The bumper sticker read: "I THINK, THEREFORE I'M DANGEROUS." I've seen it dozens of times. I'm sure you have too. But this time it was different - I was suddenly really angry. At the time I wasn't sure how I felt about that. But today I'm thinking that maybe this anger is a good thing.
But I'm ahead of myself. Let me back up.
I've talked before about how I grew up Christian and that my father was the minister of our church. What I haven't mentioned is how much I looked forward to his children's sermons. The best was his toothpaste sermon.
It began the way all his children's sermons began; he reached behind his pulpit and pulled out a crumpled up grocery bag. You always wondered, "What's in the bag?" and both children and adults couldn't wait to find out.
Bag in hand, Dad sat down on the steps to the sanctuary stage and invited all the children to come sit around him. He reached into the bag and pulled out a plate and the largest box of toothpaste you've ever seen. As he slowly opened the box and pulled out the tube, Dad talked about his recurring fantasy as a kid. Every night as he carefully squeezed out a thin line of toothpaste onto his toothbrush, an almost irresistible desire welled up inside him. He wanted nothing more than to grab that toothpaste tube with both hands and launch the paste skyward, shooting a giant glorious stream of blue goo into the air and all over the sink and mirror.
The problem was, of course, his mom. No parent would let her child get away with that. You'd have dish duty for a month. So Dad's fantasy went unfulfilled.
Until now, Dad explained. The way he figured, those childhood rules no longer applied to him as an adult. It was his toothpaste now-not his mama's-and he could do with it as he pleased. Dad then pointed out that all the parents were stuck in the pews and since we weren't under their roof, maybe some of us would like to help him liberate the paste from the tube. More than a few kids were interested! A "Lord of the Flies" moment broke out-all of us reaching in for a squeeze. In the end we had a perfect pile of glorious blue goo.
We caught our breath, contented smiles on our faces. Dad picked up the plate and looked at it. He turned and looked at the tube. Then, one by one, he looked at us kids, cleared his throat, and asked, "Now, who wants to help me put the paste back in?"
Needless to say, we didn't respond to this invitation with the same enthusiasm.
Dad smiled, put the plate on the floor and talked to us about what happens when you get mad at people, when you get in fights with others. He spoke about how easy and tempting it is to hit, call people names or place all the blame on them. But he cautioned us, encouraging us to remember that hitting and name calling and blaming it all on the other guy is kind of like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube; It's an easy thing to do, but once the toothpaste is out, it is virtually impossible to put back in and you end up with a bigger mess than you could have possibly imagined!
He ended by explaining that he was telling us this not just because he wanted to help prevent messes, but because he cared about the kind of people we would become. Most people, he said, make their choices without considering the mess, and I don't want you to be like most people.
On this, the third anniversary of the Iraq war, I find myself thinking a lot about my dad's toothpaste sermon. And frankly, it's got me all wrapped up in a tangled mix of sadness, disappointment and even fear because it seems to me that we as a country have indeed turned out to be, as my dad put it, "like most people."
I know a lot of us want to talk right now about the mess over there, but it seems as important, if not even more important, to talk about what we've become over here. As sad and frightening as the mess in Iraq is, I truly think that our cultural denial of, and blindness to, that mess should trouble us more.
I mean, here we are, a country that celebrates "progress" when the number of attacks on coalition troops and the number of Iraqi civilians killed and injured has risen steadily for the past four months, when kidnappings of Iraqi children now outpace the number of new seats in Iraqi classrooms, when assasinations and reprisal killings now outpace the number of new hospital beds.
Here we are, a country whose newspapers describe Americans as "welcomed and loved" by Iraqis, when Iraqi and European newspapers point out that half the Iraqis believe that attacks on American troops are justified, and eight in ten strongly oppose our troops' presence in their country.
Here we are, a country that easily accepted the idea that once Saddam was gone, national unity would be easy to achieve, despite the fact that every military assessment and academic study of the past 20 years has described Iraq as a country of three antagonistic, hostile groups artificially held together by the brute force of Saddam Hussein's regime.
We tell ourselves we are a peaceful nation and yet completely ignore the fact that that our soldiers are stationed in more than 75 countries and our military budget exceeds those of the next 13 nations combined.
We reassure ourselves with the figure of "only" 2000 soldiers dead, but fail to mention the 20,000 seriously injured or the estimated 50,000 who will need long-term treatment for psychological damage.
And we pass with ease a national budget that contains the largest defense budget ever with only a brief mention that it also includes the largest national deficit in years and reductions in every single human service budget that exists.
How is this possible?!
Really?! I mean, when did this occur? How did this happen to us? How did we become a people so oblivious to the mess?! How did we become a people whose actions are so disconnected from an awareness and acknowledgement of their consequences?!
Well, they lied to us, right? That, so far, seems to be the answer with the most traction these days. The messes are off our radar screens because they've kept them hidden from us. Second place, I think it is fair to say, goes to the "scared defense." We've become a culture of fear, this line of reasoning goes, and thus we can't really handle news about the messes out there. We don't want to hear about the problems that are occurring or might occur, we just want to hear assurances that everything will be alright. And third is "the revenge explanation." From this perspective, the messes are beside the point; we just want to see somebody pay immediately, no matter what it costs.
Unquestionably, all three of these explanations are pieces of the puzzle, and yet this week I haven't been able to get that bumper sticker out of my mind. I imagine the owner of the bumper sticker meant it as a proud statement about him or herself, but I read it as a statement about us, a statement about how we've allowed thinking, questioning, doubting to become a dangerous thing in our society, rather than an essential thing or an American thing. And so, while I am sure that the presence of liars, fear and revenge explains a lot about what's going on today, I can't help but wonder if it's not the absence of doubt that is more significant. For I just can't see how liars, fear and revenge would have misled and blinded us so badly if a commitment to doubt and raising questions had been on the scene.
None of us, I think, expects our ministers to be historians, but every minister will tell you that it's history, often even more than theology, that explains who we are and who we are called to be. I've been taken lately with those historians who suggest that the story of America, at least the story of America since the beginning of the 20th century, is best told as the story of two competing definitions of "the good American." To be an American, they say is to be caught in an often maddening push and pull between the duty to doubt and the duty to be loyal-between "American as doubter" and "American as loyalist." It is the wrestling match, these historians say, that determines so much of everything else.
One of my favorite historians, Jennifer Michael Hecht, does a wonderful job of pointing out how, at the beginning of the 20th century, doubt was the most popular kid on the American block. And she illustrates this by telling a story about dance, of all things. She reminds us that at the beginning of the century there were two major dance crazes, first the cakewalk and then the turkey trot. The cakewalk originated in the African-American slave experience. It was an energetic and bold dance designed to mock the formal strut of the dances once favored by slave owners. The turkey trot was also energetic and joyful, but also just plain silly, with dancers having to hop around four times on each foot. It became a craze mainly because the Vatican denounced it.
Both of these dances, Hecht notes, celebrated not rebelliousness so much as the right and importance of doubting and challenging authority. Both of them promoted doubting the status quo as the primary way freedom-as in the case of slavery, and enlightenment-as in the case of the Vatican, survive. And not only did these dances represent doubt as a positive force, but Hecht also stresses that both were embraced as quintessentially "American" dances. Regardless of class, race, ethnicity or political affiliation, everyone got in on the act. These dances became for a time one of the primary ways people expressed their unity in the midst of diversity. We all may look, talk and even think differently, but we share a common task as Americans, the dances seemed to say-the task of celebrating and enacting the right and significance of doubting authority and custom.
And yet, here's the tragic part of the story. Hecht says that this was the last time that the idea of "American as Doubter" was so universally celebrated. The next chapter in our national story, as she and many other historians have documented, is dominated not by the feeling and values of dance, but by the feeling and values of war, particularly the Cold War with the Soviet Union. There is no way, historians say, to minimize the deep effect the cold war had on our culture. All wars lift up the value of loyalty over the value of doubt, they say, but the Cold War was unique; the Cold War used the value of loyalty to destroy the value of doubt. This was, after all, not just a war against another country, but a crusade on behalf of ideas. In this context, doubt wasn't just a lesser value, it was the enemy. If you raised questions about God or capitalism, you weren't an individual speaking your mind; you were a heretic and a national threat. Suddenly, doubt wasn't the means to protect freedom and truth; loyalty was.
Here's how the great progressive historian Howard Zinn sums up this legacy of the Cold War. Of all the passages I have read over the past few weeks, this is the one that haunts and challenges me most:
"During the Cold War--make no mistake--the faith of America shifted from trusting the power that comes from questioning authority to trusting the power found in standing behind authority; and from this shift, we have yet to recover!"
Friends, if there is a single line that explains why our country has been so unable to prevent-or even see-the messes that are upon us, this is most certainly it.
(Now I see how depressed your faces look, so let me quickly say that this is the "downer" insight of the sermon. Here's the hopeful one...)
Besides explaining what's happened to our country, I think Howard Zinn's line also outlines what we need and can do as a religion. Indeed, recovering from the shift that Zinn talks about is, in my mind, exactly what religion at its best is all about.
You all know that I'm not a theist, and yet I have no problem whatsoever admitting that it is my theist friends that most often help keep me clear about the central task of religion. My church history professor from divinity school articulated it best. He explained to us that theism has been understood and used in two very different ways. The first way is the most straightforward: it treats theism as an assertion that there is a God. The second way is more subtle: it treats theism as an assertion and a reminder that we human beings are not God! We may not have much of a clue about who or what God is, this perspective says, but we do at least know one thing: It sure as heck isn't us! My professor said that, in his opinion, it was this second way of understanding theism that explains its persistent survival. In other words, above all else we human beings continue to keep God-talk around not so much because it tells us the clear truth about transcendent reality but because it tells us the truth about us!
Another way to put this is to say that the religious task is not about eliciting confidence so much as eliciting humility. Its job is not to win unquestioning loyalty to a particular idea so much as it is to remind us that all ideas are incomplete and flawed and thus always in need of questioning-as are the leaders who advocate those ideas.
It is a job that is desperately needed today, especially if we are to have any hope of seeing, cleaning up and avoiding our messes.
And as Kaaren mentioned at the beginning our service today, it is also a job that is uniquely Unitarian Universalist. So, friends, let's get to it.
Amen.
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