Why Be Good?

Why Be Good, She Asked

The Rev. Wendy von Zirpolo

a sermon preached at the 

Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead

The sermon this morning was birthed on a cold day in November in the midst of a common UU misadventure ~ that of heading for the Arlington Street church in Boston instead of the UU Church in Arlington, Massachusetts. I was attempting to get to an Annual Mass Bay District Meeting and I was not alone. I was accompanied by my daughter, a college freshman, and her roommate. While I would like to think the girls were along for the spiritual enlightenment or my own stimulating company - I have no illusions - it was the promise of a free lunch!

            So, there we were, having discovered our error, now headed off in the proper direction and finding ourselves with some extra time to chat. It started out innocently enough - my daughter’s roommate, raised in the Baptist faith, had a few questions. She started small ----------------------- “So, Mrs. von Zirpolo, I understand that you can believe anything you want in Unitarian Universalism - how does that work?” We spoke of creeds vs. principles, purposes and sources. We spoke of freedom and reason. We spoke of holding up the right of each person in Unitarian Universalism to seek their own truths while honoring others. She then ventured a little deeper, asking “Do you believe in God?”…..I told her that I considered myself a religious humanist, someone who did not believe in a single entity or a being-like presence to whom I could pray and expect intervention in my life or the life of others. I said that instead I believed in a greater power of goodness, inherent in each and every human being - one that oriented us toward betterment for all. She then asked about Heaven - and I said I didn’t believe in a life after death but instead of a heaven here on Earth - beloved community. A place where all are truly and deeply welcome, each of us as our human, perfectly imperfect selves. All honored for our gifts, all equal participants, all willing to stay at the table working out differences in the overriding context of deep love, forgiveness and respect.

“Where does Jesus fit?” she asked next and I told her that for me, Jesus was and is a great teacher and leader, someone who glimpsed true beloved community and said “Wow ---- follow me, I’ll show you the way.” I also told her that while those were my beliefs that I worshipped alongside others who were theists, believing in a prayable to, intervenable, personal God, those who might worship many Gods or Goddesses, those who believed in Jesus as The Christ, the divine son of God and those for whom the language of God and Jesus held little or no value or perhaps pain.

And then, she paused……………..THAT should have been my warning that the big one was coming! Because as we approached the Arlington church, she did pause in thought ………… and then asked…..”But, if you don’t believe in life after death, and you don’t believe in salvation through Jesus Christ …………………….. Why be good?”

Why be good, she asked and words about inherent worth and dignity rolled out of my mouth, followed by those of peace, social justice, witness and world community. Why be good, she asked and my words reflected a deep commitment to the betterment of humankind. Why be good, she asked, and like a parent facing the question “Where do babies come from,” I found myself grateful that our destination has been reached, the question tabled and distractions were in sight.  Why be good she asked and although the words flowed out quite easily and I am not compelled to retract them, the question resided for months, hovering here and here and here……. understanding my answers on a personal level took on a level of importance equaled by the need to be able to offer the answer as a public theology -- one I would be able to articulate as a religious leader in our movement. Why be good, she asked, and here I stand today, inviting you to join me in looking hard at that question and also claiming it as one we should be able to answer.

We’ll start our journey in the Hebrew Scriptures - the Old Testament - where we find a God who makes promises to his chosen people. A people called to honor him and in return be delivered from horrific conditions. Honor and obey me, he says …… and the land of milk and honey awaits …just rewards indeed. As the ancient prophet, Micah, reports, this God requires three things “to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with their God.” Here in the Hebrew tomes, and in the words of the prophets, we find clarity for these people, not only in terms of what rewards are offered but also the price of noncompliance. For theirs is a God not unaccustomed to incurring wrath.

Moving on into the Christian Scriptures, the New Testament, we see the commitment to goodness articulated in following Jesus Christ as entrance into heaven and the price of heavenly rewards. Prominent also is the eschatological view that the judgment day is upon us - the end is coming and each will be judged.

Moving away from the God of the Hebrew and Christian communities ---- although we lose a common understanding of God, we do find the ethic of reciprocity ---- otherwise known as the Golden Rule……….in Baha’i “ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee” and in Buddhism’s Udana-Varga the admonition “hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful” and in Islam “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” And yet, these exist as rules and codes of behavior - not answers to my young friend’s question.

So let’s add another voice into this exploration. In his book “Letter to a Young Lawyer” famed lawyer, Alan Dershowitz lays out the issue of ‘being good’ with the express intent of convincing his young lawyers to choose strong moral character as a constant in a profession in which he tells them it will be challenged daily. In his argument, calling for such personal responsibility to goodness, he wishes to disconnect that obligation from any sense of outside authority. He calls them to an inner authority. Always ready for argument, Dershowitz pits himself against Pascal’s Wager. You know the wager ….over 300 years ago Pascal offered an orientation toward good as a bottom-line safe bet. “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.” Dershowitz disagrees and takes his audience through a legalistic argument tying goodness, based on religious belief to either a rote response to authority and/or a calculated choice. Neither of which speak of the valiant character of the individual wishing to do good for the sake of good.

While Dershowitz calls on this orientation to goodness from an altruistic view of what is best as a human being---------- that is, what would truly be deserving of accolades, another thinker, Dennis Prager from the University of Judaism calls goodness a necessary behavioral goal, articulating the wish that our educational system held goodness and depth as its two pillars rather than brilliance and success. He offers seven reasons to be good:

If everyone acted this way we’d live in a beautiful world

You’ll like yourself more

You’ll be treated better

It makes you feel good

You know how much you want others to be good

Because God said so

A part of you wants to be good

This behavioral approach offers many doors in, allowing for the theist to be good for the sake of religious beliefs but also holding up rational arguments based on outcomes.  An interesting footnote to Prager’s contribution, and an affirmation of Dershowitz’s commentary on the relation of authority to goodness is a 1960 behavioral study held at Yale in which subjects were to apply a shock to a learner under the guise of a scientific experiment exploring punishment as a correction to incorrect behavior. The study received quite a bit of renewed attention when the abuses of Abu Graib came to light. In the study, unbeknownst to the subjects, the person receiving the shock was an actor and no electricity was involved. The subjects were required to increase the voltage in steps up to the end of a 450-volt scale. No subject stopped before reaching 300. 60 percent went the distance and many who stopped along the way to question the disturbing effects upon the subject, continued once absolved of responsibility.

So here we have two somewhat polar views --- belief in a God authority who demands goodness at one end and at the other a consumerist approach of being good so you get good stuff whether it be heavenly rewards or people simply treating you better.  As UUs we tend to seek compromises or a homogenization toward an approach that welcomes all and offends none….but I’m not looking for a compromise. And I found aspects of each of these views compelling in their arguments, what still remained lurking about was that there was something more - something somehow namable that calls me to goodness and perhaps others. I don’t relate to seeing it as simply a behavioral response to having people like me or getting something that I want. But I also so not relate at all to the idea of salvation and heavenly rewards. I do not believe in a punitive God of any shape. I don’t even believe in the more secular -- things happen for a reason or what comes around goes around.  I found each of these contributions to comment more on interpretations of people behaving well then as answers to the question “Why be good.”

To me, this orientation toward goodness is clearly something bigger than human thought, something preexistent in our hardwiring. It gets back to what a congregant once told me when I asked her “Why Be Good?” She answered “Because I would know” and I would be changed……..

That resonated but I needed more…..I landed with Albert Schweitzer and what he called the ‘reverence of life” He thought ethics was nothing more or less than that --- reverence of life. He came upon that thought while on an errand of mercy in Africa. He was on a boat, creeping slowly upstream following channels between sandbanks. His mind deep in thought as he scribbled disconnected sentences on sheet after sheet of paper. On the third day, quite late in the afternoon, as they wended through a herd of hippopotamuses, the phrase ‘reverence for life’ flashed, unbidden upon his mind. He wrote “the iron door had yielded: the path in the thicket had become visible.” Schweitzer also told of the discovery of a more intuitive form of this ethic when he was only seven or eight years old. One spring, a friend invited him to go to a place where they could shoot birds with a ling-shot. Though the idea was repugnant to the young Schweitzer, he went along, fearing that his friend might laugh at him if he didn’t. They found a bird singing in a tree. His companion put a stone in the leather catapult and Schweitzer, determined to be brave and manly, did the same. At that very moment the bells of the church began to ring. Schweitzer felt it was a voice from heaven, reminding him of the wrongness of senseless killing. He shooed the bird away and ran home.

Add to this imagery one of my favorite stories - that of famous UU leader Theodore Parker who tells of being 4 years old, raising a stick to strike a basking tortoise and hearing the words “it is wrong” - he runs to his mother who through tears tell shim that it is the voice that c\some people call God and others call conscience - but regardless of name, she is certain that to listen to the voice will allow it to grow stronger and stronger and it will always be present as a guide\de - and to ignore it is to lose it.

Here, finally I felt at home …could it be that simple? Why be good, she asked -- because it is wrong to behave otherwise --- is it right to be good? Well on a personal level, surely - I hear that inner voice - it speaks to n=me viscerally often. Through tears as I watch the news, through the need to face the homeless man directly in the eye as I roll down the window and offer change - or not - though the knot in my stomach when I hear of fundamentalist bashing of a peer seeking same sex marriage.

But on a public theological level we have work to do. Because the answer is not fully formed and articulated. I am pretty sure wearing t-shirts sporting Theodore parker at age four with a stick, a tortoise and a big NO sign won’t do the trick - but maybe, maybe it’s a start. We as UUS are often seen lacking a common voice or the ability to join together in theological mission…. But this spells opportunity to me.

I urge us to own this question together, to keep it here and here and here. Because to ask this question of ourselves and each other - to keep it active in our discussions, in our covenant groups, active in our parenting, in our loving, in our working, active in our voting, active in all aspects of our lives - puts us in the game - it declares us players in the larger game of serving the cause of the betterment of humanity and it does it in the name of liberal religion. If we do not gather here on Sunday mornings in agreement of this - then why are we here? What better cause do we tend?

Let me add an exclamation point to that message… by returning to the original question…… from the time she asked me, these things have hit the news:

·        A woman was trampled to death in Wal-Mart during an early bird sale of DVD players

·        A two-year old boy was killed in a case of road rage in Australia…crushed in his own driveway over an argument over a taillight

·        A professor in Claremont, CA spoke out in a forum about the need for tolerance and racial harmony and later found her tires slashed, windows broken and car looted.

·        Under the guise of girl power, a US clothing producer sold T-shirts that said “Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them”

·        A Muslim man was beaten to death in the UK by youth shouting anti-Islamic abuse at him.

·        And just last month, our own youth of color, while eating lunch outside of a conference on leadership development in Dallas, Texas had a car drive by, the occupants stick out their hands and pretend to shoot them….each one….

Why be good, she asked?  For ‘goodness sake’ ~ it’s our only hope.