February
7, 2016 Community Christian Church of
Springfield, MO
Roger
Ray, pastor “Honest Questioning and Uninformed Certainty”
Mark Twain — 'What gets us into trouble is not what we
don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.'
May favorite painting in the world hangs in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is a ten-foot wide canvas by Jules Bastien-Lepage depicting Joan of Arc as a 13-year-old
girl standing in her parents’ garden. Faintly you can make out the images of
the three French saints whom she believed spoke to her. There is a look of
intensity and mild shock on the child’s face as she instructed by these disembodied
voices to inspire a rebellion in France against British rule.
I have kept a print of this painting over my
desk where I write my sermons for 20 years. Her determination, sacrifice, and
zeal inspire me. However, it should also be noted that Joan of Arc was
certainly a schizophrenic or at least suffered from some form of dementia. The
voices she heard were not really the voices of the long dead French heroes. The
voices came from inside Joan’s skull.
Still, it would be a mistake to write her off as
being simply schizophrenic. She was a brave, young woman of great faith. She
was inspired and she inspired a nation and she courageously went to her death
defending the voices that both she and her accusers should have known were not
real. And, I suspect, many who followed her into battle might also have
believed that the voices were not real.
But the voices were spurring the French to fight
for their liberation and that was a voice they all heard in their own hearts.
Our evening news is often marred with images of
religious fanaticism. Wars, beheadings, suicide bombers, representing a
jihadist view of the world… like Joan of Arc, in part inspired by deranged
faith, and in part fighting for liberation from Western dominance or for power
and dominance the way that people always have.
We can admire strong faith. We value courage. We
sympathize with the goals of self-determination and freedom from oppression.
But as religious people, I think that we need to take a very sober look at the
issue of certainty.
Fundamentalism demands fealty to absolute
certainty. It gives people false confidence that they possess absolute truth
about things that no one can know. Even
Muhammad’s first reaction to the visions he experienced was to doubt that they were real.
Muslim fundamentalists never want this part of
Muhammad’s history to be repeated, but after his first religious vision, he
assumed that he had been possessed by a demon, what in that culture was called
a “jinn” or an evil genie. Again, you might suspect some sort of dementia when
anyone says that they hear voices and have visions but among religious
enthusiasts, you might have expected Muhammad to come running down the mountain
after his first vision, full of joy and enthusiasm, euphoric about hearing a divine
message delivered by an angel.
But in his own account, he was struck with
self-doubt and feared that he needed to kill himself to be rid of the jinn that
had taken over his mind. His wife, out of concern for him, sent him to stay
with one of her cousins who was an Ebionite.
Ebionites were Jewish Christians who believed that Jesus was a prophet
but was not divine. They rejected the letters of Paul and kept Jewish
customs. It was this cousin, Waraka, who told Muhammad that his vision had been of the
Archangel Gabriel. She was the one who taught him about the Ebionites’ view of
Biblical narratives and beliefs, much of which, not so miraculously, ended up
in the Quran.
Now, I do not say this to be
disrespectful, though I am certain what I have just said would put me in some
physical danger were I saying it in the wrong country. I offer these
observations as a corrective, not a rejection.
History museums are full of the
artifacts of dead religions related to gods whose names are no longer
remembered. Any religion that is too dogmatic, so certain of its own absolutes
that it cannot bear questioning, doubts, or changes in direction is destined
for a shelf in a museum.
Fundamentalism will not save
Islam, it will destroy a beautiful religion. Fundamentalism, literalism,
conservatism, will not save Christianity, it will, in stead, make it so
irrelevant and out of touch with reality that it will take its place along side
other outdated superstitions and magical thinking.
The realities of the universe and of God are
simply too big for any one religion. God is not defined or controlled by
religious beliefs. God does not recite or write creeds.
As Gandhi said, God is not a Muslim, Hindu,
Christian, or Jew. God has no religion.
I’m not saying that all religions are the same. They are not. I will
say, however, that there is no right religion and that there are healthy and
unhealthy ways in which you can be a member of any one of them.
The current pope of the Roman Catholic Church,
Francis, seems like a very open minded and, at least for a Catholic, a fairly
progressive person of faith. His predecessor, I don’t think that anyone could
rationally have described Benedict as having been either open minded or
progressive but they were both not just Catholics but popes within the last
decade.
There are hundreds of millions of Muslims you
will never hear about in the news who are hard working, moral, sane, peaceful
people who are loving and devout people of faith. We should no more put them
under the same heading of jihadist terrorists than we should be put in the same
group with Christian Identity or the KKK.
I love the quote from Mark Twain that we used as
our wisdom lesson today, that it is not what religious people don’t know that
should worry us but rather we should be terrified of things about which they
are certain.
All that being said, I want to be clear that
problems are not always corrected by going to the opposite end of the spectrum.
Religious certainty about things that cannot be seen, verified, tested, or in
any way validated is just idolatry, and as you have heard me say many times,
all idols are slated for destruction. That kind of certainty is virtual
insanity.
However, that does not mean that all beliefs and
teachings are of equal value. It doesn’t mean that we can’t know anything,
learn anything, grow and improve. Yes, a
sincere faith should question everything. You should be able to ask any
question, examine any truth, but you should not be afraid to step out of the
shadows and act confidently on what you know to be true…. And there are things
that can be tested, examined, observed, and determined to be true.
I don’t often suggest songs to Sean since he
seems to know almost everything there is to know about music but I sometimes
hear a song being played on one of my news podcasts that I listen to every week
and I stop in my tracks, look up the song and send it to Sean.
He is doing one today that I wish we could use
on our video but I think we would be breaking a ton of laws to do that though I
will risk repeating the verse that made me know that we had to use it in our
services:
Who are
you to deny your fellowman his human rights
nobody
says that you have to agree but you have to let others be free
These
are not opinions I am right and you are wrong
your
arguments are worthless and your reasoning is flawed
your
mind can't be free when it's locked inside an ancient book
When it comes to things about which no one can
be certain, we can entertain all kinds of ideas in open, humble, conversation.
But there is no room for dogmatism.
But in a world where a governor can decide to
poison the water of an entire city just to save a little bit of money, killing
a few, lowering the IQs of many, and negatively affecting the mental and
physical health of tens of thousands of people, there is no respectable way to
be neutral.
When the prejudices of the majority can keep
women’s pay less than mens, can so corrupt the judicial system that only poor
minorities are ever executed… when we fill our prisons with young people who
were caught with marijuana while we fill Caribbean luxury resorts with the
bankers who manipulated the market place and brought about a world wide
recession then neutrality is something to be ashamed of
and not defended.
I believe that the church has historically been
guilty of acting like they had absolute confidence about things that cannot be
known and about which they seem almost certainly to be wrong, and they have
remained indifferent towards the injustices all around them that not only can
be known but you have to try to not have the facts thrown in your face on a
daily basis.
When it comes to speculative theology, let’s
show some real humility. When it comes to social justice, let’s start showing
some real courage. Maybe we shouldn’t have
put a cross in this church that is more interfaith than it is Christian but it
is here and it should be a reminder to us that Jesus was executed by the state
and he was not executed for having the wrong religious beliefs. Don’t ever kid
yourself into believing that Jesus was killed for healing the sick and telling
people to love one another. Even Rome didn’t kill people for acting like Mr.
Rogers.
The cross is a reminder that Jesus wasn’t a
moderate and when it comes to matters of justice, we shouldn’t be either.
