Excerpt from a sermon by Rev. John H. Applebee, 1914:
To the Unitarian... the soul is a thing of divine origin, and infinite possibilities. Hence the emphasis that Unitarianism places upon character as the supreme end of life, and the only salvation. Character is the final goal of all our efforts... character is the test of religion. 'By their fruits ye shall know them.'
Unitarianism... is the attitude of the soul towards the universe. The universe is the expression of the indwelling life and love of God. It is not a dreary vale of tears; it is not accursed. It is good from center to circumference... The universe reveals, not hides, the spirit of God. Through the gate of the senses it rushes into the soul to make it rich. Nature is the friend and helpmate of man. All nature serves his spirit. What we call evolution is the unfolding of the divine purpose... in ever increasing beauty and richness of life. To the Unitarian, the world is supremely good. All its laws and forces help the soul in its high purpose.
Unitarianism is the attitude of the soul towards life. It holds that life here and now upon the earth, with all its struggle, its suffering and sorrow is good and beautiful. The possible richness of one day's life is immeasurable. The universe is offered to us; and we take just so much as our souls are large enough to hold. Life is a splendid enterprise whereby the soul day by day may build itself into strength and beauty.
(Character is the final goal of all our efforts... character is the test of religion. 'By their fruits ye shall know them.')
—published by the Women's Alliance of May Memorial Church, Syracuse, NY.
I remind you of the modern parable of two boys fighting... "you be Jesus!"
There is an old adage: Often, the hardest thing is not doing the right thing, but knowing the right thing to do. (The Ten Commandments of Character, Joseph Telushkin, p.20)
One of the main reasons people gather in religious community is to discover what the "right thing" is, to have a way to tap into that wisdom, to create a way in life that resonates with that wisdom. In short, to develop a logic and intuition of good character.
Our Unitarian forebears went further than that, they considered character rather than creed as the pathway to salvation—"by their fruits ye shall know them."
Character, according to the Encarta Dictionary, is "the set of qualities that make somebody or something distinctive, especially somebody’s qualities of mind and feeling."
Character, then, is our claim of being: distinctive and interactive, our own unique self as one among many. Character fuels the interplay of interdependence, the dance, if you will, of the web. We form character from our own resolve and understanding, through our own choices and habit, yet we make it real in community, in how we are with others. The choices we make and the experience of them then strengthen or weaken our sense of self, which then informs our way of being with others. When we work on charcter, we work on the health of our relational lives.
This circular interplay of self and other, dependence and independence, is the lifeblood of Unitarian Universalist faith practices, originating in the ancient Judeo-Christian call of the first two commandments: "You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength; and you shall love your neighbor and as yourself."
As Rev. Applebee preached in 1914, "this, then, is Unitarianism in a nutshell.... In it, indeed," he writes, "is summed up the very essence of religion by whatever name it is called. It is very simple; also it is very profound. It reaches to the depths of life and life's experience. It is the solvent of all perplexing social problems. When men live as well as profess the commandment of love, there will be no social problems. It is the bringer of the world's brotherhood. It is the assurance of the soul's peace." (Unitarianism: What It Is Not, and What It Is, Rev. John Applebee, 1914.)
This vision of a healthy, thriving world community was also on the minds of our foremothers and forefathers of the United States. "A nation, as a society, forms a moral person," wrote Thomas Jefferson, "and every member of it is personally responsible for his society." (as quoted from the Character Education Partnership website)
The thrust toward character education growing in our schools reflects that vision of an interactive society, built on the interplay of individual responsibility and sustenance of good will in the larger community.
According to the Character Education Partnership, a nonprofit, non sectarian coalition of organizations, "widely shared, pivotally important, core ethical values such as caring, honesty, fairness, responsibility, and respect for self and others, form the basis of good character.... In a school committed to developing character," the description reads, "these core values are treated as a matter of obligation, as having a claim on the conscience of the individual and community. Character education asserts that the validity of these values, and our responsibility to uphold them, derive from the fact that such values affirm our human dignity, promote the development and welfare of the individual person, serve the common good, meet the classical tests of reversibility (i.e., Would you want to be treated this way?) and universality (i.e., Would you want all persons to act this way in a similar situation?), and inform our rights and responsibilities in a democratic society. The school makes clear that these basic human values transcend religious and cultural differences, and express our common humanity." (from the website: www.character.org, the Character Education Partnership)
Notice how the nature of character and character forming relies upon the discipline of being self-respecting and other-regarding persons. It relies on us creating a core sense of our own worth and ability, while honoring that same worth in others.
This is an aspiration that has been echoed many times, but no time more powerfully in recent years than through the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
When he claimed his dream at the Lincoln Memorial in August, 1963, that his four little children would "one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," he was calling the nation to a discipline of knowing what lies deep in all our hearts, and urging us to shape our lives to answer that call. It was his consistent call to character that inspired the slow, painful and on-going growth of the soul of this nation.
The call to character has also been foundational in the forming of our faith. The inspiration of character in our faith is energized by the circular movement of our first and seventh principles in Unitarian Universalism, affirming the worth and dignity of every person while respecting the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. The reality of character, however, does not come to fruition until these principles are applied to the living of our days.
The reason character is an important part of the Unitarian Universalist religious journey is the affirmation that the integrity of self is the wisdom of the universe, that there is a core understanding of how life can come to its fullness and that we are each born with that intuition. The tricky part is getting out of our own way when we rely on fear and all the ego distortions that come with that response.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin shares this story in the preface of his book The Ten Commandments of Character: "Some Jews from Kovno, Lithuania, approached Rabbi Israel Salanter... to seek his counsel. A wealthy Kovno Jew had lost all his money and eventually died of starvation. Although the men who came to Rabbi Salanter had been unaware of the man's desperate financial situation, they felt responsible for his death: How could a man they knew be in such dire circumstances and they remain oblivious to it? What should they do now? Rabbi Salanter advised them that they were not at fault: 'That man did not die of hunger. He died of pride. He should have taken charity and not allowed himself to die of hunger'." (p.15)
Self respecting and other regarding... love your neighbor as yourself...
This parallels the famed offering by Rabbi Hillel, a reknowned scholar and teacher who lived around the time of the Common Era, two thousand years ago. It is known as "the three questions":
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am for myself alone, what am I?
And if not now, when?
Character is about applying what we know to be right in our lives and doing it when we know it. It is not about theory, but practice. It is not about judgement, but taking part. It is not about pleasing others, but about integrity of self.
We are not born with character, it is something that builds from our interaction with ourselves and others. We are born with inherent dignity and all the potential that goes with that, but it must be exercised in our lives in order to come to its fullness.
So—how, then, do we know the right thing to do?
There are some rules of thumb that have been handed down through the centuries which can guide us to our innate wisdom of good character: caring, honesty, fairness, responsibility, and respect for self and others. I offer five from a variety of sources:
A Unitarian believes that confidence in the innate goodness of human nature will prove to be the best instrument for the establishment of that goodness, and that realistic but unequivocal trust in the character building gift of human nature can be an island of order and dependability in the disturbing and disordered chaos of daily experience.
Our trust in the effective goodness of human nature is well expressed by the (then) president of our Unitarian, Association, Frederick May Eliot:
Unitarians believe that character is the final test of any man's religion, the most important fruit of religious experience and practice, the goal of all religious education. Unless religion develops character in men and women, it seems to us to be something less than religion; and no matter what the other products and by-products of religion may be, without character its primary purpose has been defeated and its chief value lost. Character is the foundation-stone of all lasting human welfare.
Let us believe in our innate wisdom of the peaceable realm. Let us challenge ourselves beyond our fears. Let us honor the truth revealed in our ways and walking and give what we know to others.
And let us embrace our potential to live and model lives that help heal a broken world.
So may it be. Amen.
Copyright © 2007 Lisa G. Ward. All Rights Reserved.