whatever you call it, however you conceive of it, or however you describe the miracle of the connectedness of life and the mystery, beauty and diversity of creative processes, take that back and celebrate it. What I'm giving back to you is a dandelion, and as you breathe into it and release those stars out into the universe to create, to move, to be the process that they ought to be, remember that every living thing is a process, especially you. You are the divine process. Your relationships are the divine process. Nature as we enjoy it is part of the divine process. Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens have asked all the right questions about the God that we used to believe in, but their critique doesn’t come close to the God that we now celebrate, the God who unites reason and passion, the God that is a dandelion, releasing galaxies of stars into the universe. Their critique can't even get close to the religion that is written on your hearts and minds. close window | ^ top | home |