Questions and Questing:

A Faith Full Journey

A Sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church

West Lafayette, Indiana

October 7, 2007

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Long ago under the vaulting arch of the sky a man or woman sat – and hoped and feared and began to feel the mystery of being and to wonder about the forces that shaped life -- the forces that tore life apart, the forces that caused harmony and those that fostered discord.  Whether this person had the good fortune to return to the cave or the hut – the community and to share her wonder with a willing tribe or if she was laughed at, ostracized, or simply ignored as not quite right – we’ll never know – but we can be sure that she lived in that long ago time because her spirit lives in us now.

There are three ways to approach that spirit of human wonder – One is to cling to answers – either ones you receive or ones that you imagine, another is to dissect the matter and to dismiss the wonder if it seems that the questions cannot be answered, and another is to be willing to live in the tension – between wonder and exploration knowing that the one need not destroy the other.  No matter how much I studied physics in college it only increased my sense of awe at the universe.  No matter how much time I spent preparing for parenthood – learning the biology of gestation, reading about human development – no matter what I read about attachment parenting – no amount of study could diminish my ongoing wonder at the miracle of life and the depth of love.

            We find ourselves, today, in a world dangerously challenged by people who choose not to wonder – not to question – but to assault life with a frenzied certainty that they have found and captured the truth and will hold all the world hostage until it admits of that truth or is destroyed in the cleansing process.  How will we pass through this epoch? How did we get here?

            As a child I read Alice in Wonderland and even in the Disney version I was absolutely shocked that Alice would simply eat or drink whatever the label told her to – without question.  I would read that passage each time with horror – “no don’t do it!”  But if course she never listened and each time I would learn again the importance of asking questions – and not being an unthinking follower.

            No matter that I don’t know the fate of the early ones who looked to the vaulted heavens -- I do know that it is our questions which have shaped humanity.  Our questions have shaped how we see the cosmos and the place of the world and ourselves in it.  The questions we ask also shape the answers we find – just as the outcome of an experiment can be subtly or not so subtly influenced by the way the experiment is structured and the result of a survey can be skewed by the questions asked.  Therefore the questions that matter have to be -- not leading questions -- but the ones that truly arise from the human condition – authentic. The questions that matter rise from the anguish or delight of the soul or the sharp edge of the reasoning mind. 

            Religion and philosophy both have emerged out of human questions and human answers to them.  And there’s always a tension between the questions and the answers. 

            My love of scripture was born out of all the contradictions in the Book of Genesis.  It was a great discovery!  No faith allows the questions to remain unless it means to leave them as a sign post for future generations – forget not your doubts, ye who enter here.  When I read of Abraham arguing with God I was hooked – here was a text that taught that – no matter the outcome – whether you triumph or fail – you have the right – perhaps even the responsibility to argue with God or in other language – you have the right, the responsibility to question the nature of the world in which we all live, move, and have our being.  This Friday I watched again an episode of the great Bill Moyers series Genesis: A Living Conversation – we’ll be watching the series this fall in preparation for Scripture Study.  Anyway, I’d been eager to go back to Jacob wrestling with the stranger at the Jabbok.  They wrestle all night long and the stranger cannot defeat Jacob until he magically touches his hip and puts it out of joint – not a model of fair play – and still Jacob will not release him until the stranger blesses him.  So the stranger blesses him and gives him a new name – Israel – which means one who has wrestled with both men and God and prevailed.  One more point for those who doubt and wrestle with what is – for those who wonder and do not meekly accept. 

            For me the most poignant moment in Western Scripture is the cry of Jesus from the cross: “Father, father why have you forsaken me?”  A moment of radical questioning – a critical moment.

            Sometimes it astounds me that any of those passages made the cut through all the rabbis and all the church councils.  For they are sign posts for the careful reader.  Over the centuries, no matter how religions have tended to lean toward trying to overlook or gloss the questions – the human impulse to keep asking also leans into religion and all systems of thought and refuses to be crushed.

            Scripture admits that the woman was hungry for understanding even before she ate the fruit.  Yet the tension remains in the text and in the history of religion between the recognition that we are naturally wondering beings and the desire of “organized religion” of every stripe to limit the horizons of that wonder and the lives of human beings.

            Before the beginning was told there had to be the question – how did it begin – and along with the question came the fear of the question and that tension remains.  It’s our central life tension – we have a hymn in our hymnal that says – “give me the wonder of the child.” In our earliest moments all is wonder, discovery, experiment.  At a certain point – often just around the age of 2 comes the need to say “no!” as the child discovers her or himself by pushing against and resisting the guiding forces that have shaped her or his life so far.  If this resistance is met with understanding and respect and not crushed – that child becomes one who asks why why why why.  The sort of asking that we hope to encourage in our religious education program.  And that child – may grow into the mature person who also asks deeper questions of meaning and ethics.

            Studying philosophy in college I fell in love with Cicero, the Roman philosopher who lived just before the time of Jesus.   Unlike our Jim Leary, I did not read Cicero in the Latin but even in translation his skepticism caused my marginalia to be effusive.

            Cicero wrote:  “Surely such wide diversity of opinion among men of the greatest learning on a matter of the highest moment must affect even those who think they possess certain knowledge with a feeling of doubt.  This has often struck me – but it did so with especial force on one occasion when the topic of the immortal gods was made the subject of a very searching and thorough discussion.”

            Reading Cicero and other ancient and modern philosophers – I affirmed my own skepticism again and again.  In retrospect it was an interesting kind of fundamentalist practice where I proof texted the history of thought to lift up only the skeptics and bury the believers.  The questions had become a stopping point – a wall against the wonder that had originally birthed them.

            But somewhere lurking remained traces of that pure wonder that is the birthright of every person. With that wonder came also a yearning to celebrate and honor the human condition: to celebrate life and contemplate it as holy.  Simply to enjoy the questions and the quest was not enough for me.  And that brought me back to Unitarian Universalism and that brings me again and again to the study of the history of religion.

            Now you can look at the history of religion in one of two ways.  On the one hand you can see it as the story of humanity’s yearning for communion with the Divine – by whatever name that is called.  A story of goodness and faith periodically sidetracked by people of ill-will and a thirst for power who drag religion down some brutal and mistaken alleys for which many people suffer.  You know: the history of religion is mostly a history of good people except for the crusades and the caste system and a few other problems.  On the other hand, you can see the track record of religion as the violent, gory story of humanity seeking for a sense of control in a challenging world – a story of nearly unremitting cruelty and destruction – of a delusion bathed in blood -- interrupted only periodically by people of good will who resist the cruelty and dogma.

I got an email this week that reminded me that deities can have more than two hands.  And here we need another hand.  Recently I read Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: a history – which is a great read and for me was a trip down memory lane where I encountered all the skeptics I had met in college.  Hecht reminded me that there’s at least a third hand.  There is another way to look at the history of religion.

            It is the history of humanity’s yearning for meaning or communion with the divine and at the same time of the human tendency to set the answers in stone, to find comfort in a sense of control or certainty – and that results in carving idols or smashing them and smashing people along with them.  At all times – even in this, our time – faith is always accompanied by her twin sister – doubt.  The one awakens and haunts the other.  You cannot have one without the other.  I wonder – no – I feel certain that in your hearts there have been times when you have felt both awe and skepticism at the same time – or times when you sat in some church and felt your questions rising within you. 

            From Genesis through history doubt has been whispering, speaking, at times calling into faith.  There have been times when doubt has been intimidated – but never has she entirely shrunk from her task.  Galileo spoke new truth in the face of religion, Martin Luther challenged the church for charging money to buy your way into heaven – the list goes on.  Often it’s those who take to heart the highest lessons of religion – to love, to pursue the truth, to call for justice – it’s often the most religious persons who are driven to question – because they can’t bear to see either the Divine possibility or the human condition locked up, sewn tight, or carved in granite.

            The reformation – that long period of upheaval in religious history – was a chronicle of doubt challenging the established religious order – not on a whim – but to pursue the truth.  Our own Unitarian and Universalist movements arose out of it – people died for it.  It was a period – which hasn’t really ended – in which doubt pushed religion to find out what is worthy and to discard what is false or harmful.

            Religion can’t evolve without questions – without doubt – skepticism. That’s what Jennifer Michael Hecht reminded me of.  Religion needs doubt to keep it honest – to make it accountable to the human condition, to keep it living.  Sadly – the work of doubt can be challenging, even life threatening: just look at the Inquisition.

            When Jan Hus the 14^th century Czech reformer questioned whether the communion cup should be restricted only to the clergy and offered it to the people he died for his heresy but today there are countless churches where communion is taken by the people.  Our own Chalice is in part in honor of Hus’ courage in offering religion into the hands of the people.  Faustus Socinus fled Italy in the 16^th century bringing his belief in the humanity of Jesus into Poland and Transylvania –often in danger but he gave rise to a genuine Unitarian movement which survives in Transylvania to this day.  When Universalist Hosea Ballou preached the doctrine of universal salvation and of God as a loving and forgiving force he was often derided and threatened.   He was even ridiculed by Unitarians.  But he reshaped the image of God in America so that in churches of many faiths the notion of an angry, punitive, record keeping deity has come to seem too small a deity and has been replaced by the image of a loving parent.

            Challenge, skepticism – doubt is the best friend of faith.  It asks that we question our most basic beliefs – not take them in like Alice did the little bottle that said – drink me.  Genuine questioning does not tear down for the sake of tearing down – but to serve life.  It asks – does this reflect life? Does this serve life?  Will this speak to or ignore the human condition? Will this alleviate human suffering or only mask it?  Will this draw humanity in the direction of greater harmony or intensify the clash of dogma and creed?

            Unitarian Universalism has a long and noble history of doubters and skeptical visionaries – people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Theodore Parker, Curtis Reese, Kenneth Patton… who, ceasing never, have made this a questing faith that stands upon certain life affirming principles. To question is not enough – we do need ground upon which to stand.  We stand upon grounding principles.  We rely on living sources to inform our world views: direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder; words and deeds of prophetic women and men; wisdom from the world's religions; humanist teachings; and the spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions.  We stand upon strong ground and yet we honor both faith and doubt – both sisters. 

            So I differ with comedian Cathy Ladman who said that “All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”  It’s true that too often religion seems to try to boil life down to a simple set of precepts – that as Hecht put it in an interview on the podcast – Skepticality – religion can sanitize our world view.  And yet – Unitarian Universalism does not simplify or sanitize – rather it creates the space and freedom to hold our contradictions.  I’d be witnessing falsely if I did not say that I believe that we have something special – powerful – world healing – and desperately needed here.  There are many marvelous religious paths in our world and a few truly dead enders – but here we bring together many paths and explore them with both reason – the organ of skepticism and awe – the organ of faith.  Our world has many stories that can awaken the soul – here we celebrate the stories, keep ourselves awake and hold ourselves able and responsible to question, to wrestle.

            Here on purpose the questions are welcomed and the questing continues.  Here we’re drawn toward new insights into the human condition and encouraged to honor the mysteries we can’t capture in words or quantify in numbers but know through the heart.   Here we offer a direct challenge to the frenzied certainties that are fomenting violence in word and deed in the world today.  Here we are called to challenge every fundamentalism and look for the spirit beneath the letter and the truth beyond all else.  Here we know that science can only deepen the sense of wonder and awe at the world – and enlarge our vision – but ultimately the mystery remains and we live within it – with all our questions – under the vaulting heavens.  You carry the spirit of that ancient wonderer and we are that religious tradition that has honored both faith and doubt and our ability to live with the questions, the answers and the mystery.