Sermon by the Rev. Charles J. Stephens
March 13, 2014
I ended the last sermon in my series “Questions of Socrates” with the question, “What is Piety?” Socrates didn’t seem to be bothered by the size of the questions he asked or their significance.
“What is Justice?” “What is Moderation?” “What is Virtue?” “What is Piety?” What is Courage? Socrates challenged his followers to live lives not according to blind duty not based on past cultural or rel. truths, doctrines or beliefs.
Socrates said “The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. And to live well meant, along with more enjoyable things in life, to live according to your principles”
Christopher Phillips, author of “The six Questions of Socrates” and “Socrates Café,” demonstrates how Socrates practiced philosophy: “philosophy as deed, as way of living, as something that any of us can do.
The Socratic method is an open system of philosophical inquiry that allows one to interrogate from many vantage points.”
Phillips demonstrates this approach to philosophy through asking Socratic style questions in various groups around the world which he calls Socrates Café Dialogues. He demonstrates that to make philosophical inquiries, we don’t have to have a major in philosophy nor are we required to have an allegiance to any specific philosophical viewpoint, follow some analytic technique or use specialized vocabulary.
Phillips approach to philosophy, “calls for common sense and common speech” when it comes to asking the question: What’s it all about?
Ultimately, it matters less what Socrates or other philosophers thought or think is virtue. What matters are the answers we come up with today when we think and talk about what virtue is and “what is good. “
Our UU tradition challenges us to be open to dialogue about what is true and why this or that is so and what it means to live a life of virtue. Our UU tradition calls us to openly receive wisdom from all available sources.
My sermon today centers on the question, “What is Good.” I like to think that when I take a stand, concerning a social justice issue, that I am standing on the side of that which is good. But can we be sure that we consistently stand on the side of that which is good?
Take for example, the international dilemma concerning Ukraine or the death and destruction that has and is going on in Syria. On the surface, it seems like major actions ought to be taken by ours and other governments. But exactly what actions would turn out to be good? It isn’t clear what it is that should be done?
We might kill 1000s of innocent people if we intervened militarily. We have the haunting memory of what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan was that good? We could supply weapons to groups who oppose Syrian leader Assad today only to have them turn their guns on others in a year or two? But what if we do nothing?
Or take question of who to respond to the economic challenges facing Maine and the rest of the world. Is cutting taxes good? With April 15th coming in two days we think that maybe there are some taxes that should be cut. Maybe there are others that should be raised. Are the pensions of public workers in bad shape because they are too generous? Or are those Pensions in bad shape because present and past governors and legislatures have not made adequate regulations or payments to fund the promised pensions? Are we at a time in our country when adequate wages and secure pensions are not possible for the majority of our citizens? What is good in these economic situations?
Barbara Ehrenreich who wrote Nickel & Dimed some years ago, pointed out then that the gap between rich and poor in our country was larger than ever before and today it has gotten larger.
And all the time the poor in society have nearly become invisible to the rest of society. When the suffering of others is invisible we can avoid hearing about how they feel we can avoid the knowledge that if a few things in our life changed, we could have been in their situation.
It is good, I believe, that those of us who are not living in economic fear & instability – are not blinded to the suffering and the tragedy of those who are not so very different than you or me?
Thomas Aquinas wrote that the 1st precept of law is that good is to be done and pursued and that bad is to be avoided. Few of us would argue with the validity of that statement.
Two Sundays ago, other speakers here wrestled with the issue of putting people in prison because they have been convicted of having done bad things. The question being, is that good for society? Is it good in a moral sense? Putting people in Prison has been done for a variety of reasons such as: Punishment, protection & rehabilitation. Society is now questioning – is it good to put more and more people in prison because they break the law in nonviolent ways?
I have a nephew, who is really not a bad kid. He has done some dumb things and had a problem with substance abuse. He was in prison for breaking his parole for a minor infraction. He was held in a prison where there was absolutely no constructive activities to keep him occupied, let alone improve his skills, or help him in his decision making process or provide him with treatment for his addiction.
The U.S. houses about 25% of the world prison population. There are about 750 people in our country who are in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population.
It wasn’t always this way in the U.S. Back in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville was impressed with the U.S. “In no country,” he wrote, “is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the U. S.”
The incarceration rates in our country were quite stable until late the 1970s. Today, people are more likely to be imprisoned for nonviolent crimes and given longer sentences than in most other countries. Canada our neighbor to the north has closely paralleled our crime rate for the last 40 years. At the same time its prison rate has been stable while ours has skyrocketed.
This is not a sermon on the criminal justice system, but I raise the question, is what our U.S. criminal system doing good? Is it good for individuals on either side of the prison bars? Asking the question what is good, raises difficult issues.
In a conversation Christopher Phillips had with six young people – both Jewish & Arab, they dialogued about the question, what is good. One of them, Dorothy, commented that in Hebrew tov means ‘good,’ and lev tov means a person of ‘good heart.’ Iyad, one of the Arab young people, responded that in Arabic the very similar word tayyab refers to a person who is virtuous & good.
Asking the question “what is good?” implies the follow-up question, what does a person who is good, do?
In a middle-school children where asked what they thought was good? One child said that “Good is when you behave your best even when no one else is looking.” Another remembered her mother saying, “Be good for goodness’ sake.” Another talked about seeing someone bullied and getting hit when he stood up for the person. He said, it is not always easy being good, even when you think you know what it means to be good – even if you really want to be good, it is not easy.
I have long admired, Martin Buber. Buber is best known for his philosophical writings about how humans relate to one another. He identified two extremes. You can either relate to another in an I-Thou relationship or you can relate to another in the superior position of an I-It.
I-Thou involves a dialogue with others in an open forum where we look at those we are with as equals. I-It involves a monologue were we tend to look at others as objects that we treat not as equals but as inferiors.
Buber lived in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. In 1935, he protested Hitler by resigning as a professor at the University of Frankfort. Buber created other avenues for Jews to be educated when Germany forbid Jews from attending centers of public education. Then in 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem. There he continued to apply his philosophy in his interactions with all people.
He was a Zionist, yet he related to Palestinians in an I-Though relationship. Buber proposed that Jewish statehood should not come at the expense of others in Jerusalem. He recognized that Palestinians also had historical rights as well as spiritual ties to the land. He believed that it was wrong for any people too oppress or dominate any other people.
After the tragedy of 9-11,I joined an interfaith group of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Unitarian Universalists. A group of us, rabbis, Imams and ministers made a “Compassionate Listening Pilgrimage”to Israel and Palestine. We prepared for our pilgrimage by trying as a diverse group, to emulate Buber’s example of dialoguing with people of different Religious outlooks, in “I-Thou” relationships rather than “I-It” relationships. Buber’s philosophy helped us get closer to understanding “What is good.”
Buber wasn’t alone in his thinking, in his speech to the Israeli Knesset, Anwar Sadat said, that, “(a)ny life that is lost in war is a human life, be it that of an Arab or an Israeli…,” He went on to say, in relation to the killing of others that, “Innocent children who are deprived of the care & compassion of their parents are ours (children)…be they living on Arab or Israeli land.”
Like Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech spoke of a universal message that he felt embraced the entire world. For Rabin, abiding by this universal message was an ultimate good which helped “sanctifying human lives.” Rabin, came to view all humans, Israeli, Arab and others as equally human and equally deserving of living with dignity.
Thus we come to a very important challenge. If we admit that it is good, to view all humans as equally human that calls us to help build a more just society where all humans are treated equally. Our challenge: to build a society where good is promoted for all people while that which is bad is stopped or at least lessened.
If we admit that it is good for society and good for us to view all children as our children, then we are called to build a better society for them. We need to start right here in our area, right here in our state. We can disagree about what is the best way to do it but we cannot disagree about the importance of viewing all children as our children.
We are called to build a society where good is affirmed and promoted for all people, all children and all adults, regardless of their religious faith, their politics,
their race or ethnic background, their gender or gender orientation or their wide diversity of abilities.
Asking the question what is good, does not help us unless we are willing to face the challenge of being good for goodness sake, the challenge of doing good, not to please any person or even some god or goddess we face the challenge of doing good, simply because it is the right thing to do.
In our seven Unitarian Universalist principles we end with the affirmation that we are connected to an interdependent web of existence. What affects one affects all. When a major crisis strikes, we realize this in a poignant way.
Think about how you felt when you heard about the Boston Bombing one year ago. Think about how you felt when you heard about the missing Malaysian airplane. Think about how you felt when you heard about the tragic bus accident this week in CA involving disadvantaged children. Think about how you felt when you heard about the latest shooting in Ft. Hood or about the most recent deaths in Syria
At such times, we know that every person and every sentient being is intimately interconnected. As we encounter the suffering of others, let us realize that when one person hurts, we all hurt, when one person celebrates, we all celebrate.
OPENING WORDS
Most of the greatest evils
That man has inflicted on man
Have come from people feeling
Quite certain about something
Which, in fact, was false.
Bertrand Russell
Readings: from “The Six Questions of Socrates” by Christopher Phillips
First Reading: In the Nirvana Sutra, Buddha says that “the suffering of all other living beings are his own sufferings.” If this notion of “shared suffering” – when one person hurts, we all hurt – became fixed in the consciousness of most human beings, this in and of itself, I think, would make tremendous inroads in eliminating acts of inhumanity.
It was the notion that the late president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, subscribed to when he made unprecedented overtures to Israel that were aimed at paving the way for a lasting peace. In his historic speech before the Israeli Knesset on Nov. 20, 1977, Sadat said that “(a)ny life that is lost in war is a human life, be it that of an Arab or an Israeli…Innocent children who are deprived of the care and compassion of their parents are ours…be they living on Arab or Israeli land.” (p. 175 Six Questions of Socrates)
Second Reading: In his book The Good Society: The Human Agency, the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith equates a good society with one in which “voice and influence” are not “confined to one part of the population,” as is the case in the United States, where “money, voice, and affluent, and business interests,” in an “unequal contest” in which “the socially and economically deprived” are marginalized. To remedy this, Galbraith calls for “a coalition of the concerned and the compassionate and those now outside the political system.” (p. 174)
The late Walter Kaufmann, a social philosopher at Princeton University, who as a youth barely escaped the Nazi Holocaust, writes that the “deepest difference between religions,” as well as that between “theism and atheism,” is “not nearly so profound as that between those who feel and those who do not feel their brothers’ torments.” He notes that even though Buddha “did not believe in any deity,” he nonetheless was “like the prophets and the Greek tragedians,“ in the sense that they all opened their hearts “to the voice of their brothers’ blood.” (p. 202 Six Questions of Socrates)
Closing Words: Quotes from Socrates:
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”
“The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.”
“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”
“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
