Confessions of an Agnostic
Sermon by Emily Burr
February 18, 2001
Confessions of an Agnostic
Before I started school at Andover Newton Theological School, I attended a "Prospective Student Information Day." During one of the breaks between student panels, finance lectures and faculty receptions, I was talking to the husband of another prospective student who had come along with his wife as moral support. We exchanged some small talk questions, including what denomination we were affiliated with. When I replied that I was a Unitarian Universalist, his return question was something on the order of, "Unitarians aren't Christians. Are they?" I attempted to explain that some UUs are Christian. Some are Buddhist and some are agnostics." His immediate reply, with something of a chuckle, was, "You certainly wouldn't want one of those as your minister!" I refrained from telling him I was one and had every intension of becoming a parish minister and that being an agnostic wouldn't hurt my chances of being called by a Unitarian Universalist congregation, but that being a Christian might. I didn't think he'd understand.
Since then I've been pushed, by both classes and life in general, to look at my theology and consider not only how that would affect my ministry, but also how it affects the way I live my life every day. How do my beliefs about God and an absolute reality influence how I view the world? What are your beliefs about God and the meaning of life? How do they affect the way you live your life?
Before I go much further with those questions let me make sure we are all working with the same definitions. When I first considered myself an agnostic, it was because I thought an agnostic was a person who couldn't decide whether they believed in the existence of God or not. This is a common misunderstanding of the meaning of "agnostic." It was someone in the UU 101 class here in Nashua this fall, that explained the real meaning of the word to me. In my first semester at school, I purchased a theological dictionary to help me make sense of all the new terms and language I was hearing and reading. It defines agnosticism as, "The view that it is not possible to have any certain knowledge beyond ordinary experience, so that one cannot know whether or not God exists." Webster's definition of an agnostic is, "one who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable."
The differences between my original understanding of agnosticism and the actual definition are more than mere semantics. There is a vast difference between doubting the existence of God or a higher power and accepting the fact that it is impossible to prove its existence or nonexistence. As I thought about the real definition of agnostic, I realized there was a whole new possibility for how to frame the question of my belief or non-belief. It is a theology that feels more comfortable for me, than what the original concept of agnosticism offered me. Embracing my new understanding of agnosticism, I no longer feel a need to arrive at a definite answer. It is all right not to know for sure yet I am still free to consider possibilities.
Some people think that being a UU is easy because we "don't have to believe anything" or we can "believe anything we want to." Well, it isn't that simple, is it? Not being told what to believe means we each have to try to figure out for his or herself what is true about any ultimate reality. I am going to share some of my experiences with my "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" in the hope that it may help you with yours.
I have not always been an agnostic. I started life as a Congregationalist, in what is now the UCC or United Church of Christ. I was brought up with the same God that many of you who were not raised Unitarian Universalist probably started out with. He was a white man with long hair and a long beard who lived somewhere up above the clouds and looked down on the world, including me. Being the God of a fairly liberal protestant denomination, he was a beneficent fellow, at least in the pictures. He did not threaten elementary school children with everlasting hell, as some Christian versions of God do. However, having been read Bible stories like Noah's Ark, there was still a sense that if I got too far out of line, God, along with my parents, would become displeased and I would be, if not washed away by a flood, at least in hot water.
By late elementary school, my rational, scientific mind was having trouble with just exactly how Jesus could be the Son of God and a human woman, and how any God could know what I and each of the other billions of people on the earth were up to every minute of the day and night. I don't remember all the things I questioned then, but I know that when I started going to the Unitarian Sunday school I was relieved that it was all right to think of Jesus as a wise human being and that not everyone believed in the God above the clouds that kept a list of whether I was naughty or nice.
I went through junior and senior high school during the sixties, the age of sputnik and scientific advances as well as the time of assassinations and the Vietnam War. I found more sense in science than a God who would allow such craziness. I think subconsciously, for me, the quest that we all have at some level for answers to the whys of the universe turned toward science. In college I majored in physics with a minor in astronomy. God became irrelevant to my life. You didn't need a God for the answers. Logic and reason were the way to find the answers. If you, we, the scientists or whoever couldn't prove the reasons for the origin and why of the universe, then we just weren't asking the right questions or didn't have the technology to find the answer.
My life became filled with teaching, children, participating actively in the community and all the minutia of daily living. I was too busy for questions of God or the mysteries of the universe, except in an occasional moment of awe and wonder. Even when I rejoined the ranks of active Unitarian Universalists, a few years after college, I was not overly concerned with questions of the ultimate why. At that point in my life, if asked, I would probably have considered myself a humanist and if pressed on my belief in a God, an atheist. I was busy raising children, building up an RE program in a small but growing UU fellowship and trying to get the equal rights amendment passed Ð all things that depended far more on people than any higher power.
It was not until I came to some bumps in the road that I began to question whether my humanistic atheism was a valid way to view the cosmos. A divorce and children who were rapidly becoming less dependent on Mom left gaps in my busyness and started me wondering what the purpose of my life really was. In some ways it felt as if I had been asleep and had awoken to a new world. This new world looked much the same but felt a lot different. It included both wonderful things and scary things for which logic and science weren't sufficient. It's hard to explain exactly but I'll try by giving you some examples.
I have a "Rose is Rose" cartoon on my refrigerator. The first frame shows Rose, your typical modern wife and mother, at the sink happily repotting a houseplant. In the second frame she has this horrific expression on her face. The third frame shows her with a "considering" expression. In the last frame she is sitting next to her husband on the couch telling him, "My ÔIs this all there is to life?" episodes don't last as long as they used to." For a while, these episodes kept popping up for me.
I also had episodes of great loneliness, not just people loneliness, but a deeper kind of aloneness. It was partly a realization that in many ways we are each separate and alone. No one can experience what I have and therefore no one can truly understand me. I had an image of myself as a lost space explorer drifting through the vast reaches of the cosmos, unconnected and alone. Scary feelings! In some ways I wanted the guy in the sky back or at least some assurance that there was a benevolent force that was watching out for me and who could insure that this isn't all there is to life.
All of this was interwoven with a new awareness of something special that I had missed, or caught only a glimpse of in my old busy world. It is a sense of awe, wonder, amazement, gratitude for life, a sense of belonging and connection along with other emotions that defy words. This experience has happened to me at the tops of mountains, quiet forest paths, or a clear night's view of the universe. Exceptionally good music, like the final chord of the organ or choir resounding through the sanctuary or concert hall, has provided such moments as well. This sense of being a part of something "more" can also happen when I am quietly with myself, whether "officially " meditating, or when I just lose myself in thoughts while sitting at the computer or while driving, thoughts about how amazing this whole dance called "life" is.
But the times I find the greatest sense of connection to "whatever" and have a sense of something important happening to what is special in me is through the eyes and touch of special people at special moments. Sometimes they only last fractions of a second but whether I am with my mother, daughter, a lover or friend the feeling of both being connected to each other and a part of something more, something all encompassing, just can't be explained by the logic of science. I have heard people try to explain such feelings as electrical impulses in our brain that release substances into our system. Some days it is impossible to believe it is all simply brain chemistry and firing neurons.
So where does this leave me now? Science and logic no longer provide me with satisfactory explanations for all my experiences, but I also have no proof that any higher power, spirit of life or "whatever" exists. Some days I lean one way, some days the other as to whether or not some such thing exists. So I am an agnostic by my old incorrect definition. I don't know if God exists or not.
For most of my life I was perfectly content believing there was no God or not paying much attention to whether I believed or not. Then my world turned inside out and upside down. I wanted a god or something that could help me reframe and make sense of all my new experiences. I felt a need to know one way or the other. How could I trust these new feelings and experiences if I couldn't explain them with science OR explain them by God? The true definition of an agnostic lets me do that.
If one cannot know whether or not God exists, because one cannot have any certain knowledge, beyond ordinary experience, then I am free not to have to know. It is a relief to be able to accept my experiences as just experiences without having to have a rational explanation for them. I feel free to consider possibilities I could not, when I was still trying to prove or disprove the existence of something "other."
I probably would have gotten to this place, of accepting my inability to know for sure, without the word "agnostic" to attach to my system of belief (or non-belief), but having that possibility brought to my attention helped me shift my focus away from my customary, scientific need to be definitive.
This certainly is a spiritual journey I am on and my agnosticism may be only a stop along the way, but at least for now I find I am better able to accept all my experiences for the gifts that they are.
Rainer Maria Rilke an early twentieth century German poet has spoken to me in the newfound place I am with my search for what is real. He wrote:
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart And try to love the questions themselves Do not seek the answers that cannot be given you Because you would not be able to live them, And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, Live along some distant day into the answers.
I am learning to be at peace with not having the answers but living the questions now and enjoying with wonder and awe this dance we call life.
