On October 2, 1983, I preached a sermon from this pulpit entitled, "A Self-Correcting Faith: Of Typewriters, Computers and Religion." It was the dawn of the computer age - the church had just acquired its first PC. I was skeptical. After all, I already had the ultimate writing machine - an IBM Selectric 2 typewriter with an erase feature by which I could backspace to an error and lift it off with correction tape at the mere strike of a key. Nonetheless, I first loathed, then pitied, then embraced this onslaught of technology. I determined to draw a parallel between my typewriter, its computer challenger and the dynamic of the liberal religious faith. After all, I had heard religion described as the "self-correcting discipline of the human spirit."[1]
Never having used a computer before, I had a crash course Friday morning before the Sunday service and then, throwing caution to the wind, set the computer on a table beside the pulpit to demonstrate the inherent tendency of Unitarian Universalism to be a self-correcting faith. I would type out a theological belief I once entertained, then delete it and enter a newly-won theological insight. This would be a graphic demonstration of how our faith encourages people to grow in the light of new experience.
However, I both underestimated the difficulty of computing and overestimated my own capacity to learn. The result was a near-homiletical disaster, as I somehow induced a computer crash in front of the whole congregation. The language I was tempted to use on that occasion only serves to remind me there are many times when very colorful theological language is heard around computers - some quite sacred - some quite profane.
Undeterred by the knowledge that at times preaching is the triumph of hope over experience, I once again compare the technological with the theological. How is Unitarian Universalism like a computer and how is it not? Some may object to using a technological metaphor in a spiritual context - just one more capitulation to the machine. On the contrary. The machine in this instance is designed after the designer.
There are simultaneously striking likenesses and differences in the metaphors of computer and Unitarian Universalism. Take the story of a father with a family counselor: "We're worried about our son, 12. We've bought him a P.C., big Ram, CD super pack Windows, voice-Fax-Modem - Pentium, Internet access, own website, big speakers and all he wants to do is draw and write with pencil and paper."[2]
That boy shows an independence of spirit that marks the Unitarian Universalist when we are at our best - our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every human being.
Unitarian Universalism is a counter-culture in which we refuse to give up human reality to the virtual reality of easy answers to hard questions about life;After all, as the late A. Powell Davies once rightly said, "Life is our only chance to grow a soul."
we challenge the impersonality of an age which renders human suffering as abstraction;
we insist on the integrity of personal human experience filtered through mind and soul, rather than canned religion that is little more than disguised self-seeking;
we demand what Ralph Waldo Emerson called "an original experience of the universe," unfiltered by bible, priest or church;
we reject salvation by technique, insisting that our quest be humanly real.
That same independent spirit is exhibited by the cartoon character Hobbes in this exchange with Calvin: Calvin says: "In the future, everything will be effortless! Computers will take care of every task. We'll just point to what we want done and click. We'll never need to leave the climate-controlled comfort of our homes. No nuisance, no wasted time, no annoying human interaction..." Hobbes: counters, "...No life." Calvin: "Life is too inconvenient."
Life is inconvenient, no doubt about it. It is messy. It is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and surrounded by a quandary, all in the shape of a question mark. It is often more question than answer, more doubt than faith. It is defined by contradiction, paradox, ambivalence and oxymoron. That is why human beings invented religion - to try to figure it all out. And that need has brought us here this morning.
Unitarian Universalism is fraught with risk - it is a spirituality of risk because the future is open. And anyone knows that operating a computer is likewise risky business. When one leaves the world of the typewriter and enters into the mysteries of the computer, one never knows quite what to expect. Computing, like liberal religion, is an adventure.
The dangers of our being totally seduced by our technological prowess are easily caricatured. A mother was teaching her 3-year-old daughter the Lord's Prayer. For several evenings at bedtime she repeated it after her mother. One night she said she was ready to solo. The mother listened with pride as she carefully enunciated each word right up to the end, "Lead us not into temptation," she prayed, "but deliver us from E-mail. Amen." Don't we wish?
Being "on-line" today seems to be as common as getting out of bed in the morning. It is quite incredible to think that with the flick of a switch and a few taps on a keyboard millions of sources of information and billions of pages of data are only seconds away. It may interest you to know that the inventor of the World Wide Web was Tim Berners-Lee - a Unitarian Universalist layman from suburban Boston. Wouldn't you know?[3]
However, our Unitarian Universalist passion for the democratic method in human relations shows through as Berners-Lee discusses the relationship between his new-found religion and the World Wide Web, which he conceived in 1991 before he found us. When asked why he did not copyright the Web as a private system and become a multi-millionaire, he said, "The only way the World Wide Web would have taken off was as a totally open, free system. Any attempt to claim intellectual property would have killed it and has killed other projects in the past and will kill other projects in the future."[4] Unitarian Universalism has a radical commitment to the democratic process in human relations, an inherent sense of protest against hierarchy, an infinite trust in the capacity of human beings to think for themselves, and belief in a free and open religious system.
The World Wide Web has other liberal religious implications, illustrated in a Hi and Lois cartoon in which teen age son Chip and a friend are lying under a tree beneath the stars. The friend asks profoundly: "Do you believe there's an all-powerful, all-knowing force in the universe?" Chip: "Sure. It's called the 'Internet.'"
That image of the Internet points to another of our principles. Being "on line" technically is not quite as marvelous as being "on-line" theologically, feeling oneself a part of that "interdependent web of all existence" of which we are a tiny, but significant part. As access to the Internet and the World Wide Web makes us feel like all-powerful knowledge workers; access to our liberal religious faith makes us feel humble before the vastness and complexity of the cosmos. We don't want to settle for a god who has the remarkable faculty of always agreeing with us.
Nor does being "on-line" in the computer sense fully convey the sense of being humanly "on-line" in liberal religion. To illustrate. You may know that Gary Trudeau of "Doonesbury" fame once roomed with Scott McClennan, a Unitarian Universalist minister and chaplain at Tufts University. Rev. Scott Sloan is loosely based on my colleague.
Chaplain Scotty is showing Joanie around the Little Church of Walden: "Let me show you around, Joanie! There've been lots of changes at the Little Church of Walden. The old house is used for our spiritual wellness seminars and various 12-step recovery programs... in the new wings, we have a food court, a fitness center, and our interpretive dance studios." Joanie, "Um, where do people worship?" Scottie: "On our web site. Keeps the heating bills down."
What is offered here is not an isolated spirituality with "individual comfort zones," but a communal experience of individuals accepting one another and encouraging each other in spiritual growth.
There is no substitute for a worshipping community;
there is no substitute for a community of the dialogue;
there is no substitute for a community of moral discourse and social action.
Virtual spirituality is simply not real. Unitarian Universalism, for all its faults, and they are many, is real - real people wrestling with real problems, celebrating real values.
I liken this congregation to a communal computer into which each of us plugs our individual terminals. The living tradition which we share becomes a spiritual search engine to surf the net for the best in human religion. In this image the whole church becomes a vast data bank of human experience from which we may draw. In the upper right hand corner of our screen is the "Help" button - for we are a radically interdependent community - cherishing our personal autonomy, but knowing always we are also members of a sharing and caring community. In our spiritual cyberspace, you'll never have to click alone.
That help button on my computer is a question mark icon, for we are born with questions marks in our heads - here is where we come to find help in asking the right questions and seeking the best answers. Sunday morning is one vital time during which one floppy disk of human experience called a sermon is put on the screen for all to read. One may cut, copy, delete or recycle what is there; and here one can always hit the "reply" button.
Anyone who has been on-line, or even those of you who think on-line has something to do with hanging clothes out to dry, knows of the ubiquitous chat rooms. But while the computer is an impersonal communications device, and while chat rooms are distant connections among people, our chat rooms are up-front and personal.
In a society whose technology can cause withdrawal from human interaction, our church encourages and enables face-to-face conversation about the deepest realms of human experience.
In this Unitarian Universalist congregation one can dig into the problems of personal theology, share with others how we negotiate the seasons of living, celebrate the values experiences of life with others, discern our moral responsibility for the wider community. I doubt any chat room can duplicate our intense sharing of personal religious experiences.
Max Frisch expressed the danger of technically enamored society when he said, "Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."[5]
I was reminded of this problem a few years ago at the hub of the hub of the liberal religious universe - Unitarian Universalist Association headquarters at 25 Beacon Street in Boston. Accompanying our Religion in Life Seminar on a pilgrimage, I heard a communications expert on staff speak of home pages, the World Wide Web, the Internet. And then the coup de gras - he remarked how many of those in our denomination's technological network listed Unitarian Universalism on their home page as their hobby. Think about it! Faith is more than a hobby. If we spend more time playing with technological toys than fashioning our faith, we are in deep trouble.
Rather than thinking of religion as a hobby, we might borrow from computer language and celebrate the value of a spiritual homepage - some starting point for understanding our spiritual journey. In Unitarian Universalism there is no single spiritual homepage to which all relate - no creed or dogma or catechism which defines each of us to which every one of us must subscribe.
Each of us has our own spiritual homepage - that basic core of convictions which defines who we are and where we wish to go and what we want to do with our lives. Like its computer parallel, this homepage is open to change - and it is public - we are not ashamed of our root beliefs and are willing to share them with the wider world.
It is said that information on-line is doubling every 8 months. That can be stimulating. It can be daunting. It can be utterly discouraging. I despair of trying to learn the tiniest fraction there is to know about any area of human endeavor. But I have learned not to care. A merely well-informed person is a spiritual bore. What is of far more importance is being able to integrate what we do know about life and death, right and wrong, joy and sorrow, and fashion from it a faith that will sustain us through the good times and the bad times.
To be sure the computer gives one the fantastic advantage of being able to express one's most striking insight, one's most deeply felt emotion, one's most powerful experience, one's most steadfastly-held faith - reflect upon it, interpret it and modify one's convictions - before printing. Given my atrocious handwriting, I personally find this technical capacity indispensable.
However, the process of writing, the efficient instrumentality, the ease of creation, the method, is no substitute for content. We sometimes confuse our proficiency and efficiency at writing words with the quality of the words themselves. Some have suggested that the quality of writing is in inverse proportion to the ease with which it is done.
Unitarian Universalism invites the writer - in this case - the seeker/believer - to express all that is within one - of beliefs, convictions, values - without fear of judgment. The beauty of the faith, however, is that one is not limited to what was once thought, to what was believed by someone else in a former time, to the orthodoxy of the day. There is a soaring freedom to compose a life and to make adjustments along the way.
We have our own delete, undo, redo, recycle, copy, cut and paste features. Perhaps most important of all , there is in our faith always the "retry" command. The future is open. Homo sapiens is a self-correcting creature - endowed with infinite capacity for religious growth. And what are computers but electro-mechanical entities with correcting programs we have built into them because we know we are finite?
The danger, of course, is that we are so tentative, so afraid to decide, that we keep revising and never print out our credo - our personal faith. Liberal religion is not indefinite suspension of belief as one sits at one's theological keyboard. We need to learn that occasional print-outs are necessary to denote the resting places - places where we take our stands - along the religious way.
The computer provides us practically infinite possibilities for creation and communication. By the same token, a liberal religious faith provides an infinite range of religious possibilities in building a theology, creating a religious philosophy. The word processor practically begs one to write; the Unitarian Universalist faith practically begs one to create convictions which guide one's life. After all, religion is a self-correcting discipline of the human spirit.
And so, my fellow seekers,
May all your files be not so much big as bold;
May all your web sites be found and abound with wisdom;
May you scan the wisdom of the ages and this congregation into your own hard drive;
May you print out only the distilled wisdom of your innermost being;
May you be able to reboot from confusion to courage;
May you not overload your memory and ask too much of yourself;
May the screen of your mind and heart never go blank;
May all your chat rooms be face to face;
May you find the "undo" command from time to time without embarrassment;
May you tap resources of the cosmos even more powerful than the internet;
May you not overload your system or try to hold up the whole sky alone;
May the networks of this community of faith never be down.
May your memory of the delights of life abide with you always;
May your databank of wisdom and compassion always be accessible;
But most of all, may you be centered on your spiritual homepage
May it see you through the good times and the bad, even when you have forgotten everything else said on this Sabbath morning.
You may now turn off your computer, but not your spirit. Amen.
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