Yours in Faith

by Terry Sims

A sermon delivered on July 29, 2007 in the West Valley Unitarian Universalist Church of Glendale, AZ

I received a note from someone recently who had read my March, 2007 column in the Surprise newsletter. I mentioned in that column that I had been sitting in the Memorial Garden at the Surprise church one day and thought of those who have gone before me there. I thought what a difference they made for those who worship there! I wished I could let them know how much that place they built up means to me. And then I wrote: "But they must have done what they did for people they realized they might never know. They must have done so in faith."

The person who wrote me the note wondered what my "expression read into their 'faith.'" The note continued: "What faith? 'In faith' is of course used by many evangelicals and I see it used by highly placed UU's like our UUA President, Bill Sinkford. I don't know what he means, either. Do you? 'In faith' to what wishful end? To what entity or entities is the faith attached? I'm in favor of plain language rather than the more recent UU encouragement to look and sound like, or somewhat like, other religious traditions."

Wow! What wonderful questions! And what an opportunity to explore what I really do mean by talking about our "faith." I wasn't caught totally by surprise by the note. When I started serving the Surprise church as its Consulting Minister, I thought a good deal about how I wanted to sign e-mails and letters and newsletter columns. I have been signing some of my newsletter columns and correspondence "Yours in faith." So, as the expression goes, I could have told the note writer, "I'm glad you asked that question."

My discussion of faith begins with my own tendency to be gullible. My inclination is to trust everyone. I tend to believe what anyone tells me. I really have to be careful not to be taken in by people who don't tell the truth, or who talk about things they don't know as if they did. Another lawyer in my office knew about my gullibility, and also knew my penchant for words and spelling. He once told me he had checked my dictionary and the word "gullible" was not there. I said I didn't believe it, and immediately went to check the dictionary for myself. I think I was about halfway through the "g's" when the other lawyer couldn't contain himself anymore. He started laughing and I realized I had been taken in by his pretty obvious joke. That I would even bother to check whether the word "gullible" was in my dictionary demonstrated just how gullible I could be. Rather than trust myself and what I thought I knew, I took someone else's word for something very unlikely.

So what is required for faith, for us to believe in something? What protects us from gullibility, from being easily deceived by others' claims or what we just want to believe? Two tests, I think. First, there should be some basis for belief. There ought to be some reliable evidence for a proposition before we believe it. Someone said the other day that I should believe in divine intervention because I couldn't disprove it. That's right, of course. I can't disprove that a supernatural force reached into my life or someone else's. But we don't usually believe something just because we can't prove it isn't true. We usually require some positive proof.

Imagine that you are sitting on a jury in a criminal case. How would you react if the prosecutor asked you to believe the defendant committed a crime just because the defendant couldn't prove he didn't commit it. Our legal system requires proof that he did. For the same reason, I need positive proof of a supernatural intervention. Trying to prove a negative requires you to disprove all other possibilities. That's very hard to do. We don't trust that kind of logic in law. So why do some people trust it in matters of religious belief? That's why I suggest that the first requirement of faith is that there be some reliable, positive proof, not just someone's claim or our wish. That eliminates lots of things one could believe in.

The second requirement I would suggest for faith is in tension with the first. That is, you need some reliable basis for belief, but you can't know for sure. If you know something for sure, something about which you have no doubt whatever, that is knowing, not believing. Knowing doesn't require faith. I used to think that you could only have faith in something that was certain. But that doesn't recognize the volitional aspect of faith. Faith involves a choice to believe. We have to admit some measure of unknowing, some doubt, and choose to believe in spite of that doubt. Faith is believing in something you don't know for certain. That's what hard about faith. It takes courage and commitment to believe in something that isn't certain; that you don't know for sure.

Those are my two tests for whatever we say we have faith in; that there is some reliable basis to believe it, and that we have some doubt about it and choose to believe it anyway. I was re-reading the six sources for our living tradition cited by the UU Association of Congregations the other day. I have faith in them. Here they are:
1. "Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life."
2. "Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion and the transforming power of love."
3. "Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life."
4. "Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves."
5. "Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit."
6. "Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature."

I do have faith in all these sources of our living tradition. I have seen the difference for good in the world that these sources have made for some people, so I have some reliable basis for believing in them. But I do not know any of them is certainly true. I choose to believe in them anyway. I consider myself committed to most, if not all of them, in spite of my doubts.

But any Unitarian Universalist could have faith in any one of these sources without having faith in the others. Someone who believes in her own "direct experience of transcending mystery and wonder" may not have faith in Jewish or Christian teachings. Someone who believes strongly in humanist teachings may find little of personal value in Earth-centered traditions. Most of us would probably say we have faith in our seven Principles, too. But I want to get even more basic. Is there a faith that unites all Unitarian Universalists; a faith we cannot do without? Are there a few things all UU's believe that are the source of our hope and joy, that make life worthwhile?

I don't need to tell you that it's risky at best to presume to tell UU's what they have to believe, or even what they do believe. Ultimately, of course, I'm going to do what I always try to do, and what I think every UU minister in every pulpit does. I'm going to tell you what I believe and leave it to you to decide whether you agree. I know you wouldn't have it any other way.

I suggest that all UU's have faith in three very fundamental things. I'm going to tell you what these three things are that I think we believe in common. Then I'm going to ask you to test each of them with me according to our two requirements for faith. The three things I have faith in sound pretty basic, but I think they are the core of my faith and the faith of Unitarian Universalism. First is that I have faith in human goodness. Second, I have faith in our collective abilities. Third, I have faith that together we can and will make life better.

I believe in human goodness. One church member told me the reason she believed in absolute goodness was because she saw it in someone dear to her. I believe I know how she feels. I had spinal surgery my senior year in high school, when I was 17 years old. I was out of school and confined to bed for four months, from October, 1970 until February, 1971. Because both my parents worked, church volunteers came to sit with me during the day to help me. They were not paid, except in gratitude. I'm not sure I knew all their names, even then. Those I did know I have forgotten. But I have never forgotten their kindness.

I see people everywhere who care about others and act to help. Some weeks ago, as Jay Leu was driving his daughter to school Wednesday morning, he saw a loose pit bull trying to attack a dog behind a chain link fence. Leu saw the dog turn away from the fence and start chasing children. "I saw the crossing guard calling for help," Leu said. "There were all these children and the dog was looking for other things to attack." Leu sped up to where the children where screaming near 37th Place and Emile Zola Avenue and used his large truck to shield the children from the dog. Leu saw the dog turn away and start running down Eugie Avenue. He thought the coast was clear and dropped his daughter off at Indian Bend Elementary School. On a hunch, he drove back and again saw the aggressive dog again chasing and nipping at children. "Kids were just everywhere," Leu said. "Every time the dog turned around, there was somebody to go after." Leu knew he had to stop the dog, but he didn't want to get injured. "I made up my mind to put the kids in my truck," Leu said. "I told the kids, 'get in.' I don't know how many, it was a bunch of kids. Everywhere I looked there were faces." When the children were safely inside the truck, Leu drove them down the street to the school and dropped them off.

This story illustrates why I have faith in the core goodness of people. I believe other people can be good because I have some evidence that they do good things for others. I've seen people act out their goodness innumerable times. But I am never certain any particular person will do good on any particular occasion. I don't trust goodness completely. People also do terrible things to each other. There's plenty of proof of that, too. So I have some doubt about people's goodness at any particular time, including my own. I choose to believe goodness is there anyway. I refuse to give up on the good in people despite all the times I see it not used. That's not just wishful thinking or being gullible. I think an underlying faith in the basic goodness of others is essential to being a Unitarian Universalist. It is central to our Universalist heritage; universal salvation; that all souls will be saved. What soul is there to save if there is no goodness?

The second thing I have faith in, that I think all UU's must have faith in, is our own abilities to figure things out, individually and especially collectively. This is why each of us affirms and promotes a free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and the right of individual conscience. At District Assembly a few weeks ago, I heard the keynote speaker talk about themes of Unitarian Universalism. One of those themes was reason. At our core I think each one of us must believe we can discover by reason what is true and meaningful, if not for everyone, at least for us.

This starts out like a joke, but it actually happened. I was talking with two UU minister friends not long ago. One of them asked the other if he thought he was right about the things he believed. The other minister said, "No, I just believe I'm not as wrong as other people." In case you don't recognize it, this is what passes for UU humility.

Again, let's apply our test. Do we have some evidence that humans collectively can use our abilities to come up with better answers? Absolutely. Here are some of those better answers I can think of. That all people are created equal with fundamental human rights. That at least some diseases have physical causes, rather than being the result of the whim of long-abandoned gods. That we orbit around the sun rather than the other way around, and can send people to the moon and back. Am I certain we have derived the right answer in any particular case? Hardly. Humanity has been wrong too many times. But I choose to believe we can continue to reason life out, even though I have some doubt about that.

The last thing I think is essential for the faith of Unitarian Universalists is that together we can and will make life better. That we will use our goodness and abilities to make a difference. Another theme in UUism that the District Assembly speaker talked about was social action. What basis is there for our social activism if we have no faith that we can make a difference? Liberal religion was pilloried in my theology class in seminary because of its presumed naïvete: "the progress of humanity, onward and upward forever." Conservative theologians said liberal religion could not survive after the atrocities of the World Wars. They said there was no justification for believing in human goodness, or abilities, or improving life. But I believe those theologians missed the point of our faith.

What is our test? Despite the worst humans can do and have done, there is lots of reliable evidence that we can and have done better at times. The Code of Hammurabi. The compassion and piety of Buddhist King Ashoka. The teachings of Jesus. The Edict of Religious Freedom under King John Sigismund. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Democracy in the Greek city states. Development of the sciences and humanities. Of course we cannot be sure that we will use our collective abilities to improve life for all on this planet. But that uncertainty, that doubt, is the second part of our test for faith. Unknowing is just as essential for faith as some reliable evidence. The point of faith is to choose to believe that we can make our lives better now and in the future, in little ways and big ones, even though we can't be sure we will. Not knowing is exactly why we have faith. Ours is not a gullible faith ready to believe without reliable support. Nor are we easily deceived by confusing wishful thinking with certainty.

So, back to my note-writer's questions. "What faith? . . . To what wishful end? To what entity or entities?" Faith in just three things, informed by some reliable evidence as well as by doubt that can only be overcome by a leap of faith. Faith in us, the big "us." Faith not just in UU's or religious people, but faith in humanity, in everyone, even the worst of us. Faith in a core of human goodness, in human abilities, and in human action to make life better. Faith that we will use our goodness and our abilities to make a difference for ourselves and others. When I sign "yours in faith," I mean that as a commitment. That I am going to keep trying to make a difference for good in the world in spite of my own limited goodness and abilities, in spite of my doubt that I will have any significant impact. I am promising others and myself that I will keep on believing and working in faith, in this faith.

I meant the same thing when I wrote about the faithful souls at Surprise who were there before and made that place for those of us there now. We could say the same about the founders of this church. I think they must have created this church community in the faith that they could use their desire to do good and their abilities to create a space for others to use. In the faith that others would carry on their work. That they could make a difference in the world, and that those who followed them could make a difference in the world. Faith that their goodness and efforts would not be wasted.

I conclude by acknowledging that we cannot say Unitarian Universalists all agree on an idea of God or scripture or an afterlife. Ours is not a traditional faith. People of other faiths may have a hard time figuring out whether we actually have faith, something we believe as strongly as they believe. Other religions may see ours as a paltry faith, one that doesn't believe in much. But I disagree that the UU faith is paltry. I don't need to believe in a lot of things. I don't need faith in what I just want to believe but have no evidence for. And I don't need faith to believe in the things I know for sure. I just need to have faith in a few things, like human goodness, human abilities, and human action to make a better life for all of us. That seems like plenty of faith to me; a reliable, justified, hopeful faith. One that can keep me believing in it and working for it because I choose to, in spite of some evidence and doubts against it. In that faith, I am yours and I trust that you are mine. Blessed be.

BENEDICTION: "We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present, some self-respect beyond our failures." "We have religion when we have done all that we can, and then in confidence entrust ourselves to the life that is larger than ourselves." Yours in faith. Amen.