Sermon: Hell Hath No Fury

2015 November 22
by First U Bklyn

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Hell Hath No Fury

Ana Levy-Lyons

November 22, 2015

First Unitarian, Brooklyn

 

I don’t know about you but I’m feeling overwhelmed and scared and heartsick about what’s going on in the world right now. The hatred around the globe seems to be spiraling and building on itself in a way that’s hard to imagine how it could ever be reversed. Every time a Palestinian stabs an Israeli, the IDF bulldozes another innocent Palestinian’s home. Every time hostage takers in Mali let out only Muslims, an American politician demands that we let in only Christians. It feels like nothing but madness on the horizon in every direction.

 

How are we, as religious people, supposed to respond to this? There are a lot of prayers flying around the airwaves these days. Are we supposed to pray? The Dalai Lama says no. In talking about the Paris attacks, he said, “We cannot solve this problem only through prayers. I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying.

But humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to solve it. It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place.” Great. Thanks. (Spoiler alert: I do not have a solution at the end of this sermon. I am not building up to the big reveal of my eighteen-point plan to fix the world’s problems. I don’t have one and the scary thing is, no one else does either.)

 

I think I’ll always remember a conversation I had with one of our members here where we were talking about the original concept of Universalism – the idea that everyone is saved. No one goes to hell. No one is finally excluded from the big love. The idea made her uncomfortable and she was honest enough to say so. She didn’t necessarily want everyone to be saved. “Hitler?” she asked. “Hitler’s going to be in my heaven?”

 

And what a great question. Hitler is going to be in my heaven?

Is that really what Universalism means? At the end of the day, there’s no justice? Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who planned the Paris attacks, is there in Heaven right now alongside Mother Teresa? When we die, we all have to just put down our grudges and live forever side by side with the people who hurt us? Surely the early teachers of Universalism – George deBenneville and Olympia Brown and Hosea Ballou – surely they couldn’t have meant it so absolutely and so simplistically.

 

In fact, we know that many of them were troubled by the idea, just like some of us are. Some of them came up with elaborate caveats, in which really evil people would spend some time in hell first before getting out on parole. Or go to purgatory. Or there would be some kind of reconciliation process with God where the evil part of them would simply cease to exist and their pure soul would be returned to them.

 

And then there were some, like Hosea Ballou, who were called “ultra universalists,” who said, “Nope. No caveats. No exceptions. No hell. Everyone is absolved, everyone is forgiven, everyone is saved.” Ballou was a 19th century minister who’s considered one of the “fathers of Universalism” and in his preaching, he trash-talked other ministers who preached fire and brimstone. And here’s the really interesting thing for our purposes – he opposed that kind of punishment and retribution preaching, not just because he thought it was factually incorrect, but because of the effect of such preaching on the people. When you hear how he talks about it, which I’ll read to you, it’s actually more about psychology than theology. He writes:

 

“It is well known … that the human heart is capable of becoming soft, or hard; kind, or unkind; merciful or unmerciful, by education and habit. On this principle we contend, that the infernal torments [that’s hell], which false religion has placed in the future world,

and which ministers have, with an overflowing zeal, so constantly held up to the people, … have tended so to harden the hearts of the [proponents] of this religion, that they have exercised, toward their fellow creatures, a spirit of enmity, which but too well corresponds with the relentless cruelty of their doctrine… By having such an example constantly before their eyes, they have become so transformed into its image, that, whenever they have had the power, they have actually executed a vengeance on men and women, which evinced that the cruelty of their doctrine had overcome the native kindness and compassion of the human heart.”

 

So basically he was contending that people who are taught over and over again that God tortures and punishes sinners for eternity become mean people. “The cruelty of their doctrine had overcome the native kindness and compassion of the human heart.”

 

A doctrine of love and forgiveness, by contrast, would support the native kindness and compassion of the human heart. Instead of hardening us, it would soften us. And this, to Ballou, was what Universalism was about. Less about what happens after we die, and more about – what’s our spiritual orientation or tone toward one another in this life? Are we imitating a God of welcome and forgiveness or are we imitating a God of judgment and rejection?

 

Of all the battles going on in the world right now, one of them is a battle for tone – for who gets to determine our emotional stance toward the other. What’s the appropriate psychic orientation of the community? There’s a lot at stake in this battle because I believe that ultimately communal emotion is what drives all of our decisions at the policy level. I don’t see politicians on any side changing their minds based on reasoning they hear at congressional debates or hearings. That’s clearly not what it’s about.

Listening to a conservative news show last week, I was struck by how upset some people were with President Obama’s tone in responding to the Paris attacks. They spent a long time talking about this and they were really agitated. That he was calm and thoughtful and measured “no-drama-Obama” really angered them. “Where’s the fire?” they asked. “And the brimstone?” we might add. Where’s the George W. Bush after September 11th saying, “We’ll smoke ‘em out of their holes!”

 

And those same politicians who were craving that fiery, wrathful emotional leadership are saying now that we should reject Syrian refugees, even children, in case there are terrorists among them. I think this is appalling. These people are pleading for our help in protecting their children from the very same violence that we fear for ours. Yes, of course there is a chance that some people among the refugees will be coming with the intention of harming Americans.

But it’s impossible to predict how many new terrorists would be created around the world by the U.S. earning a reputation as xenophobic, anti-Muslim, and miserly with our wealth. And we live in a porous world. You can’t keep people out, you can’t keep ideas out, you can’t keep drugs out, you can’t keep information out, you can’t keep anything out that really wants to get in. And despite that porousness, if you’re an American, you’re statistically much more likely to die from heart disease, a car accident, or even suicide than by a terrorist attack.

 

But those deaths happen one by one. And they happen in private. The sudden, public deaths of a terrorist attack are a whole different thing. They successfully terrorize us. They trigger our fight or flight response. They trigger our fear of the other, our fear of difference. And they trigger our worst theologies. The warrior God; the God of judgment.

If you open the gates to Syrian refugees, a terrorist might get in. If you open heaven to just anyone, a Hitler might get in. The universe, through this lens, is not loving and compassionate. We separate the wheat from the chaff, and the chaff gets burned, in the Bible’s language, in an “unquenchable fire.” It’s not only, as Ballou suggested, that cruel theologies make people cruel; it’s the other way around too. Our life experience shapes our theology. And the two become a mutually reinforcing cycle.

 

Here’s something we know of the Muslims who become jihadists with theologies of violent end times and a glorious afterlife: they tend to be people who have experienced hatred and discrimination themselves or in their communities; who feel politically powerless, who are low wage earners, who immigrated alone with no family, or who have experienced some kind of personal trauma.

 

It’s no wonder, given their own bitter experience of life, that they embrace a grandiose theological counterpoint. And interestingly, they tend to come from families that are not very religious. Being raised in a religious family is actually a protective factor against becoming radicalized. No one is born a terrorist. “Terrorist” is not an ontological status. It’s a label earned by desperate people when they commit desperate violence, seeking meaning in a world that feels meaningless and seeking power in a world where they feel powerless. And these people, like all of us, are drawn to a theology that matches their experience.

 

And so what can we, as religious people, do? We can attend to both sides of that feedback loop – theology and experience. We can teach a theology that supports “the native kindness and compassion of the human heart.” We can teach of a loving God and universe – one that welcomes all and forgives all.

And then at the same time, we can work to build a world in which such a God and such a universe are actually plausible. When we break bread together, we can make sure that we leave enough for everyone in the room and a bit more for others who are not yet in the room.  When we work for justice, we can make sure that it’s justice for everyone, no matter what they look like, what language they speak, what God they worship, or where they come from. And when people in need knock on our doors, we can find the compassion to welcome them.

 

What technically, literally happens after we die, we have no idea. Whether Hitler will be in heaven with us, we don’t know. But the spirit of universalism, the tenor, the tone, the orientation toward the world, can inform how we live our lives. And that’s the important thing. Because as the Dalai Lama said, we shouldn’t be bothering God with our problems or looking to God to solve them. The universe is going to do what it’s going to do.

What happens here in this world in our lifetimes is our work. It’s here and now that we can make universalism a reality. Here and now, bit by bit, we can make a heaven on earth – a heaven to which everyone is invited.

One Response
  1. Joe Bredau permalink
    November 23, 2015

    Rev. Levy- Lyons: Thanks for the sermon yesterday, 11/22/15. Appropriate for the times and it made me proud to be a UU.

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