The Good Old Days? They Were Not That Good!

April 25, 1999
Tarpon Springs

May 9, 1999
Sarasota

[Editor’s Note: This is a sermon, based on a March 1, 1994 musing]

In order to solve the problems of crime, corruption and education, we are frequently exhorted to return to a time when Christian religion prevailed because that faith was the foundation of our nation. A typical paragraph from a letter to the Editor is representative of the attitude of many fundamentalist Christians:

“Our nation was founded by godly people seeking to further their Christian faith, and God wondrously blessed and sustained their efforts, and those of succeeding generations. We must realize that we compromise and reject our founding values at great peril to our nation.”

Somehow, many people seem to believe our problems can be solved by returning to a world that never was. The ancient Greeks believed in a Golden Age. Hesiod wrote, “They lived like Gods, free from worry and fatigue; old age did not afflict them; they rejoiced in continual festivity.” They were not immortal but they died as “though overcome by sweet slumber. All the blessings of the world were theirs, the fruitful earth gave forth its treasures unbidden. At their death they became guardians and teachers of the living.”

That Golden Age never existed. There never was a pre-”sin” Paradise in a Garden of Eden either. Such beliefs were never founded in historical fact, but on dissatisfaction with given circumstances, frustration with social problems that seemed unsolvable, perhaps as methods of social control, or attempts to explain mysteries about the human condition.

We do face massive and complex problems with crime, poverty, education, taxes, downsizing/unemployment, dealing with how to pay for doctors, hospitals, prescriptions, insurance premiums (whether you call it a crisis or not.) It is a PROBLEM when you face it; it is a CRISIS when I face it. However to believe that today’s vexing, frustrating issues would be solved by a return to the beliefs and actions of the “Founding Fathers” is to lend validity to a nostalgic glow which is artificially lighted.

For example, in the book BOSTON OBSERVED, written by an old friend and fellow Universalist minister, Carl Seaburg, he quotes a letter written by a visitor from England, Edward Ward, in the year, 1699:

“....(Boston) is the metropolis of all New-England. The Houses in some parts joyn as in London. The buildings, like their women, being neat and handsome. And the streets, like the hearts of the male inhabitants, are paved with pebble.

“The inhabitants seem very Religious, showing many outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace. But tho’ they wear in their Faces the innocence of Doves, you will find them in their dealings, as Subtile as Serpents. Interest is their Faith, Money their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they covet.

“Election, Commencement and Training-days, are their only Holy-days; they keep no Saints Days, nor will they allow the Apostles to be Saints, yet they assume that Sacred Dignity to themselves; and say, in the Title Page of their Psalm-Book, ‘Printed for the edification of the Saints in Old and New England.’

“They have been very severe against adultery, which they have punish’d with Death; yet, notwithstanding the harshness of their Law, the Women are of such noble souls, and undaunted Resolutions that they will run the hazard of being Hang’d, rather than not be reveng’d on Matrimony, or forbear to discover the Corruption of their own natures.”

Edward Ward observed the Bostonians’ widespread religious hypocrisy and greed for money and possessions (“Money was their God”). His paragraph on adultery was a gentle but candid observation of sexual promiscuity. Typical, however, is his implicit condemnation of women, but not their necessary male partners. Would we really solve our problems by such materialism, morals, and manners?

In the same 17th century, a Quaker, Mary Dyer, was executed, hanged on Boston Common for religious heresy and protest. Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams were expelled from the Colony because they were religious dissenters. The late 17th century also witnessed the hysterical, infamous Salem witch trials, when 20 women and one man were executed.

In Great Britain, the cruelties in mine and mill in the expanding mercantile era are almost beyond belief. The work-day ran from 12 to 15 hours a day, 6 days a week. Most sickening and disgusting of all, children as young as five or six were full-time workers in mill and mine.

In mines where the passages might have been only 18” high, little boys and girls, crawling on all fours, hitched to small coal carts struggled through. Infant mortality? Half of ALL children born in the cities of GB died before reaching the age of six. In many cities, 1/3 to ½ of all infants were illegitimate. Women were forced into prostitution in order to eat, left their newborn infants in corners, or smothered them, or left them at the door of an orphanage. They utterly despaired of feeding them and housing them. Mother’s Day? Every day for them was grief and shame and suffering.

This was a period when the owners and entrepreneurs thoroughly believed in the economic law of supply and demand. If costs went up, demand would decline. Therefore, cheapest labor. Not to speak of the conclusion of some, that terrible, deadly living conditions were an acceptable form of population control. And these were Christians in a Christian nation. This was a time when a person could be indicted, jailed, fined, ostracized for publicly denying the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ or the miraculous physical Resurrection. But there was no law or prevailing opinion to halt the cruel and deathly exploitation of children and women for profit.

Similar conditions prevailed here in mine and mill. Do you recall Sarah Cleghorn’s bitter lines written before child labor laws were enacted in our country?

“The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.”

Good Old Days? I don't know about you, but I would NOT want a return of such cruelty, malice, exploitation, intolerance and ignorance. In spite of all the numerous letters to editors, NONE of our problems would be solved.

Furthermore, I believe that the last thing the Christian right-wing would want is a return to the religious beliefs of “Founding Fathers.” Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Adams, Tom Paine were Deists. Briefly and perhaps over-simplified, Deists believed in a God of Nature, who in the beginning set up a Universe governed by natural laws – clockwork was a favorite analogy. But this God of Nature did not interfere in the affairs of humankind to damn or save anyone. Deism represented a substantially different and heretical theology from the Christian gospel of the Atonement, Trinity and Resurrection. You can look it up, as they say.

What do you think of this description of our world: “This is the present: everything is tottering, immeasurably confused, tumultuous, unmanageable. Everything is debased, exhausted, past hope.” Is that a quote from Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson? No, that was written by J. G. Drysen, a German historian in the 1840s.

One more quotation, who do you think said this, “How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” Was that Ross Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Ken Starr? None of these, it was Henry David Thoreau in 1848.

We learn from history if we are aware of it and are not beguiled by nostalgic falsehoods or non-historical myths. Our social problems are formidable. We need all the help we can muster. Helena, in ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, says,

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to Heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.”

We are no longer sparsely populated colonies with unlimited natural resources but a nation of nearly three hundred million people. There is no “going West” for pioneers any more. There are no longer deep-soiled prairies waiting for a first plowing. In the larger cities there is an inner core of overcrowding, pollution, hopelessness. Easy answers are unrealistic. To mention just one, there is an illogical conclusion to the continuous building of more prison cells. Are to become a nation comprised of the jailed and the jailers?

Then, too, consider the continuous discussion about health care programs – and the failed effort in Congress a few years ago. We know opposition is heavily financed – not only health, but big dollar opposition to issues of ecology, pollution, and so on. I suggest a simple question when looking at fierce opposition to what seems to be progressive legislation – WHO BENEFITS? Who will make the Big Bucks?

Joseph Califano, who was a political force in the Lyndon Johnson era, speaking about fierce Congressional quarrels about health programs, said, “When you toss trillions of dollars up in the air, the pushing, shoving, fighting for it is going to be brutal with no holds barred. Do you think the ignoring by Congress of something like the Canadian plan has anything to do with the probability that the Big Bucks, the trillions would not be there for the special interests?”

On that and other issues, when you read or do the TV news, why not ask yourself, “Who benefits?”

I do not have unqualified answers. Today, I am not proposing or arguing for particular positions. But in spite of gloomy appraisals, there are positive indications. Violent crime is decreasing; women and minorities are getting increasing recognition, although the task is far from complete. The “Welcoming Church” principle, if we persist, can be contagious enough to sow the seeds of a Welcoming Nation.

But, with all our prized individuality we need a stronger sense of community. Many are disgusted with politics, special interests, ridiculous excess in campaign money-raising and spending.

If you are one of those, like I am, who remember the 30s and 40s, who were there, you know that the sense of community worked in the Depression and WW2; we knew we were all in those tough times together. Think about this: The Lone Ranger never rode alone.

Turned off, too many people do not vote. In the recent election in Sarasota County, the voter turn-out was between 10 and 15%. But the remedy is not to turn away from politics but become more involved. I know so many of you here today are socially responsible, that I’m aware I’m preaching to the Choir. But do not let him or her who says to you, “I’m too disgusted to vote” go unchallenged. The answer to bad politics is better politics. I believe that if there were a 75 to 80% turnout of eligible voters in municipal, county, state, national elections, our legislative representatives at all levels would be compelled to new perspectives of responsibilities in their duties. They would think twice or thrice before becoming the acquiescent agents of special interests. Is a rising tide of civic involvement too much to hope and work for?

One of my fondest hopes is that around the year 2075, my great-great grandchildren and yours and their peers all over the Planet will look back on us and say, “The good old days, they were not that good.” Why will they say that? Because there will have been substantial progress in alleviating pollution, overpopulation, health problems, ethnic hates and wars.

But that can happen only if in OUR time the ounces of OUR weight are in the arena of humane concerns with an ever-rising consciousness that we are all in this together; that we will be adding some building stones for a better present and future.

If any wish to do further reading, or check my references, the following is suggested:

IN THE BEGINNING, THE ADVENT OF THE MODERN AGE, Jerome Blum, Scribner’s, New York, 1994

BLASPHEMY, Leonard Levy, Knopf, 1993

SAGA OF ENGLAND: 1840-1940, Sir Arthur Bryant

REASON TO BELIEVE, Mario Cuomo, Simon and Schuster, 1995. Also his speech to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, earlier in 1999.

The Heretic’s Bible

April 10, 1988
Lakeland

May 1988
Tarpon Springs

The plural form is the heresy. “Heresy” is from the Greek, “to choose for oneself.” In religion, heresy is being opposed to the dogmas and doctrines of the prevailing religious establishments. Fundamentalist and most orthodox Christian churches are provincial in attitudes toward their sacred scripture, the Bible. Many, if not most, Christians would accuse religious liberals of being negative, as well as heretical, because we do not teach that the Bible is uniquely revealed and sacred, as no other document is sacred. The reality is that Unitarian Universalists are positive in our plural teaching that the religious books of all people are to be respected and admired as the products of their hopes and fears as they have wrestled to interpret the experiences of living with satisfactory meaning.

The plural form is the heresy, because so many proponents of sectarian religious bodies insist that there is only one Bible, divinely revealed. The plain truth is that there are many bibles. Not only Christianity, but each of the world’s great religions treasures sacred writings. When Unitarian Universalists assert that the various religions have equal right to claim holiness for their respective scriptures, we are saying that no one scripture is uniquely the word of God or the only record of his/her will (if one holds that God is revealed that way). If a religious group stakes its claim for authority on the special and closed revelation of only one Bible, then, of course, the liberal religious attitude threatens that unique position. Consequently when we uphold all the world’s scriptures as a library of information, inspiration, reformation, and consolation, the reaction from Bible worshipers is usually hostile and self-righteous.

Orthodox Christians are not the only religious who believe they possess the revealed word of God. It is illuminating to note that not only do some historians (H. J. Muller, e.g.) think the Koran of Islam has had more influence on history than any other single book, including the Christian Bible, but also Moslems believe the Koran is much more literally the holy, revealed word of Allah than the Christian Bible or any other scripture. More than being inspired, the orthodox Moslem believes the Koran was a directly transmitted revelation from God to Mohammed, divine in every word. The religious liberal in our country is only somewhat handicapped if he/she is running for public office. In Moslem countries, it is political suicide to concede publicly that the Koran is Mohammed’s word rather than Allah’s.

While orthodox Christianity has seldom relented from a rigid, Bible-centered viewpoint, any study of the long centuries of Christian thought discloses that philosophers and theologians have relied as much on Plato and Aristotle as on the Old and New Testaments. Notwithstanding this reliance on pre-Christian Greek philosophy, the orthodox Christian would be affronted if he were asked to consider Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as sources of the “word of God.” Nevertheless, the influence of Greek inquiry, logic, and wisdom helped shape the mold for the structure of Christian theology.

A similar parallel could be drawn more obviously in the case of the Hebrew and Jewish scriptures. Christian theologians and dogmatists, with the petty proclamation that the great faith of the Children of Israel was only a forerunner to the only “true” religion, Christianity, ... appropriated and called their own the great Jewish library of law, prophecy, myth, legend, poetry, wisdom and fiction. Oversimplified, perhaps, that was, and is, theological plagiarism.

Thus, although the fundamentalist Moslem and the fundamentalist Christian may insist that there is only one scripture, the acceptance of idea of plural sculpture is the only persuasive stance when one considers not only the contradictory claims, but also the inevitable way the world’s scriptures have influenced and modified each other. The old scripture of the Hebrews was contributed to and influenced by pre-historic, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Babylonian, Phoenician, and Greek religions, at least. The later Christian faith bore not only these marks, but also the imprint of Roman institutions and Greek and Asiatic mystery cults. The Koran was obviously and admittedly based on the patriarchal religion of the Hebrews.

This influence and inter-play between religions are literary, historical, and religious knowledge commonly shared by most scholars and many persons. It causes aggressive responses only from among those zealots who still harangue us on an alleged unique, supernatural revelation supposed to have occurred only in the little land of ancient Palestine. To concede any universality of sacred writing, no matter how apparent, might shake the unmoving platform on which the fundamentalist stands. Erasmus, the Reformation monk, who had few illusions about organized orthodoxy, commented once, “By identifying learning with heresy, you can make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.”

From my point of view, the grimy sexual escapades of a few scalawag evangelists, repulsive as they seem to be, are not as reprehensible as waving the Bible as a threat or lure in order to obtain vast sums of money to build dubious financial empires. As Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher (and a religious man) wrote, “If books were to be judged by the bad uses man can put them to, what book has been more misused than the Bible?”

Although most fundamentalists are Protestant, the true meaning of “Protestantism” is not synonymous with ignorance. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, a professor at more than one seminary, wrote, “We have been told many times that the word “protestant” means not ‘being against something,’such as pope or parochial school; rather, ‘pro-testari’ means to testify on behalf of something, to assert positive convictions.” (PATTERNS OF FAITH IN AMERICA TODAY).

The positive teaching of Unitarian Universalism (our pro-testari) is that when people possess the art of writing, their religious aspirations are recorded, sifted, modified and edited over centuries of time. These bodies of religious writing, when they contain both the nitty-gritty of everyday experience and noble aspirations of a culture, deserve the description “sacred literature.”

Some early peoples have no sacred literature because they never developed a written language. Their religious lore was passed down by oral traditions, seasonal celebrations, and tribal living patterns. But when the power of communicating is strengthened by the art of writing, persons begin to create a continuous religious tradition of song, poem, ordinance, prophecy, history and letters between persons. The Aryans of ancient India, the Chinese of pre-Christian centuries, the followers of Buddha, the Zoroastrians, the Jews, the Moslems – all in their differing climes and times reacted to the procession of the seasons, knew the joys of human love, worried about the tensions of group living, experienced the comfort and security of the bountiful meal at harvest, wailed at death and shouted gleefully when celebrating marriage and birth. These experiences and emotions, common to all members of the human family, then and now, are the human basis for the world’s sacred scriptures. This is the universal record.

Jews and Christians respond most readily to their own scriptures – for them, matchless. The inspirational qualities were born in human experience. Somber, thoughtful Jeremiah saw the need of his people and the perils when they made foolish political choices. Isaiah had a powerful, personal religious experience, and it has been preserved. The Maccabees fought passionately for freedom and religious ideals, and their record stands. Paul not only kept the faith, he wrote it – and through him we can have some sense of the thrilling experiences of the primitive Christian movement. Other peoples have their religious literature, too, with similar impact on their succeeding generations.

The basic religious experiences are interpreted differently, not only within Western culture itself, but also within the the numerous denominations and sects. All the world over, varying conditions of culture and climate produce dissimilar emphases. Because India is a land of intense, prolonged heat, the higher religions of India are contemplative. In temperate zones where everything is hustling, religion, too, is active and energetic. Theological interpretations are partial captives, at least, of climate and culture. We will be kinder in our understanding when we recognize the many conditions which lead toward interpretations of the inner and social experience we call “religious.” It was said of a Christian missionary to the Eskimos that he had a little difficulty in communicating Christian theology because these people of the arctic zone had no word for “lamb.” How could he explain about the “Lamb of God?” He changed the term and preached about the “Baby Seal of God.”

Just because we are different does not mean we are better. Our scripture may be more precious to us than the Vedas, the Koran, the Analects, or the Tripitaka. On the same premise, the Vedas mean more to the Hindu, the Koran to the Moslem, the Analects to the Confucianist, and the Tripitaka to the Buddhist.

One of the ways to increase understanding is to recognize the universality of religious feeling, and to attempt at least a minimum recognition of the value and beauty of all the bibles of the world. In all cases, including the Jewish and Christian scriptures, one must wade through dull antiquities and irrelevant collections, such as Leviticus and part of Numbers, for example. But in every scripture there are treasures and essences of noble thought, lovely language, and uplifting examples for all persons in all times.

All the world needs the Jewish emphasis in Torah which provides men and women the goal of individual responsibility along with loyalty to a decent, fair method of human conduct for the group. All the world needs the gentle universality of Hindu scriptures. In the epic of Mahabharata, the charioteer who is the incarnation of Krishna, the god, says to the ranks drawn up in battle lines, “By whatever path you come to me, I shall welcome you, for all paths are mine.”

But in order to experience the mingling influences, we must read and appreciate. It is said that in the sixteenth century, when Francis I was persecuting Protestants in France, the noted Reformation scholar Beza of Geneva wrote a masterful letter to Francis, courteously but forcibly explaining why the monarch should not persist in the persecutions. Beza is said to have remarked sadly, the letter “could not have failed to win over Francis I, if only he had read it.” So with the bibles of the world, all of them, they will have no winning qualities if we fail to read them.

A reach for understanding does not mean that we will settle into a condition which leaves us with no convictions other than the book we happen to be reading at the moment. Sri Radhakrishnan, one-time Vice-President of India, expressed a more reasonable attitude, “I do not want my house be walled in on all sides and my windows stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” (EAST AND WEST, p. 45)

One thing more, for me, and for most Unitarian Universalists I have known, scripture is not and never will be a closed book. [CJW note: The scriptures are loose-leaf, not permanently bound]

I for one (and am one of a host) have found in poetry, novels, drama, and the arts, ... much stimulus to hard thinking, help in understanding my emotions when they are troubled, [and guidance] discover the “I” amid the innumerable “we” and the “we” that sustains the “I.” Even certain rare classic movies and television productions soon, if not now, are the scriptures of a people (The Grapes of Wrath, Casablanca, the original Stagecoach, etc.).

But for today let me testify to several literary examples which for me have wisdom, striking imagery, and insight into our strange and wonderful, glorious and terrible human condition....

One time or another you have all sung the round, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream; merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Have you ever thought that life is but a dream? Prospero in THE TEMPEST said it superbly with the power and imagery of great poetry – scripture, if you will.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

All our days we make decisions, some important, many trivial. In times of difficult decision have you ever felt like a kite whipped around by cross-winds of uncertainty? Then the scripture of Brutus’ words before the battle of Philippi may confront one:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.”

A noted Shakespearean critic (Coleridge) once wrote that Shakespeare “addresses us in words that enchain the mind.” A succinct definition, to me, of scripture that addresses the human condition.

Is life worth living? Hamlet’s soliloquy is superb scripture because it matchlessly reveals the human dilemma of that interval between birth and death we call life:

“To be or not to be – that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep -
No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to – 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep -
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor's wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”

Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, everyone of us has thought of death – our own death. Where are more profound and beautiful word pictures Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.”

“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

...

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.”

Scripture is old. Scripture is new. Scripture is provincial. Scripture is universal. The bibles of the world are the treasuries of human aspirations and human recognitions; ever accumulating, ever sifted as persons struggle, lose, or win in the changing worlds of each generation. James Russell Lowell sensed this with a poetic grasp of larger truths:

“Slowly the bible of the race is writ,
And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair and hope, of joy or moan.

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,
While thunder surges burst on cliff of clouds,
Still at the prophets’ feet the nations sit.”

The winnowed expressions of human tragedy and human triumph are the Heretic’s Bible.

Field Of Chaos

March 1984
Lakeland
Tarpon Springs

When choosing the subject, FIELD OF CHAOS, I am not describing the Democratic primaries, not analyzing the confused failure of our Lebanon policy, not attempting to make sense of the gassy generalizations over our national deficit. My theme is illustrated in the news this week: A sniper shoots indiscriminately into a schoolyard filled with children, one dies, 11 others wounded. Another item informs that in Salt Lake City a man goes on trial for kidnapping and murdering five boys. A blizzard strikes the Great Plains and sweeps east, at least 50 people die because of the storm. Why did not God, or whatever you name the power of the Universe, arrange the sequence of cause and effect differently? The blameless are struck down again and again by implausible junctions of circumstances and are the victims of unmerited suffering.

The procession of unexplainable tragedies is enough to strain the faith of anyone who might believe that there is meaning and purpose in this complex universe. We can organize, design, and engineer space travels that reach the moon; we can devise vehicles that propel a man alone in space. But we do not come close to handling the immediate and painfully obvious needs for peace, jobs, and feeding the hungry in the world. Many more billions are spent promoting detergents, beer, and automobiles than on research for peace or resolution of conflict.

Matthew Arnold, culturally a Victorian, but not complacent or romantic, may have been one of the first to sense the modern mood of despair which increasingly characterizes our time: (last two stanzas of Dover Beach). He grieves for the times:

“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
and the naked shingles of the world.

“Ah, love, let us be true
To one another; for the world which seems
To live before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

The astonishing [new forms of] communications technology [are] the instrument[s] whereby we have become aware, as our grandparents never were, of tragic struggle in remote parts of the earth. The film, magnetic tape, remote camera, and the satellite provide instantaneous or slightly delayed impressions of an airplane crash, a hungry child, and the savagery of wars, declared and undeclared. “This is a crazy world,” we hear and say, more and more.

The late Albert Camus, Nobel winner in literature, wrote in “Create Dangerously” (RESISTANCE, REBELLION, AND DEATH, p. 26): “The suffering of mankind is such a vast subject that it seems no one could touch it unless he was like Keats, so sensitive, it is said, that he could have touched pain itself with his hands.”

It seems plain to me that God, if there is a God, does not intervene to stop the assassin’s trigger finger, the murderer’s bludgeon, or ease to storm when blizzards across the Midwest snuff out innocent lives.

How do we deal with chaotic happenings and unexplainably tragic events that not only stain the front pages and light up the tube, but also come home to us individually or those dear to us?

A Danish anthropologist, studying the lives and customs of the Vendas, a tribe in Rhodesia, wrote (New Yorker, 2/19/66), “One group we stayed with did a particularly subtle thing to propitiate the goddess of Chaos.” They planted a Chaos Field – all sorts of seeds were mixed up and thrown together in one field. All variety of confused growths came up in that plot. This ceremony by a pre-industrial culture deep in Africa may seem primitive rather than subtle. But chaos is a part of life we cannot explain when we consider all the coincidences which lead to tragedy and suffering. Why not recognize this instead of trying to pretend it isn’t there? Chaos is part of our lives; perhaps that African recognition by way of the ritual of random growth is a basic acknowledgment which helps acceptance.

Another East African tribe “explains the presence of evil in the world by a hypothesis which seems reasonable to them. Although God is good, he has, most unfortunately, a half-witted brother who is forever interfering with what he does (NY Times Book Review; date?). From the time persons began to think conceptually, to have ideas even in the fumbling beginnings of human thought, there has always been worry and consternation about the meaning of life and the cause of unmerited suffering, of tragedy, for which the victim seems blameless. The Garden of [Eden] myth was an attempt to explain death and pain. In the vivid Greek mythology, Pandora opened the box which loosened innumerable troubles into the world. Another variety of Greek myth which tried to explain the unexplainable was the myth of the Fates. Edith Hamilton wrote, “very important but assigned no abode, whether in heaven or on earth, were the Fates, Moirae, who Hesiod says, give to men at birth evil and good to have. They were three: Clotho the Spinner who spun the thread of life; Lachesis the Disposer of Lots, who assigned to each man his destiny; Atropos, she who could not be turned, who carried the ‘abhorrent shears’ and cut the thread at death.” (MYTHOLOGY, p. 43) [CJW note: One constant effort seems to be that enigma [that] God was/is domesticated and interpreted for a particular cultural preference]

But most would agree that the Hebrew scripture of Job is the most searching literary creation presenting the agonizing problem of unmerited suffering.

“If God is God, He is not good,
If God is good, he is not God;
Take the even, take the odd....”

That rhyme is not from Job, but from J.B., Archibald MacLeish’s modern play which Job inspired. With the poet’s economy of words, he proposed the ancient riddle which disturbs our wonderings. Why? There is some explanation for sufferings which follow a mistake or an act of wrong-doing. If I should be driving while stoned or drunk, and my car, out of control, smashes into a bridge, my injuries and suffering would be at least partly explained. The responsibility is mine – I had it coming, as we say. But if others are killed or maimed, what then? When the sudden and undeserved blow of fate deprives us of a person or a needed ability, and no one seems in any way responsible, in our anguish we cry, “Why did this happen? What did we do to deserve this cruel, unmerited suffering?”

The old, poetic drama of Job wrestles with the problem of the presence of sudden evil or unexpected bad luck. If God is good, he cannot be all-powerful. If God is all-powerful, he cannot be all good. Must we take the even or take the odd?

The Biblical classic, Job, has deeper roots than pre-Christian Palestine. Told as a folk story and legend centuries before taking written form, there are variants of the tale in the ancient traditions of India, Egypt, and Babylon.

The merit of Job is more than its place as the literary masterpiece of the Bible, although it is that. Job gets you in the gut because ultimate problems are dealt with.

The scene of the prologue of Job is the Court of Heaven. The Lord reigns in all magnificence as the sons of God appear with him. Among the sons of God is the Satan. Important to the understanding of this theme, the Satan is neither the Devil nor an incarnation of Evil. The Satan – some scholars believe a more accurate translation is “The Adversary” - is an inspector or auditor of humans and their affairs.

God indicates to the Adversary that Job is the perfect servant. The Adversary answers, “Why not?” Job is prosperous, his family life is happy. He has fine sons and daughters. How can Job really be judged? Since everything is pleasant, secure, and gratifying, he is not likely to question God’s ways.

The prologues sets up the Divine machinery by which Job’s faith will be tested. God gives the Adversary permission to bring all manner of suffering upon Job for the purpose of testing his faithfulness. The drama presents in superb imagery the mystery of the good man experiencing suffering which is both catastrophic and undeserved.

In rapid sequence, the poetic sections describe the disasters which strike Job. His herds are stolen, his children die tragically, his wife bids him, “Curse God and die,” he is afflicted with a painful skin disease and is rejected by his community. He moves to the rubbish heap on the outskirts of the city.

He is visited by friends, Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad, who remind Job of the belief which is characteristic of much of the Old Testament: No innocent man is visited by calamity. The disasters which struck Job must have been consequences of the sins of Job. Through several cycles of speeches, these friends of Job argue this theological point of view. The good are rewarded; the evil are punished. Therefore Job must have committed evil.

But Job strongly insists he did no wrong. He was not tormented by guilt. While he did not question the power of God, Job denied that human good is justly rewarded or human evil deservedly punished. [CJW note: The poetry and images of these defense counsels for God are superb.]

In masterful, poetic sequence, the problems become defined. Can the undeniable existence of undeserved suffering, of “fields of Chaos,” be coherent with the belief in an all-powerful God whose nature is love? The author of Job seems to affirm that the only reasonable answer is that God is almighty, but cannot be completely just. However, knowledge and understanding are limited by our capacity and brief time on earth. Most believers ... want to hold to belief, take refuge in the undemonstrated assertion that the Creator is transcendent and mysterious. Therefore, any human answer must be inadequate. When one reads the 38th chapter and following, one senses the feeling that the human species is such an infinitesimal part of a mammoth creation that it is altogether presumptuous to question God’s power and wisdom.

Biblical Job remained unconvinced that he had been evil, but accepted the reality that there would be no explanation. One scholar appraised the whole of Job as a “derision of theology,” in that theology labors mightily to explain the unexplainable and is unconvincing.

How profound are our myths of good and evil? On one level of discourse, we speak with resignation: “that’s the way the ball bounces; the umpire made a bad call, but it’s not going to be changed.”

We live in a world where the physics of relativity is accepted. We live in a world where scientific studies propose that even atoms, in their basic structures, exhibit random behavior. We live in a world where genetic theory proposes that human genes mutate mysteriously. Most of all, we live in a world where convictions which provide a solid base for assured living are not easy to come by.

There are those who find security in the faith that although tragedies are real and that suffering frequently overwhelms explanations, the universe is basically good. “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform,” underlies the convictions of many persons, enabling them to build useful lives and find adequate meaning in human experience.

Many of us, however, cannot accept such assumptions that everything works for good, because there seems no doubt to some of us that there is much in human experience that is bad, there is considerable evil we could do without, such tragedy that might have been averted. I for one remain skeptical of bromides, Pollyanna slogans, and easy assurances that everything works for good if we only knew it.

Consider, rather, certain points made by Hugh Thomson Kerr of Princeton (editorial THEOLOGY TODAY) Jn. 66 p. 469) representing a segment of theological thought in our age. He wrote, “We are moving theologically into an era of the open option.” That is, there is increasing recognition that no religious group can claim that its interpretation of truth represents the only valid claim. This attitude is reflected in the increasing cooperation and conversation between groups which only a few years ago has kept strictly apart. Secondly, he wrote, the mood of our modern age is that “the meaning of existence is ambiguous.” We have the theatre of the absurd, the music of disharmonies rather than harmony and theme, literature which is disorganized in structure and whose structure and essence, if there is an essence, must be painfully extracted from heaped-up incongruities. Kerr raised the question, “Will some preacher someday dare to preach the gospel as it illustrates rather than solves, the sheer ambiguity of life?”

The third observation he makes, which seems helpful for our modern mood and fields of chaos, is “fragments of truth can be more significant than truth as a whole. There is an experimental quality to contemporary attitudes about life and the world. Authentic experience, no matter how fragmentary or dislocated, is more than wisdom about the causal connections within the vast complex of reality. This is a protest against all traditional harmonies and chains-of-being not because they aren’t fascinating in their escalation from one cosmic level to another, but because modern people think that any particular link may be as important as the chain itself.”

One particular link which seems to me central to an understanding of the field of chaos in human experience is that the universe is not necessarily organized for the good of the human species, although many people take comfort in that unverified notion. We poison ants, kill deer, spray mosquitoes, freeze fish, and slaughter beef and lamb. We live on other forms of life, even as all life lives on other life. Schweitzer called this “the terrible mystery of life.” The human species is one of countless organisms struggling to exist, to provide for, and to continue its own species. No apology is needed for this struggle. But the uncountable plurality of organic life needs to be recognized rather than any blithe, unfounded assumption that the only important life is human life.

One can have faith in the Universe as containing purpose and meaning for humankind as a unique creation, or accept the Universe as a creation containing meaning for all that is, nonhuman as well as human [CJW note: even though it is meaning that cannot be fathomed]. One can also defy the Universe as alien to human purposes, inconsistent with human purposes as these have evolved in unique human consciousness. But whatever one chooses as the focus of meaning, always there will be a field planted to chaos. We will never fully understand. As our telescopes become more powerful, the depths of space are disclosed to be infinitely vaster than supposed. As our microscopes are built to have greater powers of magnification, so the microscopic universe recedes into ever more minute forms. Always the grasp of knowledge seems loosened by the elusiveness of mystery.

Like the Venda tribe in Rhodesia, attuned to the mysteries of the field of chaos, we can accept ambiguity and partial truths, even though these seem frequently confounded by mystery. The tragic cannot be neatly explained by thesis, scripture, experiment, or creed.

In one of the endings MacLeish wrote for “J.B.”, Sarah and J.B. find their consolation in none of the accepted ways of salvation – orthodox religion, psychoanalysis, or Marxism. They find dignity and meaning enough in human love. Sarah says,

“Blow on the coals of my heart,
The candles in churches are out,
The lights have gone out in the sky,
Blow on the coals of my heart
And we’ll see, by and by.”

We can love – and we are worth loving. That is a truth-link that needs no heavenly God-Satan bet. Perhaps that is what May Sarton was getting at in her invocation to Kali, the goddess of destruction:

“Help us be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth.”

St. Augustine once wrote, “People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the vast compass or the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

The greatest wonder is the self. The “I” that reaches out to a “Thou.” Each of us best answers for himself/herself when the anxieties caused by the field of chaos intrude, batter, injure, betray, that which we call the self. But in ancient and modern dramatizations, in the ceremonies of the cultures, whether simple or complex, there can be the authentic hope that men/women at their best demonstrate that disaster can be accepted, that human dignity can re-assert the goodness of life even in the midst of mysterious evil and unsearchable suffering. This is the message of the mythologies of the ancients, the ceremonies of pre-industrial tribes and the authentic stance for the arts, the sciences, the religions of this difficult modern age.