Too Many Saviors

April 26, 1981
Port Charlotte

May 3, 1981
Lakeland

How can our tense world, throbbing with anxiety and bristling with antagonism have too many saviors? We need all the help we can get! Among the reasons for the Unitarian Universalist rejection of the idea of salvation by one savior’s unique sacrifice are (1) the fundamental injustice of one innocent person suffering the punishment due the many guilty, and (2) the justice in the idea that we are and rightly should be responsible for our own salvation. Rejecting, then, the authority of a revealed redemptive scheme, in whose hands shall we place authority? This is the persisting problem that underlies every historical crisis – the conquests of Alexander, the Roman candle-like flare and dimming of Napoleon, the Battle of Britain, the power of the dictators, to the vexing and distressing crises of this hour – El Salvador, the law of the sea treaty, how should we relate to Cuba and the Soviet Union. Shall we believe those who tell us that the nation’s survival depends on cutting taxes and social programs and fattening the Pentagon’s already obese dimensions? I submit to you that we have more, not fewer, reasons to wrestle with the continuing crisis of: whom shall we trust? Who speaks for the citizens? Where is the truth? What shall we do?

There are ancient illustrations and current warnings about the nature of authority and there is something vulnerable about the human condition for many which welcomes the authority who tells us what to do and how to think.

One of the two Bible legends about the anointing of Saul as the first king of the Israelites tells how Samuel, the last of the judges, a prophet, was approached by the tribal chieftains who asked that Samuel appoint a king to rule them. The prophet Samuel did not approve, because he believed that Jahveh was the only king the tribes should have. After prayer and thought, Samuel warned the tribal leaders, “Here are the methods of the king who shall reign over you; your sons he will take and place them in his war chariots and among his horsemen.” Not only would military service be required, but also, Samuel warned them that a king would conscript their sons and daughters for palace duties, a tenth of the people’s income would be confiscated and all of them would be slaves.

Then the Moffatt translation goes on (1st Samuel 8/19 ff): “However the people would not listen to the voice of Samuel. ‘No,’ they said, ‘we must have a king over us, to be like all the other nations, that our king may rule and march in front of us and fight our battles.’”

Saul was one savior too many for these people. There is something vulnerable about our individual moral stamina which makes us all too willing to say, “rule over us,” even though the price may be loss of freedom, the erosion of justice, and the choking-off of mercy.

The problem of freedom and authority is far more momentous than an oversimplified recital of a scriptural legend. The same psychological pressures to which those Israelites yielded are compressing us today, with the menacing addition, in words written by the late Dr. Albert Schweitzer, “The organized political social, and religious associations of our day are at work to induce individual man/woman not to arrive at conclusions by their own thinking, but to take as their own such convictions as are kept ready-made for them.”

George Orwell, in his classic prophecy of totalitarianism, 1984, wrote brilliantly, and forebodingly, of the horror of a political system which controls not only action but thought; where the dictator is shrewdly and repulsively named, “Big Brother.” Orwell’s prophecy seems far more likely to come true than we are willing to admit. There are many saviors professing to provide salvation for us if we will only plead, “rule over us, tell us how to think.”

The Soviet Union is illuminated for us constantly as a power which would rule the world. Our foreign policy and our mammoth expenses for war weapons are based on that assumption, an assumption we are seldom permitted to forget. It should be a sobering discipline however, that for many nations, the U.S. with its powerful influences of money, overseas military bases, nuclear weaponry, international trade, huge investment in other countries, is looked upon by some other nations as one savior too many.

But there are other dangers as well. The so-called Moral Majority is making its influence felt. The Moral Majority wants to make us think and behave according to its agendas; and masks that reach for authority behind a slogan that they are doing God’s will. There are others, who would dilute the disciplines of science by imposing religious myth as an equally valid scientific explanation of creation. [CJW note: resolution] I wonder how those who advocate that one variety of special creationism would respond to the suggestion made by a farmer in Goodland, Kansas, a humanist for more than a half-century, than an additional chapter be inserted in Genesis which would set forth the theory of evolution to account for the origin and change of species? [CJW note: Fair? Would it not?]

Another illustration of more saviors than we need is the Helms/Hyde proposal which would make an end run around Supreme Court decisions on the right of a woman to choose abortion. S 158, HR 900, would legislate that “actual human life exists from conception.” Completely ignoring the fact that there is absolutely no scientific, theological, or moral consensus as to when HUMAN life begins, the proponents, Jesse Helms and Henry Hyde, maintain “the political department most appropriate to decide when life begins is Congress.” Such a Congress, if it passed these freedom-nullifying bills, is one too many saviors for us.

The constant appearance of organizations and individuals who profess great intentions, but willingly indulge in wrong ways to accomplish the goals, are not new. The tribal sheiks who promoted a king in ancient Israel are legendary – but the Moral Majority, the Ku Klux Klan, the Helms and Hydes are but reminders of the constant struggle that is needed. There are those among us who remember the House Anti-American Activities Committee, McCarthyism, the John Birch Society. These new anti-freedom efforts provides substance to the proposition that the struggle to maintain, as well as to establish freedom and justice, never ends.

Do you know the little story of the small boy who asked, “Father, what is a demagogue?” “A demagogue, my son, is a man who can rock the boat himself and persuade everybody else that there is a terrible storm at sea.” [CJW note: source?]

A French sociologist, Gustave LeBon, studied the behavior of crowds during the days of the French Revolution. He concluded that the crowd is given to action, not thought, and acts by barbarian instinct. The clever leader, the Hitler type, manipulates the crowd psychologically and the crowd responds as a mob, not as participating individuals in group interchange of shared ideas and contrasting views.

There are too many self-appointed saviors who try to scare us interplaying that most dangerous game – that the end justifies the means. The late Sir Charles P. Snow, astute scientist and writer, observed, “When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find far more, and far more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than ever have been committed in the name of rebellion. If you doubt that, read William Shirer’s RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH. The German officer corps were brought up in the most rigorous code of obedience. To themselves, no more honorable and God-fearing body of men could conceivably exist. Yet in the name of obedience they were party to, and assisted in, the most wicked large-scale actions in the history of the world.”

In the Hindu scripture, the Sanskrit Panchatantra, there is a fable which speaks to our tendency to acquiesce to saviors we do not need. Three magicians starting out to show the world the greatness of their powers, allowed a rather simple fellow to accompany them. Coming upon a pile of bones, they decided to show the simpleton their powers. The first magician said, “I can cause these bones to form a skeleton.” He spoke a magic word and the bones were assembled. The second magician announces, “I can clothe this skeleton with flesh.” The miracle happens. The third magician proclaims, “I can endow this with life.”

The simple man interrupts. “Don’t you realize that this is a tiger?” The wise men pay no attention to him – this is not relevant to the demonstration of their powers. The simple man then climbs a tree. The tiger is brought to life and devours the three magicians. The tiger wanders off, sated. The simple man descends the tree and goes home. (Told by Joseph Wood Krutch, in HUMAN NATURE AND THE HUMAN CONDITION.)

Too many saviors of whatever authoritarian persuasion, who sacrifice means to end, right or left, if we say to them “rule over us,” will bring the tiger to life and we will be devoured. We need, like the simple one, to ask again and again, “Don’t you realize this is a tiger?”

The central struggle in the world is for the minds of men and women. All other struggles are of subordinate importance. Those who have studied human beings under stress remind us that we are in most danger when we permit ourselves to become confused and bewildered under the strain of situations which seem too intricate for our understanding, too vast for constructive individual judgment. When overwhelmed, we may willingly accept the savior no matter if his beliefs (or propaganda and stifling legislation) do violence to our principles.

Of particular relevance to members of a religion, Unitarian Universalism, which asserts a base of rational thought by a free people, is whether we can be trusted to chart our own future. There is a foundation in our form of government and our liberal religion which assumes that what I believe to be true, I cannot impose on you except by persuasion. What you think absolute, I have a right to believe is false or relative. There are too many saviors who would impose THEIR salvation on us – who pressure us to say, “rule over us,” but when we concede freedom by deferring either to the far left or far right, we have lost the battle for the minds of people. Christopher Fry, in his play, THE DARK IS LIGHT ENOUGH, said this lyrically when the Countess pleads with the Colonel:

“So be certain, whatever the temptation
No man is made a slave by you.
Then to the number who die
And far beyond that number infinitely,
Surely you will show
One man over another has no Kingdom.”

But let there be no doubt about it, the struggle starts [with] ourselves. We are not a different species from the tribes who prostrated themselves before Saul.

We dislike being whirled into the centers of controversy. Who is bold enough to deny that he/she is always tempted to play the role of blameless bystander, to cluck-cluck with alarm, while managing never to become seriously involved? To appropriate the title of a detective story of some years back, more often, however, the bystander is the “guilty bystander.”

Although some wanted George Washington to become king, our Founders did not say to Washington, “Rule over us.” He scorned that possibility. Our country had as a basic premise that (men, not women?) were born to be free and “freedom was the right to choose.”

Unitarian Universalists have a special obligation. We make hardly a ripple in the ocean of religious denominations. Yet the distinctiveness we claim is the free rational mind and that the correct religious duty is service to human need. How then can we avoid the issues that represent threats to the free mind and danger to the human personality?

At the rise of Philip of Macedon in ancient Greece, Demosthenes addressed his fellow Athenians: “The worst feature of the past is our best hope for the future. What then is that feature? It is that your affairs go wrong because you neglect every duty, great or small; since, surely, if they were in this plight in spite of your doing all that was required, there would not be even a hope for improvement. But in fact it is your indifference and carelessness that Philip conquered; your city he has not conquered. Nor have you been defeated – No! You have not even made a move.”

Today, as in ancient Greece, apathy prevails among much of the citizenry. Overwhelmed by the difficulties of alternatives, subdued by the complexity of issues, the apathetic are the prime prospect for the “saviors” who would chart authoritarian ways. There would be many who would sigh with relief to avoid difficult choices and hard ways of freedom. [CJW note: Fromm: ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM] But such a savior is one too many, whoever he or they may be.

One wise historian [CJW note: Hugh Thomas] wrote, “The will of a few to dominate and the desires of many to be dominated meet in a happy engagement to fill the void caused by the absence of a social culture based on ideas.”

The best of our country has been based on ideas, ideas freely, openly expressed for which strong, sacrificial efforts have been made to make them real. As Stephen Vincent Benet wrote in his poem, “Nightmare at Noon,”

“There are certain words,
Our own and others, we’re use to – words we’ve used,
Heard, had to recite, forgotten….
Liberty, equality, fraternity.
To none will we sell, refuse or deny, right or justice.
We hold these truths to be self-evident.
I am merely saying – what if these words pass?
What if they pass and are gone and are no more,
Eviscerated, blotted out of the world? …
They were bought with belief and passion, at great cost.
They were bought with the bitter and anonymous blood
Of farmers, teachers, shoemakers and fools
Who broke the old rule and the pride of kings ….
It took a long time to buy these words.
It took a long time to buy them, and much pain.”