Living in the Questions

"Do not search for answers to be given to you; if given, they would be of no use, for you could not live them. For the present, live in the questions, and little by little, and almost unconsciously, you will enter the answers and live them also." -Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke’s claim that we should live in the questions has always seemed sensible to me. After all, none of the great religious questions: why was I born? why must I die? what is the meaning of life? is there a God? are answerable, that is, none of the answers is provable, in any empirical, scientific way. Or, perhaps, one should say that they are not answerable with any degree of certainty. Certainty isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Answers can certainly be given: but, for me, at least, the answers are not particularly satisfying. The questions, on the other hand, have always fascinated me.

Growing up as a Unitarian, and later as a Unitarian Universalist, I was always encouraged to ask questions. You know the famous joke about Unitarian Universalists, that they go around burning question marks on people’s lawns? Like all such jokes--like most stereotypes--this one contains a kernel of truth. We do believe that the questions are at least as important as the answers. And, I would venture to say, most of us either enjoy the questioning or are at least comfortable with the idea that there are no final answers to life’s most important questions.

Unitarian Universalism isn’t for everyone. Not everyone likes uncertainty, and not everyone is interested in the questions. Lots of people, obviously, and despite Rilke’s claim, are perfectly content to accept the answers that they are given, and, I would argue, some even find them useful. We UU’s, on the other hand, are part of that small minority of folks who can’t or don’t.

That isn’t to say that we don’t find at least some answers that are useful. It just means that, generally speaking, we are not content to rest in those answers. We believe that religion is a way, and not a stopping place. Religion is a process. We believe in the never-ending quest for truth and meaning. Questions lead on to more questions, and answers even lead to other answers. Sometimes, they lead to even better answers.

If religion is mostly about the questions--and I believe that it is--then one way to understand the church is to think of it as a kind of school for souls. School, to me at least, implies a desire to learn and to grow. Education is dead as soon as we stop questioning and growing. So, I would argue, is religion. Education also depends on the willingness to change our ideas and our opinions. So, I would argue, does religion.

The only way to really grow spiritually, then, is to be willing to change: to change who we are, to change in our beliefs, to change in our actions, to change in our practices, if need be. It all starts with an openness to the questions, or, as Rilke puts it, with "living in" those questions. The idea is not to eliminate the questions, but inhabit them.

Now all of this may come as a surprise to those who have always believed that religion is all, or mostly, about the Answer. But for us Unitarian Universalists, this questioning is almost an article of faith. As Roy D. Phillips writes in his "Sixteen Historical Affirmations of our Unitarian Universalist Faith," which you can find printed on the reverse of your orders of service, UU’s affirm "that answers to questions, solutions to problems and comfort from discomfort--to have any real or lasting effect--must come from within a person, not from outside."

Questioning is an integral part of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist. This is clear if you read through that entire list of historical affirmations: It’s OK to doubt; indeed, it can actually help us to find the truth. People should be free to judge for themselves. Religion requires reflection, or as one of the original principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association put it, "the disciplined search for truth and meaning." Truth, rather than being something that is absolute and once-and-for-all, actually grows and changes. We ought to apply our reason to religious assertions.

After all, Unitarianism and Universalism were both born out of their opposition to orthodoxy. Our faith was born out of a refusal to accept the answers that are given and out of a desire to seek our own. Whether it was the opposition of the early Unitarians to the non-biblical doctrine of the trinity, or the claims of the Universalists that salvation was not the sole possession of a hidden "elected" group, UU’s have always stood squarely in the heretics camp.

UU’s refuse to believe that truth was handed down only once and for all time, no matter how sacred the tradition or the Book about which this claim is made. As one of our great liberal hymns puts it, "Revelation is not sealed." Revelation is still open: it is still happening, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said in his famous Divinity School Address, "God speaks, not spake." And as the banners which have recently been hung on local congregational churches put it, "God is still speaking." (I wonder if they know how Emersonian and Unitarian that statement really is?)

My colleague Jose Ballester has written that, "When we Unitarian Universalists proclaimed that "revelation is not sealed," we had it almost right but not quite. It is not just that revelation is not sealed; revelation is not sealable." He continues, "The first Unitarian Universalist affirmation which we can make is that the wonders of creation out spill every category into which we try to fit them." And as my colleague Edmund Robinson has written, "Unitarian Universalism is a religion based on the proposition that some questions are too important to have only one right answer."

There will be and there are those who disagree with us. There will be those who claim to possess the truth. But we will not be convinced. Indeed, I would almost argue that a UU is someone who, constitutionally, can never be convinced of the finality of any claim. (The danger is when we fall into the same trap as those who would force their version of the truth upon us, and ourselves fail to remain open to the questions. This so-called "fundamentalism of the left-wing of religion" is just as bankrupt as its opposite.)

As Thomas Ahlburn, late minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence, Rhode Island, once wrote, "The real issue is whether one continues openly and honestly to question one’s convictions, or whether one merely regards them as final, and perhaps binding on others." That applies to us, too. For Unitarian Universalists, there are no final convictions: not even those to which we are most fondly attached.

The bottom line here is that we believe that even the questions, when honestly engaged, can still provide meaning for life. Answers, at least of the final variety, are not necessary even if they were possible, which they are not.

As my retired colleague Charles Stephen, who spoke at my tenth anniversary celebration last year, has written,

To wonder at the great question of God, or of the reality that transcends our little lives, is to enter into the realm of the oldest of human questions; we affirm its importance even as we shy away from definitive and final answers.

To believe that the search for truth is a holy enterprise is the foundation of our religious enterprise; to believe that authority in religion is not in tradition, nor in a book, but in the reason and conscience of each individual, is to affirm the importance of that search, and the importance and dignity of human beings, who are capable of understanding it.

To believe in the right to disbelieve is an affirmative principle of religious liberalism. In the end our beliefs and our disbeliefs are a unity. And the reverence we feel for all of existence itself becomes for us the great affirmation of human evolution and human possibility.

Our faith must remain in the questions. I would rather put my faith in the honest acceptance of the mystery that is. Our Unitarian Universalist faith lies in the acceptance of Rilke’s claim that answers that are given are ultimately of no use. Such answers may even be worse for us than our doubts. Only those answers which we have gained through the trials and tribulation of our lives, through our losses and sorrows, but also through our encounters with life’s great beauty and joy, are of ultimate value; and even those are subject to change and alteration.

My colleague Wendy Fitting has said it well:

It is . . . a requirement for Unitarian Universalists to engage in conversations about our religious questions, our evolving identities, the content of our worship, and who we are to the greater community. The essential qualities for these conversations to be fruitful are patience, respect, open-heartedness, and civility. By this practice of an examined faith, our religious lives are enlivened, our church changes and grows, and our ancestors are honored.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock