THE GREAT END IN RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION
Reason & the Path of Wisdom

14 September 2003
James Ford

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The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to touch inward springs; not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered to their decision; not to burden the memory, but to quicken and strengthen the power of thought; not to impose religion upon them in the form of arbitrary rules, but to awaken the conscience, the moral discernment. In a word, the great end is to awaken the soul, to excite and cherish spiritual life.
William Ellery Channing

When asked what might best summarize our Unitarian Universalist way I often draw upon UU historian Earl Morse Wilbur’s freedom, tolerance and reason. In addition to identifying these characteristics, Wilbur wrote a pretty good summary of this shared style of ours which spans across generations and continents.

“First, complete mental freedom in religion rather than bondage to creeds or confessions; second, the unrestricted use of reason in religion, rather than reliance upon external authority or past tradition; (and) third, (a) generous tolerance of differing religious views and usages rather than insisting upon uniformity in doctrine, worship or polity.”

Perhaps you recognize these things, freedom and tolerance and reason, as living characteristics marking the spiritual lives of your selves and many of our friends and companions in this very community. At least, I suggest, when we’re on our game, when we’re at our best.

Now, I suggest as with faith, hope and love, there is also a greatest here. I believe of freedom, tolerance and reason, the greatest is reason. I find each of these things is powerful and true about us, and each is worthy of extended reflection. But today, at the beginning of our formal church year, particularly at a time marking the beginning of our religious education program, I want to spend just a little time exploring specifically what reason might mean for us as a people of faith.

Reason as a spiritual enterprise, I think, lies at the center of what we are. Some observe that while our Unitarian stream is about the mind, our Universalist stream is about the heart. I feel while there is some truth to that; in fact, both currents of our tradition are in some fundamental way about reason, and both are paths of discovery that ultimately shows us our heart.

Take John Murray for instance. Murray is one of the founders of the Universalist tradition in North America. He was also a wonderful writer. With a sense of joy in life, an appreciation for irony that won me; and an unblinking eye for his own foibles unusual in a clergyman of any era and astonishing in an early nineteenth century preacher, Murray’s autobiographical accounts are a delight to read.

In his memoir Murray tells how he first encountered Universalism while an elder within an English Methodist congregation when he led a delegation to remonstrate with a young woman who’d fallen, as they saw it, under the spell of Universalist balderdash.

From the moment the delegation sat in the young woman’s parlor, as Murray tells the story, it was immediately obvious who was in control of the situation. And it wasn’t Murray or any other of the Methodist elders. They quickly found themselves discussing a rather complicated theological point while the young woman relentlessly drove through the holes in their logic.

In Murray’s recounting with growing anxiety he drew out his watch, glanced at it, realized he had a pressing engagement, and with little further fanfare the delegation hastily departed. In his memoir Murray ends this account with the observation how from that moment on he cordially avoided and detested all Universalists. Things would change, but that’s really for another sermon.

My point here is that from the beginning of our movement in both its currents, Unitarian and Universalist, reason has been singularly significant. Take a look. You’ll find references to the centrality of reason in nearly every early Unitarian or Universalist writing.

Now, to be human is to reason. To notice what is going on, to weigh and contrast those bits of information; and from that to make decisions is the great mark of our humanity. As human endeavors, therefore, all religions of course use reason.

In fact most religions use reason in defense of their already arrived at premises achieved through revelation or assertions made by founders, most of which have little to do with what our five senses tell us.

Unitarian Universalism, however, is one of the few of the world’s religions, and is the only western religion I’m aware of to see reason itself as the great and broad path to wisdom. For us reason rather than faith sits at the heart of our spiritual enterprise. Curiosity, doubt and inquiry are the hallmarks of our way. This is why Small Group Ministry is a spiritual practice, how conversation can truthfully be called sacrament.

So, we hear in our reading for today’s service the text upon which I base this sermon, another early nineteenth century description of this assumption we share. If you think about what William Ellery Channing is saying to us today, almost two centuries after the words left his pen, he’s telling us we can figure out what we need to figure out. We have within ourselves, within our ordinary humanity the capacity to know what needs knowing. We have that incredible tool, reason. And it can take us to wisdom.

Take us, please note. Take us. Wilbur, even as he identifies these three distinctive things about our way, also reminds us “Freedom, reason and tolerance… are not the final goals to be aimed at in religion, but only conditions under which the true ends may best be attained.

“The ultimate ends proper to religious movement are two, personal and social; the elevation of personal character, and the perfecting of the social organism…” Indeed, Wilbur asserts “the success of a religious body may best be judged by the degree to which it attains these ends.” So, reason is our means of achieving wisdom, and wisdom manifests in how we choose to live and how we choose to act.

So, just a little more unpacking: Reason is generally understood to be our “capacity for logical, rational and analytic thought; intelligence.” Reason is good judgment; reason is common sense and at its most refined and rigorous, reason is science. But reason may also be about something more. As important as common sense and critical thinking and even the scientific enterprise are, these things are for us steps toward wisdom.

The American Heritage Dictionary tells us wisdom is “the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight.” I love that the editors of the dictionary throw in a line from Henry David Thoreau as an illustration of this term. “It is a characteristic of wisdom” Thoreau wrote. “Not to do desperate things.”

As much as I love Thoreau and like that something he wrote was used in an illustration of wisdom, I’m not sure this statement is true. Wisdom may in fact be exactly about desperate situations and our choices when facing them.

We live in dangerous times. These are, straight out, perilous, desperate times. Terror and war are all around us. Choices we make today can destroy our planet. And if there ever were a time that humanity needed reason and wisdom, this is it. And, so from the depths of my being, I deeply believe we here need to attend to how reason can take us to wisdom.

Reason rigorously followed, followed with humility and curiosity and nagging doubts about our own centrality to things, our own importance in the great play of things, can take us to something. Many have confessed their experience found on this way. It is an insight, an intuition that itself is not just an analysis, but rather a profoundly personal discovery of something incredible about us.

Reason is a method, a path to walk. Like for Moses, reason engaged through conversation and reflection and never, never turning away from what presents, takes us to the shore overlooking the Promised Land. But it can’t get us there, itself.

Reason is a tool, wisdom is what we are. So, what is wisdom? Actually I think it is a very simple thing. Wisdom is an experience, it is our individual insight, yours or my body-knowing that at the very same time we are different from each other, as individuals, as species, as living and inanimate things, we are simultaneously inseparably connected, bound together in a mysterious and miraculous web, ultimately one. When this insight moves from an idea to our most intimate body-knowing, it becomes the basis of our actions and reason becomes the servant of wisdom.

This seeking and this finding, I believe, is our sacred calling. It is what we are about. Our way of reason takes us on a path to love and compassion and fierce engagement. Our way takes us to a discovery of what we were from before the creation of the heavens and the earth itself. Our way is about ultimate things and how we choose to act out of that discovery.

This, my friends, is what I believe we can find in our own hearts, written in flame on our being, what the path of reason leading us to wisdom reveals. In all our glorious diversity, we are also one family, and our actions need be informed by this knowing. This discovery is the great end in our religious instruction; our path, our way.

And, it is the hope of the world. No doubt.

Amen.