The Authority of Experience

October 13, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: The Free Church In The Changing World

II Theology and the Frontiers of Learning
6. The Authority of Experience

Not long ago, a Boston newspaper columnist, Austen Lake, reminded his readers of the "classic reply of Teddy Green, Boston's clownish gun-bandit, when somebody asked why he had chosen to rob banks for a career. Said he with fine economic logic, 'That's where the money is.'" In this sermon in series on the Free Church and the Changing World, I want to speak for the authority of experience, because that's where the religion is.

Religious authority is the source of sanction for one's faith. Most Christians accept a book, a church or a savior as the seat of religious authority. What rightful power can be claimed for liberals as the support for faith?

Persons associating with the free church do not find religious authority in the commandments of a holy book, not even the Bible. We rejoice in the literary treasure and moral resources of the scriptures of the Hebrews, Christians and all the world's religions, but we do not acknowledge these documents either as supernatural revelation or as the final seat of authority for religion.

The origins and developments of scriptures have been studied by scholars of accomplishment and integrity. The sixty-six books of Hebrew-Christian scripture developed through a social process of additions to and alterations of the kernels of myth, legend, parable and teaching in order to accommodate various notions of religious leaders who differed. You must know how the many books vary in value. If you will compare Job with Leviticus, or Mark with 2nd Chronicles, you will find ample evidence. The scriptures are not an unquestioned and unfailing authority for faith unless one begins with a primitive worship of a book and uses only those parts of scripture that support the pre-conceptions and ignore the contradictions.

This is a dilemma that confronts any student who seriously attempts to deposit all his religious authority in the Bible. Because of this difficulty, there are some who have returned to an authoritative church to find the certainty for faith. Not an infallible book, but an infallible church is the source of religious authority for more millions of Christians than support any other faith. No one can observe the renewed energy within the Roman Catholic Church and not be impressed by the power that is generated by such ecclesiastical authority.

The Latin Catholic Church claims to be the sole authority for revelation and the Body of Christ in history. But the claims made for the Church convince only those who accept the assumptions. The historical evidence just does not support the case either for the authority of Peter, or that the Church at Rome was founded by Peter and has maintained direct succession.

The authoritative Church may be a comfort to millions. But to those who want to guide themselves in religion, it seems obvious that assertions of unlimited authority for the Church have been pronounced by limited human beings like ourselves.

But there are millions of Christians who say, "not the book as sole authority, not the Roman Catholic Church as infallible revealer of God's will, but the person of Jesus – there is the seat of authority in religion!" On the surface of things, this seems an appealing way to place one's trust. It was said of Jesus that "he taught with authority and not as a scribe." Millions who yearn for authority and spiritual certainty respond affirmatively to the invitation recorded in Matthew 11, 28/30, "Come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest from the world."

However comforting, emotionally, this acceptance of Jesus as Savior and authority may be, the searching mind is still unsatisfied. We cannot know with assurance that Jesus said everything attributed to him. All documents which contain his words and the events of his life have gone through processes of accommodation and embellishment. His words and his life were in a political, social and religious context of 2000 years ago. There is just no assurance of historical accuracy.

Leaving behind traditional sources of certainty, of authority, where does the religious liberal place his trust, find the truth that will be his strength in life? In the authority of experience, we find the truth that is known while keeping our minds and hearts open to the truth that will be known. There is no better expression than that contained in the old Universalist affirmation of faith which was carried over to the purposes of our Unitarian Universalist Association, "we affirm the authority of truth, known or to be known."

In one of his significant books, written more than a generation ago, Walter Lippman reminded liberals of the question that we must always encounter: 'Where is your fundamental certainty? What is the basis of your authority? Where is the faith that will strengthen the nerve of your people? Be a 'preface to morals'"?

Human experience provides us with the source of authority, the support for the feelings of our hearts and the illumination of the thoughts of our minds. Shakespeare perceived this truth of life in Julius Caesar, (Act II, sc, 2), Calpurnia, the apprehensive wife attempted to persuade Caesar from going to the Forum. Julius Caesar replies,
"the things that threatened me
Ne'er look'd but on my back.
When they shall see the face of Caesar, they are vanished."

The authority of experience is the confrontation of life and daring to put our beliefs to the test of life, vanishing threats by direct encounter. Experience is the "actual living through of an event" (dictionary). This actual living through of events tests our beliefs in the only real way that they can be tested – not only that they must work in life to be valid, but also that unless we have the courage to take our beliefs and meet experience face to face, we will never know whether our suppositions are soundly and truthfully based. The encounter of objective experience authenticates or disqualifies that which you have held in your mind and emotions and supposed to be true.

This is guidance by the combination of inner honesty and applied conscience. Belief and action become difficult to separate. There is an old legend in Genesis which may illustrate or suggest. Isaac stayed in the land to which his father Abraham had migrated, but encountered difficulty with the king of the Philistines. Isaac had to move on and the Philistines filled in the wells which father Abraham had dug. After a while, Isaac resettled and the old scripture relates, (Gen. 26 17 ff.), "Isaac dug anew the water wells which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham's death; and he gave them the names that his father had given them." It was not enough to know the names that father Abraham had given the wells; it was not enough either to know the locations. If Isaac wanted that water for his family and herds, he had to dig out the wells again in his time. That was the only way to get the life-giving water.

Although religious abstractions may be more complex than re-excavating wells, the way to feeling certitude about one's convictions is not different. Even though the brotherhood of man is professed as an article of belief, one will not be blessed with the assurance of inner authority until one has experienced brotherhood. The experience of brotherhood may be taking a stand about integrated housing, employment, education. It may be standing for peace, negotiation, disarmament. It may be attending a meeting when home comfort lures; it may be participating in a demonstration when so many will think you are eccentric or extreme.

There are many who have found that the authority of experience has welded both emotional drive and intellectual conviction into a strong and confident attitude; fear has been banished by direct encounter. The deepest and most enduring learning happens when insights are brought to the field of action and the field of action creates still more creative insights.

The better teachers of our children know that direct learning is better than remote study. If a teacher wants to teach young children traffic safety, the best way is to take them to the street corners and give them the experience of waiting while the red light shows; and crossing when it changes to the proper pedestrian sign. The child's learning of traffic rules on the street corner is by direct experience. Some of you know that like public schools, we too have the children practice fire drills in the church school. We would not set the building on fire so that the children will have the direct experience, but we can do the next best teaching, dramatize and act out the proper procedures if they should have to leave the building in quick but orderly fashion. There would be general agreement, I think, that the child learns to be competent in traffic and emergency situations by direct learning. When that is not possible, the next best way is by action drama which creates most of the circumstances to be acted out.

This is not less true of ideals in action as well as preparing for environmental emergencies. If the ideas one believes are to have authority in our inner selves, then testing these goals in direct experience is essential. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay on Henry D. Thoreau,, wrote that "[Thoreau] remarked that the flora of Massachusetts embraced almost all the important plants of America – most of the oaks, most of the willows, the best pines, the ash, the maple, the beech, the nuts. He returned (the book) Kane's ARCTIC VOYAGE to a friend of whom he had borrowed it, with the remark that 'most of the phenomena noted might be observed in Concord.'" Then Emerson goes on to observe ''that the best place for each is where he stands."

The authority we seek to give substance to our goals is not different. The church, if it is to survive in effective enough form to warrant the interest and devotion of people today, must be an institution whose members do things that count for something, not just a place where, ad infinitum, they repeat the ideas that have formed in their minds. Like children with traffic lights, we need first-hand experience; in common with Thoreau, the best place for this experience is where we are. Of this I am sure, the most shining and strong convictions, whether religious, economic or political are tempered in the furnace of first-hand experience. Then it is that the findings of a reasonable mind become faith because they have been verified by what has been discovered dependable in human experience.

Furthermore, the trial of ideas in direct experience provides not only ways to reach our goals, but also is the best basis for acquiring new insights and revising ideas when they prove inadequate to real situations, or shown to be unrealistic when exposed to the light of what actually happens in the streets of the city, the marts of trade and the halls of government. There is no limit to the quantity of ideas that can accumulate in our minds as we weave our fantasies and construct our dream castles. But the quality of living depends upon constant test of these dreams in direct experience. The authority of experience is precarious – everyone who confronts it knows not only how foolish were some of his fears, but also how fragile were his hopes at times. But only in such manner can quality be applied to the accumulation of religious conviction and theoretical learning.

Lastly I would remind you that all the fine human feelings are based on the authority of experience. The child becomes more and more precious to the parents as they experience first hand the love that is born of responsible care and guardianship. We need no convincing that there is something awry with mail-order romances.

A considerable amount of the justice that is dispensed in our courts is based on the actual experience of human beings in identical or similar situations. Because the human family has experienced conflicts and dispute, a treasure of insight has grown. Fair play, understanding of why people are in conflict and what should be done to repair best a damaged situation are ways of wisdom and order that the human family has learned through direct experience.

Let me conclude with an illustration, old, but still relevant. In the old scripture of Exodus are contained some of the oldest strands of the Hebrew law codes. The ninth verse of the 23rd Chapter reads, "You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt."

Three remarkable things about this old injunction: First, in the days of tribal culture, the stranger was not usually welcome, the tribal unit was close, and in many tribal cultures the person cast off from the tribe did not survive. Secondly, possibly as long as thirty-two hundred years ago, this small nomadic people were concerned with the impartial administration of justice – even the outsider must not feel the weight of oppression. Thirdly, this simple but comprehensive goal of justice was based on the authority of experience. These people had known oppression in Egypt, they had been grievously burdened with the slaves' labor, they had been forced to make bricks without straw. They knew through direct experience how the slave feels, how the oppressed groans against the chains and whips of forced labor. From that cruel experience their feeling for impartial justice was fortified and made the law of the tribes.

For those of us who try to apply reason and use the storehouse of knowledge in reaching our religious beliefs, there is no way we can forget reason and knowledge and accept on faith the unquestioned guidance of one holy book or one holy church or one holy man. These outside authorities can not dictate our beliefs because we will not yield spiritual independence. We count on ourselves and no matter how keen our reason or how extensive our knowledge, we will not acquire the inner certainty which will enable us to live with faith, hope and love unless we live out all we believe and rest our case in the authority of experience that will come to us through life. I believe in the authority of experience because that's where the religion is.