Mr / Ms Potato God
From our earliest
years, Mr and Ms Potato Head have allowed us to explore and express our deepest
selves. OK that may seem a little exaggerated -- but they have given us a safe way to experiment with the pieces of life with
which we have been graced. And they’ve helped us to realize the seemingly
infinite possibilities which exist within a limited number of parts -- combined
in new ways.
Mr and Ms Potato Head
allowed us to create tangible and visible images
for our ideas and ideas for our
images. Many adults in the room may have moved on to different media and
now play less with potatoes and more with poetry, or petunias, or pastas, or
PowerPoint, but most of us, I speculate, are still trying to work it all out
somehow -- if not with anything tangible, then at least in our dreams.
So today I invite you
to sit back, relax, and play together -- Mr and Ms Potato God. You may be
surprised at what you come up with.
Imagine a triad
of philosophical positions: In one corner sit those who have defined God. A
person who holds this position would never speculate about the nature of God.
The nature of God is clear, it is established. Curiosity and investigation and
doubt are unnecessary at best, blasphemy at worst.
In another
corner we have the person to whom the notion of god is irrelevant. It’s too
abstract; it’s impossible to find common ground on the topic; there is
certainly no empirical evidence to discuss, so let’s move on to something more
tangible.
And in another
corner we have the person who conceives of the divine, the whole, the
mystery... as very much there but
they believe it’s impossible to pin down, impossible to put limits on or
define... it’s beyond-human in every
conceivable way... To these folks it would be blasphemy to write down or even
to utter the holy name. And, like the others, they would find it inappropriate
to speculate about the nature of god.
If you hold any
of these three positions, you are welcome today to sit back and watch the rest
of us squirm. But if you can bring yourself to step out of your safe corners
for just a few minutes, I invite you to play, to wrestle, to wonder.
The Buddhist
tradition suggests that if you see the Buddha on the road you should kill him.
Why? Because if you think you have that
clear of a picture of the Truth, then you’re fooling yourself with a dangerous
illusion. So what I’m inviting you to do today is simultaneously reverent and irreverent: unpack your images, let
them run around with each other, and decide, once again, which ones if any, to
bring back home.
In the story of
the six blind men and the elephant we hear about the silly people who, by only
touching one small part of the elephant, fooled themselves into thinking that
they had grasped it’s entire character. One blind man, grasping the tail,
thought that the elephant was like a rope. One, touching it’s leg, thought the
elephant was like a tree. And so on.
These blind men,
like everyone who has attempted to know anything,
were partially wrong. I guess they were mostly wrong. But they were dangerously wrong, in my opinion, only if they thought they knew the
whole, and were determined to stop
looking now that they had found what little they’d found. The fact that our
knowledge is limited and often skewed should not keep us from continuing to
learn, especially if we can do so with a sense of humor about our prospects.
==
Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 reads: “Let
us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have
dominion over the...earth.” Who is this
“us/our/we”?
Let’s consider some basic categories of
concepts of the divine. These are some labels that people have applied to
themselves or to others. They often overlap. They can be used in every possible
combination. And there is a great deal of range of belief within every
category:
Theist: someone who believes in god
(we’ll have to save for another discussion what “believe” means)
Pantheist: believes that ALL is god
Process Theist: believes that god
changes...for example, god becomes aware of history as it unfolds instead of
from-the-beginning
Deist: believes god created the universe
but no longer intervenes...natural laws, randomness, and possibly free will are
now the causal powers
Mystic: believes that one can be in touch
with god directly
Atheist: most often used by people to
label others who don’t believe in their god/s; by most accounts I could
be called an atheist since I do not believe in a supernatural consciousness
with intensions for the universe; but I don’t usually use this label for myself
because it’s emphasis is all wrong
Agnostic: finds these questions
unanswerable or irrelevant
Naturalist: may or may not be a theist;
identifies the cycles of life and death represented in nature as the essential
metaphor
And finally, monotheist and polytheist --
those who believe in one god, perhaps with many names or many aspects, but a
singular entity...vs. those who distinguish the personalities or forces of
various gods as independent actors. (Note that trinitarian christians might
psychologically split their divinity more severely Hindus, with all their gods,
who may consider themselves monotheists. But that analysis would require us to
go much more deeply into the nature of “belief.”) I find it interesting that in
our culture we have different labels for ourselves according to what we call
god, but for the most part we only have one label for god, that is, “god.” I remember a poster from my growing-up-Catholic
days, which listed dozens of names for God.
But these names all referred to the same thing. It certainly wasn’t like the ancient Greek or
the modern Hindu pantheon of multiple gods with multiple powers and
personalities. Maybe that’s why many of us reject the concept of god out of
hand -- because the concept seems too broad to mean anything...and
simultaneously too narrow because someone else has already defined it.
I’ve seen surveys which show anywhere
from 3% to 20% of Americans don’t believe in God -- and I always wonder, “Which
gods do they and which gods don’t they believe in?” When I came to Wausau five
years ago the congregation had recently completed a survey of its eclectic
theologies. This was done both so the search committee could have a sense of
who to call as minister, and also to help that new minister to get to know you
better. Whenever these surveys are done in UU churches, asking people to
self-identify as Atheists, Agnostics, Theists, Humanists, Pagans, and
Mystics... the results always add up to well over one hundred percent, with
many people checking off multiple religious perspectives.
Of course these things change over time,
they change for us individually and they change for us collectively. Which
leads, of course, to the long series of questions contained on the pink sheet
in your order of service [reprinted below]. This is an opportunity to reflect
on and describe the god of YOUR experience -- not just with a label, but
getting a little deeper into the details of the nature of all-that-is. In a few
minutes we’re going to take some time to work through this list and, if you are
willing, I’d like to collect your first draft and see what kind of a composite
picture of god we might create as a congregation. If you’ll place your sheet in
the basket at the front or back of the sanctuary I’ll compile it all and report
in The Circuit Writer. The surveys are anonymous but feel free to write
your name if you’d like me to know more about you individually. While it’s
impossible to cram all of your beliefs into one page, there is some value in
trying to state them succinctly. The
exercise may show how silly, and yet how profound it is when we attempt to cram
all of our beliefs into one word, like “god.”
Before we begin I will acknowledge that
my biases inevitably come through both in the way I present this to you, and in
how I have structured the chart. You’ll
inevitably find some of the questions confusing or not applicable. I usually
get mad when I complete surveys because half the time the answers available are
all wrong. And the other half of the time the questions are all wrong. I’ve
never gotten a survey back from a group of UUs without lots of comments in the
margins.
Feel free to check off as many boxes as
apply. You can fill the sheet out as a couple by making two check marks, or you
can get another copy at the front/back of the sanctuary. You can also get
another copy to take home, or get one later from our website.
The Jesus Seminar is a group of New Testament
scholars who have done some very collaborative work on the historical
Jesus. For example in their book The
Five Gospels they went through each line supposedly spoken by Jesus,
discussed the likelihood of him having said it, and then (more than 100 of
them) voted. They dropped different
colored beads in a bowl according to whether they thought the line certainly or
likely or not likely or definitely was not spoken by Jesus. The color-coded
composite text (and it’s explanations of why the group felt as they did) is
fascinating, and gives an intricately nuanced view of Jesus’s character.
I’d like to try an experiment a little like that -- a dance with our
gods. Don’t worry, we won’t be waltzing down the aisles today. This will be
more like the oompah-loompah dance. It’s a chance to see that we probably have
more in common with people who use
different theological labels... than we do with those who use the same label as ourselves. I’m simply
going to take a few of the questions from the survey and ask you to stand if
you answered them one way or another.
[Note: it was fascinating to watch the
congregation stand and sit as we went through these questions. Someone had said
“yes” to just about every box below; I appreciate the courage all had in their
self-disclosure.]
My (understanding of) God! (as of March 2006)
largely according to a plan
within the mind of a higher consciousness
according to the natural laws of
the universe
with some random variability
with input by freely chosen
human action
whether by a higher
consciousness or by natural law, everything is fixed/fated
for ME
Benign Indifferent
Malign
for EVERYTHING Benign
Indifferent
Malign
through love, art, science,
nature....
through communion with something
beyond nature and humanity
exists independent of human
experience
is a function of subjective
human experience
5. I SEEK a view of God/Reality which...
6. I HAVE a view of
God/Reality which...
Reminds
me that I have dignity and worth
Inspires
me to make it through difficult times
Motivates
me to act for the good of all creation
Helps
me to outgrow my illusions
an exclamation
(emotional...something I experience viscerally)
an explanation (intellectual...a
means to explain the way the world is)
8. I feel in touch with creation/God/the
fullness of life...
often enough not often enough
9. God is
Life itself
The creative process of time unfolding
The sum of all matter and all experience
The spark of encounter...when I
engage with something/someone with ultimate respect
10. The Universe/God
does/ does not have a
position on general social questions (e.g. war; medical ethics...)
does/ does not have a
position on specific social questions (e.g. specific candidates for
election; whether Terry Schiavo should have been allowed to die...)
Constantly...God is omnipotent
Periodically...when God acts for
the cause of Justice
Never...God experiences life
with us but does not intervene
Never...there is no God
In this life
After this life
Over the course of history Justice is
a purely human concept
Directly Indirectly
Me to god god to me
Not at all
my preferred means of communication is:
There is a voice beyond me which
guides me. I seek to understand and to
follow.
There are many voices...and I
seek to discern and evaluate which to follow.
Any God you can define
is an idol
Any statement about God
is an understatement
I have had direct experience of
a transcending mystery/wonder... moving me to a renewal of the spirit and an
openness to the forces which create and uphold life
A Name:
A Symbol:
An Image:
What else?