Bepi's Question
Delivered by
Ilona Forgeng, September 25, 2010
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
A couple of months ago
our speaker, Toni’s son-in-law, used the term, Salvation,
and in the talk-back, Bepi asked how one could use the term salvation in a
UU context. “What on earth is a Unitarian Universalist doing talking
about Salvation?”
We don’t believe
(most of us, anyway) in heaven or hell. We don’t believe in original
sin, most of us probably don’t really believe in sin at all. Salvation?
What are we being saved from? What are we being saved for?
Actually, salvation is
central to both Universalists and Unitarians. To Unitarians, Salvation
means simply Salvation by Character. Nineteenth
century Unitarians rejected the idea of a trinity, but they still wanted
to be able to call themselves Christian. So they said that the
most important thing about Jesus was his character; they said we would
find our own salvation in adopting the character, in following the
teachings, of Jesus. What was important to Unitarian salvation was
how you lived your life.
This 19th
Century Unitarian ideal shows up very clearly in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge achieves salvation through changing
his ways and becoming more Christ-like -- salvation by character.
The Universalists were
more Christ-centered, but they believed that God loved us like a father,
and no loving father would damn his children to an eternity of punishment;
there could be no Hell, only Heaven and there was Universal Salvation.
When I was growing up
at
First
Unitarian
Church
in
Niagara Falls
, we recited a creed that said that we believed in the Fatherhood of God
and the Brotherhood of Man. (Some people added, “The neighborhood of
Boston
,” but that’s another story.) Neither of those, of course, would be
acceptable in a UU setting today – brotherhood, fatherhood, God,
man—we have grown beyond these words. We used only those two statements,
and we left out three others that were part of the full Unitarian creed.
The full text, dating from the 1890’s, was: We believe in the
fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the spiritual leadership of
Jesus, salvation by character, and the progress of mankind, upward and
onward forever.
Unitarians still hold
to at least one of those creeds, Salvation by Character.
The word salvation comes from the same Latin root as the word salve; it
refers to being healthy, being whole and for Unitarians salvation has
meant living in a kind of healthy wholeness, living fully in the here and
now, not in the hereafter. Salvation requires us to construct our lives
such that we experience that healthy kind of wholeness that makes for a
life well lived.
Salvation is not about
being saved FROM anything, it is about finding purpose and wholeness
within our own lives, right here and right now. It is about how we seek to
become more fully ourselves, to live a life which is useful to us, worthy
of the highest ideals we can strive for and that makes us a blessing to
ourselves and to all of creation.
We are here, in this
place, to effect our own salvation and to help in each other’s
salvation. We each have to construct our own—it comes from within. I
have to find my own way to that healthy wholeness. You can help me; this
place can help me, and it has. But I have to do the work. It is necessary
work, and it isn’t easy. But then, our kind of salvation requires
authenticity, and authenticity is never easy.
Christian salvation is
much easier. Follow the prescription and there you are! Believe, accept
Jesus as the one and only road to salvation, Follow the formula, don’t
question, and bathed in the blood of the lamb I am cleansed of all my
sins.
The Muslim concept of
an afterlife includes the rewards of Heaven for the righteous and the
punishment of Hell for failure. Muslims have no concept of original sin,
and so require neither redemption nor atonement. For a Muslim, Salvation
comes through following the five pillars of Islam.
In traditional Judaism
salvation is not so much individual salvation as salvation of the entire
covenanted community, and it requires that Jews live as God wants them to
live.
Moksha is as close as
Hindus come to our idea of salvation. Moksha is release from the unending
cycle of birth, death and rebirth. It is the reunion of the atman, the
personal soul, with Brahma, the oversoul and is achieved through the
efforts of the personal soul throughout many lifetimes.
Buddhist salvation
seeks enlightenment through the release of all attachments and illusions.
Cessation of desire leads to a state of nirvana, or oneness and unity with
creation.
For Taoists, salvation
is not an escape from this world; rather, salvation consists of following
the Tao, the WAY, bringing oneself into perfect alignment with the natural
world and with the cosmic forces that created and sustain it. Taoists see
salvation in the here and now, salvation by the character of the Tao.
Confusists too seek a
kind of salvation by character, but Confusists seek to understand their
place in the larger world and to honor their responsibilities to that
larger world.
Salvation in the
Humanist tradition involves the understanding and realization of one’s
human potential. It involves not only our own potential; we cannot be
saved unless all are saved—or unless we are at least working toward
everyone’s salvation as we seek our own.
Traditional religions
present us with a ready-made path to salvation. Believe, and do as they
prescribe and you will be saved. In contrast, here you have to construct
your own salvation. Here you will find a safe space that provides the
spiritual nutrition to grow. Here you can find encouragement to think, to
explore, you can find empowerment to create your own path to salvation,
empowerment to become more authentic, find a greater integrity, to live
more wisely and well.
The Vietnamese
Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn speaks of salvation through
understanding. We need placate no gods; there is no supernatural agency to
appease. Everything we need is always before us and within us if only we
have eyes to see and ears to hear.
We live in a world,
especially this eastern
North Carolina
world, that sees salvation as a ticket to the glories of heaven, a voucher
against the eternal suffering of the damned in hell. But WE
know that we create our own heaven or hell right here, and all too often
we can make life a hell for others, too. Hell and heaven are not the
hereafter—Heaven and hell are here and they are now. As the philosopher
Elbert Hubbard said, “We are punished BY our sins, not FOR them.” It
is only our own character, our own inner selves, that can bring us
salvation from a hell of our own making.
Okay, so salvation for
a Unitarian is wholeness, authenticity, the realization of our own
potential, living with the feeling that our lives are useful to us, worthy
of the highest ideals we can reach, and that our lives make us a blessing
to ourselves and others. Salvation is living out of an integrity that we
can feel deep in our innermost selves, in our souls, if you will.
But how do we get
there? How do we make our lives useful to us, worthy of God and a blessing
to ourselves and others?
The ancient Greeks
said, “Plant a thought, reap a deed; plant a deed, reap a habit; plant a
habit, reap a character; plant a character, reap a fate."
If you want to know
what kind of character makes a life worthwhile, attend a memorial service
and listen to what we say in our eulogies. The way we eulogize our friends
is a reflection of their value as humans, their character that makes us
proud to have known them as friends.
In almost all times
and almost all places, human beings have valued honesty, integrity,
responsibility, authenticity, moral courage. We prize compassion. We
admire generosity. We reject people who take advantage of others, who
treat others as means to their own ends. We don't respect anyone who has
no sense of owing something back to life or to those who loved or needed
them.
These values are our
guideposts to the one salvation that we can be sure matters, our own
salvation here and now. We find our own salvation in developing, using,
insisting on the kind of character that we can be proud of. A character
that our friends would value. We can walk that difficult road of becoming
good, not just feeling good, we can become caring people, authentic
people.
But, if all there is
is the here and now, where is the salvation in being good? Why not grab
for power, why not try to get all the money and goodies I can. Why not
walk over people too weak to fight back, lie, cheat, steal. What’s wrong
with lust, greed, pride, envy and anger?
When I was 16, my
Uncle Bob got me over a particularly bad “teenaged girl” stretch by
saying, “Don’t worry about what people you don’t like think about
you, worry about what the people you like think of you.” For more than
50 years I have tried to live in a way will make me the kind of person
that the people I like will like. The payoff for trying
to live in a way that is worthy of my highest ideals (emphasis on trying)
is that I have met and been friends with so many wonderful people who were
also trying to live by their highest ideals. I know that through the years
we have often been a blessing to each other. When I lean toward the good,
the good leans toward me.
So try to build an
authentic character. But be sure it is your own brand of authentic. The
early Hassidic sage Rabbi Zusya once said, "When I reach the next
world, God will not ask me, 'Why were you not more like Moses?' Instead,
he will ask me, 'Why were you not more like Zusya?'"
The late theologian,
Howard Thurman, knew what it took to build an authentic character when he
said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive
and go out and do it, because what the world needs is people who have come
alive.”
Find that which makes
you come alive and go and do it. Be the kind of person you would want to
spend time with. Live a life that will be worth dying for. Live so when
you come to die, even the undertaker will be sad.
One of our greatest
Unitarian ministers, A. Powell Davies, said that we are given a life so we
can grow a soul. How can we grow a soul in such a brief life, so full of
challenges, so full of pain and trouble? We certainly won’t grow our
souls by waiting for a better life in the hereafter.
We all aspire to the
very highest and noblest of ideals. We can work toward those ideals. We
can appreciate those things that have made us come alive. We can make the
spirit of life present in our lives and in ourselves.
It would be so much
simpler to see life as a prelude to an eternity of being taken care of by
the big father figure in the sky. It would be so much easier to feel that
recitation of a few pat phrases would provide us with everything we could
ever want, that someone else would take responsibility for our happiness.
But we need more than that. Life expects more from us. We need to find
that spirit of life that can make us a blessing to ourselves and to the
world around us. We need a connection to the infinite, but it is here and
now, not in the hereafter, that we will find our connection to the
infinite.
Richard Dawkins is
known as one of the most cold-hearted of the new atheists, but listen to
how he puts it:
"We are going to
die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die
because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could
have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day
outnumber the sand grains of
Sahara
. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats,
scientists greater than
Newton
. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our
ordinariness, that are here.
Don't waste your time
fussing about a non-existent future life after you're dead. Try to do as
much good as you can now to others. Try to live life as richly as possible
during the time that you have left.”
And so, Bepi, I hope I
have answered your question: “What on earth is a Unitarian doing talking
about Salvation?” Perhaps, in fact, we should talk about it more often.
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