The Big Questions: Why Should We Be Good for Nothing? by Rev. Michael McGee, Jan. 8, 2012

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“The Big Questions 4: Why Should We Be Good for Nothing?”

Reading: A story from the Jewish tradition:

There was once a man who wanted to make fun of the Torah, and of the rabbis. So he came to Rabbi Shammai and said: "Your Torah, your wonderful Torah -- can I learn it while I stand on one foot?”

Rabbi Shammai took a stick and shouted angrily: "Get out of here, you scoffer. Do you think I have time to waste on people who mock our holy Torah?"

The man then ran away and went to the great Rabbi Hillel's home. The rabbi greeted him and said: "What is the matter, my good man?" And he answered: “I will convert to your faith if you teach me the Torah while I stand on one foot."

Rabbi Hillel saw that the man was scoffing, but calmly and patiently he said: "You want to learn a great deal quickly, don't you? Very well, I shall teach you the Torah while you stand on one foot. This is our Holy Torah: 'What is hateful to you, do not do unto others.'" The man forgot that he had come only to jeer. "Does it mean that we must be kind to one another like brothers?" asked the man.

"That's it, my son. That's the meaning of the whole Torah. All the rest is only an explanation of that. Go and study it," said Hillel kindly.

Reading: “The Universality of the Golden Rule in the World Religions” --from TeachingValues.com

The Golden Rule or the ethic of reciprocity is found in the scriptures of nearly every religion. And it’s perhaps the most revolutionary statement in humanity’s history. Hear now the Universality of the Golden Rule in the World Religions.

What is hateful to you, do not do unto others. –Judaism

Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them. -- Christianity

Not one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.  -– Islam

A man should wander about treating all creatures as he himself would be treated. -- Jainism

Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence. -- Confucianism

One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All other activities are due to selfish desire. -- Hinduism

Tsekung asked, "Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?" Confucius replied, "It is the word shu -- reciprocity: Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you."  -– Confucianism

Sermon:

There’s a “For Better or For Worse”cartoon that shows Elly looking after her sick husband in bed. He says to her, “I’ve been lying here for two whole days, El. Strange how you become deeply philosophical when you’re incapacitated. I’ve been thinking: “What is life?”, “What’s it like to die?”, “What’s man’s role in this infinite cosmos?”... “What’s for lunch?” She looks puzzled and asks, “Lunch?” He replies, “...I like some of my questions to have answers.”

Well, don’t we all! During these past few months we’ve been asking some very big questions about life and religion, but the answers are not easy to discover. They require each of us to explore our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and ethics, and to enter into conversation with family and friends and covenant groups in search for an answer.

The big question today is, “Why should we be good for nothing?” You may have been accused of being good for nothing at some time in your life, but that’s not exactly what I mean. Most of us struggle throughout our lives with the big question, why should we be good? Should we be good because God or our parents or a minister tells us to? Or should we be good because there is something inside of us, something hardwired into our humanity, that pushes and prods us towards a feeling of deep connection with all of life?

I like to imagine what our two grand-girls and our future grand-boy are going to be like as they grow towards adulthood. And my biggest hope is that they will be kind, compassionate, and ethical human beings. These are the same qualities we wanted for our four children as well, and we're fortunate in that they are all spiritually and ethically mature, largely because they grew up in Unitarian Universalist churches where they learned to build their own ethical system instead of simply complying with one dropped in their laps.

But that's a rarity in our society. Many parents use guilt and God to force children into ethical behavior. Most of us were raised that way, weren't we? I remember being taught as a child that God could see everything I did, and when I did something wrong that would put me one step closer to the gaping trap-door of eternal damnation. What a frightening way for children to grow up! I would like all children to learn that ethics is a matter of choice. Just think of all the daily ethical decisions we make, from what food we eat to how we raise our children. Virtually every aspect of our relationship to other people and the earth has a moral component.

Many people believe that it's impossible to be a moral person without believing in a God who will punish you for being immoral and reward you for being ethical. Some Christians, including many of the presidential candidates, claim that if God was at the center of our society then morality would return to the nation, though they seem to ignore the multitude of immoral and illegal acts committed in the name of religion.

One reason why God's ratings are dropping is that he's been used by religious leaders and politicians as The Big Cop in the Sky instead of the transcendent, transforming Ground of All Being. People stand in line to tell us what God wants and doesn't want us to do.

God's primary purpose for many people is to instill guilt, and what a weapon that is! It's been said that, “Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway (Isabelle Holland).” Woody Allen was so traumatized by guilt that he joked, “When we played softball, I'd steal second base, feel guilty and go back.”

Guilt has been used by organized religion to manipulate the masses into goodness, as defined by the Church. The church fathers learned that they could control people not only by manipulating their natural sense of guilt but by creating artificial guilt for feeling sexual, for loving, for doubting, for disagreeing, even for being alive.

Though guilt and God are used by the Church to manipulate and control people, we need to recognize that both still can have meaning in our lives. People do bad things, and feeling guilty is how we know we've done something harmful so that we can rectify it – not by seeking repentance from the church but by asking forgiveness of those we've wronged and then doing what is necessary to correct our wrongs.

We should feel guilty about hurting others. We should feel guilty about the suffering in the world, but we should not let our guilt turn us into neurotic Woody Allen clones so paralyzed that we can't do anything but whimper and whine. Guilt should empower us not to repent but to act ethically.

To do that we need a concept of the holy that is not cruel and threatening but supportive and challenging. Unitarian Universalists have been trying to figure out God since our beginnings in the sixteenth century. It's not that we don't believe in God; most of us do in one way or another. But we don't believe in a God whose will happens to coincide with those who so self-righteously interpret it. I would dare say that many of us believe in the God that resides deep within our own conscience.

One decision each of us must make at some point in our lives is whether we want to be good for something -- that is for a heavenly reward or spiritual compensation -- or good for nothing -- that is for no benefit other than doing the right thing and becoming better human beings.

Being good for nothing is in the spirit of Boris Pasternak who wrote, “If the beast who sleeps in [humanity] could be held down by threats - any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death - then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. What has for centuries raised [humanity] above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music; the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example.”

But how do we build an ethical foundation that will support us in making the most difficult moral decisions? I believe the most simple and effective ethical system is right under our noses. It’s one that’s at the heart of every major world religion and it’s not dependent upon guilt or God.

I love the story about Rabbi Hillel summing up Judaism in one simple statement, “Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you. That is the Torah, the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” Note that there is no mention of God or a Messiah or dogmas or creeds. The essence of Judaism, as well as all religions, is not what you believe, but how you respond with compassion to others.

The theologian Karen Armstrong says, “If we did that, if we lived as Hillel suggests on a daily, hourly basis, if every time we were tempted to say something vile about someone else, if we said to ourselves how would we like it if this was said about me or someone I love, then for that moment we would have achieved an ecstasy, because we would have gone beyond ourselves.”

About a century after Rabbi Hillel, Jesus did a little editing of his words and came up with: “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them." Those words have been refined over the years into, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

And as you heard in our reading this morning, variations of this ethical statement are in every major faith, though they are too often overshadowed by creeds, dogmas, and superstition. By the way, I posted this reading on our web site, and someone said that she put it on her Facebook page, and I recommended that everyone put it on their Facebook page so we can make it viral.

Many have misunderstood the Golden Rule to mean, “Do unto others what they do unto you,” or, “Do unto others before they do to you.” But it’s important to understand that the Golden Rule is a principle of reciprocity. It doesn’t really mean that you should treat someone else exactly as you would want them to treat you. It means that you should put yourself in their shoes and ask how you think they want to be treated. That’s an important difference.

John F. Kennedy did that during the controversial days of de-segregation in the 1960s, asking white Americans to imagine being looked down upon and treated badly based only on the color of their skin. He asked them to imagine how they would want to be treated if they were in that situation, and act accordingly towards black people.

Unfortunately, I’m not seeing that kind of empathy in many of our leaders today. Instead they disparage immigrants and the poor and gay people. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the central issue of all of these presidential debates was how each candidate could best live out the Golden Rule in our nation and the world and in their own life?

I can think of no other ethical guideline that is more effective than this simple statement. I try to live by the Golden Rule, but to be honest, I have failed miserably time after time. It’s one of the most difficult challenges in my life. But I try to keep in mind that my task is not to succeed as much as it is to keep struggling to succeed, to keep practicing empathy and compassion every day, to keep stretching my heart so that I can feel what others are feeling, whether they be my friends or family or those who live on the other side of the planet. When I do succeed at genuinely feeling what another feels, then I experience a deep connection that is transforming.

I’ve told you before that Karen Armstrong has started a movement called the Charter for Compassion, in which she and many other leaders around the world are inviting people from all faiths to build a more compassionate world by encouraging individuals, organizations, and nations to live by the Golden Rule. Religion has been mistaken for creed in most faiths, so instead of simply adhering to a set of particular rules, Karen Armstrong believes that religion should be a transformative experience. It’s easy to do one good deed a day, but that’s not enough. Every day, all day, the Golden Rule requires that we practice compassion in all that we do.

And don’t confuse compassion with pity. Compassion should not be understood as a feeling, but as a behavior that is meant to make a better world. In her recent book, “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life,”Armstrong writes that we need a “twelve step” process, such as the one used to treat addiction, because we are addicted to our own hatreds. We hold onto prejudice and bitterness globally, and therefore the world cannot move beyond war and suffering.

I find it amazing that almost every religion, representing such diverse nations and cultures, encompassing a vast array of languages and symbols and myths, could all have the same moral teaching at the heart of their theology, which is simply to treat others as you would want them to treat you! Just imagine if all faiths could unite behind this one, universal ethical teaching they hold in common: the Golden Rule. Certainly peace and justice and equality would reign, and our world would become the Beloved Community.

In the meantime, may each one of us strive to live out the Golden Rule in all that we do. May we teach our children that to live lives of deep connection and empathy and compassion and generosity is the greatest of all joys. And may we spread the ideal far and wide that to be good for nothing is not only a big question but the biggest answer to all questions.

Photos from the Service

• The Big Questions by Lama Surya Das
• Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong
• The Golden Rule TED video by Karen Armstromg (see below)

1. Were you taught the Golden Rule when you were growing up?
2. What part did guilt and God play in your childhood?
3. Can you remember a time in your life when you successfully applied the Golden Rule?
4. Can you remember a time in your life when you weren't successful at applying the Golden Rule?
5. Does the Golden Rule summarize your religious beliefs?
6. Are you good for something or good for nothing?
7. How well do you live out the Golden Rule in your life?