Past Sermons by Rev. George Smith, Retired

A Theology of Theology

Reading: God Is One #566 SINGING THE LIVING TRADITION

In this world there have always been many opinions about faith and salvation.
You need not think alike to love alike.
There must be knowledge in faith also.
Sanctified reason is the lantern of faith.
Religious reform can never be all at once, but gradually, step by step.
If they offer something better, I will gladly learn.
The most important spiritual function is conscience, the source of all spiritual joy and happiness.
Conscience will not be quieted by anything less than truth and justice.
We must accept God's truth in this lifetime.
Salvation must be accomplished here on earth.
God is indivisible.
Egy Az Isten. (Hungarian)
God is one.
--Francis David adapted by Richard Fewkes

When I first became a UU in the Auburn, NY, Universalist Church, back in the middle 80's, two things struck me. First, I felt at home the minute I walked into the church. It was amazing how comfortable it felt. For years I had been longing for a place where I did not need to hide my true beliefs. Second was an uncomfortable almost disconcerting feeling. As I got to know the Church and UUism, it was clear that using the "God" word in Church, though not taboo, was frowned upon. I found this strange, given that UU principles encouraged the acceptance of differences, openness, and frankness in discussion.

(As an aside, I have found it strange that given that most UU's tend at best to be agnostic if not atheistic that one of the preparations for a minister to present to a search committee is a statement of his or her theology. It seems to become God-talk about no-God!!!)

As I thought about this feeling with regard to God talk, I realized I had encountered something similar when I was a liberal Christian Minister. I had felt this same uncomfortableness around Evangelical Christians. Their use of God language bothered me. I tried my best to avoid their language in Church and to steer others away from it. As I probed deeper I uncovered one of the reasons for our avoidance of "God" talk. When I was very young my father who was a Salvation Army Captain had one day been talking with my mother regarding one of the "Soldiers" who was an alcoholic saying something like he has the right words but does not live them! This seemed to me a very strong indictment of that person and ultimately the use of "God" talk, in general. Years later after my father had become a United Methodist minister; he would take us to the Salvation Army's Sunday evening services replete with altar calls. Often the same people would go forth to accept Christ as their savior, confessing their sin, and promising to live a renewed life. Same tears; same words; same people. As I grew, I saw more of this hypocrisy "blaming" it on the "God" talk.

I began to realize that because many UU's are come outers from Christianity (of course not all), that they brought with them some feelings regarding the abuses of God-talk as they had experienced it. Some had been "put down" or defined as being part of the out group by this talk, such as homosexuals, women, African-Americans, etc. Too often, the language was used to define individuals as being unworthy or as a means of loyalty to the group. In each case, it would add baggage to the God-talk language. So it became clear to me that part of the reason we avoided God-talk was to not hurt the sensibilities of those among us.

To take this a step further, I realized that once I heard God-talk language, I usually "tuned the person out" not wanting to find out what lay behind the words. As a chaplain in an urban hospital, I was speaking with a young woman whose son had just had an emergency appendectomy, which almost resulted in his death. When I first spoke with her, she described what happened in very typical evangelical language. The Devil made her son ill. It was difficult for me to listen to her. I put off returning to see her until just before her son was released. She began that conversation stating that I know now; I let the Devil in the back door. What a humbling experience for me, as my self-righteous attitude was ready to write her off as a religious bigot who could not deal with what was happening to herself. She used the language she understood to describe her own culpability in missing her son's symptoms. Taking some of the blame, but honestly dealing with it. By the way, we all as parents miss important things about our children, at times. It would have been so easy to write her off after the first conversation. It is much more difficult to "hang in there", with all the baggage that language has, to hear the truth that lies within.

It is imperative to struggle with: do our words define our experience or do they define what we want the experience to be? Just as Evangelicals have done with their God-talk, do we do the same, missing the real experience? UU's love words. We describe, explain, express, challenge, and drive to a point with our words, so much so that we often miss the doing.

What I was as a young person asking of the Evangelicals and later in the 80's of the UU's, was: do your catch phrases reflect you or do they just reflect what you are told to say? I was uncomfortable in both instances because I felt it was the latter. I believe it is easy if you are articulate, or if you follow the pattern given to you, to express a theology. It is much more difficult to say what really it is that you believe deeply, theologically or philosophically. Part of our struggle with our talking, is that it often hides what's really down inside us. The woman in the hospital couldn't originally come to grips with her own culpability in not getting her son to the hospital sooner, and, thus, she reverted to the "God" talk language that she knew in order to hide those feeling. "God" talk language at its depth is most difficult. Not just because of theses theological or philosophical constructs, because these can be learned. No, it is difficult because it gets to the core of our lives, to the very elemental meanings of living and dying.

In seminary, we were taught to think theologically. It was a struggle. Our first year, we had to write papers on the major theological constructs, such as God, Christ, Church, Good and Evil, etc. As we struggled with these papers, one or our classmates challenged our professor to give us his theology of God. Surprisingly, he did. That very week, he handed to us a very poorly typed paper with cross outs, grammatical errors, misspellings, and stylistic problems. It stated it was a tentative confession about what God meant to him. This event is probably the one that I remember most about my seminary days. It was a breath of fresh air. Here was a real life, blood and guts, statement from a real person about God that was not formulated on talk but on living. It is what I call the real expression of life which comes out of the intimations both quiet and passionate sensing that is not only within but also without. I believe with all my heart that thoughtful working on theological issues is important. But it must go further to allow the reality underneath to surface in order to see and live new perspectives.

We as UU's have done this in recent years. We have begun to use God-talk more freely. We have ministers who hold evangelistic meetings, healing services, and rituals for confession and absolution. It is good to see us use this other parts of our tradition effectively in our liberal settings. We are discovering the deeper meanings in these events and finding new life. As a youth my search was for a savior. As a young adult, it was the quest for identity. As I grow older, it is the quest for meaning. It becomes more now the search to find some definition for life amongst the paradoxes of living, to find a witness to a reality beyond our understanding.

It is clear that it is no easy task to do real theology or philosophy. It is more than just examining your life in the light of the ultimate, whatever that may be, feel like, be sensible to you, or to your touch. It is this matter of definition of life. Expressed and lived by you. So Be It.