X. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF TENTATIVENESS AND AN INVITATION TO HERESY

Oscar Ameringer once said with tongue in cheek, "Except that I inherited certain characteristics from an unknown number of unknown ancestors, was deeply influenced by persons most of whom were dead before I was born, and shaped by circumstances over which I had no control, I am a self-made man." 

The only appropriate response would be the one George Bernard Shaw is reported to have made to someone who boasted of being self-made: "Sir, you have relieved God of a tremendous responsibility!"

The truth is there's no such thing as a self-made person. We are all, in part, the product of a variety of influences in our lives. That includes everything we've been told or taught. If you are an American, or a member of a political party, or a follower of a religion, chances are it's because your parents were (though with respect to religion that's less true than it used to be.)

Those are all part of the "givens" of our lives, but they're not the whole story. There is also the matter of our responses to what has happened to us, our reflections on what we've been taught, and our freedom to chart our own course from here on out. We need not simply be products of our past.

Sphinx Dainty Monster., by TIm Holmes

It's with this fact in mind that I invite you to heresy. The word often seems to mean "an unacceptable theory or a conventional or unorthodox opinion." But in fact the Greek root of the word means "to choose." My challenge to you is to choose, to hammer out your own convictions in the context of the best information, the deepest reflection and the most examined personal experience you can undertake. It was Plato who said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." And the examination to which I invite you need not leave anything out. As the child said when he discovered that there really was no Santa Claus, no tooth-fairy and no Easter Bunny, "I'm going to look into this Jesus Christ business too." George Steiner defined heresy as "unending re-reading and reevaluation."

To question something is not necessarily to reject it. Most exclamation points began as question marks that finally got bent straight. It's not nearly as important to have all the right answers as it is to ask the right questions; and if, for awhile, life seems to be all questions and no answers, be assured that that is merely an uncomfortable transition. Confusion always precedes insight. And confusion is uncomfortable, which is probably why we don't ask more questions than we do. As I've said, most of us aren't naturally rebels, except perhaps for a streak during adolescence; but even then we usually abandon one form of conformity (like conformity to parental thinking) to attach to another form of conformity (like peer group). The status quo usually appears to be safer than an untried way.

One thinks of Martin Luther King, Jr. as an embodiment of heresy, refusing to acquiesce to the socially acceptable mode of operations. Somewhere Dr. King wrote:

Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position that stands

out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most

is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and

so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few people who cherish lofty

and noble ideas, hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.

So I'm inviting you to be a heretic, insisting on making your own choices, not just for rebellion's sake, but for Truth's sake. If it means finally endorsing a point of view you've been taught, then at least it is your point of view and not just inherited second hand.  If it means seeing some things in a new and better way, it may play a part in nudging the larger society to seeing the same truth you do.

New and better truth has often been introduced by one person who challenged the "conventional wisdom." In the field of science one thinks of Galileo and Copernicus and Einstein. In the field of psychology one thinks of Freud and Jung. It has happened in the fields of theology and ethics by people like Moses and Jesus and Muhammed. They were all heretics in terms of the established mentalities and the cost was often high in terms of rejection, excommunication and even assassination. Moreover, even the newfound truth may later be improved upon.

Remembering what we said earlier about a certain "tentativeness" in the best that we know, we still strive to know more, to understand better, to choose carefully, not just for our sakes, but for the sake of the larger society. Remembering also what we said about the importance of dialogue, of sharing your truth with others and evaluating and learning from their responses, we won't just "go off half cocked" with our own ideas.

I have appreciated what R. M. Rilke said in his Letters to a Young Poet (p.34f)

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the

questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a

very foreign language....Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday

far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your

way into the answers.

The creed of a genuine heretic is well expressed in these famous old words:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the years, "give me light, that

I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied, "Go into the

darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you

better than light and safer than a known way.

As we stand at the gate of this new century we know it is going to be more different than anyone has predicted. It's going to take a lot of heretics to enable us to face it in new ways. Here's hoping you'll be one of them.