There is that old joke which goes if the Ku Klux Klan wanted to frighten a Unitarian Universalist family, they’d burn a giant question mark on the family’s lawn. Actually like many jokes, this one doesn’t hang very well. Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking a bit about questions and their place in matters spiritual…
As I was wandering around the web the other day I stumbled upon a Christian site where the writer briefly noted how Christianity asked the question why sin while Buddhism asked why suffering? The writer admitted little knowledge of Buddhism and except for a brief slap at the solipsism of asking about suffering moved quickly on to his consideration of sin.
First, my own brief rejoinder that Buddhist concern with suffering (actually a limiting translation of dukkha, but let’s not go there today) is not just my suffering, but also yours, and ours. But what really caught me was that thought about questions.
Rather more importantly, I think that writer mischaracterized the question Christianity asks. It isn’t why sin? The question Christianity asks is why do we die? Sin is the normative Christian answer to that question.
So, one religion asks why do we die? Another asks why do we suffer?
And from those questions whole religions flow…
Of course these aren’t the only spiritual questions to ask.
The Unitarian Universalist theologian Forrest Church observed how “religion is the human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.” This could be broken down to the questions Why am I alive? And why am I going to die? Or, why are we alive? And why are we going to die?
Why are we alive?
Why so much hurt and suffering in this world?
And so much joy?
And why do we die?
Hidden within this is the assumption of many, perhaps it is most religions, that the answer is given by fiat through revelation. This just doesn’t work for me. Why should I believe one prophet and not another when there is no objective test, no way to sort them? I just don’t think that’s the way to go. I live in a natural world. If there is wisdom to be found, I’m confident it must be discoverable within the natural world. So, without appeal to special revelation, where do we go to understand these questions?
And, also, are they the bottom line of it?
A while back I read somewhere and I feel bad I’m not finding the source rattling around in my skull as I write this, someone I thought wise suggested the real defining difference is between the questions why and how.
I’m quite taken with that distinction, and feel it an important point. As the questions of “why” often remain abstract, certainly of a higher order than questions of “how,” which are where we actually exist and moves the issue into our human lives.
So, sin is an answer to why we die. And if one accepts this analysis, the concerns of sin become the practical questions, the how questions. Of course this doesn’t come naturally, we need this answer to come from some higher authority through the means of revelation. Because it posits something that no one has ever seen, someone or something that doesn’t die.
I want my religion grounded a bit more in the real world.
We see we are alive.
And everything joyful and sad that flows out of this precious and fragile life…
If we’re honest with ourselves, we know we’re going to die.
And a big point, at least for me…
Is this really a question? Should it be broken into questions?
Are the questions why and how almost missing the point?
Or is it an observation that requires the human mind and heart to meet something?
Is the beating and ever so fragile heart itself the question?
And from that a boundless curiosity becomes the answer? Frameable now as why and now as how?
Is the question why, the deep body question, felt before articulated in a word or two answered best by simple, mere, and total presence to what is?
As a religious matter, as a spiritual matter, I suspect this is the more important direction to go…
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