DEED, NOT CREEDS

Frank Carpenter, D.Min.

October 1, 2006

St. John’s UU Church, Cincinnati, OH

 

The Buddha always told his disciples not to waste their time and energy in metaphysical speculation. Whenever he was asked a metaphysical question, he remained silent. Instead, he directed his disciples toward practical efforts. Questioned one day about the problem of the infinity of the world, the Buddha said, "Whether the world is finite or infinite, limited or unlimited, the problem of your liberation remains the same." Another time he said, "Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions have been answered, the man might die first." Life is so short. It must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculation that does not bring us any closer to the truth. http://thebuddhistblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/teaching-of-poisoned-arrow.html

 

The Buddha’s rejection of metaphysical explanation is not idiosyncratic to him.  IN fact, getting hung up about doctrine has been the great trap of religion which most religions and great teachers have sought to avoid.

 

Unitarianism is an attempt to return to this great teaching of religion, for it rejects the creeds of the churches.  The sound byte that Unitarians once used, indeed before any one talked about elevator speeches, was that Unitarianism was about “Deeds, not creeds.”  “Deeds, not creeds.”  What is important about us is that we emphasized behavior, not religiously correct thought.  All this argument about the Trinity, the 19^th century founders of American Unitarianism said, got people into spiteful arguments, and away from the teachings of the prince of peace about loving one’s neighbor. This is what it meant for them to be liberal.

 

While ours has been a peculiar stance in the history of Christianity, most religions do not give precedent to doctrine, religiously correct thinking.  Besides the teaching of the Buddha, we may see an another example in Judaism.  Rabbi Hillel lived from 80 BCE to 30 CE, and migrated from Babylon to Palestine.  A Talmudic story tells that one day a pagan approached Hillel and said he would convert to Judaism if the rabbi could teach him the entire torah while standing on one leg.  Hillel responded, “What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but Commentary.  Go and learn it.” (Armstrong  379)

 

Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. He agreed that the greatest commandment was love of God and loving your neighbor as yourself. (A 382) 

 

Orthodox Christianity would eventually come to hold to some form of “correct thinking,” but it was not in the Gospels where Jesus taught neither the Trinity nor the doctrine of original sin.  It is not clear whether early Christians were already beginning to equate faith with belief. One of the central texts of Christianity is St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.  In that letter, one verse, 3:22,  has been central, usually translated that the righteous have been justified by faith in Jesus Christ.  But scholars today argue that an equally good translation, perhaps better would be that the praise actually means the faith of Jesus, not in Jesus. The question is whether we are called to be faithful as Jesus was faithful, or to believe in Jesus as savior.  Jesus believed in the triumph of love and goodness.  Not in the victory of the church or doctrine. [Galambush, THE RELUCTANT PARTING, page189.]

 

Christianity had gone astray by the time of the Emperor Constantine when he made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  The writer James Carroll claims that the creeds of the church, the Athanasian and Nicene creeds, were really loyalty oaths to the Roman emperor.

 

What happened?

 

Recently the Pope has made some comments on rationality and faith. Benedict summarized, speaking of  the ``inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry." http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0925-21.htm

 

Unfortunately, it was not Greek philosophical inquiry quite so much as Greek philosophical doctrine that Christianity modeled itself on.  The church’s use of creeds, orthodoxy as correctness of religious thought seems to have been the dominant appropriation from Greek philosophy. 

 

In her most recent book, THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION, Karen Armstrong writes:

 

There was a sinister directive in [the Greek philosopher Plato’s] THE LAWS.  [Plato’s] imaginary city was a theocracy.  The first duty of the polis was to inculcate “the right thoughts about the gods, and then to live accordingly: well or not well.”  Correct belief came first; ethical behavior only second.  Orthodox theology was the essential prerequisite for morality. “No one who believes in gods as the law directs ever voluntarily commits an unholy act or lets any lawless word pass his lips.”  None of the Axial thinkers had placed any great emphases on metaphysics.  Some even regarded this type of speculation as misguided.  Ethical action came first; compassionate action, not orthodoxy, enabled human beings to apprehend the sacred.  But for Plato, correct belief was mandatory, so important that a “nocturnal council” must supervise the citizens’ theological opinions. There were three obligatory articles of [this Platonic ] faith: that the gods existed; that they cared for human beings; and that they could not be influenced by sacrifice and prayer.  Atheism and superstitious belief in the practical efficacy of ritual would be capital crimes in Plato’s ideal polis, because these ideas could damage the state. Citizens would not be permitted either to doubt the existence of the Olympian Gods or to ask searching questions about them.  Poets could use their fables to instruct the masses, but their stories must not be too fanciful.  They must focus on the importance of justice, the transmigration of souls, and the punishments that would be inflicted on wrongdoers in the afterlife.  These doctrines would guarantee the good behavior of the uneducated.  (Page 324f)

 

What Armstrong does not say here is that the members of the ‘nocturnal council’ did not believe in the fabled stories of the Olympian gods or in punishments after death.  Plato’s rigid orthodoxy was meant only for the masses, the uneducated, to keep them in line.

 

It makes one wonder if all orthodoxy has nothing to do with spirituality, and is only about politics, as it was in Plato. As Unitarians, we are called to ask hard questions about faith, as well as the rest of life.  We do not want to get hung-up on what is correct thinking, it distracts us from compassion and justice. Deeds, not creeds. We as Unitarian Universalists, would be among the disappeared in Plato’s Republic.

 

Certainly good thinking has its place; there is a certain truth to positive thinking.  We know that thinking negative thoughts can make us feel baldly.  Yet a good idea taken to extreme, demanding positive thinking to the denial of reality, such as denying that people die, causes even greater pain.  If someone practices positive thinking, believe as some teachings say, they will be healthy all the time, any moment when they are sick or have problems becomes an indication of personal failure and moral guilt. They are sick because they have had bad thoughts. What was meant as an aid becomes a weapon.  Thinking is good, but not when it prevents us from reaching out to those in need, when it prevents us from acting on honesty and caring.

 

Giving precedent to correct thinking in religion has led to the alleged war between religion and science.  When one has to believe in a religiously correct view of the creation of the world, it violates the authentic spirit of religion as well as science.  As the Buddha taught, don’t get trapped into metaphysical speculations. In our reading this morning, the great mystics of Christianity knew better that to fall into the trap of rigidly holding to transcendent ideas or experiences.  Even scientists today do not hold as strenuously to the teachings of evolution as do the creationists.  Science is a process of learning, growing.  The theory of evolution has changed over the past fifty, hundred, two hundred years.  It should. Scientists who held to the version of evolution that Darwin promoted would be true believers, ideologues, not scientists

 

Placing doctrine above action, holding to religiously correct beliefs even when they tear apart your family, is the root of prejudice.  Herbert Spenser once wrote “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

 

Such a person Graham Green described in his novel THE QUIET AMERICAN.  The character Alden Pyle is "impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance.”

 

And perhaps that is the actual function, the appeal of orthodoxy, of placing creeds before deeds, of confusing belief with faith.    Pyle was armored, says Green.  And in how many ways do we seek to protect ourselves from suffering!

 

No where has the emphasis on orthodoxy, on creeds caused so much spiritual damage as in our struggles to make sense of our lives, of our sufferings.  Metaphysical speculation, as the Buddha pointed out in our story earlier, demands an explanation for our suffering.  Why do we suffer, we ask. Not, what shall we do?

 

The Buddha cuts to the quick. Stop this speculation.   He begins his teaching with the idea that we do suffer.  The First Nobel Truth of Buddhism: all life is suffering.  You want to debate it?  Not his problem, says the Buddha.  This is like Scott Peck who began his ROAD LESS TRAVELED:

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

 

Siddhartha Gautama, Scott Peck, they begin with accepting that life is difficult. But orthodox theologians come along and try to fit life’s difficulties into an intellectual framework, some systematical theology; in my experience, an exercise in self-pity. And of course someone gets blamed.  In traditional Christian theology, the fact that life is difficult is called original sin.  And if you follow that thread back, you come to the story of Adam and Eve.

 

Following the sin of Adam God told the woman that he would increase her suffering in bearing children; that she should desire her husband who would rule over her. And, to Adam God said, for you have eaten of the tree, and for this, your sake, the ground is cursed. It shall bring forth thorns and thistles, and you will eat herbs of the field. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread for all of your days until you return to the ground; for out of it you were taken; you are dust; and unto dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:16-19)

 

And so, that is the Biblical, orthodox explanation of why life is hard.  Eve tempted Adam to eat the fruit and the rest is history. How much damage has that doctrine done?

 

I believe that one of the most important purposes of faith is to help us deal with suffering.  And it is not just that you’ve had a hard day.  More than that, we are sometimes, all too often, caught in situations where our moral experience exceeds our moral insight.  Just watching the news, infants killed in Baghdad,  nine year olds raped in Darfur.  It’s overwhelming.  We know it is wrong, but what can we do to stop it?  Our own moral initiative feels inadequate to the suffering we experience.

 

How can we cling to some sense that our lives have meaning when we know that the difference between us and the people of Darfur is not a moral difference, but only a geographic distance, a chance of birth?  Can we claim to be better people than those suffering in Darfur, and therefore we are better?  I suppose if you hold to some orthodox purity, some orthodoxy, you can make that claim.  That, after all is orthodoxy’s function. 

 

But if we are just folks, the difference between us and the people of Darfur is measured not in moral qualities but in miles. 

 

The age old response has always been to tell stories.  The Hebrew tribes told their stories of Adam and Eve.  Telling stories to each other around the camp fire helps.  But making the stories the foundation of religious correctness is the very cause of more and greater suffering.  We see this in Dostoyevsky’s parable of the Grand Inquisitor, who demands Jesus’ silence to pacify the starving masses.

 

All peoples have, I imagine, stories about why humans hurt, feel bad.  The Dinka have a curious story.  The Dinka are traditional cattle herders living on the vast savanna of the southern Sudan in Africa

And they too have the sense that our moral insight is inadequate to our moral experience.

 

The Dinka believe that once upon a time the sky, the abode of ‘divinity,’  and the earth, the abode of humanity, were connected by a rope and men and women could move at will between heaven and earth. There was no death.  But one day, the woman – of course the woman – was out hoeing, planting grain. In her industry, she accidentally struck divinity, the sky, with the handle of her hoe. Offended, divinity severed the rope, withdrew into the distant sky of today and left man to labor for his food, suffer sickness and death and to experience the separation from the source of our existence.

 

What is striking about the story is the apparently trivial act that offended deity. When told among the Dinka, they find amusement at the god’s response, as if too childish to explain the consequences of the action. As in the story of Job and the Bhagavad-Gita, there is a contrast between equitable human relations and the action of a power which is alleged to hold power over our destinies.

 

This sense of a disconnect between our own moral judgment and what happens in our lives is short circuited by orthodox, correct religious thinking.  Religions function is to help us deal with this sense of meaningless.  But, denial is not a river in Egypt.  Creeds get in the way of actual living with our suffering which would allow us an authentic response to the difficulties of life.

 

There are other ways of coping with the threat of meaninglessness in our lives.  We say deeds, not creeds.  Telling stories to our loved ones is one way of creating a better world.  We may reach out to those in Gaza, Darfur, through acts of compassion. Whether we have to watch a beloved parent descend into dementia, Alzheimer's, or as a parent watches a child cope with emotional illness, acts of compassion, are better than orthodoxy.  Deeds, not creeds, connect and overcome the illusion of separateness. Creeds spin an illusion of community; deeds create community.