The following is a sermon preached by Jamie Simms on November 25, 2012, at the Dover Church. Jamie is a member of the church who wanted to share some thoughts with the congregation.
Thank you, Jamie!
Good morning everyone, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to “testify”. The concept of testimony may not be familiar to some, as the idea of a layperson standing before his fellow congregants to openly address his faith, or the flaws therein, is an anachronism more associated with 19th century traditions, not contemporary practices, but I’m from North Carolina, and Southerners hold onto their traditions.
I’ve been speaking with Max for some time about introducing the practice of testimony into the Dover Church, as I believe, for reasons I will address this morning, testimony contributes to the creation and strengthening of community, and community is the foundation of my spirituality.
I define testimony as the expression of belief as a means of establishing fellowship, a deeper rapport with those whom I seek to nurture the bonds of shared values. Not quite bearing your soul in public, but at least openly stating what you believe with the objective of connecting with others.
In the past, testimony was associated with sharing your conversion story at your baptism, or sharing about an answered prayer, or in some traditions, testimony was a form of public confession. With regard to this last form of “sharing”, I like the way our Catholic brethren approach such confessions – in private.
I also define testimony by what it is not. Testimony is not, despite what this might look and sound like, a self-aggrandizing effort to grab attention or, worse, an exercise in holy Schadenfreude, giving others a thrill but actually leaving one’s inner being untouched. That’s why confessions should be in private.
In my own distant experience, testimony was most often associated with a candidate for deacon speaking openly about why his particular sanctimony qualified him, at least in his own eyes, to be a lay leader of the church. These were more like religious campaign speeches and less like what I seek to accomplish this morning, which is to communicate to you, my friends, what community means to me and why I feel so privileged to be a member of the Dover Church. I genuinely do not intend to bring attention to myself, but instead to what a truly wonderful place this is, while perhaps contributing to making it a little bit better.
But I do need to be honest with you, I won the privilege of “minister for a day” at last year’s church auction, so in part, my testimony is fulfilling my obligation to Max in a less spiritual sense. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I paid for this pulpit!
Max previewed the topic of my remarks in the email bulletin, writing I would be “preaching about the place where the faith he was raised in intersects adult knowledge and modern science”. True, but my real topic is my definition of “community”. I define community in the way you might assume, as Aristotle first did, as a group established by those having shared values.
People need to be in relationships. We feel that we are not fully living when we don’t have people in our lives with whom we comfortably be at ease, feeling supported and safe while we grow and learn. An intimate, long-term romantic commitment or deep personal friendship can provide some of this needed connection, but community, spiritual community, offers a different and complementary benefit to the individual. Having a deeply connected community of people with whom one shares significant parts of his or her inner being fills a need not usually filled through one-on-one connections.
A successful spiritual community must be built on a common belief in what matters, in terms of spiritual well-being, and those things that are greater than us in consciousness and scope. I believe participating in a spiritual community can be an important contributor to a full
Thank you, Jamie!
Good morning everyone, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to “testify”. The concept of testimony may not be familiar to some, as the idea of a layperson standing before his fellow congregants to openly address his faith, or the flaws therein, is an anachronism more associated with 19th century traditions, not contemporary practices, but I’m from North Carolina, and Southerners hold onto their traditions.
I’ve been speaking with Max for some time about introducing the practice of testimony into the Dover Church, as I believe, for reasons I will address this morning, testimony contributes to the creation and strengthening of community, and community is the foundation of my spirituality.
I define testimony as the expression of belief as a means of establishing fellowship, a deeper rapport with those whom I seek to nurture the bonds of shared values. Not quite bearing your soul in public, but at least openly stating what you believe with the objective of connecting with others.
In the past, testimony was associated with sharing your conversion story at your baptism, or sharing about an answered prayer, or in some traditions, testimony was a form of public confession. With regard to this last form of “sharing”, I like the way our Catholic brethren approach such confessions – in private.
I also define testimony by what it is not. Testimony is not, despite what this might look and sound like, a self-aggrandizing effort to grab attention or, worse, an exercise in holy Schadenfreude, giving others a thrill but actually leaving one’s inner being untouched. That’s why confessions should be in private.
In my own distant experience, testimony was most often associated with a candidate for deacon speaking openly about why his particular sanctimony qualified him, at least in his own eyes, to be a lay leader of the church. These were more like religious campaign speeches and less like what I seek to accomplish this morning, which is to communicate to you, my friends, what community means to me and why I feel so privileged to be a member of the Dover Church. I genuinely do not intend to bring attention to myself, but instead to what a truly wonderful place this is, while perhaps contributing to making it a little bit better.
But I do need to be honest with you, I won the privilege of “minister for a day” at last year’s church auction, so in part, my testimony is fulfilling my obligation to Max in a less spiritual sense. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I paid for this pulpit!
Max previewed the topic of my remarks in the email bulletin, writing I would be “preaching about the place where the faith he was raised in intersects adult knowledge and modern science”. True, but my real topic is my definition of “community”. I define community in the way you might assume, as Aristotle first did, as a group established by those having shared values.
People need to be in relationships. We feel that we are not fully living when we don’t have people in our lives with whom we comfortably be at ease, feeling supported and safe while we grow and learn. An intimate, long-term romantic commitment or deep personal friendship can provide some of this needed connection, but community, spiritual community, offers a different and complementary benefit to the individual. Having a deeply connected community of people with whom one shares significant parts of his or her inner being fills a need not usually filled through one-on-one connections.
A successful spiritual community must be built on a common belief in what matters, in terms of spiritual well-being, and those things that are greater than us in consciousness and scope. I believe participating in a spiritual community can be an important contributor to a full
and joyful life. This is where testimony comes in. By sharing my spiritual journey with you, I
hope to add to the church’s spiritual dialog and, perhaps, encourage others to come forward to
explain their faith. I may not have an unequivocal, robust belief in the traditional God, but I do
have such a belief in you, in us, and the Dover Church.
I have concluded, after a great deal of reading and lengthy contemplation, the ideal community for me is that place where spirituality and the literal world can coexist, where the tension between religion and science is neither distracting nor overwhelming. It is that place where I can feel spiritually fulfilled, but not be burdened by the need to answer, in any literal manner, the question of God’s existence. No one person or any group is pushing an agenda, yet all members in community seek that full and joyful life. And for me, it is that place where I comfortably can make what I refer to as a modified form of Pascal’s Wager, to which I’ll turn in a moment.
Like many, I was raised in a church with a very well established liturgy and little or no discussion of alternative points of view. Also like many, I began to question the existence of a traditional God and the relevance of the Bible as a young adult. I started out with the usual exploration of Buddhism, but at the time and at that age, the concepts were too much of a cultural and behavioral shift. I was into madras shirts and khaki pants, not saffron robes.
So over the last 20 years or so, I have given Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris their fair hearing. I must say they can make very compelling arguments and can be provocatively entertaining. Even the most devout among us would find Hitchens’ commentary on the ten commandments thought provoking, and a sympathetic reader may be quite amused, as well as enlightened.
Because I am so rooted in my traditional upbringing that I have given the traditional view of faith something of a home-field advantage in this contest. So the defenders of faith got a fair hearing too, with an ample amount of benefit of the doubt that there wasn’t a “God Delusion”. I have waded through Thomas Merton, become acquainted with Francis Collins, and read C.S. Lewis that wasn’t on a course curriculum. But I must say, with the exception of The Screwtape Letters, the home team’s literature is not a lot of fun.
Unable to make up my mind, I was uncomfortable even considering the idea of declaring myself an agnostic, much less an atheist, in no small part because I wasn’t sure. And who would even want to subject himself to such scrutiny, even ostracism? In fact, I personally don’t know one person who openly declares himself an atheist, but I know many who will admit, privately, to having their doubts about the existence of a hoary, bearded manifestation of an omnipotent, omniscient being. However, either their lives are too busy or their curiosity insufficient to justify further inquiry. And their churches do not provide the venue or opportunity to pursue such inquiry.
In my case, my skeptical, rational side drove me to try to substantiate a position that religion was a human contrivance and faith a societally-defined name for “organized mysticism”. I considered the origins of mysticism and the basic human characteristics and impulse that evolved into religion. I have looked for that compelling argument that would make one point of view prevail and must concede I have not. Even the publication of Dean Hamer’s research into the “God Gene” didn’t push me unequivocally into the scientific camp. The expression “leap of faith” has taken on its own meaning for me, as I can neither make the leap neither toward nor away from a meaningful definition of God.
In this regard, the late Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard biologist and former Dover resident, had my predicament pegged. He was well known for his defense of the preeminence of science, and in particular evolution. In weighing in on the debate between religion and science,
I have concluded, after a great deal of reading and lengthy contemplation, the ideal community for me is that place where spirituality and the literal world can coexist, where the tension between religion and science is neither distracting nor overwhelming. It is that place where I can feel spiritually fulfilled, but not be burdened by the need to answer, in any literal manner, the question of God’s existence. No one person or any group is pushing an agenda, yet all members in community seek that full and joyful life. And for me, it is that place where I comfortably can make what I refer to as a modified form of Pascal’s Wager, to which I’ll turn in a moment.
Like many, I was raised in a church with a very well established liturgy and little or no discussion of alternative points of view. Also like many, I began to question the existence of a traditional God and the relevance of the Bible as a young adult. I started out with the usual exploration of Buddhism, but at the time and at that age, the concepts were too much of a cultural and behavioral shift. I was into madras shirts and khaki pants, not saffron robes.
So over the last 20 years or so, I have given Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris their fair hearing. I must say they can make very compelling arguments and can be provocatively entertaining. Even the most devout among us would find Hitchens’ commentary on the ten commandments thought provoking, and a sympathetic reader may be quite amused, as well as enlightened.
Because I am so rooted in my traditional upbringing that I have given the traditional view of faith something of a home-field advantage in this contest. So the defenders of faith got a fair hearing too, with an ample amount of benefit of the doubt that there wasn’t a “God Delusion”. I have waded through Thomas Merton, become acquainted with Francis Collins, and read C.S. Lewis that wasn’t on a course curriculum. But I must say, with the exception of The Screwtape Letters, the home team’s literature is not a lot of fun.
Unable to make up my mind, I was uncomfortable even considering the idea of declaring myself an agnostic, much less an atheist, in no small part because I wasn’t sure. And who would even want to subject himself to such scrutiny, even ostracism? In fact, I personally don’t know one person who openly declares himself an atheist, but I know many who will admit, privately, to having their doubts about the existence of a hoary, bearded manifestation of an omnipotent, omniscient being. However, either their lives are too busy or their curiosity insufficient to justify further inquiry. And their churches do not provide the venue or opportunity to pursue such inquiry.
In my case, my skeptical, rational side drove me to try to substantiate a position that religion was a human contrivance and faith a societally-defined name for “organized mysticism”. I considered the origins of mysticism and the basic human characteristics and impulse that evolved into religion. I have looked for that compelling argument that would make one point of view prevail and must concede I have not. Even the publication of Dean Hamer’s research into the “God Gene” didn’t push me unequivocally into the scientific camp. The expression “leap of faith” has taken on its own meaning for me, as I can neither make the leap neither toward nor away from a meaningful definition of God.
In this regard, the late Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard biologist and former Dover resident, had my predicament pegged. He was well known for his defense of the preeminence of science, and in particular evolution. In weighing in on the debate between religion and science,
he stated there really was no debate, as there is no overlap between the domains. Science
works from the known toward the unknown, whereas religion works from the unknown to the
known. Not quite the difference between inductive versus deductive reasoning, but you get the
idea.
Yet Gould’s argument, essentially “don’t bother trying to reconcile religion and science”, was not satisfying either, as it ignored the human need for spiritual fulfillment. Gould was articulate, witty, and thorough, but unfulfilling. In contrast, Francis Collins, the scientist who mapped the human genome, makes a strong effort to reconcile religion and science by overlaying and intertwining the domains and pushed me toward a position I could accept. He starts off sounding like Gould, stating "Science is the only reliable way to understand the natural world”. While Gould would concede science can’t address the metaphysical, and shouldn’t try, Collins goes further, equating answering questions such as “what is the meaning of human existence”, which science is incapable of answering, with how science has tackled quantum mechanics with ideas like the uncertainty principle. Quantum mechanics is, after all, based on assumptions of the immeasurable and infinitesimally small that have to be seen as the same thing as faith.
So when Collins asserts we need both religion and science to understand what is both seen and unseen, he makes an argument I find compelling and appealing. By maintaining that religious and scientific perspectives "not only can coexist within one person, but can do so in a fashion that enriches and enlightens the human experience", he offers me the path I have been seeking.
Allow me to address this question of faith and quantum mechanics, perhaps the most interesting development in the God debate ever. First, some background. For the majority of the history of modern science, scientists operated on Newtonian physics. Anything worth investigating could be measured using empirical, evidence-based methods of science, in no small way contributing to the view that science and religion were not compatible.
Quantum mechanics, which came from the work of early 20th century physicists like Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg, describes physical things at subatomic levels. Bear with me here. A quantum is the name for the smallest unit of energy – and it’s measured using Planck’s Constant, which is 6.626176 x 10-34, which is infinitesimally, immeasurably small. Heisenberg added to this revelation (or confusion) by introducing the “uncertainty principle”, which implies the more you can measure one object at the quantum level and use it as a reference point for another, the more the second object becomes immeasurable. The most recent scientific discovery is “superposition”, which miraculously means quantum level particles can jump from place to place, even existing simultaneously in two different places.
These discoveries change everything for anyone trying to reconcile faith and science. Quantum mechanics has transformed the way we see our world. The Newtonian world of the stable and measurable has been replaced with the unstable and immeasurable. And the icing on the reconciliation cake is the incompatibility of the Newtonian model, manifest in Einstein’s general relativity, and quantum mechanics. So, not only do we have a new way of seeing the world, we can’t even reconcile it with previous models and all that empirical data.
And don’t get me started on String Theory, the attempt to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics. This hypothesis, not really a theory at all, operates on a scale 16 orders of magnitude smaller than anything we can currently measure. So what drives and guides physicists working in that area? On what basis can they support spending billions of dollars on the Large Hadron Collider? Faith. Their faith in the idea String Theory will reconcile all other physical “laws”.
Yet Gould’s argument, essentially “don’t bother trying to reconcile religion and science”, was not satisfying either, as it ignored the human need for spiritual fulfillment. Gould was articulate, witty, and thorough, but unfulfilling. In contrast, Francis Collins, the scientist who mapped the human genome, makes a strong effort to reconcile religion and science by overlaying and intertwining the domains and pushed me toward a position I could accept. He starts off sounding like Gould, stating "Science is the only reliable way to understand the natural world”. While Gould would concede science can’t address the metaphysical, and shouldn’t try, Collins goes further, equating answering questions such as “what is the meaning of human existence”, which science is incapable of answering, with how science has tackled quantum mechanics with ideas like the uncertainty principle. Quantum mechanics is, after all, based on assumptions of the immeasurable and infinitesimally small that have to be seen as the same thing as faith.
So when Collins asserts we need both religion and science to understand what is both seen and unseen, he makes an argument I find compelling and appealing. By maintaining that religious and scientific perspectives "not only can coexist within one person, but can do so in a fashion that enriches and enlightens the human experience", he offers me the path I have been seeking.
Allow me to address this question of faith and quantum mechanics, perhaps the most interesting development in the God debate ever. First, some background. For the majority of the history of modern science, scientists operated on Newtonian physics. Anything worth investigating could be measured using empirical, evidence-based methods of science, in no small way contributing to the view that science and religion were not compatible.
Quantum mechanics, which came from the work of early 20th century physicists like Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg, describes physical things at subatomic levels. Bear with me here. A quantum is the name for the smallest unit of energy – and it’s measured using Planck’s Constant, which is 6.626176 x 10-34, which is infinitesimally, immeasurably small. Heisenberg added to this revelation (or confusion) by introducing the “uncertainty principle”, which implies the more you can measure one object at the quantum level and use it as a reference point for another, the more the second object becomes immeasurable. The most recent scientific discovery is “superposition”, which miraculously means quantum level particles can jump from place to place, even existing simultaneously in two different places.
These discoveries change everything for anyone trying to reconcile faith and science. Quantum mechanics has transformed the way we see our world. The Newtonian world of the stable and measurable has been replaced with the unstable and immeasurable. And the icing on the reconciliation cake is the incompatibility of the Newtonian model, manifest in Einstein’s general relativity, and quantum mechanics. So, not only do we have a new way of seeing the world, we can’t even reconcile it with previous models and all that empirical data.
And don’t get me started on String Theory, the attempt to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics. This hypothesis, not really a theory at all, operates on a scale 16 orders of magnitude smaller than anything we can currently measure. So what drives and guides physicists working in that area? On what basis can they support spending billions of dollars on the Large Hadron Collider? Faith. Their faith in the idea String Theory will reconcile all other physical “laws”.
As I an aside, I want to share some physicist humor. I read in a review of Collins’ work a
clever statement about how faith sends one person to church on Sunday while it sends another
to the laboratory – but the uncertainty principle sends physicists who have accepted faith as part
of being human to, quark-like, both places in the same week.
So here’s where I made my own leap of faith to reconcile religion and science. If physicists can have their own form of legitimate faith, why can’t those who study the human condition similarly have faith that the validity of their hypothesis will ultimately be proven?
This perspective is why I have made my own version of Pascal’s Wager. Admittedly, it was the easy, maybe even intellectually lazy way out for someone in my predicament, but I had good company with thinkers like Spinoza, Einstein and Sagan, all very smart people who made the same bet, even though Sam Harris derides it as just a “cute idea”. Seventeenth century mathematician Blaise Pascal essentially claimed it is in one’s favor to believe in the existence of God, as there is no downside in doing so. If you don’t believe in God, and there is a supreme being, you lose the wager and are in big trouble. As such, a rational person should live as though God exists, even though the truth of the matter cannot actually be known. Pascal understood the dilemma we all face today regarding the tension of spirituality and the literal world, stating, "If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous." This from a man of considerable accomplishment, one of the original inventors of what became machine-based computing, who was quite conflicted over the meaning of the unknown, as he himself had a mystical experience that caused him to abandon his scientific work and focus his intellect on theology for the remainder of his brief life.
My modification to the wager is that I’m not blindly accepting the existence of God, but neither am I blindly denying the existence of a higher power, a cosmic consciousness, or a spiritual force that is bigger and more powerful than the individual. I cannot know, so why take the risk of being wrong? And if faith is appropriate for exploring the boundaries of science, it certainly is an appropriate basis for exploring the boundaries of human existence.
So where does community fit into this? Community can mean many things, but all definitions involve sharing. Today we recognize people can belong to a number of different "communities" simultaneously -- communities of shared residence, like our town of Dover; communities of shared culture, like the German-American Cultural Center on Rt. 109; communities of shared memories, like any college alumni association. Communities may be made up of people who are otherwise strangers, but who, in the words of Daniel Bell in his study Communitarianism and its Critics, share "a morally significant history", echoing Aristotle’s emphasis on values. Bell says most of these are psychological communities "of face-to-face personal interaction governed by sentiments of trust, co-operation, and altruism." That’s a pretty good definition of the community of the Dover Church.
I mentioned earlier the human need for connection and our need to be in relationships. Without connections, without community, we feel that we are not fully living. We need people in our lives with whom we can be ourselves, and feel safe and supported while we grow and learn.
I have shared my testimony, my statement of faith, but I conclude with a challenge to all of us, including myself. That is to drive toward a deeply connected, consciously awake and aware community of people with whom we might share significant parts of our inner beings, thereby filling an important need, while strengthening our community, following the lead of Jesus Christ.
So here’s where I made my own leap of faith to reconcile religion and science. If physicists can have their own form of legitimate faith, why can’t those who study the human condition similarly have faith that the validity of their hypothesis will ultimately be proven?
This perspective is why I have made my own version of Pascal’s Wager. Admittedly, it was the easy, maybe even intellectually lazy way out for someone in my predicament, but I had good company with thinkers like Spinoza, Einstein and Sagan, all very smart people who made the same bet, even though Sam Harris derides it as just a “cute idea”. Seventeenth century mathematician Blaise Pascal essentially claimed it is in one’s favor to believe in the existence of God, as there is no downside in doing so. If you don’t believe in God, and there is a supreme being, you lose the wager and are in big trouble. As such, a rational person should live as though God exists, even though the truth of the matter cannot actually be known. Pascal understood the dilemma we all face today regarding the tension of spirituality and the literal world, stating, "If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous." This from a man of considerable accomplishment, one of the original inventors of what became machine-based computing, who was quite conflicted over the meaning of the unknown, as he himself had a mystical experience that caused him to abandon his scientific work and focus his intellect on theology for the remainder of his brief life.
My modification to the wager is that I’m not blindly accepting the existence of God, but neither am I blindly denying the existence of a higher power, a cosmic consciousness, or a spiritual force that is bigger and more powerful than the individual. I cannot know, so why take the risk of being wrong? And if faith is appropriate for exploring the boundaries of science, it certainly is an appropriate basis for exploring the boundaries of human existence.
So where does community fit into this? Community can mean many things, but all definitions involve sharing. Today we recognize people can belong to a number of different "communities" simultaneously -- communities of shared residence, like our town of Dover; communities of shared culture, like the German-American Cultural Center on Rt. 109; communities of shared memories, like any college alumni association. Communities may be made up of people who are otherwise strangers, but who, in the words of Daniel Bell in his study Communitarianism and its Critics, share "a morally significant history", echoing Aristotle’s emphasis on values. Bell says most of these are psychological communities "of face-to-face personal interaction governed by sentiments of trust, co-operation, and altruism." That’s a pretty good definition of the community of the Dover Church.
I mentioned earlier the human need for connection and our need to be in relationships. Without connections, without community, we feel that we are not fully living. We need people in our lives with whom we can be ourselves, and feel safe and supported while we grow and learn.
I have shared my testimony, my statement of faith, but I conclude with a challenge to all of us, including myself. That is to drive toward a deeply connected, consciously awake and aware community of people with whom we might share significant parts of our inner beings, thereby filling an important need, while strengthening our community, following the lead of Jesus Christ.
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