TO SEEK KNOWLEDGE IN FREEDOM

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle Massachusetts
Sunday October 3rd, 2004


I honestly believe that of all the characteristics I might point to, the one distinctive quality that most distinguishes Unitarian Universalism from every other religious tradition known to human history is the extraordinary emphasis we place on the task described in the title of this morning’s sermon: “To seek knowledge in freedom.” I don’t know whether to call this a commandment, or a mandate, or merely a “duty” -- but it’s an important part of what it means to be a contemporary Unitarian Universalist, an essential component of our denomination’s theological “culture.” I suspect that most religious organizations welcome Seekers, and I know for a fact that there are plenty who value freedom and knowledge as much as we do, but I also suspect that for a lot of them (or at least a lot of the ones that I’m familiar with) their attitude is something along the lines of “your search is over -- we’ve got just what you’ve been looking for. So come on in, sit still and pay attention, while we feed it to you on a silver platter.”

Which really isn’t such terrible advice, when you stop to think about it. You can generally learn a lot if you are willing to listen just a little. But Unitarian Universalists tend to see things just a little differently. Back in 1819 when William Ellery Channing preached his famous sermon “Unitarian Christianity” at the ordination of Jared Sparks in Baltimore Maryland, he took as his text a passage from Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” and I don’t think (as a denomination, at least) that we’ve looked back ever since.

Unitarian Universalists are curious people who like to ask questions. Lots of questions. Seeking is a way of life for us. We worship our freedom of belief almost as an object of idolatry, and accumulate knowledge as though it were money in the bank. Love is the doctrine of this church, and service is our prayer -- but our sacrament (the place where God’s grace and “real presence” is made manifest in the here and now) is “the search for truth.” And this same emphasis is reflected as well in our denominational Principles and Purposes statement, which of course begins with the familiar affirmation of “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and concludes with “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” But at the center of this overarching declaration, the keystone if you will which holds it all together, is the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Indeed, for a lot of us that freedom IS the most signficant responsibility of our lives. Truth, meaning, knowledge, wisdom -- these things are not just means to some end, they are inherently worthwhile in and of themselves; they are what make our lives meaningful, and allow us to understand who we are and our relationship to everything we see and experience around us.
Of course, these values didn’t actually originate with us. You can read about them right in the New Testament: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Lk 11: 9-10). And in the Gospel of John we are told “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn 8:32). That was probably my favorite verse of Scripture, back when I was in High School and aggressively debating against my born-again Christian classmates in order to preserve my immortal soul in a state of non-salvation. And then, some years later, when I was in Divinity School, that particular verse took on an added poignancy for me, because the verb in the second clause -- luo: “to set free”-- also happened to provide the paradigm for the conjugation of all regular Omega-verbs: luo, lueis, luei, luomen, luete, luousi -- I set free, you set free, he/she/it sets free, we set free, all of you set free, they set free.... And that’s just the simple present active indicative...don’t ask me to go any further. But one of the things I learned incidentally while trying to memorize all this is that the verb luo more precisely means to “loose” or to “release” (as from bondage). So it’s not just that we are created with a God-given freedom to seek the truth, it is also that our acquired knowledge of truth is itself liberating. The freedom to seek, and the freedom that comes from knowing (or even just thinking that we know) are really two very different things, which is why the certainty of those who think that they know things that others don’t (especially when the others think that they in fact know better) is so exasperating. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. But perfect knowledge is for God alone. And so, as Socrates so wisely put it, the wisest individual is the one who knows that they know nothing.

And yet, I can’t very well stand up here with a straight face and tell you that “ignorance is bliss” either. Truth matters. Knowledge and Wisdom matter. As human beings, we have the freedom to make mistakes; and we have the duty, and the responsibility, to learn from those mistakes and correct them if we can. Seeking knowledge in freedom is often a process of trial and error (or in the case of truly egregious mistakes, error and trial). Likewise, the inability to acknowledge even the possibility of mistake is the most dangerous form of ignorance. And we all know what Jesus had to say about people who are quick to point out their neighbors shortcomings, while turning a blind eye to their own. He called them hypocrites -- people who judge according to a standard which they themselves do not meet. Hypocrisy is perhaps the most frequently condemned sin in all the Gospels. (Actually, I don’t really know that for sure, because I didn’t really take the time to count them all up, but it sure gets condemned a lot). But either way, the first thing we need to learn and remember about seeking knowledge in freedom is to do so humbly. There are a lot of things to know in this world. None of us will ever learn them all. A little humility and the ready acknowledgment of the fact that we all make mistakes goes a long way toward liberating us from the bondage of our own ignorance.

People sometimes criticize, or even make fun of Unitarian Universalists, because we are so notoriously tentative about saying what we believe. They say that UUs believe everything, or that we DON'T believe anything...or that we believe one thing one day and something else the next, or that we simply don’t know WHAT we believe, which is why we spend so much time “seeking” in the first place. We’re often accused of being moral relativists, because we’re overheard talking about “my Truth,” or suggesting that what is true for one person may not be true for all people, or what is appropriate in some situations may not be appropriate in others. Personally, I feel that these kinds of stereotypes are a profound misrepresentation of who we are and what we believe, but I also recognize that we contribute to this misunderstanding because we laugh at ourselves right along with everyone else whenever Garrison Keillor turns us into a punch-line, and are not always as precise or careful in our use of language as we might be, and therefore leave ourselves open to misinterpretation...especially by people who don’t already understand (or who don’t WANT to understand) what we really do stand for.

But just assume for a moment that Truth truly is Absolute: that what is True today was True yesterday, and will be True tomorrow and for all eternity. And further assume (just for the sake of argument, since it’s a pretty big assumption) that it may even be possible for a human being to know and understand that Truth, perfectly and in every detail, and still further possible for them to communicate it sensibly to another human being. Even if it were hypothetically possible, how often do you think it would really happen? How long do you think it would take to know and understand “the Truth,” and how many people would actually take the time to do it? Truth is “out there” but knowledge is “in here” -- it’s a much more personal thing; and even if Absolute Truth is eternal and unchanging, each individual still has to discover and learn it for themselves. Patience and Persistence are essential qualities in a Truth-Seeker, and True Wisdom is the understanding that there is a difference between “the Truth” (which may very well be absolute and eternal) and knowing (or thinking you know, or claiming to know) what is true at this particular moment (which is always a little dicey and tentative anyway, since often it seems like the more we know, the more we discover there is to know). Knowledge is something we acquire slowly, over time. When we are free to seek knowledge we may actually be able to acquire it a little more quickly and thoroughly than if we just sit around and wait for knowledge to come to us. But let’s face facts: true “know -it-alls” are basically just figments of their own imaginations, often failing to meet even the so-called “laugh test” when confronted with the evidence of their own profound misunderstanding.

Of course, it may also be true that Truth (or at a least certain kind of Truth) is a very simple thing -- something that we seem to know intuitively, as if from birth, and only need to learn to trust. I’m not going to hazard a guess right now as to what these “truths” might actually be, but there are certainly plenty of things in life that I basically just take on faith, because I know that if I doubt EVERYTHING, if I can’t Trust ANYTHING, there’s no way I’m even going to make it through the day. You’ll probably hear me say this a lot from this pulpit if you sit here often enough, but “faith” is not belief in things you know aren’t true. Faith is trusting the “truth” of things you know you can never really prove, and will never really have to prove to anyone but yourself. It’s the confidence to live your life knowing you will always be a little more ignorant than you might like, but that you’ll figure out a way to muddle through. And every time you do, you learn a little more...about yourself. You become more knowledgeable about who you are and what you’re made of.

And this is true even if the outcome is less than perfect. I know it’s a cliché, but failure can be a magnificent teacher...it teaches us things about ourselves and the world that success never can. Not all of those lessons are positive; some of them can be quite crippling if they rob us of faith in ourselves and the confidence to try again. But when you understand the task to be “seeking knowledge in freedom,” it changes the nature of the process itself. The goal is no longer merely to succeed. It is to learn something new about ourselves and the world we live in through our efforts, and to be able to draw freely upon that new knowledge the next time we are confronted with a challenge.

Of course, like a little knowledge, relying too greatly on Force of Will and the Power of Positive Thinking can also be a dangerous thing. There’s a profound difference between optimism and wishful thinking, and simply saying something is true doesn’t make it so. We may not always choose to be completely candid with the people around us; there is such a thing as Too Much Information, and some things are simply nobody’s business anyway. But it is always dangerous to be less than completely honest with ourselves. Only a fool tries to pull the wool over their own eyes, or ignores what is as plain as the nose on their face. Of course, this cuts two ways as well. We can also become too critical of ourselves, underestimating our own abilities or minimizing our own skills. Honesty means Honesty -- the strengths as well as the shortcomings; and often times we don’t even know what we can do until we try. We should neither underestimate the power of optimism, nor should we rely on it exclusively. Trust, but Verify. And the verification -- the “truth-testing” -- generally comes only through the effort of honest exploration, or (to put it another way) the on-going process of seeking knowledge in freedom.

Of course, there are also some truths that can never be verified. I know I’ve talked a lot about God here this morning (maybe not so much recently, but earlier) and I know there are a lot of people who get a little nervous when I use that kind of language, just as I know there are others who find it kind of comforting and reassuring. The experience of God is one of those simple truths that can never really be proved, and never really has to be proved either. But this places that knowledge in a very special category. Even if you haven’t had the experience...if you’re not a believer, if it’s just not part of your own “truth,” you can still believe someone who tells you that they have experienced the presence of the divine in their life, and that it has changed their life for the better. You don’t have to believe in God yourself in order to believe in the experience of the person who believes, especially if you can see with your own eyes that their life has been changed. (Of course, sometimes it may seem to you as if their lives have been changed for the worse, but that’s a topic for another day). But once again, the Scripture tells us “by their fruits shall ye know them” and admonishes “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I, by my works, will show you my faith.”

And likewise, even if you have been blessed by a profound, life-transforming experience of the Holy which you simply know without a doubt was the work of God, you need to remember that just because it makes sense for you to talk about that experience in a certain way doesn’t mean that those words are going to be meaningful to others. You need to learn how to differentiate between the wisdom, and the insight, and the knowledge that you gained from the experience itself, and the various ways that you might communicate that knowledge to others so that it will be meaningful to them as well. And this represents yet another different kind of knowledge altogether, which relies less on divine revelation than it does simple human connection, and the ability (as I mentioned last week) to find commonalities in even the most diverse human experiences.