The goal of religion, we are told, is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. That statement, one that I cannot find in Bartlett's, but which I have heard for years, understanding that it was first said by a journalist about journalism, seems to sum it up for me very nicely. I have a colleague who, for a while, served a church in a well-to-do community on Boston's South Shore, who felt unhappy with the lack of scope for ministry there. He wanted a church in an inner city where they could get involved in relieving the suffering of the poor. Although I sympathized with his compassionate motivation, I could not then, nor can I now, agree that there was no scope for ministry in the church that he was serving. If his congregation was indeed as smug and self-satisfied as he thought, he had a wide range of options for afflicting them, and had he dug a little more beneath the surface comfort of which he complained, I suspect he might have found more real affliction to comfort than he realized. He discounted their sufferings because they had more to eat and wear than they needed, and indeed their comfort level may have been very high, even beyond their material satisfactions. If so, I'm sure he could have found ways to afflict them if he had tried. I agree with Miss Manners that there are a lot more interesting, exciting and important things to be than comfortable. Painful feelings, if they lead to right action, are far more to be desired than comfort which does not. And in fact, comfort will never lead to any action at all, because if you are comfortable, you don't want to change the situation. That's what makes it so difficult to get out of bed in the morning. The only thing that can motivate you to do so is the idea of the discomfort you will experience if you do not, or the joy that you will find if you do. Good feelings which lead to right action are also more important than being comfortable.
William Ellery Channing once said, "It is the mind that does the work of the world." Now, I seldom argue with Channing, but he was of an era that tended to divide the human being into different aspects with the mind on top. Intellect alone, without the understanding bred by the feeling of compassion falls far short of wisdom. It has occurred to me that there would be little work done if there were no bodies or even if there were no emotions. Feelings are very important. They are our primary motivators. We seldom if ever set a goal based on a rational idea of what would be best. We want what will make us happy or satisfied or fulfilled. We probably are not even constituted to set ultimate aims based on rational thought. I can't think of how we would go about it. Even if your primary goal is something completely outside yourself, as for example to make the town of Immokalee a better place to live, the reason for it is to make people feel better, be more comfortable, safer, happier. Feed and clothe the hungry? Why should we? Because rationally we know that well-fed, well-dressed people are nicer than hungry, ragged ones? No, of course not. It's because want and suffering make us feel compassion, and helping gives us a sense of satisfaction. The brain comes into action only in figuring out how to satisfy our emotional goals.
It is not strange, then, that we should examine and talk about our feelings a great deal, though it sometimes seems odd to me that it is so difficult for us to decide what they are. What does it mean when you say that you have to decide how you feel about something? I don't think, after all, that feelings are precisely decided upon. We feel them, and then we decide how to act (or not act) upon them. There are those who say that we decide how we are going to feel, but it isn't really that simple. There are things that we can do to change the way we feel about things, but it is not a matter of simple decision.
It is fashionable to talk about how we feel about things — almost to the point of rudeness. It is important to go with your feelings, to express them, and so forth. At the same time, we don't really accept our feelings and honor them, although we say and think that we do. On the contrary, we keep trying to change them — either deciding to, which is another way to say repressing them, or avoiding things that give us feelings we don't like, or simply by denying them. It seems to me that even bad feelings may deserve some honor. I was asked — pressured may be a better word for it — to go to meetings of the present incarnation of est. I think it's called The Forum now, and is much less drastic than it was when it began in the 70s. They started out by asking if I were completely happy and satisfied with my life, and being incorrigibly truthful, I said, "Of course not." They said they could help me become completely happy and satisfied, and I said that, all things considered, I'd rather stick with things the way they are. One of the questions they asked was how much money it would be worth to me to become those things, and I said, "None," and I meant it. I think my sadnesses and dissatisfactions are valuable enough to keep. They tend to militate against complacency, if nothing else, and there is nothing like complacency to get in the way of the growth of the soul. I do not wish to be one of the comfortable whose primary spiritual need is affliction. It is far better for the soul to be one of the afflicted.
I used to play bridge at the Louisiana Bridge Association. Most of the players there were almost incredibly good. One was even admitted into the Bridge Hall of Fame. I mentioned to one of them that I found playing there to be good for my soul because it was always so humbling. He responded that it was humbling for everyone, but it would take a woman of the cloth to think of it as being good for the soul. True enough, I suppose, but if the soul's business, as I would argue that it is, is to bring the individual closer to goodness, anything that militates against complacency, even playing bridge with people who are much better than you are, is spiritual discipline.
One of the things I often find myself doing as a byproduct of my occupation is talking to strangers about religion. Some time ago I was talking to someone who told me that she was not a Unitarian Universalist. That was okay with me, but, since she had brought up the subject, I asked why. We got into a discussion of her beliefs, and, although I do not share them, I know some Unitarian Universalists in fairly good standing who do. I asked her why she believed what she did, on what evidence she based her beliefs, and she said, "It just feels right to me." And I said, "You're right. You're not a Unitarian Universalist." There are two unacceptable reasons for religious belief among Unitarian Universalists. One is that the truth was told to you by a mystical, unquestionable authority, but the other is that it feels right. That doesn't mean that you can't believe an idea that you are comfortable with, merely that although that may be necessary, it is not sufficient. Although the mind alone is not sufficient to do the work of the world, either practical or spiritual, neither are the feelings. An idea that cannot be defended against the arguments of doubters — an idea that you, yourself, refuse to put through the refining fire of doubt because it is one that feels good to you — is an idea that a true Unitarian Universalist cannot believe.
Unitarian Universalism in its history, tradition and purpose is not a comfortable religion. A position of unending quest and of institutionalized doubt is not a restful place to be in. We sometimes try, in our efforts to comfort the afflicted, to make it seem that way. "To question is the answer," we say, or "The goal is the quest." And sometimes, when we're really in bad form we say, "In a Unitarian Universalist church you can believe anything you want to." None of those statements are true, although we would like to believe them, and of course the last is the least true of all.
The first two are the kind of easy paradox that sounds nice and satisfies until you think about it a while. In fact, of course, although answers may not be (and indeed are not) attainable to the kinds of questions we mean, questions of religious truth, to question by itself is insufficient. We need to come up with interim, questionable, doubtable, answers. Questioning continues after answers are found, but questioning has no meaning by itself, just as a quest which is aimless is not a quest at all, but merely an endless journey in which what is found is without ascertainable value. It does not really comfort the most dedicated researcher to be told that what is sought is irrelevant, however intrinsically rewarding the search itself may be. You need, after all, a framework and a direction for your search. You need, as well, a basis for the acts of faith, the living out of your religion.
There are those who tire of the theological search when the impossibility of finding a final answer other than through revelation (which we have rejected, or we would not be Unitarian Universalists) becomes patent to them. They say, and truly, that we don't really have to know whether or of what kind God is, or whatever you may wish to call ultimate reality, to act religiously, to seek the good and do it. My own feeling is that that is really the same quest, since the metaphysical nature of things is, in fact, the basis on which we define our action as religious action. To decide that to be generous, compassionate, faithful, courageous and humble is to live religiously is to, in some sort, define ultimate value. To define as a consequence of your religion, the requirement to struggle for justice, equality and freedom, is also to define ultimate value.
However, transferring the quest from intellectual understanding to physical action does not change the process. We must still question and still honor doubt. That, by the way, is what the quotes should say. Not that to question is the answer but that it is the defining process of Unitarian Universalism, which is what makes it so uncomfortable a religion. No conclusion, even one about right action, may be taken for granted, however comfortable it may be to do so. They must always receive the test that doubt can offer, and be open to change.
I occasionally talk to people who agree that experience is the ultimate source of truth, and quote their mystical experiences as evidence of their experience of God. I would never say that that is impossible, and from my own experience, I know that a mystical experience carries within it its own guarantee of truth. You know that you have experienced the truth, whether you have or not. However, it must still, for the sake of integrity, undergo doubtful questioning, and those Unitarian Universalists (and I have known a few) who refuse to question the truth conclusions of their own experience, who fear the refining fire of doubt, cast doubt on the integrity of their own experience, and are faithless to our defining process.
The woman who told me she was not a Unitarian Universalist, although I did not admire the belief she chose to refuse to examine, garnered my respect for her understanding of what our faith really is, the uncomfortable requirement that all beliefs and their consequent actions must be based on some evidence and that they must stand the test of doubt. Unlike her, we cannot believe what we want to, but only what we cannot doubt or question away. Only what we must.
Unitarian Universalism is often called an intellectual faith rather than an emotional one. Certainly the process of doubting the conclusions, not only those of others but also our own, is an intellectual activity. Although I would not have it be exclusively an intellectual discipline, neither would I lessen that aspect of it. The intellect is rather out of fashion these days. Hardly anyone ever says "I think." We always say, "I feel," in an attempt, I suppose, to avoid seeming dogmatic. Sometimes we even say, "I have to decide how I feel about that." I suspect everyone may do a little more thinking than they admit to, and I've made a vow not to say I feel when I think is what I really mean. There is no question that the intellect alone without the tempering of altruistic emotion can be very dangerous. Equally exclusive reliance on the feelings would be just as dangerous. It takes compassion and knowledge together to create wisdom.
We often hear of the comforts of faith. I suspect what is meant is the complacency of unquestioned, undoubted belief. Let me call you instead to discomfort, even sometimes to affliction as a consequence of questioning and of doubt, and as a spur to change and growth. When you are asked if you are comfortable with anything, my hope for you is that your answer will almost always be no.