Too Dangerous, Too Small

"The world is too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love." -William Sloane Coffin, Jr.

The little quotation on your orders of service this morning really says most of what I want to say this morning. The world is dangerous, and, increasingly, it is small.

The world has always been dangerous. It has not always been small. But it has been large, and that brought its own problems. The great world for countless generations had its fearsome mystery, and for long most people would not venture beyond the margins of what was close and familiar. No one knew what lay over the mountain or on the other side of the forest. Few cared or dared to find out. Whatever dangers there were--and there were many--remained mostly unknown.

But thanks to modern transportation and communication, the world has become small. Now we can know much about our world, but much of what we do know terrifies us. Ironically, our shrinking world has not made us feel more secure. Indeed, I would argue, it has made us more fearful than ever. Before, many of the world’s dangers were obscured: now they are clearly exposed to our view.

This reality of a world that is "too small" makes it especially difficult for parents and children, I believe. I empathize with both, that is, I feel with them and for them. I know how hard it is to raise a child and how hard it is to grow up in this world. Knowing all the dangers that are out there in the world has a tendency to make us overly protective. Knowing what we know, we convince ourselves that we can protect our children if only we are vigilant enough and knowledgeable enough. It’s an illusion.

Society, unfortunately, responds to this new reality by creating more and more rules. We live in terribly legalistic and overly-reactive times. More and more laws are designed to protect our children against themselves. The consequence is that there is less and less freedom to be and to learn from our mistakes. More and more of our kids are winding up in the police log. We are reluctant to let our kids be kids because we know how dangerous the world can be. We feel we must protect them. But we are not doing them or us any favors by doing this.

Because in doing so we infantilize our children, desperately trying to maintain their innocence in the face a dangerous world. We don’t let them grow up. I would not particularly want to be a young person growing up in this new and smaller world.

Though I grew up in a small town, my world was large. I was free to wander and explore. Every minute of my time was not pre-programmed. There were not computers and video games and cell phones or even organized sports to claim all my attention, and TV only received three stations. But I could ride my bike all over town. I could explore in the woods or alone on the seashore. As long as I came home at a reasonable time, no one worried about where I might be. I learned to love solitude: the joy of being alone and of entertaining myself.

The reality, of course, is that we cannot protect our children from the world. Even the safety of my childhood world was an illusion. We will never be able to cover every contingency. Security is a myth, but it is a myth to which we--especially we Americans--cling tenaciously. So we try to keep the world at bay by keeping our children younger longer.

Our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world know that security is a myth. We cannot protect our children from life. We can, as someone has said, give them roots; but we must also provide them with wings. We must learn to let them go, for their sakes if not for our own. We must let them try and fail. They will make mistakes. They will do stupid things, sometimes. They may even do themselves harm, but we must let them go if they are to learn to live in the world as it is.

Given the reality of our too small and too dangerous world, William Sloane Coffin, Jr. offers us a way to survive. The keys, he says, are "truth" and "love." As parents, we must be honest with our children about the world. Of course, we must also love them. But we must not smother them and overprotect them from the realities of the world and of life. We must let them try out their wings. We must be honest about life’s dangers, and we must also be prepared for them to come to grief. As someone has wisely said, "Love means grief in time."

Most young people respond to love and honesty. This does not mean that they will be perfect. But I have seen enough of them grow up to know that if the foundation of their lives has been solidly grounded in truth and love they will be OK in the long run. Very few of them will emerge totally unscathed, but I ask you, who among us is perfect or problem free? Life is hard, and we do our children no good by trying to protect them from this reality. Hardship and reality are often the greatest teachers, after all.

The little story which I told you this morning suggests how we must try to live in this world. The old carpenter learns a hard lesson. We must never give up on the effort to do our best in life, no matter how futile or overwhelming it may seem. If we live honestly and with love, if we each day do our best to build our lives in the best way we know how, we will have reason at the end to be thankful. If we learn to live our lives well in love and service, we will have no reason to regret them.

The central goal of Unitarian Universalism has always been to make the best of this life. For this is the life we have been given, and as far as we know it is the only one. If we build our lives carefully and wisely, they will shelter us through all our days. We must do the best we can, in honesty and love, each and every day of our lives.

If we do this, I am convinced, we will have all the tools we need to survive in this world. "The world is too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love." Let us remember this, and go forth to live our lives more fully, more honestly, and more lovingly, for this may be the only chance we get. And let us have the courage to live each day, not in fear of what might be, but in hope for what already is. Let us have the faith to live our lives, and to let our children live theirs, in spite of a world too dangerous, and too small.

May it be so.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock