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    Sin of Being Human

    Filed Under questions, religion, uu culture 

    After reading Shelby’s post on Rev. T.D. Jakes’ advice to congregations about domestic violence, I replied that I’d never seen that issue raised within a UU congregation. Maybe about some other people, out there somewhere, but basically I’ve been left with the impression that domestic violence doesn’t exist within UU communities. Is this true? I doubt it. UUs have all sorts of problems, why wouldn’t we have that one? And yet, I can’t think of a single incident in my six or so years as a UU in which domestic violence was treated as our problem.

    Peripherally, I’ve been hearing about this Larry Craig Senator guy and his fall from “grace.” And yes, a lot of left leaning folks are quick to call out his hypocrisy, while baffled that the right makes excuses for him. I want to say to the Lefties: For crying out loud, don’t you get where these people are coming from? Many of them believe that it is inevitable to be sinful - we can’t help it as humans - but we have to admit that it’s a sin. The great crime isn’t in succumbing to temptations, but in being rebellious to God’s laws.

    This is how you can end up with such wonderful rationalizations as the one told to me yesterday by a new friend: upon hearing that she was moving in with her boyfriend, her devout young Catholic friends chastised her; when she pointed to their child born out of wedlock as an example of them being hypocritical, their defense was, “Well, yes, we had sex outside of marriage, but at least we didn’t use birth control!”

    If UUs were perfect, that might explain our small numbers. But we all know that’s not the case.

    When I hear about the crazy-ass shenanigans of some of my Christian friends’ church lives, it makes me go Wow! How is that even possible? Adultery, alcoholism, domestic abuse, embezzlement, trickery and gossip-mongering - all kinds of things that may have precedence in the Bible, but are certainly not generally considered moral - and it dawns on me: it doesn’t matter. Maybe to the individual person here and there, but it doesn’t matter on a bigger scale: people expect this. Religious communities are like big families, and “dysfunction” is - in a way - embraced as proof of our inability to live without God’s grace.

    But in a community that doesn’t necessarily believe in God’s grace or in the human being’s hopeless imperfections, what do they make of a parishioner who beats their partner or child? How do we minister - if at all - to that person? As a non minister, I have no idea. But shouldn’t I, as a lay person? As a church-goer? We try to protect the innocent, but what to do about the guilty person? And aren’t we all guilty of something?

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    5 Responses to “Sin of Being Human”

    1. Chalicechick on September 5th, 2007 4:49 pm

      My guess would be that we treat the person as a sick soul who needs help to keep from continuing to hurt himself and others, help that is perhaps more than we are equipped to give as a church. We try to get the abuser into therapy, a process that would include therapy and/or counseling for the abused spouse. We reach out, shifting the power dynamic by making it clear that the spouse has other options.

      But we wouldn’t treat him as a moral authority on how to live a peaceful life either, and if he started to opine on other people’s marriages without mentioning his own difficulties, he would be ignored and/or called a hypocrite.

    2. Shelby Meyerhoff on September 5th, 2007 8:13 pm

      Wait, did you say we’re *not* perfect?

      Just kidding. Thanks for the link and for raising this difficult issue on your blog.

    3. Jamie Goodwin on September 5th, 2007 10:31 pm

      Although we may not always act that way, I personally take a great deal of strength away from the fact as Unitarian Universalists we do not claim perfection.

      In fact I think that “[a] human being’s hopeless imperfections” is a important part of our theology.

    4. hafidha sofia on September 6th, 2007 12:26 pm

      Jamie, I think that for me for the key word might be “hopeless.” I wrote this post pretty quickly and “hopeless” isn’t the best word to describe what I’m thinking.

      “Damning” might be more apt. I’d agree that believing in our inherent human flaws is a part of UU theology, but where I feel a difference is in how those flaws are interpreted. We try to address them, while knowing we’ll never be perfect. We do not (in general) believe that we are inherently sinful, and that BECAUSE of this, it is only through God’s infinite (or not so) mercy that we are allowed into Heaven.

      Am I making sense?

    5. Elandria Williams on September 7th, 2007 1:39 pm

      I think that when something major goes down in the traditional black church that is so huge it causes folk to start thinking about what that means. I haven’t in a long time attended a service where the sermon was about something altogether tangible. We are really heady and philisophical so we have no time for down to earth things like domestic violence or debt mangement. We are getting better cause there is no a parenting class at my church.

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