One of the most common themes in myth is the idea of hubris, the human effort, doomed, of course, to failure, to rival the gods in accomplishment or power. Since, from my first intro-duction to the Bible, I was reading it critically rather than as the revealed word of God, and therefore not under the obligation to excuse God's behavior, the theme of the two stories from Genesis that I read to you this morning have always interested me very much. I was much less concerned with the disobedience of Adam and Eve to God, which to everyone else who wasn't hung up on the possible sexual references, was the point of the story of the fall in the garden, than I was with God's fear of the potential of human knowledge. Note that there were two trees in the garden. One was forbidden: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the other tree, the pair were allowed to eat, and that was the one that kept them immortal: the tree of life. The reason Yahweh and the rest of the pantheon (of course, with the later monotheistic emen-dations, the other gods became Yahweh's angels) threw Adam and Eve out of the garden and guarded its gates with a flaming sword, was to keep them away from the tree of life. If they had the knowledge belonging to the gods, which indeed they now had, having eaten the forbidden fruit, the gods feared that the humans would become as powerful as they were, if they continued to be immortal.
That is the same theme as the story of the Tower of Babel, but here it is even clearer. After the flood human beings increased in power and ability and decided to build a tower to the heavens. The problem was that it seemed they could actually do it if they cooperated with one another, so again Yahweh and his cohorts became fearful of human potential and confounded their speech so that they could no longer understand one another, could therefore no longer cooperate with one another, and had to give up their project. Edith Hamilton in her book of mythology says flatly that the only purpose of the mythological stories is to explain why things are the way they are. This story could be interpreted simply as an explanation of different languages and cultures on the earth. However, I suspect that had the inventors of this story not been concerned with the issue of hubris, they could have thought of a lot of other ways to explain the origin of differences of language, as I think is also true of the story of Arachne and the origin of the spiders. That merely gave them a vehicle for their warning that it is dangerous to try to rival the gods.
The notion of jealousy of divine power, whether it be Yahweh, the Greek or Roman gods, or any other divinity, is amazingly widespread. There are cultures where it was required that any human creation must contain some small flaw in order that there be no mistaken notion that human beings were trying to achieve sufficient perfection to engender a jealous response. Our superstition of knocking on wood when we make an optimistic statement - and I do not know where it started - is a charm either to distract the attention of whatever gods may want to throw a monkey wrench into the works, or perhaps merely to work some magic to control or avert their jealousy. One of the most important characteristics of Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, was his jealousy. "The lord, thy God, is a jealous God." That was to warn against worshipping any of the Gods of other tribes rather than the Hebrews' own, but his jealousy was not confined to other Gods, but clearly also was directed toward the accomplishments of human beings.
Well, in this contest, I've always been on the side of human beings, and it's one of the main reasons I have never considered the God described in the Old Testament particularly worthy of worship. As an aside, it isn't really possible to describe in any terms humans can invent, any such worthy God, but most of the characteristics that have been ascribed to divine power are usually peculiarly despicable either in Judeo-Christian mythology or any of the other mythologies that we encounter. It never ceases to amaze me, the sorts of things that people want to ascribe to God and consider divine traits. I've never considered raw power particularly divine, not to mention its arbitrary use - or worse, its jealous use.
I've always admired Eve for her choice of knowledge over obedience, and I think it would be nice if human beings could cooperate more. In fact, human knowledge and achievement, even without the sort of cooperation that would be ideal, has taken us far higher than any earthly tower could ever be built. Not only that, I suspect that some of the weaving we can do in quan-tity could not well be rivaled even by a divine weaver. You really don't need to get much better than wonderful, as many of our beautiful fabrics are, and as are other achievements of our minds and hands. We're still not physically immortal, though there are people who seem to see that as an achievable goal. I hope they're wrong, but I'm not going to try to get into the ultimate value of immortality in this sermon.
However, the warnings against hubris do not suggest that human beings should not try to achieve wonders, but rather that they should not try to arrogate to themselves divine power. The problem with the stories that has me nearly always siding with human beings against whichever god is the divine protagonist is that it is difficult to decide where pride, self-fulfillment and achievement end and hubris begins.
Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, according to traditional theology, and many people equate pride and hubris. I suspect that hubris is a deadly sin, and it is a kind of pride, or perhaps better, arrogance. It's one of the Greek concepts that do not translate simply into English, needing phrases, or maybe even sentences for its synonym. It is, therefore, used as an English word, and should be substituted for the word pride when it is more appropriate. Because of our human experience that our best-laid plans may fail, however, pride is tarred with the same brush as hubris. The Bible says that "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall," and the Greeks and Romans had many stories which suggested that any kind of marvelous achievement might be viewed as hubris by the gods, and that even any great advance must be punished.
The great heresy of Unitarianism, despite the name it was given by its enemies, was not the denial of the trinity, but the acceptance of pride as sometimes a virtue rather than a sin - the idea that human beings are not wholly irredeemable except by grace, but rather that they have within themselves the ability to work out their own salvation. This was an ancient heresy, rising again and again within Christianity. There is something in humankind that says to us that free will does not necessarily equate with evil, that human beings can choose the good for themselves and achieve great works of every kind, from the physical to the spiritual, and that this is also good, deserving of an honest pride in themselves, and worthy of reward rather than punishment.
It is amazing how often and in how many forms and under how many different names this same heresy arose, no matter how vigorously and even violently it was opposed by the traditional thinkers of the established church. Its first official name (and it is usually named after its most eloquent apologist) was Pelagianism. Pelagius lived in the 4th century A.D. He denied the doctrine of original sin, and said that human beings had the capacity to choose the good, and in fact it was that very capacity which enabled them to choose to follow Christian teachings. His teachings were condemned, and no one knows what happened to him after that time. He was merely the first of many, all of whom were condemned as heretics, including the founders of our own religion in the United States. Primitive notions of God tended to see divine power as arbitrary and amoral. Therefore when human effort failed in some way, it was easy to blame the failure on the jealousy of that controlling power. It is a short step then to say that the effort itself is evil as an attempt to rival the gods, and next that there is no possibility of human good that is not attained through divine grace coming from the transcendent other.
For Unitarian Universalists the idea that human beings are free to choose the good and have the responsibility to do so is not heresy at all but a foundation of our faith. We are all Pelagians - or at least semi-Pelagians. It took almost a complete break from our roots in traditional Chris-tianity to achieve the institutionalization of pride - pride in ourselves as human beings with freedom and its concomitant ability to choose to do the right and to attempt great things, and pride in our potential to achieve them. I was a Unitarian Universalist at heart long before I began to attend church, and I was almost always on the side of the human beings in their tussles with God.
Almost always. As I suggested before, I think that there really is such a thing as hubris, and that it really is the pride that by its nature "goeth before destruction." It takes several forms, and although I am not at all sure that I can indicate all of the ones that it may take, I will at least mention some and repeat what it is not. It is not the sin of Eve. That, I think, was really not a sin at all. To choose knowledge rather than obedience is not hubris but self-respect. It is to be honored rather than anathematized. Arachne, however, may really have been guilty of it if she boated that her weaving was as good as that of Athena. It is suggested that in fact it really was as good, and that's what made Athena so angry. However, the reality is that in real life we can do very good work indeed, but only the gods can be perfect. The drive for perfection is hubris, and it carries its own punishment. It is, in the first place, doomed to failure, and failure is a primary source of unhappiness. It also tends to make people self-righteous, feeling superior to those who are content with mere excellence. Another problem that perfectionists sometimes have is that if they know they can't do something perfectly, they won't even try. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly, but human potential being what it is, it is also worth doing as well as you can.
Another example of hubris is the notion that you are in complete control of your life. I think that this is a peculiarly modern sin to which many of us are heir. Because of discoveries which have been made of the relation of the psyche to objective experience, we sometimes think - and are even often taught to think in the human potential movement - that all we have to do is have the right attitude and the right thoughts and we'll be able to have everything we want. The implication is that to suffer illness or pain or sadness is the consequence of a bad personal at-titude and has nothing to do with the actions or will of anything else in the outside world. We are totally in control of everything that happens to us and therefore can take all the credit for anything good that happens to us. Of course, we also have to take all the blame for anything bad, and if we subscribe to that philosophy we will also credit or blame others for things that I would suggest are probably beyond their control, and even if they are not, are much more complex in their workings than merely the attitude we choose to assume. Hubris goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
There is another example of hubris that I think many of us, many of the best of us, practice. That is to think that we can manage everything - all the problems of life - by ourselves. It may even have its roots in the false humility of a poor sense of self which tells us that we are not important enough to bother others with our personal trials and tribulations. Whatever its roots, however, its consequence is to tell us that we can manage without the support of others in our lives. There may be lives which are so smooth that a helping hand or a supportive ear is never necessary, but if so, they are few, and, I would suspect, boring. Most of us do need help at some point in our lives, and to refuse to reach out for it because you are sure you can manage without it is hubris. It too carries its own punishment. You may find that you really can't get through whatever the pain may be, and you are destroyed by it. Even if you do manage to get through, it could have been made much easier for you, but, more importantly, you would have given others the opportunity to serve you. The Buddhist monks who beg for their meals feel that they are doing those who feed them a far greater favor than their suppliers are dong them by enabling them to acquire merit through charitable acts. I tend to agree with them, and think that to refuse to ask for the help that people would be glad to give is hubris. It is possible, too, that in getting through whatever your pain may be without the help that others would be glad to give can weaken or warp you in ways that you do not have to experience. The sin of hubris almost always carries its own punishment.
I do not think that humankind was really thrown out of the garden when they ate of the fruit of good and evil, and took, thereupon, responsibility for their own lives. I think, rather, that they can till the garden until it blooms better than ever. However, Athena left spiders there, and though they may make beautiful webs, some of them are dangerous. One of the most dangerous of all is the sin of hubris which may lead us away from success, plunge us into self-righteousness or guilt or criticism of others, or keep us from forming mutually supportive relationships.
In the Unitarian Universalist rejection of the idea that human beings are "born to evil as the sparks fly upwards" we sometimes resist the concept of sin at all. Yet sin, in the Sanskrit from which it comes, simply means to miss the mark, something all of us do all the time, failing to live up to our own ideals of the good and right. Hubris really is so dangerous, in part because it masks itself so insidiously as a virtue rather than a sin: a sense of responsibility or high standards or self-reliance. We can tell, however, what it is when it interferes with our relationships, when it keeps us from compassion or generosity or creativity or forgiveness of one another and ourselves - when it keeps us from love.