A Spiritual Stretch

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

August 28, 2011

The first in a series of sermons on the seven Unitarian Universalist Principles, this one is about affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of each person. What does that entail, exactly? What is confusing about it? Why does Rev. Meg sometimes wish she could still believe the old Calvinist doctrine of “the total depravity of human nature” instead?

Since the early days of Unitarianism, in the 1700’s, the Unitarians have insisted on not coming up with a set of beliefs by which to define themselves. We call that being “non-creedal.” (The Quakers are a non-creedal denomination as well.) The Universalists, on the other hand, adopted several statements of belief over the years of their history. They wanted to create a statement that defined them, which was that God, in God’s infinite goodness, would not send people to the eternal torments of hell. When, after years of discussion, originally initiated by youth groups, the two denominations decided to merge in the early 1960’s, a list of commonly held beliefs was drawn up to articulate the common ground. Twenty years later the women of the two denominations initiated a rewriting of those commonly held beliefs in the 1980’s to make their language more overtly inclusive of the female half of the population, and those are the Principles we now agree together to affirm.

Over the next seven months I’m going to preach on each of the seven principles, as they are a part of what defines us as Unitarian Universalists. The first principle is that we covenant together (a covenant is a promise, a statement of intention, an agreement between or among people.) We covenant together to affirm (that means say “yes” to) and promote (that means tell other people that we affirm this thing) the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This is one of the principles that sets Unitarian Universalism in direct opposition to the Calvinism that underlies much of American Christianity.

I was raised Presbyterian, which is a Calvinist faith. One of the things Calvin taught (and he was not the first, just the worst) was that human beings, indeed the whole creation, is broken, not as it was meant to be. They would scoff, when I was young, if someone said “Follow your heart.” The heart was fallen. It would not tell you, could not tell you the right way to go. John Calvin put it this way “We believe in the total depravity of human nature.” It’s a cheery little doctrine. No, really, it’s cheery in that when someone embezzles, cheats, or disappoints, you say to yourself “What can you expect? People break bad. It’s our innate tendency. Because we were born in sin (original sin,) we could choose to do good things or bad, but we have an inherent bent toward choosing to do bad things. It’s kind of a miracle, then, that I’m a pretty good person, that I haven’t robbed the hospital pharmacy, that I returned the money in that wallet I found. Because of the depravity and brokenness of our nature, we need redemption. The theological problem comes in trying to understand why so many people live generously, do kind things, and love each other.

Our Unitarian Universalist heritage has its roots in the hopeful eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where reason was trusted to find answers to all mysteries, where the progress of humanity was expected to continue until we create a golden age where reason rules, all truth is discovered, all injustice righted, all shadows dispersed by the light of the human mind and spirit.

Taking a stand for humanity’s being born just fine the first time, (I wrote a song by that title, which I will sing to you in a few minutes) in no need of redemption, we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. This is not to say that there are no torturers, no murderers, no really bad people. We just agree that in their original state, when they were babies, they were inherently good. The temptation is to go straight to Hitler when talking about the principles. “Did Hitler have inherent worth and dignity?” I would like to suggest that we probably don’t have Hitler in this congregation, and that we make a pact that, for the next two years, the first person in any discussion who brings up Hitler loses. This is not to say that we don’t go wrong, make destructive decisions, hurt people’s feelings, or throw plastic things occasionally into the trash. We need forgiveness. I don’t mean to be flip about this. Sometimes we hit someone we love. We need forgiveness. Sometimes we scream at our kids or cheat on our partners and spouses or slice someone to pieces with our words.

What does our UU first principle ask us to do? To affirm one another’s worth and dignity has multiple ramifications: be encouraging to them, to listen to what they have to say, to believe they have the same rights you do regardless of their religion, their ethnic background, their sexual preference, gender identification, political party. You believe they have the same rights to community as anyone else, and you welcome them into your church if they have the mental and emotional capacity to enter into covenant relationship with the congregation.

It means you don’t beat people up, not if they are strangers and not if they are in your family. You don’t behave sexually with people against their will. Not with children at all. That is a sure way to insult and injure a person’s sense of their own dignity. This principle is also related to our attempt to become aware of our own learned racism and c1assism, our homophobia, our sense of superiority.

It means you don’t give up hope for people. Here is where I fall down almost every day. We violate others’ worth and dignity when we dismiss them out of hand because they love Rush Limbaugh, or because they think the right wing has some good points to make, or because they are a fundamentalist Christian. Even our Republican UUs members and UUs who identify as Christians sometimes feel attacked in their own congregations. Now, while I do think that dismissing people by saying “they just want to be told what to think,” or “what a bunch of idiots,” violates this principle, I think it’s respectful of someone else’s worth and dignity to engage them in conversation, argument, debate.

Sometimes we fail this principle because we understand it too broadly. We get confused and think that it asks us not only to affirm the dignity of everyone, but to affirm and promote the worth of every behavior and every idea. Some ideas lead to destruction and injustice, and some ideas are just stupid. We’re allowed to say “I disagree with that. Can you help me understand why you think this?”

We don’t have to tolerate bad behavior If someone is being destructive, I think it is respectful of their worth to say “Come on, you can do better than this.” If people continue with that bad behavior, you calmly withdraw from interaction with them until, as the I Ching says, they begin behaving correctly. Mostly, we pay attention to our own behavior, even though it’s a lot more fun to focus on others.

I could be wrong, though. Listen to this teaching story: A young Japanese man was riding on a crowded train when a belligerent drunk made his way through the train car and began to insult passengers. The young man had studied martial arts for many years, and he felt his blood begin to boil. He stood up, blocked the drunk’s path, and opened his mouth to challenge him. Suddenly he felt a hand on his arm. It was a frail old man. “Let me handle this,” the elder said mildly. The old man invited the drunk to have a seat next to him. He began to talk to the man, asking him questions about his life, looking him in the eye with kindness. After a while the thug confessed that his wife had just died and he was in great pain; he had gone out and gotten drunk to numb his agony. The old man placed a comforting hand on the fellow’s shoulder, and he began to weep. Before the young man’s eyes the thug was transformed from a villain to a suffering human being. If we look at one another through what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke calls “soft eyes,” we will grow in our understanding of one another, and we will grow in compassion.

Some of us are awful to ourselves, using words like loser, failure, idiot. I don’t have to tell you that is not respectful of your own worth and dignity. When you are feeling down remember your own inborn worth.

“Born Just Fine the First Time.”

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776