*This title is a callback to the UU curriculum "How Can I Know What to Believe?" by Charlene Brotman & Barbara Marshman
It will probably not surprise you to know that I thought this was great! It felt so grown up to sit talking to the minister about important things, to be asked what I believe like it mattered. I had been the kind of kid who always thought about such things, who wanted to know “why” -- who wanted to know “is there a God? Is there a heaven? What happens after we die?” and sometimes it was really hard not having clear answers to those questions. Our minister told us, much as my mom had, that sometimes it was challenging being UU, because no one could tell you for sure what to believe, BUT, the gift was that we could learn to hone our own skill for discerning what was true. We were taught from a very young age that even if an authority figure says something is true, it’s okay to question, it’s okay to notice when what “people are saying” contradicts your lived experience. Questioning and religion go together, if you are UU. It’s part of the “Free and responsible search for truth and meaning”
One of our core understandings about this (called epistemology if you like fancy words) all the way back to the beginning of our Unitarian roots, is a trust in our inner compass in this search for truth. A place of inner wisdom, conscience and integrity exists in all of us, and this is the place in ourselves where we go to discern what is true, and what is important. For theists, this is the place where we are connected with and listening to the divine. For humanists, this is an innate human capacity. This discernment, this consulting the inner compass is at the core of our spiritual practice, and can be strengthened and habituated.
Have you ever had the experience of catching yourself not wanting to know something, or not wanting to face something internally? I sure have. Because we humans can also train ourselves not to look too closely at things that are uncomfortable, or things that might disrupt our relationships with other people. “Denial is not just a river in Egypt”, right? Coming to that place of integrity inside ourselves is not always easy, but that is the spot from which each of us can know what is true for us, the spot where we bring ourselves to discern.
Just as it takes our teens a full year to explore their beliefs in a comprehensive way, there are too many for us to consider deeply today. But I want to give us something specific to consider. I was thinking about all the angels that appear in the stories of this season, we had one in our story last week, and will undoubtedly sing about them at our candle light service. What do UUs believe about angels? It’s not something UUs talk about very much, it’s not really central to our shared theology, but it might be a helpful example as we explore this question of “how can I know what to believe?”
UUs are also big on evidence; the unitarian part of our tradition was inspired by people who bravely insisted that their beliefs must be compatible with the witness of their senses, and the learnings of science. But this means different things to different people. Some UUs take the strict stance that because angels have never been proven to exist using the scientific method, and because they themselves have never seen the angels described in the sacred texts, therefore they cannot believe in angels. When they ask their inner compass about angels, they get a hard no.
Some UUs believe the ordinary IS miraculous, and so when you ask “do you believe in angels” they might recall powerful moments of generosity and kindness they have witnessed in the midst of ordinary human relationships. Even a stranger on a bus can be an angel- providing direct evidence by their kindness.
But other UUs might offer another kind of evidence- a feeling they had one night at the sick bed of someone dear to them. A loving, comforting presence that radiated goodness. A vision, a voice. They consult that inner compass and feel the truth of that experience, the power of it to their lives, and maybe the word “angel” comes to their mind- and forever after when someone uses the word angel, it summons up that felt experience.
Three different ways of thinking about angels, all coming out of our UU epistemology. This is because there are different kinds of truth, different kinds of knowing. For example I know that this week was the full moon because I saw it, and it was verified by all the calendars and apps in my house. I also know I love my husband, but that’s a different kind of knowing, harder to describe, harder to replicate, but true all the same. Myself, I tend to be agnostic about angels, but I do believe in the power of archetype and imagination. I know that something like angels have appeared in sacred stories and folk tales down through millennia. And I tend to believe that something which captures our collective imagination of that many generations must have some power for our psyches, whether it has any material reality.
The tricky bit for UUs is that on any given Sunday we might find someone for whom the whole idea of an angel sets off warning lights in that place of truth and integrity, might be sitting a few seats away from someone for whom angels play an important part of their spirituality, based on powerful experiences in their own lives. That is why respect is so important for us- because we don’t all have to believe the same thing, it’s okay to just listen with open mind and heart to the beliefs of each other, to notice how different our lived experience is, and the differences in how we have made meaning of our lives.
UUs try to keep our minds open to new understandings. The Dhali Lama once said “if science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with the facts.” He’s not a UU but that sure fits. Scientist Isaac Newton once said “What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.” Who knows what we might still experience, and learn, who knows how our world might change? This is something I think all UUs would agree, that none of us can see the whole picture, and the picture is guaranteed to change over time. Perhaps that is why sometimes in our Sunday school clases we say “UUs are the people of the Open Minds, Helping Hands and Loving Hearts.”
Universliasts are people who keep that inner compass in their loving hearts heart. Our whole Universalist tradition came into being through people who believed deeply in love. When they went to their inner compass with the teachings of the church tradition of the day, way back in the 17th century, which was big on souls suffering in eternal torment, these kind hearted people couldn’t reconcile themselves to that teaching. When they talked to one another about a God who loves everyone, their inner compass said “aha”. It would be hard to find much evidence for this belief, one could easily look at the evidence of the world and say “humans are terrible, and God is punishing us” but what makes a Universalist a Universalist is because their inner compass points towards love. In my own life, there was a moment when I chose to take the leap of faith and believe in love, even though my inner compass said “where’s the proof?” I thought I’d try a little experiment- try believing in love for a while and see if that made me happier and more loving, which turned out to be the case.
Because as near as I can tell, love creates a kind of feedback loop. When we bravely open our hearts to those around us, grounded in the belief that there is a love big enough to hold everyone, bigger even than the evils of the world, love grows -- in ourselves and in our communities. If we take a skeptical approach, if we close our hearts to the love, perhaps because we’ve had our hearts broken, and can’t risk being disappointed again, this can create a feedback loop of disconnection and even despair. The early Universalists noticed that people who believed in a judgmental punishing god became themselves punishing and judgmental, and those who believed in love tended to be loving.
The great 20th century UU teacher James Luther Adams talked about a “pragmatic theory of meaning.” The most important test of our beliefs is how they cause us to act in the world; do they inspire us to make the world a kinder more just place? As Sofia Lyon Fahs wrote in our hymnal “it matters what we believe” “Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged. Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.”
Deeper sympathies, that’s a nice way to put it. Our compass must be attuned not only to our own wellbeing but to the whole interconnected web. That’s something that unites today’s UUs- the belief that we are accountable to one another, and to our ecosystem. That’s what we mean by a free and Responsible search for truth and meaning. When you hear someone say “UUs can believe anything they want” what’s missing from that idea is this accountability to our inner integrity, to one another, and to the web of life.
When attuning to your inner compass, it can be kind of like tuning those old radio dials. There are some frequencies that are indeed judging, and make us feel like we are no good. That’s not the one we UUs are looking for. The frequency that makes us feel like we alone have the true answer? Don’t settle there either. Keep refining your search until you begin to tune into the frequency where you are in harmony with yourself and with the wider web of life. We are looking for the frequency that helps us grow in Freedom, in awareness, in compassion, in engagement.
Back in our coming of age class, we went question by question through those big mysteries of life, and began to put into words the knowing we found inside ourselves. If I think back to what I wrote then, I can see that there have been some significant changes in my own answers, and some answers have become more subtle and nuanced as I grow in life experience. This work of discernment continues as long as we are alive and growing. I wonder sometimes if our adults wouldn’t like a time like that- to explore and re-explore what we believe, to notice how the things we used to believe are evolving along with us. So I will make this offer- if you have specific questions you’d like us to think about together, please let me know!
This is one reason why we come together, to hear one another, the deep listening that helps us know ourselves in a new way. What a relief it is sometimes to have a belief that is like an amorphous lump and hear someone put just the right language to it, or offer the image to it that helps it crystalize into clarity. When we listen deeply to one another, we might hear something that makes us say “aha! That’s it!” or we might have kind of a “negative aha” where our inner compass says, “not for me!” which can also be clarifying. There are also plenty of places for me personally where I just don’t know. My inner compass gives me a lot of “maybe” when I ask it. And as hard as it is not to know something for sure, “I don’t know” can be a good honest answer. This is our free and responsible search for truth and meaning, so glad we can be on the search together.
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