Why I Question Everything?

For many who voted for Al Gore, George W. Bush is a nightmare. It's sort of a replay in reverse of the scenario when Bill Clinton was elected––if you voted for his opponent, you likely saw Clinton as the very devil.
Whether you agree with how it was done or not, as you sit here this morning, do you feel relief that Saddam Hussein is gone?
In the months leading up to this war, I found myself depoloring many of our tactics and seriously questioning our motives. Yet I have to say, I am glad Saddam is history.
People demonized Clinton––he was evil incarnate. Now, millions demonize President Bush. But regardless of whether I may disagree with a great many things about Clinton or Bush, can I pull back enough from my opinions, and for a moment question not either Clinton or Bush, but myself?
I believe that questioning ourselves about how we view another saves us from demonizing them––and that's something I don't want to do to any human being. Our very first principle as Unitarian Universalists is that we uphold the worth and dignity of all.
What I'm concerned with here this morning isn't who's right or wrong, or whose "side" you were on in this election, but how any of us regard those with whom we disagree. To question, to discuss––this is healthy. To demonize isn't.
A lot of people want to voice an opinion, but few really question. For instance, oilman Joe Kelly Butler was anxious about the progress of a newly hired, inexperienced man on one of his oil rigs.  Butler approached him, midway through his first shift, and asked, “Are you catching on all right?”
“Yep.”
“Do you have any questions about our operation?”
“Nope.”
“Son,” Butler said sternly, “I’ve been in this business for 35 years and I learn something new every day!”
“Well, don’t you let that bother you none,” the new man said encouragingly. “Some people are just that way.”
When it comes to their beliefs, whether political or religious, millions are just that way.
I was one of them.  I grew up with ideas about God and faith, and it never occurred to me to question them.  I mean, use the word "God," and we all know what we are talking about, don't we?  Or the word faith . . . we all know what faith is, surely?
Like that recruit on the oil rig, it's when you assume you know that you don't let questions bother you none. You imagine the pope, the saints, the apostles got it right.  The man who wrote more of the Christian Scriptures than anybody else, Saint Paul . . . he certainly knew, didn't he?
Well, maybe not.  Probably the most famous piece he ever wrote is the one you hear all the time at weddings––you know: "If I speak in the tongues of angels, but do not love, I am nothing. Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
The part you won't hear, which comes right in the middle of this statement about love, is, "As for knowledge it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end."
You mean the inspired Saint Paul only saw a partial picture––that many things he took for granted could well be wrong and fade with the coming of greater understanding? His thoughts about women, for example, or about gay people.
Paul was in no doubt about his limited insight. "For now we see in a mirror, dimly," he admitted. I have to add, when it came to issues such as women and slavery and gay people, pretty dimly indeed.
He continued, "Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." The things that seem so obvious to us are like peering through the darkly tinted glass of a sedan, trying to make out the driver's face. It's a very limited experience compared with finally encountering the person face-to-face.
In this beautiful prose that's used for weddings, Paul says, "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways." What you believe may well be infantile, he's saying. Unless you consciously mature in your spirituality, you're likely clinging to ideas that furnish the kind of comfort children seek––beliefs equivalent to Linus' blanket.
It's a question of whether I have the integrity to face up to a view of an issue that, while it may be the opposite of what I have always thought, ought to be considered. Can I hear the person, wear his or her moccasins for a little while? Or do I simply rebut?
It's because even the most enlightened of us sees only a part of the picture that we need to keep questioning. So, about the time you figure you've got it all sorted out––you know, you're a UU now, enlightened and all that! . . . that's when a fresh charge of curiosity is called for. Because as you peer through the tinted glass, you're going to see some things that I won't see, and I'm going to make out features that will escape you. This is why a diversity of viewpoints is so essential––why we must dialogue, and hear each other's different "take" . . . and each other's questions. If we someday finally come face-to-face with reality, we'll both realize how limited our vision was. We'll discover that, in so many cases, when we thought we had the answers, the truth was we hadn't even heard the questions!
That humans view reality from a variety of vantages, all of them through a darkly tinted window, is reason to be tolerant of each other's perspectives. Which is why Saint Paul plants his argument that we have to grow up in our understanding firmly in the soil of love. His topic isn't romantic love, which is how this piece of prose is almost always used, but the fact people can't get along with each in their spiritual community, and he is advocating tolerance of each other's different views. Spirituality isn't about beliefs. It's the ability to be patient with those who don't "get it" like you think you do––tolerant of those who see things differently, accepting of a diversity of viewpoints.
But tolerance doesn't mean I act like I agree with you and never challenge you. It isn't pretending we all see things the same. On the contrary, it's precisely because we differ that we need tolerance. Tolerance is accepting we don't see things at all alike. It's the ability to hang onto yourself and not become defensive over an opposing view.
Saying that all viewpoints are valid, all paths equal, is I think either an excuse for intellectual laziness because we don't want to bother to investigate . . . or for stupidity. Like two leaders who were bragging about their followers. The first said, "If I pointed to the north and said, 'Go,' my people would––even over a cliff." The David Koresh's of the world, the Hale Bopps, the Jim Joneses––people follow them over the cliff. But the second leader said, "If I pointed north, all my people would respectfully redirect me northeast or northwest, so we'd miss that cliff." As Thomas Huxley said in the eighteen hundreds, "Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority." Tolerance loves people, and therefore challenges them.
Moving toward a deeper experience of the mystery of our existence requires continually challenging certainty with curiosity. As Albert Einstein once said, "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
So if you were once a theist, and you questioned your theism and are now more of an atheist, are you still questioning? Do you now also question your atheism?
And if you were once an atheist, and now you've become a theist, do you continue to question your theism?
It takes courage to say forthrightly, "I don't know." I applaud Annie Dillard, who admits in For the Time Being, "I don't know beans about God." I can echo that. It's good to hit the occasional speed bump––healthy to at times throw up your hands and admit you're perplexed.
The most important area in which I need a holy curiosity is my belief in my own objectivity. If I imagine myself sincere, a thinker, a seeker, the more likely I am to end up cock sure––especially on the things I think I've studied and have a real knowledge of. So I must always question my viewpoint, doubt my conclusions, and examine myself. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." If I don't have integrity when it comes to questioning the core beliefs that drive me, then what pray tell do I regard as sacred?
So let me pull all this together by returning to where I began––with a political figure. In this case, Al Gore. There's none so sure-sounding as politicians, so they serve well as symbols of the need to question everything . . . absolutely everything.
Word went around that Al Gore claimed to have founded the internet. Maybe he never actually said that, but that's the way many heard it. Well, how would you know whether he in fact did or didn't found the internet?
The philosopher Rodan of Alexandria said way back in the first century, "Only a brave person is willing to honestly admit, and fearlessly face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers." Being a curious person, with a sincere and hopefully logical mind, I have done some personal investigation of this internet matter. So now I ask you to fearlessly face what my sincere and logical mind has dug up concerning what the internet itself reveals about its own origin.
It turns out that in ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com.
She said unto Abraham her husband, "Why doest thou travel far from town to town with thy goods when thou canst trade without ever leaving thy tent?"
    And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, dear?"
And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)." 
Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. The drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent.
But this success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabea did secret himself inside Abraham's drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young man did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to horse flesh.
And, before very long, there were many others and they were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short. And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums, that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates' drumheads and drumsticks.    
Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others." And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel––or as it came to be known, "eBay," he said, "we need a name that reflects what we are," and Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators."
"YAHOO!" said Abraham.
And that is how it all began––it wasn't Al Gore after all.
The lesson is, tolerate everyone, but don't trust anyone––including yourself. Which both Al and his opponent have been learning, as revealed in events of a month ago. You see, Al was voted onto the board of Apple Computer. This definitely shows he's finally wising up in the computer world. But President Bush is wising up too––he's demanded an Apple board vote recount!  
There's a Zen saying, "Small doubt, small enlightenment; great doubt, great enlightenment." Doubt your ideas––question everything. Invite dialogue with different viewpoints. Go out of your way to hear a different "take."
Most of all, doubt yourself––especially your need to feel that, now that you're a UU and have been straightened out, you've got it together.
For as Kahlil Gibran said so insightfully, it's only "when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb."