The Power of Pluralism, Skepticism, and Doubt
A tyrant, known for human rights abuses, was coming to speak at the United Nations. We lay down in the street, blocking his car from passing. We were handcuffed, arrested, and taken away in a police van. I believed we must obey the law of the land and respect the police. But I also believed that we must engage in civil disobedience at times and break those very laws designed to protect us. I sat, in the police van, meditating on that tension. That experience of embracing the paradoxical nature of complicated matters is not foreign to me.
Too often, complicated ideas are positioned through the limiting structure of binaries: x is bad, but y is good. Position A is superior than position B; it goes on. As changemakers putting in our all for causes we hold most dear to our hearts, it is easy for us to fall into the trap of believing there is one side that is pure good and one side that is pure evil.1 Holding on to the frenetic complexity of activism matters, even when it presents a paradox. For indeed, as George Bernard Shaw wrote: ‘All great truths begin as blasphemies.’2
The fundamental misunderstanding that plagues many—including spiritual activists—is the propensity to choose between just two viewpoints: absolutism (one truth) and relativism (no absolute truth). These diametrically opposed viewpoints have contributed to fractures in inter-religious relations, intra-religious relations, and all society.
For absolutists, there is one truth, and beliefs and actions are deemed right or wrong, regardless of the circumstance. With so many commitments—spiritual, political, or economic—absolutists are loath to create a humble culture of self-critique, doubt, struggle, and reinterpretation. It is certainty and fidelity to unquestioned norms that sustain this community.
For relativists, there are no absolute morals and truths; instead, these claims are made relative to particular circumstances that may include personal, social, cultural, or religious considerations. David Hume, considered by many to be the founder of moral relativism,3 distinguished between matters of fact and matters of value. By doing so, he argued that moral judgments were value judgments, as they do not deal with issues of fact. Thus, he denied that morality had any objective standard of review. Of course, relativism potentially leads to problematic behavior and intellectual justifications for violence, greed, and misanthropy.
We should consider, of course, that many Western (that is, European) absolutist movements have led to disaster. Under absolute monarchy, the standard organization of society for centuries, a supreme leader supposedly ruled by divine fiat and horribly exploited millions of peasants to benefit a small group of wealthy nobles. Radical societal upheaval, like the French Revolution, spun so far in the opposite direction to reorient society to its principles that it eventually disintegrated into terror, in which everyone had to prove loyalty to the new regime or face the guillotine.
Immanuel Kant, another major figure of the relativist school, believed that due to our severance from the objective world, we cannot know objective truths. Therefore, humanity structures the world according to fundamental and universal concepts and categories, which are used to make relative moral judgments. Since we never know events or actions as they truly are in their essence, we cannot judge them to be absolutely moral nor absolutely right and wrong. On the famous biblical story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac, Kant concluded that anyone who asked a father to kill his son could not actually be God. Who, then, is the source of the truth? The one with agency or the one whose elements transcend agency?
Indeed, as with any philosophical approach, there are limits to Kantian epistemology. When in doubt about a moral decision, Kant suggested that we resolve doubt by ‘playing God.’ His ‘categorical imperative’ is a form of invitation to recreate the world. Every time one acts in a moral manner, one has the opportunity to start the world over by creating a new imperative that all must live by. We seek personal authenticity (the individual as arbiter of morality) but also conformity, in that we are all bound to the same universal standards.
Søren Kierkegaard writes, ‘One can be deceived in many ways; one can be deceived in believing what is untrue, but on the other hand, one is also deceived in not believing what is true.’4 While we embrace pluralism, skepticism, doubt, and the relativity of truth, we must also commit to a central truth. That is our propelling force. There is significant value to having ethical norms respected in society and in our various religious communities. Yet, we must not be satisfied with these ethical norms—we must not stop there. Our world is broken, and we must pursue that simple, yet profound, remedy of healing the world. We must realize that religious life is not merely about absolutes or relatives, but about living the values we have chosen to adhere to. We cannot look to any outside authority to awaken our own spiritual intensity or to arouse our heart to our own moral and spiritual calling. We must do that work on our own, albeit in community. Our traditions are rich and beautiful, yet demanding. We must faithfully serve others in the way that all those who have come before us have done; for this is what spiritual authenticity is about.
Ultimately, one must live by conscience and principle, which may at times be opposed to certain social norms. As long as these truths spur a higher level of moral development within us, then the tensions of external forces are normal.
The paradox of activism is that we put our heart and soul into activities that others may resent us for. We may put in every ounce of effort, only for our initiatives to fail. We are in need of deeper moral struggle in religious life today, for individuals to wrestle autonomously, in dialogue with text and community, with moral problems. We must break free from the bondage of spiritual conformity and our routine methods of thinking and addressing moral quandaries. Religious life that is driven by the social fear of being placed outside the camp has ceased to be an authentic religion of value.5 We must rebuild a culture of authentic, courageous, honest, encouraged spiritual exploration and service. In addition to honoring religious ideas (texts, beliefs, laws) the deepest religious and spiritual enterprise may be the cultivation of conscience. In natural morality, we all intuit what is just and good, but we must learn to honor that inner voice speaking truth. The quiet voice of moral conscience is more true than any ancient text. Perhaps the most crucial dimension to being ‘religious’ is learning to hear and honor that inner divine voice.
We must learn to live with uncertainty. Rabbi Sholom Noach Berezovsky—known as the Netivot Shalom, a prominent twentieth-century Hasidic thinker—explains that there are two types of trust. One we learn from the exodus from Egypt: how to give up control, be patient, and wait. The second we learn from the splitting of the sea: rising up to act in situations of uncertainty.
Sometimes our challenge is to give up control and trust that we can keep walking on the same righteous path as we spiritually wait for change. Other times, our challenge is to actively alter course and remain confident as we strive to take control of the situation and create change.
Each day, we might ask ourselves: In what area of my life do I need to just stay the course, let go of control, and stop wasting so much of my physical and spiritual energy in anxiety about that which I cannot control? We might also ask: In what area of my life do I need to rise up, become more active, take control, and create change?
May we have the wisdom to find this spiritual clarity and then strengthen our trust: (1) trusting in the conclusion that the highest good will ultimately prevail; (2) trusting that the foundation of all being, of all existence, is itself good; (3) trusting in the process itself that walking the righteous path is good in itself, as we walk from darkness to light, from uncertainty to clarity, as each of us leaves our narrow place each day to cross through a new sea. Uncertainty is itself holy, because it deepens the light of trust in us, and thus our sense of the holy interdependence and spiritual connection among us. May this deep trust reinvigorate and renew us.
For our family, one of the hardest aspects of fostering children who have been neglected or abused has been letting go of children we have loved as our own when a judge mandates the child’s return to their family. I’ve often wondered if, one day, I will pass a man in the street. Giving each other gentle smiles such as one gives a stranger, neither of us will recognize the other. For the brief moment, our eyes will lock, and I’ll know that I’ve seen those eyes before. Then, through a process that is not understood by the mundane mind, our souls will connect. Our souls will know that we once lay on the floor singing the alphabet together. That we enjoyed cuddling and exploring the vastness of the backyard. That we shared tears and laughter. That we shared happy times with kisses and hugs. This soul truth will be enough. And I pray every day that this will be enough. In this passing moment, this stranger and I will be one. We will have led different lives, but we will have a shared past. We may have forgotten each other’s faces, but never each other’s spirit. This love shall always endure. Through this, I learn that we must do our best in our endeavors and then learn to let go of all that we cannot control.
Rabbi Dr Ariel Burger explains a teaching from the Kotzker Rebbe:
‘And all the people trembled, and stood far away; but [Moses] entered the dark cloud where God was.’ It’s easy to be moved by the inessential, to be distracted by lights and sounds, by celebrity, by fame. But [Moses] knew that the real treasure is found in darkness, humility, in inexpressible places. If you see someone speak a truth that’s perfect, tied up neatly in a bow, be wary. The deeper truths are hidden.6
As Carl Jung explains: ‘whenever we speak of religious contents we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable.’7 We create imperfect ritual and symbolic expression to get at truths well beyond our grasp and comprehension. This is necessary to instill and foster a sense of humility, wonder, and awe. The late philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti explains how relative and complex the search for truth is:
Truth is the pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a fence of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man’s thinking, his relationships, and his daily life. These images are the cause of our problems, for they divide man from man.8
Not all truth is relative, of course, but, embracing the complexity of inquiry and humbly acknowledging the imperfection of human knowledge, we can hold truth fervently but also more loosely. We dare not be seduced by the ghost of Plato who had insisted that what is true for me now must be true for everyone at all times. God’s wonderfully complex creation is open to so many understandings. Indeed, it is only truly valued if we embrace how manifold are the truths, even paradoxes, in the universe.
But how do we teach and lead without crystal-clear clarity? The late German economist E.F. Schumacher writes that:
It is easy enough to see that all through our lives we are faced with the task of reconciling opposites which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled. The typical problems of life are insoluble on the level of being on which we normally find ourselves. How can one reconcile the demands of freedom and discipline in education? Countless mothers and teachers, in fact, do it, but no one can write down a solution. They do it by bringing into the situation a force that belongs to a higher level where opposites are transcended—the power of love.9
At this point, you may wonder if love will truly save us? To borrow a phrase, love may not save us, but it may make us worthy of being saved. By holding on to love, we can lead holding on to paradoxes and have trust in the process that conflicting truths can co-exist. That is the great challenge of our time: to let go of ego, to let go of the preconceived notions of our opposition, or our station in life, to let go of the mundanity of everyday living and seek something greater for the betterment of the world.
Yes, the monotonous nature of the contemporary condition may seem like a chore, but it also provides a catalyst for passionate action. How so? We share in the pain to seek redemption. We look for the worst in humanity to bring about the best in humanity. Is love the answer? For better or worse, love is the singular emotion that will propel people to be their best selves. And even if that is a struggle to make manifest and tangible in the world, its value is incalculably great.
Ludwig Wittgenstein writes, ‘An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.’10 For the spiritually complicated, we can consider building our faith not upon a brick foundation of certainty but upon a less stable yet elevating tightrope of humble inquiry, doubt, seeking courage, and harboring the dearest form of ‘love’ (whatever that term truly means) for ourselves and all of humanity.
Exercise 1: Take two conflicting truths that you can easily imagine to be true. Vacillate between the two, back and forth, first with some difficulty but then with greater ease, as you become more comfortable with conflicting truths.
Exercise 2: Meditate on an aspect of your inner world that feels perfect and complete. Then meditate on an aspect of your own brokenness and imperfection. As you go back and forth, start to mold them together, sitting with your perfection and imperfection simultaneously.