The Distortion of our Best Values

Rev. Douglas Taylor

2-25-24

Sermon Video: https://youtu.be/uN4RYgFPs4g

A few years back I discovered that, as a clergy person, I had to become fluent in recognizing online scams and phishing schemes – and more importantly – how to teach everyone in the congregation how to recognize and avoid them.

Here’s what would happen: some grifter or thief with a modicum of internet savvy would create an email address that was not quite mine but believably close enough. Then they would hack a list of contacts and send messages around to people asking for money, pretending to be me. “Blessings,” they would write, “I am in a meeting at the moment and can’t call. Email me back if you can help me out with something.” If you respond, the scammer will then say something like “Thanks, I have this group of adolescent cancer patients I’m helping out and I need to you go buy me gift cards, scratch the backs, and tell me the numbers so I can run off with this untraceable information.”

So I learned to say, repeatedly, that I would never, ever ask someone to send me gift card information using a fake email address. Ever!

It’s not that I would never ask some of you for money. And it’s not that I would never be part of a conversation to financially support people in need. I do talk a lot about helping people and supporting the vulnerable among us and using our money as a reflection of our values and about how important empathy is. It’s just that I will never do it with gift cards and a fake email address.

It is frustrating to have scammers take advantage of our kindness, empathy, and willingness to help others; to take advantage of the trust built up among us as a congregation.  I want us to continue to be kind, empathetic, and trusting. But we also need to stay curious and even skeptical. I’m thankful that curiosity and skepticism are also religious values we hold together. It is part of what helps us stay open and resilient.

We live in a world that is constantly pushing us to be fearful of each other, to be on guard against threats, to be vigilant against potential dangers. I want to be cautious about sounding that bell myself this morning. In the reading we heard this morning, from the beginning of the book Healing the Heart of Democracy, Parker Pamer warns us that the collapse of our democracy will happen not because the communists or the fascists have taken over, not because of a foreign invader, and not even because of greed and dishonesty among some elected officials; but because we “become fearful of each other, of our differences.” (p9)

Unitarian Universalism, as a faith tradition, has long held a deep value of honoring the differences among us. We prize our capacity to be together as one people without insisting on a coerced conformity of belief or practice. We have made ‘honoring our differences’ as one of our highest values.

Our diversity is like the prairie. Allow me to explain. Parker Palmer starts one of the early chapters in his Healing the Heart of Democracy book with the following story:

For nearly an hour, we had been driving the back roads of southern Minnesota, past acre after acre of corn lined up in orderly, tedious, and mind-numbing rows. As we crested a hill, my friend broke the silence: “Check it out.”

Afloat in the sea of uniformity called American agribusiness was an island of wind-blown grasses and wildflowers, a riot of colors and textures to delight the eye. We got out of the car and walked through this patch of prairie my friend had helped restore, dotted with the kinds of plants whose names make a found poem: wild four o’clock, bastard toadflax, Ohio horse mint, prairie Indian plantain. After some silence, my friend spoke again, saying something like this:

“There are more than one hundred fifty species of plants on this prairie – to say nothing of the insects, birds, and mammals they attract – just as there were before we first broke the sod and started farming. It’s beautiful, of course, but that’s not the whole story.

“Biodiversity makes an ecosystem more creative, productive, adaptive to change, and resilient in the face of stress. The agribusiness land we’ve been driving through provides us with food and fuel. But we pay a very steep price for this kind of monoculture. It saps the earth’s vitality and puts the quality and sustainability of our food supply at risk. The prairie as it once was – a state to which it can be restored – has a lot to teach us about how we need to live.” (p11-12)

Palmer declares that if our democracy were to collapse it would be because we had become fearful of each other; fearful of our differences. And, conversely, a healthy democracy is like healthy prairie – the biodiversity of our ecosystem helps us remain resilient and to thrive. And yet, there are those who claim diversity is destructive. Diversity and differences are used to stoke fear, but that is a distortion of one of our highest values.

I suppose one of the arguments against diversity can be echoed by the argument against the biodiversity of the prairie. The prairie does not provide us the corn we demand. The rows and rows of monotonous corn is what fuels our country. We all need food and the monoculture of corn provides it efficiently. Similarly, the monoculture of white, heteronormative, patriarchal consumerism is also efficient. As if being efficient is the best quality allowed to us.

But here we honor that our differences, we see that our differences are good. Here, we strive to be more like the prairie. Diversity is one of our best values.

In my description for this morning, I listed other values as well – Hope, Tolerance, Peace, Self-Respect and even Love. Consider that list, they’re good values! Let me unpack how they can get twisted.

The negative side of hope is a kind of naïve optimism that does not accept reality. We are in favor of reality around here. A false hope blocks us from accepting reality. Therefore, hope is for naïve, weak people who can’t handle reality.

Tolerance is good, but it’s always been the weaker version of true acceptance. Tolerance says ‘I’ll let you continue unhindered over there;’ while acceptance opens the door and ushers you in. Tolerance is okay if your not willing to do the real work of inclusion.

Peace is important, I’d be delighted to have more peace around the world. Let’s call for the full ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the war in Ukraine. But in saying that we must acknowledge that peace without justice is too often appeasement. Peace is not enough; sometimes oppressors need to be challenged and stopped – which isn’t exactly the same as peace, is it.

Let’s talk about “self-respect.” Surely everyone can see that self-respect is a key value for all people. Hmm, let us consider the difficulties of how self-respect can be corrupted into entitlement. Let us consider how privilege and ego can narrow a person’s perspective as to think they deserve special treatment when they don’t get their way. I know that’s not what self-respect is really about, but that is the distortion. If you don’t believe me, I’ll remind you of the story Fox News ran 15 years ago saying Mr. Rogers ruined a generation of kids with his talk of self-esteem. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fox-fred-rogers-evil/ Their complaint was he made young people feel entitled when we told us we are loved just as we are instead of suggesting we could all stand to put in a little hard work to earn our place in society.

And love. Let’s not forget love. The proposed change to our Article II statement of Unitarian Universalism shifts us away from the Seven Principles to instead have a constellation of values with Love at the center. To distort our best values, even love, is to puff up the worst version of them; to imagine how these values are actually terrible things. Even love? Yes! Even love; soft, mushy, touchy-feely, kumbaya, let’s-all-just-get-along love. No thank you! That is a version of love that asks nothing of you; a version of love that is flakey and weak. We would do better to align ourselves with strong values like … the rule of law and free markets, I guess.

*Deep breath*

I refuse the distortions of our values. I am committed to truth and love and hope. I’m open to the critiques, I’ll listen. I am more than willing to temper a call for peace so that is aligns with justice – that is a great correction, a worthy conversation. And I have room in my world-view to let an idea like tolerance be the base, the bare minimum while acceptance becomes the truer goal. I can get behind that. And I will continue to laud our values of empathy and diversity and respect (including self-respect.)

And love. I will not be dissuaded of the centrality of love. The love to which I am committed is not mushy or soft. When I speak of love I mean something different from the feeling, from the romantic emotion of love. I mean love as the action, the behavior, the promise – love as the choice to treat others in a particular way. And it will not matter to me if other people misunderstand me – even if they do so on purpose. When we say love holds our center, we need not let others sway our definition of that value.

This calls to my mind that poem found on Mother Teresa’s wall at the children’s home in Calcutta. It’s the one with the lines “If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.” The poem attained fame with attribution to Mother Teresa but she never claimed to have written it. It was written by Kent Kieth under the title “Paradoxical Commandments.” And the sentiment gets at what I’m trying to say this morning. 

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never (only) between you and them anyway.

In other words – hold onto and stay true to the best values you have – even when others distort them. Stay true to them because you know they are true. And do not worry if my list of great values does not line up with your list of the list from the Seven Principles or the new UUA values constellation. Because diversity is one of our best values; and by our differences, we are made more beautiful and we will find greater resilience.

By grace and love, our diversity will help us to thrive; we will be like the prairie and we will thrive. Even as forces around us distort our words, whisper fear into our dreams, and threaten to destroy what is precious.

We are part of the prairie, my friends. We will not be scammed or fooled or bamboozled into abandoning our best values. Stay curious and even skeptical, my friends. Be not fearful of the differences among us and around us. Love will be our guide, truth will be our daystar, and compassion our constant companion. We will be the prairie.

In a world without end

May it be so.