SEVEN PATHS TO GOD
by Forrest Church
April 24, 2005
Somewhere in northern Vermont, after driving in uncertainty, a traveler becomes convinced that he is on the wrong road. At the next village, he comes to a halt. Calling one of the villagers to his car window, he says, "Friend, I need help. I'm lost."
"Do you know where you are?" the villager asks.
"Yes," replies the traveler. "I saw the name of your village as I entered."
"Do you know where you want to go?"
"Yes," the traveler again replies, and names his destination.
Ruminating for a moment, the villager shakes his head and says, "Mister, you ain't lost. You just need directions."
To me, that little story sums up the spiritual search. We know where we are. We know where we want to go. We feel lost sometimes. We just need directions.
The good and bad news both is that there are hundreds of priests and gurus, imams and ministers who will be glad to give us their road maps. But each map is different. Not to mention the small print at the bottom of it, which tells us how we have to pack for our journey and what whole burnt offerings we must make along the way to win a safe arrival.
I thought it might be helpful, at a time when many of us are attending family Passover celebrations and following the news broadcasts on the selection of a new Pope, to approach the religious quest in a slightly more Universalistic manner. Even within the Catholic Church and the Jewish Faith there are many different paths to God. For instance, Jewish mystics are far more akin to Catholic mystics than either are to the more legalistic practitioners of their respective faiths. Among the Catholic saints themselves, the most cursory survey demonstrates how many different paths there are toward spiritual enlightenment. Forcing a young Saint Francis to follow the steps of Saint Joan of Arc would only impede, not advance, his progress, and vice versa.
This morning I shall take you on a brief tour down seven very different well-worn paths toward God. None of the seven is superior to the others. And no individual search falls into one single category. Over the course of your own religious journey, you may follow two or three different paths farther than most people follow one. On the other hand, one way will almost surely come more naturally to you than will the others.
In sharing these seven paths (and you will surely think of others), I affirm the Universalist belief that the One True Light, call it what you may, shines through many different windows.. The paths to salvation and enlightenment are many and various. Here, to me, are seven of the most familiar, each of which I shall define according to the nature of the seeker.
The Child
Rarest of the types, the Child views all creation as enchanted. Toddlers can turn anything into a toy. In the same respect, the Child can find good, and therefore God, almost anywhere. Jesus said that we have to become like little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He meant that many so-called adult qualities—skepticism, cynicism, world-weariness, and the like—can blind us to the heaven that is in a mustard seed, present only to the most open and least jaundiced eye. In literature, one example of the Child as seeker is Prince Dimitri in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. Sophisticates view him as a fool, and his openness and innocence make him vulnerable to ridicule, but acting according to his nature, he proves to be almost Christlike in his actions and thoughts.
Only rarely does the Child survive childhood. Many adults who fall into this category are "retarded" or "simple." Paradoxically, the same defects that make such people unsuited to the rigors of adult society allow them to develop a spontaneous and beautiful relationship with God.
The pitfalls of this type are obvious. Even as innocence is lovely, naivete is not. Nor are being childish and being childlike the same thing. The Child often lacks an eye for evil. But this type of seeker more than compensates for her or his shortcomings by helping the rest of us to open our eyes a little wider, wonder at the beauty of the most ordinary things, and see God in their linings.
The Lover
The Lover's path to God is through the human heart. When Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan or answers his disciples' questions concerning how to get to heaven by suggesting that they "feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and visit those in prison," he shines his light down the Lover's path.
Often the Lover sets out to search for God only after experiencing some great suffering, a failure or personal tragedy. Such a crisis can lead to despair through isolation and bitterness, but it need not. Seekers embark on the Lover's path when their own experience makes them more compassionate toward others through the empathy of shared suffering. To recognize one's own tears in another's eyes can create a human connection that is divine.
The Lover almost always finds forgiveness (which is next to godliness) to be a natural act, one that leads to self-acceptance deepest level, "peace with God"). The greatest natural limitation the Lover must often be aware of is that focusing on compassion may blind him or her to questions of justice. Mercy can cloud judgment. Also, following an individualistic path to God through one-on-one relationships can distract the Lover from evils of society that demand a more prophetic response.
The Champion
Unlike the Lover, the Champion has a natural instinct for human rights in the larger, societal sense. Driven by a passion for righteousness, often fostered by a consciousness of her or his own sense of guilt (or sin), when the Champion serves, and therefore seeks, God, it is by pursuing justice. The Hebrew prophets were Champions, advocating the rights of the poor not as individuals but as a class. For such seekers, to embark on the path toward God can transform what otherwise might remain an obsession with their own sense of sin into a quest for justice.
The principle danger for Champions is that their preoccupation with righteousness may be accompanied by an insensitivity to mercy and an inability to forgive. In extreme cases the Champion can even become a terrorist for God. On the other hand, throughout history almost every triumph of social justice has been powered by the conviction of Champions. If at times it may be said that Champions "love humankind, it is only human beings they can't stand," Champions who remain mindful of the other paths to God, and thus temper their natural passion for justice with an appreciation for mercy, become soldiers for good and pillars of faith.
The Servant
The Servant follows the most traditional path to God, relying on the authority of scripture, following the teachings of religious authorities, and joining together with others in religious fellowship. Servants receive guidance from many generations of teachers, find truth and meaning in the great religious writings, and give positive reinforcement to those who walk down the same path, as well as receiving it from them. Because of the richness of scripture and the insight of spiritual guides who draw from the same material, the Servant draws from a long and proven tradition to help discover his or her way.
Servants seek and find authority outside of themselves. Their goal is truth, which they are taught, and believe, is codified in the scriptures. When they follow a broad way, they and others are safe, even more than safe. The danger comes when Servants are lead down a false path by false teachers. Servants can have so narrow a view of truth that they deem others who follow different paths to be headed not toward a different view to be headed not toward a different view of illumination but toward damnation.
Fortunately, the great religious traditions are by nature self-correcting, and Servants often are able to follow both their own nature and the teachings of authorities toward an ever deeper appreciation for God.
The Dreamer
Dreamers are mythmakers. Rather than discovering God within ordinary experience (whether heaven in a wildflower, a scripture, and act of justice, or an act of love), Dreamers project their experience of reality onto a cosmic screen, creating a heavenly drama of mythic proportion. Dreamers draw more on imagination than experience. They invent rather than discover God. Not that what they invent is unreal. Given the mystery of God's nature, Dreamers may come closer to certain aspects of God's nature through their vivid imaginations than do others through their experience of common reality. Every creation myth and Armageddon scenario, even those contained in scripture, is spun from Dreamers' speculation. Dreamers think big. Though often impelled by fears of things unseen, they find hope by spinning fantasies that give portent and meaning to life.
The Dreamer's virtue is hope. A world exists beyond the seen world, giving meaning to what otherwise might seem to make no apparent sense, especially death. The pitfall here is that Dreamers may supplant reality with fantasy, deprecating the value of the all too-human in their search for the mythic underpinnings of reality. When they lose themselves in their thoughts, Dreamers create a world that no one else actually inhabits. Like conspiracy theorists, they create a hyperrational reality, one that has no basis in our shared experience. Yet, Dreamers also paint on a larger canvas than do most people, and thus they give more expression to the drama and majesty of creation. Looking down at our paths in order not to make a misstep, the rest of us may completely miss what Dreamers see.
The Mystic
The Mystic is the most introverted and attentive of God's seekers. By nature a loner, or by some stroke of fate driven toward solitude for solace, the Mystic seeks illumination through long stretches of quiet contemplation. Solitude and loneliness are different things. Solitude is the fullness, loneliness the emptiness, of being alone. Some Mystics, more gregarious by nature, draw on personal powers of intuition or healing to minister directly to others. In either case, the path to God involves self-emptying. Mystics aspire to become open vessels for the Holy Spirit.
More intimate than any other path, the Mystic's illumination comes in a passive form. Every faith contains mystic exemplars, most of whom would related more empathetically to mystics of other religions than to nonmystical members of their own. The greatest danger of contemplative mysticism is that Mystics withdraw,, even from their own human needs, to make room for God. Conversely, Mystics who are healers or diviners can confuse their own power with God's, and thereby become dangerous to the people who turn to them for help, Charlatans can ape the Mystics' insight and do harm to the credulous, but most Mystics need only take care not to delude themselves. Their gift of self-emptying, which is both rare and special enough to be honored and cherished, gives Mystics a special place among God's seekers.
The Star Gazer
The Star Gazer divines God in cosmic details. Unlike Dreamers, whose approach is Mythic, Star Gazers respond to the mystery of the creation with a different kind of awe. Drawing from imagination, Dreamers project divine figures onto a cosmic screen; Star Gazers ponder the universe to discover hints of cosmic purpose. Their virtue is humility. With 200 billion stars in our galaxy and as many as 100 billion galaxies, Star Gazers sit on the very edge of the universe. They ponder bigger things than can be imagined. Many great scientists, ancient and modern, are Star Gazers. As one cosmologist said, "The universe is not only queerer than we imagined, it's queerer than can be imagined." Humility invites the Star Gazer to embrace all others as one, mysteriously born, fated to die, children of creation, seeds of a divine mystery.
That this is by far the widest-ranging path to God is precisely the Star Gazer's problem. God can become an abstraction, a great oblong blur. What fascinates the human mind may not touch the human heart. When we mortals are in pain, infinity can be cold, unresponsive, even merciless. On the other hand, awe and humility constitute our most primal human religious response. Any path to God that can lead to each of these in such profound measure is a true and worthy one.
These then are my seven paths. At one time or another, I have tried each of them, only to find that I am by nature more of a star-gazer and lover than I am, say, a mystic, champion or servant. Many noted Unitarian Universalists—I think especially of Theodore Parker—are remembered for being champions. Others, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, were fundamentally mystics. I draw inspiration from both of these distant mentors as I do from many contemporaries whose path to God (or truth or light) is different from my own. The blessing is that in this faith all paths are honored equally. We don't have a single set of instructions. Perhaps it would be nice sometimes if we did, but there are plenty of other religious shops available to you that will fill that particular need if you find it essential for your religious peace of mind.
One final thought. Whichever path you follow, in your search for God you will never finally discover what you seek. God is far too mysterious and multi-faceted for any of us to comprehend. God is not even God's name, but our name for that which is greater than all and present in each. God is a symbol expressive of ultimate mystery, meaning and power, and ultimate goals always prove elusive. The good news is, on whichever path to God we follow, we may find our higher selves.
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.