A Reasonable hope for our time

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Part of Panorama

Title: A Reasonable hope for our time
Creator: Pierce, Richard D.
Language: English
Year: 1968
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Abstract: This thoughtful paper is a remarkable expression of what may be called the way, the truth, and the light.
Fulltext: ■ This thoughtful paper is a remarkable expression of what may be called the way, the truth, and the light, A REASONABLE HOPE FOR OUR TIME Ten days ago I was stand ing in the midst of the Amazon Jungle three hun dred miles south of the Equator. There were seven of us who had set out to visit a settlement of the Yagua Indians who inhabit the forest areas along the Amazon River. Our bare footed guide, himself a half breed, after leading us through underbrush which he cut as he went along with his- machete finally located the little clearing where one lone family of the Yaguas was living. The fam ily consisted of the parents, four children, and a motherin-law; their worldly pos sessions comprised three iron pots, a couple of hammocks, a blow gun with a quiver of poisoned darts, a few scraps of coloured cloth, and a jar of red paint with which they proceeded to decorate one of our party as a special sign of favour. Their shelter was freshly cut from native tree branches; their food ap peared to be a few fruits on a rack and a fish which was roasting in a banana leaf over the embers of a fire. We were seven; they were seven — nothing ex cept our common humanity made us kin — neither language, nor custom, nor civilization. We had expec ted to find ten times their number in an established village, but we were to learn that whenever a death oc curs the entire camp is abandoned and the huts burned to the ground lest the evil spirits pursue the survivors. There apparently is no doubt in their minds but that there are evil spi rits and that malicious spirits will do them evil. They are fearless as they pursue the jaguar and tiger through the forest with their slender 18 Panorama poisoned reeds, and as they paddle blithely along the Amazon in their fragile canoes knowing full well that the river is ready to swallow them up and the man-eating piranha is ines capable. Of these things, they have little fear, and in dealing with them they have much knowledge; of the evil spirits, they have great fear, and in dealing with them they doubtless think that they also have great know ledge. It is apparent, however, from our point of view, that in everyday life they act upon one kind of/ knowledge and in their religious life they operate upon a second k;nd. The knowledge and skill bv which they not only tnrn the steaming jungle to the *piirn®ses of nourishment and . shelter but even fathom out the secrets of medicine from the herbs of the field and the trees of the forest — in this they act upon the same principles and by the same methods as rational men everywhere;—and given the same facts and ex perience, we and they would doubtless find little upon which to disagree. In the realm of the spirit world, however, it is doubtful whe ther many rational men would arrive at a common agreement with them. The Greeks made a care ful distinction between know ledge and opinion — beween that which was veri fiable and that which was based upon feeling or im pression. Indeed, for that matter, so have all intelligent men, and all of us know that the hottest arguments arise in those areas where men have the strongest opinions and the least specific knowledge. Not all conflicts, to be sure, have arisen from faultv knowledge, but not a few of the bitter controversies in politics and religion have found their support more from the ignorance of men than from their enlighten ment. And yet men must have opinions for there are manv relevant areas of life in which we must act without suffi cient knowledge and for which there can be no post ponement. Indeed, some sort of faith is an essential to existence as is the body of May 1968 19 verifiable knowledge requi site to rational daily living. I gather that except that each of us assembled here this morning felt the need of and had some intimations of the nature of faith we would hardly have left our com fortable homes to gather here. Faith may be, some times has been, and; perhaps often is a lazy substitute for hard-headed thinking and wrestling with cold realities but it is far more than what and it is relevant even to the 20th century scientific man. Much faith has, indeed, been shallow and oftentimes we have told men to have faith when we couldn’t think of anything else to tell them. Some of us will recall Calvin Coolidge’s pat exhortation to HAVE FAITH IN MASSA CHUSETTS when some of us would have preferred that he should have attempted to tell us what kind of Massa chusetts he was offering us to have faith in. My topic this morning isA REASONABLE HOPE FOR OUR TIME. In a sense, I, too, am urging you to have faith in our time, our world, our society — but I hope it will not be a shallow faith nor an unrealistic one. To be sure, we could exhaust the remainder of the hour in enumerating all the reasons for abandoning hope in our time. We could recall the war in Vietnam, the crime in our cities, the corruption in our politics, the indifference of our people to social issues, the lost college generation with its hippies and addic tion to drugs, the bitter ten sions of civil rights and black power — all these and more can neither be dismissed nor brought under immediate so lution. Yet it would be more unreasonable to be hopeless than to affirm our conviction in the ultimate triumph of righteousness. The fact is that the plusses still out number the minuses else the social order would have crumbled and we would in deed be in the midst of anarchy; crime is still news worthy because it is ex ceptional, unusual and con trary to the usual order of events. It may be small com fort to affirm that there is more good than evil abroad in the land and in the world, and that most men whether 20 Panorama they be Yagua Indians on the Amazon or neighbours in Back Bay are more friendly than unfriendly, and more to be trusted than feared most of the time. Yet, from this modest premise we can build our statelier mansions of faith, and upon these founda tions we can build our castles of hope. I discern, however, a num ber of false hopes in our time and I believe we should examine them candidly and dismiss them before they dis illusion us. There is in the minds of many men the hope of uni formity — that somehow the day will come when all men, presumably by the process of education and yet of their own free’will, will come to think and act alike. In re ligion they will all be good Unitarians, or Catholics, or Baptists, or whatever our own preference in these mat ters; in politics they will instinctively adhere to the right issues and parties; in taste they will enjoy the same music, the same art, the same recreations. In short, it is xery difficult for most of us to accept the fact that other individuals can possibly dif fer from us in an essential matter except it be from ig norance, stupidity, or per verseness. Another heresy of our time is like unto the first, namely the false hope of conformity. If men will not or cannot honestly arrive at the same convictions in all matters es sential, then we like to be lieve that somehow a false uniformity may be achieved by imposing a gentle or less gentle conformity. The pres sures to conform are not the same in our generation as those of the Spanish Inquisi tion or Puritan New Eng land, but they are not absent and the flower people, if they have a message for our age, may be just saying this— to remind us that the pres sures to conform are real and sometimes oppressive. Another heresy of our time is the ecumenical move ment because, I believe, it is a false hope. Good Chris tian people, recalling all the bickerings, the bloody reli gious wars, the useless theo logical squabbles, are decided that Christianity should bury its differences and strive for May 1968 21 uniformity and conformity, the better to propagate its doctrines and to defend itself against the indifference and hostility of a secular age. Our orthodox friends are un dergoing much soul searching and agony of spirit as they struggle to reduce the peculi arities of their own particu lar tradition into conformity with a single statement of faith and common creed, losing much, I believe, of the richness of their religious heritage in the process. These are hopes of our time — in politics, in socie ty, in religion. I have called them heresies because I am convinced that they are false hopes and will neither be achieved, nor is it desirable that they should be realized. It is not bad that men should think differently, that they should act differently, that they should believe different ly. It is bad that they should fight with each other, that they should hate, that they should be uncharitable and dishonest with one another. BUT THESE ARE DIF FERENT MATTERS. But there are real and reasonable hopes in our time — positive signs of pro mise and faith. There is the hope of the unity of understanding. We live in a marvelous era of communication and enlight enment. Many of our grand parents lived lives of extra ordinary isolation; — or if not our own grandparents, the generations immediately behind them — they seldom traveled, they read little more than local news, they had only the foggiest notions of what life was like outside their own section of the United States, much less the rest of the world. In fact, it didn’t really make much difference anyway, for the United States had not yet be come a world power and they, as individuals were not likely to affect many people outside their own community. Today, there is no isolation; indeed, there is no escape. I have heard American jazz in the Sahara Desert and the Amazon valley. Radio has brought, sound, and television has brought images into the most remote community — thousands upon thousands have traversed the globe either as civilians or to even 22 Panorama more remote areas in military service. We do not have Wendell Wilkie’s one world politically, but we are mov ing forward to one world of understanding, if it be true that knowledge and expe rience make for understand ing and sympathy. What age has even approached the degree of knowledge of its peoples of one another, or when have more diverse in dividuals been brought into contact one with another? And then there is the hope for the unity of good will. Here we need perhaps a higher degree of faith for not all we behold on the face of the earth is in the nature of good will. I believe, how ever, there is more good will abroad among men today thari ever before. There have been foreign mission aries in other centuries and thev have served selflessly and with devotion; but what age has ever before seen a Marshall Plan, or a Peace Corps, or organized political concern for the oppressed. Civil rights, fair housing, desegregation—perhaps some of these issues are too precipitantly launched — but who can say that they are not evidence of a unity of good will unparalleled in our history. Understanding and good will are the foundations of any reasonable hope for the present or the future. But more than this, there must also be a unity of MUTUAL RESPECT. Men will not arrive at uniformity nor will they conform for any ex tended time. Nor will men really succeed in reducing the diversity of Christian ex perience to an ecumenical unity. Nor is it perhaps de sirable that any of these thoughts should be brought to pass. The Unitarian movement is an' attempt to incorporate into a religious institution the ideas which I have been discussing this morning. It has always striven to be hard headed and rational, but it is as aware as any church that men do not live by bread alone. We, as members of this liberal tradition, have never claimed that ours is the only road to salvation or, per haps, the right road for many May 1968 23 people. We have ever sus pected uniformity and con formity in life and doctrine, and we have not so much opposed creeds and forms because of our suspicion of their validity, as from our fear that they may stifle the believer in his personal search after truth. It is not without pain that we suffer fools gladly within our move ment and without it, but the same charity that we ask for ourselves must perforce be extended to the most bizarre individualist or the most rigid institutionalist, provided he be sincere and honest in his profession. Our own move ment is blessed with diversity and no One can claim that our strength lies in conform ity (and uniformity. There is a rational hope for the year that lies before us and for the unfolding pro gress of man. But that hope will be realized only as men and women, like ourselves, believe and accept the chal lenge to make the world bet ter for their having lived in it. The apostle Paul may have been a poor theologian when he tried to deal with sin and election, but he ne ver discerned the spirit of the universe better than when he reminds us that we are co workers together with God in the building of the king dom of the spirit. Let us, therefore, take courage with that which has been achieved, fall to the task of the pre sent, and be of good cheer for the future.—By Reverend Richard D. Pierce, S.T.M., Ph.D., LL.D. LOYALTY TO PROFESSION Every man owes some of his time to the up-building of the profession to which he belongs. — Theodore Roosevelt 24 Panorama