ANOTHER CHANCE
by Forrest Church
September 18, 2005
A wag once said there are two kinds of people—those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't. As an Universalist, I should fall into the second category. Age-old Universalist doctrine holds that all of us are born to be saved. I subscribe to that faith. If some people are born to be saved and others born to be damned as relentless Calvinist logic dictates, then God is a bastard.
Apart from binding circumstance (race, gender, sexual preference) we are born free, capable of both good and evil, driven by beastly appetites and subject to the redemptive call of the better angels of our nature. That which unites us—being mysteriously born, fated to die, the drive for self-preservation, the need for love and forgiveness—is so much greater than any distinguishing feature, whether color, faith, or class, as to make every act of human divisiveness almost fatuous. Sin is precisely that: anything that divides us against our better selves or estranges us from our neighbors or severs us from the ground of our being. Salvation, conversely, is the state of oneness: inner peace (when our conscience is clear); peace among God's children (when we reconcile ourselves with our neighbors, rather than succumbing to the temptation of brotherly and sisterly hate); and peace with God, the Holy, being itself. This hope is what the early Universalists, to their everlasting credit and against the demonic and divisive force of all religious history, proclaimed. God is love they taught and we teach it still. This doesn't mean that God—who lies beyond our knowing, the creative power itself, life's deepest mystery—is actually love. But it does mean that love is divine.
As one old joke has it, there are two kinds of Unitarian Universalists: The Universalists believe that God is too good to damn them; the Unitarians, that they are too good to be damned. On this divide, I side with the Universalists. Unitarians employ their vaunted rationality to parse the creation. As Fundamentalists of the left, many Unitarians divide the world into the enlightened and the benighted, even as fundamentalists of the right divide it into the saved and the damned. By latest reckoning there are 1.7 billion stars in the known cosmos for every living human being. That any of us should dare to set up an altar, even to Reason, on this tiny rock, and vaunt our insider information on the creation and the creator is the very height of hubris. Fortunately, in addition to the idol of rationality, Unitarians have generally been faithful to Sacred Liberty and mutual respect as well. Our commitment to religious freedom and the commandment to respect not merely tolerate those who may differ from us is the bridge connecting Unitarianism and Universalism. Where the two meet, we celebrate above all others the Second Great Commandment: "to love thy neighbor as thyself."
One thoughtful, non-doctrinal, and respectful child of Harvard's Unitarian ethos was the father of academic psychology and great philosopher of religion, William James. He divided the world into two kinds of people—the once-born and the twice-born. Most Unitarians he placed in the former category. In short, we feel no particular need, as the Apostle Paul put it, "to throw off the old man and put on the new." By this set of religious instructions, properly to assemble the human animal conversion is not required. The once born may and often does work to reform society, believing that Eden is in the future not the past, awaiting only our most thoughtful concerted efforts to plant and inhabit. In the center of this Eden is the tree of Knowledge. Eat of its fruit and we shall be saved, not damned.
William James suffered from depression. He admired the sparkling shallows in which the once-born plashed, but couldn't play in them. Recognizing the tragic nature of human existence, he understood the human need to be born-again. Not all twice-born individuals give their souls to Jesus. William James certainly did not. But they share the experience of (or desire for) conversion. At some point they hit bottom. At that moment of crisis, either they perish or are born anew.
In the theater, a crisis is not what happens to the protagonist, however dire it may be. The crisis is the moment of decision that follows. It may lead to catastrophe or redemption. By the same token, the Chinese ideogram for crisis has two ideographs or word pictures: Danger and Opportunity. If we can seize the opportunity that awaits us hidden only by danger's shadow, if we change, we will look back on this time in our history as a Great Awakening.
From personal experience—and from the privilege I have been given these twenty-eight years now to enter your lives through the cracks in them and finally to see, between those very cracks, the light shining through—I, who for so many years considered myself a card-carrying member of the once-born, have experienced the power of being born again. Not in Jesus necessarily, though he embraces me. Rather in what D. H. Lawrence called "the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitude of brothers [and sisters]. . . . A person has no religion (he writes) who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together." By no means himself a Christian, Lawrence calls this being "born again."
A like principle holds true for nation states. If the United States seems at casual glance to be the archetypal once-born nation state—optimistic, self-satisfied, unreflective—a closer look reminds us that we too as a nation have been saved at times of trial by corporate rebirth. The Union born in 1776 died and was born-again a new nation, forged in the crucible of the Civil War. In fact our moral history as a people can be graphed as a catena of little deaths and rebirths, the founders' ideals holding the nation under constant judgment. Oftentimes it has required the worst to bring the best out of us. We hit bottom during the Civil War and again during the Great Depression. One of America's founders, John Adams—at once a Unitarian and a secular Puritan—looked forward to such moments not as irredeemable calamities, but as opportunities for spiritual growth. "It may be the will of heaven that America shall suffer calamities still more wasting and Distresses yet more dreadful," he said early in the Revolution. "If this is to be the Case it will have this good Effect, at least: it will inspire Us with many virtues, which We have not, and correct many Errors, Follies, and Vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonor, and destroy us. The furnace of Affliction produces Refinement."
I can't help but wonder how different things might have been for the nation's soul had Katrina hit four years ago and not a terrorist attack. It would have forced us all, including our president, to contemplate the evil within our society, not some outside evil bent on destroying us. For decades now, with an economic boom and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has morphed into an Emerald City, the City of Oz, which we view through green tinted lens. This luxury has taken its purchase on our collective soul, filtering out the depredations of poverty and racism, fostering illusions of shared plenty that disguise growing disparities between rich and poor, white and Black, haves and have nots. Katrina was like that moment when Toto pulled the curtain down and the great Oz himself—projected on the nation's screen as a mighty ball of fire, beautiful siren, and gigantic all-knowing talking head—is revealed for what he is: a man using every trick of contemporary stagecraft to anesthetize the public and maintain his power.
The wizard of Oz was not a bad man, remember, but he was "a very bad wizard." He too, by the way, was liberated when the curtain was pulled aside, even as our president—however late his conversion to the reality Katrina has exposed—seemed liberated on national television the other night. He appeared chastened and committed, at least rhetorically, to reclaim our most precious inheritance and lead us home to the hearth of our highest values: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all . . . are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights." Business as usual (the president's reflex position especially on taxes) is no longer tenable. I have to believe that this will soon become clear. Once the Congress begins attending to the many neglected aspects of our national fabric that need mending, of Katrina too we will look back and one day say, "it inspired us with many virtues, which we had not, and corrected many errors, follies, and vices, which threatened to disturb, dishonor, and destroy us." Terrifying, humbling, and destructive though it was, Katrina has given the United States of America another chance.
The pop singer Tracy Chapman brought out a new song last month. I first heard it right as Katrina was breaking the back of the Gulf Coast. Her song is personal. It witnesses to the last hope of the yet to be reborn.
If you knew that you would die today
If you saw the face of God and Love
Would you change?
Would you change?How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction
What cause and effect
Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you change?When one of you has changed, thrown off destructive habits, lifted the veil of self-absorption, found new and better reason to hope and love and serve, your redemption has not come without sacrifice. It took courage, but finally you had the guts to shuck off your oily skin however closely it had come to fit you, however accustomed you were to slithering about in it. The same holds true for a nation. Yet, almost uniquely—if we compare today's compound crisis of a trillion dollar war against terrorism and the greatest natural disaster in American history—the one act our leaders have yet to call on us to perform is common sacrifice.
This is bad for the nation's heart. The American people have a mighty heart. For it truly to beat as one heart we must share in our neighbors' pain. To sacrifice means, literally, "to render sacred."
It is also bad for the nation's soul. The further we continue down the road of "borrow and spend" the surer it is that our children and grandchildren will be picking up the tab at the end of it. There will be sacrifice, but we will be asking others to make it, which is the very definition of "soul-destroying."
During my sabbatical I am writing a book about religion and the early American presidents. Throughout the first lifetime of our Union, which ends with its dissolution at the outset of the Civil War, one leader after another postponed the reckoning on slavery. They kept raising the limit on the nation's moral credit card until there was absolutely no credit left and the children and grandchildren of their irresponsibility were sacrificed by the millions on the field of battle. Our leaders today are again fleeing rather than facing the music. By raising the limit on their own card they set in motion an inexorable process that can only lead to the breaking of our children's bank. There will be sacrifice. There always is when crisis strikes. If our generation refuses to pay it, our primary bequest to our children will be a burden, not a gift.
Tracy Chapman is asking precisely the right questions:
If you knew that you would be alone
Knowing right being wrong
Would you change?If you knew that you would find a truth
That brings a pain that can't be soothed
Would you change?With the curtain pulled aside, with the shame of two Americas in view for the world to see, to her haunting verses we now can add:
If you knew that we were truly one
Our neighbor's deepest need our own,
Would you change?If you knew the price you refuse today
Your children soon will have to pay,
Would you change?How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction
What cause and effect
Makes you turn around
Makes you try to explain
Makes you change?From a lifetime of thoughtful study and painful experience, William James concluded that there are two kinds of people: the once-born and the twice-born. From this low Unitarian pulpit, I pray for our rebirth:, as individuals, all sinners, all in need redemption; and for the nation itself, that singly and together we may not revert to self-denial and false pride, but instead meet our responsibilities honestly, chastened by experience to sacrifice some modicum of our comforts and privileges for the common good.
This is not asking much of a great people. We can surly turn around. We have before. In this very room, many of us have shaken off the blinders of denial and the temptations of instant gratification. Chain reactions, cause and effect, makes us turn around and try to explain and then finally to change.
Nations are no less selfish than individuals and no more wisely so. But from our nation's history, we know that the worst can be the prelude to the best. When Abraham Lincoln called on us to hearken to "the better angels of our nature" he sponsored a rebirth of freedom. When FDR at the depth of the Great Depression told America that we had "nothing to fear but fear itself," he sponsored a rebirth of hope. They did the nation proud by insisting that the only pride that is not a sin is our pride in one another, seeing our tears in each others eyes, knowing that truly we are one.
In this morning's New York Times Book Review, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. invokes the greatest theologian of the 20th century, Reinhold Niebuhr, to guide us through the moral thickets of our own young millennium. In The Irony of American History, written in 1952 at the height of the Red scare, Niebuhr (a Christian realist who insisted that we combat our external enemies), wrote: "If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature of history but by hatred and vainglory."
Katrina has given the nation and its leaders another chance—to throw off our blinders and green money-tinted glasses and front squarely our responsibilities to one another and to the divine spark within each of us. Will we change? Yes, I believe we will. And if we do, our children and grandchildren look back upon this moment with abiding gratitude—at the secular yet moral great awakening that led us as a people to be born again.
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.