Not Religion—Relationships
Preacher: Reverend Andrea Abbott
Not Religion—Relationships
My favorite church sign was the one I read of lately that said “Not Religion—Relationships”. I fondly imagined that it was in front of a U-U church but it didn’t have to be. All religions have an interest and a take on relationships. Indeed, all of our lives we are involved in relationships. Lighthouses are automated now and no longer require lighthouse keepers. The national parks are overrun with people and even in the deepest woods and in the most deserted desert there are hikers and explorers bent on an extreme vacation. I am reminded of the early monks, those who sought a life of solitude and contemplation in the Egyptian desert. No sooner had they installed themselves in tents or yurts or whatever, than their fans found them and whole communities were established. In 300AD, the poor monks were complaining about the crowds. So, from the first centuries of the common era, being a hermit has been tough work.
With that option gone, our only course is to live in relationships. And, though at times we would like to leave the whole messy business behind, for the most part we seek out relationships. We use all means, including electronic, in the pursuit of love and we join groups and we keep in touch with our families even as we complain about the very people we have sought out. Perhaps complaining is part of the attraction of relationships.
We are, from our earliest origins, social animals. From the small units of extended families to tribes to nation states, we construct relationships. And then we have to live in them.
Our earliest relationships, and usually the most long lasting, are with our families. It’s from our families that we learn two things; the way we are expected to understand ourselves and the way we are expected to get along with others. These two lessons, how we view ourselves in the world and how we view others, are lifelong lessons. What we learn first from our families we continue to refine as we go out into the world. From the beginning, we form our identities, how we see ourselves, through how we are viewed in our families.
And so, we view ourselves through other people’s eyes to a huge extent. Though we would like to think that we create ourselves, that we are not overly concerned with how other people think about us, in fact this is the way that we first come to see who we are. Though it may be a problem to be concerned with what the neighbors think, or to feel that we have to keep up with the Joneses (I often wonder who the Joneses feel they have to keep up with), it is in relationship to others that we define ourselves and come to see ourselves as separate entities. As a child matures, he or she comes to see that they are independent of their mother and a person in their own right. From that point on we struggle with the competing definitions of others and with our desire to define ourselves; we struggle with our need to relate to others and how that fits with our own sense of ourselves. Often these definitions are at odds with each other. Sometimes we see ourselves clearly, sometimes not; sometimes we are not able to see the effect we have on those around us and sometimes we are blind to how we are seen. As Robert Burns said, in his poem titled “ To A Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church” and I roughly translate from the Scots here “O would some power the gift be given us, to see ourselves as others see us”.
I’m not sure we would really want that gift. And what would we do with it if we had it? In this world of competing roles and competing expectations, we are bound to disappoint someone. Seen through someone’s eyes, we are bound to be failures, to hurt feelings, to be seen as selfish or grasping or complacent or vain. We might be horrified at our image in other people’s eyes. Can we simultaneously be the world’s best parent and the world’s best at our profession? Can we “be there” as people say for everyone at all times? Can we contribute to and work for every cause, everyone in need? What would our lives look like if we tried? Valium, anyone?
On the other hand, completely disregarding the opinions of other people is one of the qualities of sociopaths and that’s not our goal. We do have to consider others. We are not islands. Our actions make a difference and we do have to consider the effect of those actions on others. And most of us want the good opinion of others, at least of some others. And so we enter into the struggle of mature human beings, balancing our own needs against other’s needs. Balancing our desires, which are never ending and always expanding, against our own resources and the resources of the world.
In the process of finding out who we are and what we can do, we come up against the judgment of others. We are formed by those judgments and the more we are judged, the harsher we can often be on others. Matthew 7:1 says “Judge not, lest you be judged by others”. When we rely too much on judging each other, we create a climate in which judgment, not mercy, becomes the only tool we have in our dealings with others. This is particularly problematic when we often don’t know the people we are judging. This is a society of great division and great gaps between people, and we often feel we understand people’s lives when we really do not know the pressures and constraints under which they live. And judgment is often a tool that cuts its user. We become harsh with ourselves because we are harsh with others. We become brittle and defensive, defending ourselves quickly because we fear the judgment of others which, in turn, leads to justification and more judgment of others. One of my favorite pieces of wisdom in the New Testament follows hard on the verse I quoted earlier about judgment. It is Matthew 7:3 where Jesus says.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
Many times we would rather be right than seek harmony with someone with whom we disagree until being right becomes more important than a relationship. Because of this, though we live in close proximity with many, many people, we are very alone, very afraid of opening up to others. We are afraid of each other, we are afraid of being seen as inadequate or weak, and I think we have seen the results of that fear too often lately.
Relationships are at the heart of religion because religion is about more than how we can live with each other. At the heart of religion is the desire to live with purpose, with dignity and to find worth and, just as importantly, to help others to have the same sense of purpose, dignity and worth. This involves a good deal of balancing and a good deal of self-examination. When our lives are spent judging others and fearing the judgment of others, we are unable to examine our own dark places, our wants, our own feelings of deprivation, the underside of our life, the places where we find ourselves wanting. We are unable to come to terms with our own limitations and contradictions. And so we seek happiness by trying to satisfy our desires, sometimes at the expense of others, of our planet, and, perhaps most bewilderingly, at the expense of our own real development and happiness. Most of us know that happiness is not found in possessions but how tempting they are. Most of us know that, in seeking happiness in the wrong places, we often endanger the true fulfillment we could have. And yet we go on trying to make ourselves feel better, even when our relationships, our true source of joy, suffer in the consequence.
That is why relationships are at the heart of religion. Relationships, the ways in which we initiate them, maintain them, end them occupy a huge part of what we are about. In thinking about the relationships in our lives, we often focus on their difficulties and we seek to justify our own role and actions in them. But it is less our concern for our own goodness, our own, if you will, salvation, and more a concern with seeing goodness in others that is important. We are all too willing to present our own reasons and arguments. How willing are we to listen to the reasons and arguments of those who are opposed to us? Or even to those we love when their interests run counter to our own?
It is human to seek to present ourselves in the best light. It is human not to see how our actions may be at fault, how we may be contradictory or how we may see the good in ourselves and in those we love while being blind to the same qualities in those we do not see as like us. We are willing to excuse faults in those with whom we identify but not so willing to excuse those with whom we don’t. Is there a way to get beyond this very human barrier, a way to expand our loving kindness to more people?
A Kadampa Buddhist saying is, “Whenever you see a fault in others, attribute it to yourself. That way you will get the benefit and will learn from others’ mistakes.” That is an interesting discipline. What would happen if, every time we found fault with someone we identified ourselves with that fault? When we criticize the poor for terrible decision making, what if we thought about our own bad decisions? When we criticize the rich for being greedy, what if we thought about the times that we, too, had taken advantage to get something we wanted? Would it help if we could see our own actions as flawed and, with that insight, be more compassionate to everyone? What would we lose if we were to proceed in this manner? What would we gain?
How do we learn to be more compassionate, to hear the other person better? How do we begin self-examination, sometimes cringe-making self-examination, without corrosive self-flagellation, the self-flagellation that leads to more recrimination and more rationalization?
The balance is incredibly hard to attain and yet incredibly necessary. It is, in the first place, necessary to understand that saints are not great companions. We are, none of us saints, and that is good. Being human is a process of learning, learning that goes on forever, or, at least in my experience so far, for 68 years. I’m sure there are faster learners than myself, but it is also my experience that we learn how to relate to ourselves, how to relate to each other, not from reading a book or two, not from listening to a speech, but from the painful process of trial and error. A process in which we need self-forgiveness as well as self-correction, humor as well as discipline.
How, then, do we find guidance in the ways in which we treat each other? Each major religion has something which is very similar to the saying we call the Golden Rule. Here are the major versions.
For Christianity, Matthew 7:12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
In Buddhism: “One should seek for others the happiness one desires for oneself.”
In Islam: “None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” Number 13 of Imam “Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths.” 3
Judaism: “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary.” Talmud, Shabbat 31a.
And so it goes, on through Baha’i, through Native American religions, through Confucianism, through Jainism, all the way back to the Ancient Egyptians. We wouldn’t have to keep saying the same thing over and over if this was an easy fix. And the fact that we have to say it so many times in so many settings, is also an indication that human nature is remarkably similar over time and space. Each religion insists that we must recognize not only our own need for compassion but our need to give compassion to others. And it’s not only a good thing to do. It’s also good for you. As the Dali Lama says ·
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” That’s win/win
Relationships are difficult. Balancing our own, legitimate needs against the needs of others is a tough act. But it’s what is most needed in this world of dissent, division, and danger. Sometimes it’s harder to be kind to those close to us than it is to be kind to those we know only as abstractions. Sometimes it’s much easier to have a relationship with a Divine Being than it is to have a relationship with someone in our own families. But even at our angriest, even at our most wounded, we know this. Within all of us are hearts, hearts that are easily broken, hearts that are often lonely. In our loneliness and in our brokenness we seek each other. At heart we are one people, longing to be together with each other, longing to be whole.