Reflection on ‘Maxim 1’ (Always Question Everything)

“Always question everything; certainty is the enemy of spiritual growth.”
—Maxim 1

This is the very short piece of ministry that started it all, so to speak, in terms of such short ministry. It occurred to me repeatedly, and once I gave in and wrote it down, it was soon followed by a series of other such short pieces. It wasn’t a rush, nor a constant flow over time, but came in fits and starts.

It’s also rather a foundational thought for my own spiritual approach. The first part is actually a common saying among skeptics (they always seem to use that Americanised spelling online, even many of the Brits, and I’ll use that spelling specifically for this usage), by which I do not mean people who are generally slow to believe things. I mean the movement of actively non-religious, often science-focussed (and positivist), and sometimes downright anti-religious people that has grown largely online. The patron saints of the movement seem to be Dawkins and Popper, though there is also a current among skeptics that suggests that Dawkins might be a bit of a jerk and that Popperian science is both not as restrictive as some think, and not the only way to think about science. It is the approach and attitude that gave rise to Pastafarianism (also known as The Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster) and various other satirical approaches to (or uses of) religion, and might be seen as a new generation’s version of the secular humanist movement. Indeed, some people involved in the skeptical community also get involved in secular humanism. “Always question everything” might reflect a sceptical view generally, though I’ve also heard it from conspiracy theorists – by which they mean to question the official narrative of events – and various sorts of counter-cultural and off-mainstream viewpoints.

Here, I don’t think it should be taken literally; if we were to spend time literally questioning everything, we would be questioning constantly, with no cognitive capacity left for anything else. I’m not going to constantly question why the sky is blue (and I don’t suggest anyone else does, whether they know the generally-accepted scientific explanation or not). I’m not going to constantly question whether people actually want me around at, say, a social or Quaker event (well, I will, but that’s for other reasons). It is more a matter of reaching the conclusion that nothing is final. That is clarified in the second part of the maxim – we are called to question because certainty is a perilous thing for the Seeker.

I should say here, as I’ve said before, that I don’t claim any authority over the meaning of these short pieces of ministry. I prefer to say that they, like all of my written ministry, are written down by me, rather than written by me, though some of the longer pieces are very personal in their content, such as those that are tagged “what I can say” (some pieces under that tag are ministry, and some are deliberate writing). I may have a little insight, as I experienced the call to minister and it does tend to convey more than I can put into words. However, I am also often profoundly uncertain about the meaning, which causes me to be cautious of those times that I do feel more certain. So, my reflection here is about what it means to me, and some sense of what I might have discerned as its meaning to others – based on their reactions – but not an explanation. I can’t explain this ministry, just explain how it speaks to me.

So, to me, this ministry is about it being impossible for us to reach final, definitive truth in the religious/spiritual sphere – and thus we must always be ready to put aside or amend the truth we think we have. Of course, Friends with a very settled religious view that they think other Friends ought to share – and such exist among liberal Friends in theologically diverse Yearly Meetings, not just in the explicitly Christ-centred Yearly Meetings or pastoral and evangelical Friends – may find that idea troubling. If you feel that you have obtained the ultimate – albeit possibly incomplete – religious Truth, you will be naturally resistant to the idea of questioning it. I have even had Friends suggest that, to paraphrase, I wish to put everyone in the same spiritual quagmire of confusion as they think that I must be in. I do not interpret my lack of certainty as confusion, however, nor as any other sort of quagmire. It is, instead, an admission of the inscrutability of the Divine, the inability of the human mind to understand, never mind human language to express, that complex and incomprehensible other.

It may seem that a theistic understanding of the Divine and a non-theistic one, or a stereotypical “big beard in the sky” understanding and a pantheistic understanding, or a monotheistic understanding and polytheistic understanding, are fundamentally incompatible. It is, to any reasonable human, impossible for both of any of these pairs to be true; they are contradictory (though the summary of Hindu theology I was taught in school suggests that one can construct a system in tension between polytheism and monotheism). Yet if the Divine is ultimate and beyond us in a way that is beyond our comprehension, why should we suppose that it can be grasped using our logic. It is somewhat like three dimensional representations of four dimensional figures; many representations all accurate in their way, and all failing to entirely convey the same idea.

So it might be that many understandings are valid in their way, but that doesn’t suggest the need to question everything. It would, in fact, suggest that one not question things because they are all right. However, even one point of view can be refined after its own manner, and the use of multiple points of view allows you to refine each of them by way of the others. Thus even while each point of view has its own validity, by taking them together we continue to question and refine.

There is one other meaning that this has, for me, and that is very important. We have a lot of corporate points of view as Meetings – local, area, monthly, quarter, yearly (as the terms are variously used in different places). We engage in discernment and decide, for example, to embrace equal marriage. But we have to remember that each of these things was new when it was decided, and that there were other approaches, other decisions before. It is not enough, to carry on the same example, to support equal marriage because that is what your Yearly Meeting does. It is not enough for it to become crystallised as tradition. It must be something that we continue to do because we understand it, we understand why, and we feel the living Spirit still moving us in that way. I do not mean that we should question equal marriage in the sense that we should consider abandoning it – though it could, barely conceivably, come to that. Rather, I mean that we should keep doing it because we should keep doing it, rather than because we once decided to do it.

Always questioning, and rejecting certainty, is not a matter of confusion. It is a matter of refusing to accept that which was once thought to be true will always be true, or perhaps was ever true. It is a matter of knowing human-comprehensible truth to be always incomplete and provisional. It is being prepared to be surprised and to change our minds, and perhaps to change ourselves in unexpected ways. It is being inquisitive and not inappropriately confident about things that should not be a matter of confidence.

It is, one might say, seeking without expectation of finding an ultimate goal. We find many things on our spiritual journey, but we do not find an ending to our search.

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