If you were hoping that we’d have a clear answer on Sunday for how we live with uncertainty about big questions, you may have felt a bit unsatisfied with where we landed. As a collective, Unitarian Universalists hold a complex, pluralistic, dynamic cluster of possibilities. And it’s hard to let go of the comfort of certainty.
UU theology doesn’t answer a lot of things about the Divine/Goddess(es)/God(s). Sometimes we might think that means we have to come up with our own answers. Like we need to have personal certainty in the places where our faith doesn’t provide clarity. And once we have those answers for ourselves, we can say “I believe x” with some authority and conviction.
The more I consider who we are as a religion, though, the less I think the point is to be a big group of people, with a bunch of individual answers we’re certain about, learning how to get along with each other and hold a diverse community together. I’m leaning more toward wondering whether our faith tradition invites us to say, “I don’t know,” a lot more often.
Not dismissively, but with curiosity. “I don’t know… let me ponder that,” rather than, “I don’t know, so it’s not worth thinking about, because not knowing is really uncomfortable.”
Where our theology offers certainty is at the level of big containers. That’s kind of how I see our values. Containers big enough to hold all of the big questions while still offering humility about our inability to be certain of the answers.
I can’t say anything with certainty about the Divine/Goddess(es)/God(s) except that I know Love is at the core of holiness. So I don’t have to worry about the sacred being vengeful or shaming or full of condemnation, because the thing I am certain about is Love. So when I start pondering some of those things I really want clarity on, the container for all of that pondering is Love.
And the container for my realization that I can’t have clear answers about most of those big questions? That’s Love too. So, when I ask, “How can I act faithfully in the world if I can’t have certainty about some of these big questions?” the answer begins with Love. What would it look like to love well? Do that. You don’t need answers to all the big questions to know what it is to love well.
All of our values flow from that source. Loving well means honoring pluralism and interdependence. It means justice and equity embodied in our relationships. It means practicing generosity and embracing transformation.
Liberating Love may not be a clear and certain answer to a lot of questions, but it can be a container for our questions. And it can be a lens or a focus or a filter for our wondering. Because if we’re honest, when it comes to most spiritual questions, any of our answers will have a lot of asterisks and caveats and uncertainty to them. It’s more honest and authentic to keep vulnerably asking than to believe we’ll ever be done with big questions.
So, amid our perceived answers to big questions, may we continue to ask, “What if…?” And may our certainty be that Love is at the core of whatever we call sacred or divine or holy.