Three Views of Time

by the Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
Preached at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Baton Rouge
Sunday, July 26, 2009

When I was here a year ago, I took the opportunity to thank this congregation for all your generosity and hospitality to the Unitarian Universalists and people of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Since that time, this congregation has made the Greater New Orleans UUs a generous gift of money to help withour recovery and rebuilding, and so I must thank you once again, both for the donation and for not forgetting us.

I am also grateful to my colleague Steve Crump for giving me this opportunity to be in your pulpit once again, and for the interesting and challenging summer services topic: Time. Time has been a thorny problem for philosophers and scientists and theologians ever since there have been philosophers and scientists and theologians. Time is part of a social system, and it is an expression of culture. It is part of our human psychology. It can be a spiritual irritant or part of a spiritual discipline. It is a good thing for us religious liberals to examine our concept of time and how it affects us.

There’s a kind of spiritual convergence of three great world religious traditions on their differing but related views of time, and interesting questions are raised in pondering those differences. And whenever we UUs think about the world’s great religious traditions, we always want to know what implications they might have for us. Let’s look at each of them in turn, and see what we find out, and what we think it means for Unitarian Universalists.

The oldest tradition is, of course, paganism, which has had encounters of varying degrees of conflict with both Judaism and Christianity for millennia. (By "pagan," I am referring to Western naturalistic traditions older than Judaism and Christianity, as well as to the animistic religions of pre-industrial indigenous peoples of several continents, and to Eastern traditions such Hinduism.) The pagan view sees time as a circle or a spiral. Everything in nature and in life moves in a cycle, from the seasons of the year to the phases of the moon to the stages of human life. What goes around, comes around; everything returns.

This perspective on time offered human beings a sense of continuity, a comforting reminder in the coldest winter that spring was just around the corner, that the darkest night brings the brightest dawn. The careful notation of natural signs also helped with the advancement of agriculture and the establishment of settled communities. For thousands of years, human beings followed the circular path of the mother goddess and her consort the dying and reborn god, and were strengthened and comforted by their place in the spiral nature of time.

Judaism developed out of and in the midst of the nature religions of the Middle East, and yet the Hebrews had a completely different view of time than their pagan neighbors. For Jews, time runs in a straight line, moving from chaos to creation to covenant with the one God. The line’s purpose is the eventual fulfillment of God’s plan for humanity, and everything that happens is part of this straight-line progression. For at least 3000 years, Jews have been strengthened and comforted by their knowledge of their place in God’s movement through history, as the people chosen by God to further the divine plan for all human beings. No matter what oppression or exile was being endured, the Jewish people would always know that somehow, in ways sometimes mysterious and unknowable to them, everything was working out as God had planned it, toward the goal of liberation and reunion with God.

Christianity began as a heresy of Judaism, and still retains the idea of time as an arrow pointing towards fulfillment of a divine plan, but with the refinement of the idea that one man, one individual, can alter the path of history. Christians see Jesus of Nazareth as breaking into the story of humanity and changing its course forever. For Christians, the notion that one human being can have such a powerful and long-lasting effect on the world is both comforting and strengthening, proving to them that individual human life has value despite great historical forces moving in the opposite direction.

All of life is one big circle that human beings can neither control nor affect – human life moves in a straight line of progress to an inevitable goal – one person can make a difference. These are the 3 views of time bequeathed to Western Civilization by paganism, Judaism, and Christianity. As we have seen, all 3 have value for human beings, but all 3 can also be fairly and legitimately critiqued.

Too much reliance on the circular nature of life can produce resignation and apathy and acceptance of injustice. If everything goes round and round in a primeval pattern that you cannot change or have much effect on, then there’s not much use in working to end oppression. Indeed, in some pagan religions, Hinduism for just one example, one’s place in this life is predetermined by acts in previous lives and thus it would be WRONG to rebel against one’s divinely appointed role in the spiral round of life’s wheel.

Giving too much credence in the idea of a divine plan for humanity can also stunt the growth and development of people. If things are working out the way God has planned, who are you to have the nerve to complain? It can also lead to arrogance, to the notion that you know what God wants. Such misplaced assurance has led many times in human history to acts of vicious cruelty and intolerance, all in the name of "God’s will."

The raising of the importance of the individual that derives from Christianity and the humanistic traditions that followed is one of the most important values of Unitarian Universalism, even those congregations that might suffer from anti-Christian prejudice. "The inherent worth and dignity of every person" is the first principle listed in the section of the UUA By-laws that many UUs refer to as The Principles and Purposes, and to many UUs it is the most important. But an over-reliance on the primacy of the individual has inevitable negative consequences – the despoliation of the earth’s environment in the cause of human comfort and materialism, the rise of dictators and despots whose idea is "if it’s good for me, it’s good, and if it’s bad for me, it’s bad." One person can indeed make a difference – but that difference may not always be for the good. Adolph Hitler and Osama bin Laden are both single individuals, whose evil philosophies have negatively affected millions of people.

As Unitarian Universalists, we need not be bound by any one view of the nature of time. We can freely accept that which is good and true and useful in other traditions, and be warned to take care and be wary over those aspects with less positive side effects. We can learn to honor nature, our own and the earth’s, in the manner of our pagan ancestors. It is good to be in tune with the changing of the seasons, the monthly cycles of the moon, the pull of the tides both within and without us. There is much that is positive in seeing all the stages of human life as having intrinsic value, instead of the relentless celebration of youth that we find in our media and popular culture. But we do not have to see ourselves as trapped in a circular round of rebirth that we cannot influence. The past may indeed be prelude, but it does not have to be so.

It is good to see ourselves connected to a human history given direction and meaning by the idea that there is progress, that we are moving towards a desirable, if not divinely appointed, goal. It is good to feel that we are part of something larger than ourselves, something that, in the words of Hebrew scripture adapted by Theodore Parker and often quoted by Martin Luther King Jr., "bends toward justice." Seeing our part in history in this light, we are moved to actions to end oppression, to bring about peace and justice. However, we do not have to interpret everything that occurs as part of a divine plan; we can realize that although human history seems to be moving in an overall progressive motion, progress in not inevitable, it is the activity or nonactivity of human beings that makes the difference. Time itself neither heals nor makes progress.

Finally, we can be energized and inspired by the knowledge that one person can make a difference for the better. Jesus arose during a time of the dominance of a great and powerful empire that took over countries and oppressed all those considered outsiders to the power and might of Rome. The Buddha arose in a time and place when your station in life was determined forever by the circumstances of your birth, and pain and hardship were the lot of the majority of people. Martin Luther King Jr. arose in a time when segregation and degradation for people of color were considered national norms that could not be disturbed. Rosa Parks sat down when African-Americans were supposed to give up their seats as well as their dignity to any white person who demanded it. Forty years ago last month, in the summer of 1969, during the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, a single drag queen, named Sylvia Rivera, fed up with constant police harassment, started the riot that began the second-wave of the gay rights movement in our country. One person, acting with courage and hope, and supported by a community, as all these examples were, can indeed change the world for the better.

May we as Unitarian Universalists learn from and be inspired by all three perspectives on the nature of time, and be moved to take our place in the circle of nature, help propel the arrow of justice, and be secure in the knowledge of the power of one plus a community. So might this be! AMEN – ASHE – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!