How Large the Truth
If anyone ever asks you what distinguishes Unitarian Universalism as a religion of the world, just say “Epistemology.” It might stop the conversation, but it might open up a deep, probably interesting, perhaps healing, maybe transforming experience. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. It addresses the question at the heart of religion, “How do you know what is true?”
A simple answer is to discover what you hold as “authority.”
Historically, religions point to one or more source of truth, or authority. It might be a sacred text, or the Teacher, or guru, or Pope, it might be a set of beliefs, doctrines, or a creed, it might be tradition, or it might be something else.
Many people have left the religion of their childhood because they can no longer believe in the truth of the authority held by that religion.
Back in 1819, Bostonian William Ellery Channing preached a sermon to which we look back as the first authoritative statement of Unitarianism in the United States. It was a lesson in epistemology.
Basically, Channing said, to understand the truth of the Bible we must treat it as we would any other ancient book. We must place it in its historical and cultural context. We must study its use of language and understand its sources. In short, we must use our ability to think rationally and to apply critical methods to discern truth.By emphasizing our capacity for rational thought, Channing celebrated human nature, differentiating this liberal approach from that of the Calvinist Christians of New England who believed humans are depraved the Bible is literally true. Religious authority, Channing declared, should be based in human rationality.
Channing’s critics suggested that such extreme commitment to rationality was a “corpse cold” understanding of religion, devoid of feeling and spirit, and this led to Unitarians being called God’s frozen people.
Responding to this, the next generation of Unitarians, with people like Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson, developed Transcendentalism, with an emphasis more on spiritual values.
Since then we have lived our religious lives in an epistemological tension. How do we know what we know? What is our authority? Are there limits to rational thought? How do we understand feelings, intuition, apprehensions, and how are they related to what we call “truth?”
We still affirm rational thought.
We embrace the methods of science to discern truth.
And, we are open to insights that come to us through what we call “experience.”
I like to think of experience as the meeting of the total person, with the present moment of reality, in its fullness.
Remember hearing a piece of music – no words, just the experience. Then someone asks you about it, and you search for the words to name the experience. Thinking is rational reflection on the experience.
You might say: The music was beautiful. It was like a flower blooming. Or, I could picture a meadow, deep in a forest. Or, it was like a river flowing. Listening to the music I felt at home.
The experience produced “felt meaning.” Before we have language to describe something, we have an awareness of it. Certainly there is truth in our awareness.
Some of us strive with our best analytic abilities to give precise descriptions of our felt meaning. We might describe a song in terms of its key, or measures, or meter, as well as its words.
Some of us use word images to convey felt meaning, making poetry, pointing to the spaces between the words, the silence between the notes, believing what is unsaid conveys truth. The seventeen syllables of a haiku poem can name a world of felt meaning.
How we describe an object is more a description of our experience than the reality of the object. That’s the message of the old story of the blind men describing the elephant. Their descriptions of the experience vary, reflecting whether they were touching the ear, the trunk, the tail, or the leg.
What was true? The experience of each was true, and, as is always the case, it was partial.
Truth is relational. The idea of an isolated self is an illusion. We are, to use the metaphor of our UUA principles, part of an interdependent web of all existence. Truth, then, lies in the experience of the relationship.
Think about your experience when Michèle leads us in Singing Praise.
Do you wish you had a hymnal open so you could see words and notes on a staff? That’s very rational. Or can you just go with the experience?
The task of religion is to encourage the flow of relationship. You tell me how you experience life and I’ll tell you how I experience it. This is what we do in Chalice Circles, in Personal Theology, in the myriad groups that fill our church calendar.
We understand it is in relationship that we are transformed. As we learn to listen, and to take in our experience of another, we are enlarged, and we can give back to the world our new understanding, a larger truth.
You may wonder why this understanding of epistemology is important.
It has to do with how we are in the world, how we engage one another,
how open we are to the stranger.
In the almost 200 years since Channing preached his sermon about the rational basis for religion much has changed. Our knowledge of the evolutionary nature of existence has transformed the way we understand truth. Truth is always changing. If you and I keep engaged in life, experiencing and reflecting upon it, if we stay in relationship, our understanding grows. Truth grows.
As the people of the world increasingly become a global community what is true for each of us changes. The world of today is, and more and more the world of tomorrow will be multicultural. When Channing spoke there was little awareness in liberal religion of Eastern religions. Think how that has changed. When Channing spoke slavery, though outlawed in Massachusetts, was still entrenched in the South. Think of our ongoing journey of racial justice.
Our challenge is always to keep open to new truth.
As a white heterosexual male, the last decades have been full of learning. Time after time I am confronted with how mine is an experience of privilege. I affirm the worth and dignity of all people, and I look through a lens shaped by my age, gender, race, sexual orientation, identity, and abilities, characteristics that, historically, my culture has given a privileged place.
The truth I have seen, is not necessarily the truth seen by others. I have taken for granted “equal rights” because I have experienced them that way.
Now I know, the truth of immigration in the United States looks different if you are the Governor of Arizona, an undocumented agricultural worker in California, or a descendent of people living in this country long before Europeans invaded.
Now I know, the truth of “with liberty and justice for all” is different for a child growing up taking for granted a college education, than for a baby born to a single mother in the Iron Triangle of Richmond.
The truth of my awareness changes, and the changes around me produce new truth.
A child born today in California will grow up in an environment where people of Caucasian descent are in the minority. No matter the color of the child’s skin, this change shifts the truth.
And, the exponential increases in our ability to communicate with others via technology are mind-boggling. Remember when fax machines were a miracle?! The newborn today will take social networking for granted.
Our challenge is to keep open to new truth and to help it happen.
I find hope for the world in our Unitarian Universalist understanding of truth as constantly evolving. We are not stuck in the past, though we all know embracing the new is not always easy. We affirm that revelation is not sealed, that “salvation,” to reframe an old religious word, is a process reaching toward the harmony of the whole through the celebration of the parts.
It is not easy, but in moments that matter we experience the creation of shared meaning. Through experiencing music and art of a culture different than our own we can learn new perspectives; through meeting, greeting and conversation with people who look different than ourselves, we can stretch and grow. Jacqui Lewis calls these experiences “close encounters of the holy kind.” They are the way we grow to be multicultural. If we can breathe through our fear of change, we open our hearts, and can love what we are becoming.
That’s the key, I believe. And it points to another understanding of truth in our religious tradition. Universalism affirms we all have divinity within us. No matter what painful, even terrible experiences we may have suffered, each of us has a yearning toward love. Each of us wants to be understood and appreciated. We want relationships that accept us, complete with our imperfections. In this yearning is the seed of love, and in its flowering we know compassion, for ourselves and for everyone.
That’s where I find the hope. As the seed of love within us blossoms and we live our lives with compassion, new truth comes into being. And all the hurt and alienation around us finds a remedy, and the world is transformed.
How Large the Truth from UU Church of Berkeley on Vimeo.
Copyright © 2010, Rev. Bill Hamilton-Holway, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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