MAN’S DEEPEST NEEDS
Sermon by
Rev. Glenn O. Canfield
May
Broadcast over WSYR
Everyone, I believe, is
interested one way or another in religion. Some people are interested
negatively in religion. They are interested only in the extent to which they
disagree with it, or the extent to which they refuse to believe its teachings.
But almost all people are
interested affirmatively in religion. They “have a religion” as it is said,
rather carelessly. Or, rather, almost all people live by certain general
principles of religion, or what might be called rules of good living. Even
agnostics usually live by religious principles, broadly defined. A great many
of us, however, are adherents of one or another particular kind of religion.
And I think this morning that it would be very beneficial if we did a little
thinking about our own religion. There are a few questions which, I would like
to suggest, it would be good for us to think about.
First, how did you get your
religion? Did you inherit it, like most people do? Were you taken by your
parents to a particular church, when you were quite young, and brought up in
that church and taught to accept the religion of that church? Or, is your
religion today of your own choice? Do you enjoy the pleasure of your religion
today because it is the one you have chosen for yourself? Have you ever stopped
to think whether or not your religion is the one you would have chosen if you
had exercised your right of choice?
And another question: What
kind of religion is it? Let us think more carefully about this. Is it largely a
set of beliefs which you are required to accept? Or, is it largely designed to
further the interests of the church? Or, is your religion dedicated to you, and
to your interests? Does it do something for you, to build up your life in the
great human values which bring a better and finer life to you and your fellow
men? Is your religion something which is imposed upon you from above by some
authority? Or does your religion really satisfy your basic needs, and arise
from your needs, and does it help you to develop your life in the ways of
happiness and growth and life fulfillment?
Now these are pertinent
questions, and I should like to say something more about them. First, I do not
care very much what kind of religion you have, and neither do I care very much
how you got it. Those questions, I think are really not very important. Among
all the questions I have asked up to now, the only really important question is
whether or not your religion satisfies your deepest needs, and does it proceed
from your needs to build up your life, and does it help you to learn how to
live with your fellow human beings?
Now I think that each of us
should very carefully analyze his religion, regardless of what he may have, to
see if it is producing these desired results. We should re-think our religion
frequently, I think, to see if it is leading into life fulfillment. And I think
we should re-think our religion frequently in order to prevent it from becoming
encrusted in tradition and simply the tool of a church.
One of the fine things about
our Unitarian religion is that we are encouraged to study and learn new truths
about the life of man, and we are expected to use these new understandings to
improve our religious living. Research and experimentation in all the fields
related to the science and art of successful human living, provide a continuous
stream of new insights and understandings which help us to determine the deep
basic needs of man, and help us to learn how to fulfill those needs and thus
find a happier and finer and more creative life.
Now, if we go into an
examination of our religion, where shall we begin, and what guides do we have
to follow? Now from what we have already said it is evident that there are,
generally speaking, two kinds of religion: the kind which primarily serves the
interests of the church, and the kind which serves the interests of the church,
and the kind that serves the well-being of man. I reject the first kind. I do
not believe that religion should be used to build up the power of a church or
any other organization. So, I want to think about the latter kind, the kind of religion
which is dedicated to you, and to your well-being and to building up your life
to its highest level of fulfillment.
Now, what is the first step
in this examination? First, if we have a religion which serves the well-being
of man, we must learn all we can about man. We must determine what kind of
religion man needs. Then we must set out to try to find that kind of religion.
We must first attempt to discover man's deepest needs - what he must have, and
how he must live -- if we are to live as well-developed human beings, and live
up to our highest and fullest possibilities. Then we must discover how to
answer those needs, and how man can build a happy and successful life which
will inspire him onward and upward to yet higher levels. This it seems to me,
will provide the basis upon which successful religious living can be built. A
religion based upon man’s deepest needs, and which guides him into the
satisfaction of those life needs, and which teaches him to aspire to the
highest values and the most complete fulfillment of life, is the kind of
religion which man really needs today.
Now let us begin this
analysis. What are the basic needs of man? They seem to fall into three
different classifications. First, there are physical needs. We need to breathe
-- the first thing that we need to do when we are born. We need to eat and
drink. We need shelter and clothing and sleep and recreation. We need to
maintain good health; to reproduce the race. We need to provide economic
security for ourselves, and then we need to fill all of these needs for those
who are dependent upon us.
Now the second group is what
may be called personal needs. The child needs to be accepted in the family, not
rejected. One of the worst tragedies that can ever befall a child is to be
rejected. The child needs to be accepted in the family. The child needs to
receive love, especially from its mother, and from its father, and the rest of
the family and the relationship. It must have this love. Then, as we grow
older, we need to develop self-respect, as a member of the group. And we need
to develop self-reliance, again as a member of a group. And
we need, further, mental freedom, and again, as a member of a group. Not
mental freedom to think or do simply as our whims may dictate, but with a social
consciousness, and with a sincere realization of the implications of our
thinking and the power of our mental freedom upon others. Then, again, we need
to be venturesome and courageous. We need to be creative. We need a sense of
security, a feeling of at-home-ness in the world and among our fellows. We need
a sense of belonging, that this is our group, that we are a part of this group,
that we are at home in this world, that we belong to
the human family. We need to discover and build our lives upon basic human
values. Then, finally, we need aesthetic development. We need to learn to enjoy
the beauties and spontaneous pleasures of living.
Then there is a third group
of basic human needs, which may be called social needs. It is difficult to
distinguish between these groups, of course, and these distinctions are only
arbitrary. But under the classification of social needs, we might list these: A
human being needs to love, to relate himself to others, for love is relatedness
and cooperation. A person must express his love to someone else. A person needs
to be with other people. Our authorities tell us today that man is born with an
innate need for love, and a need to respond to the love of others. We need to
feel a sense of relatedness to others, to recognize our dependence upon others,
as a member of our group. We need to recognize our need to live in cooperation
with others. We need to be identified with our group; to belong to a group; to
find expression in a group; and to communicate with a group. Finally, we need
to sense the security of love in our group, for love is security, and
relatedness and cooperation.
All of these have been
discovered as the major needs of man – our needs. This list, however, should
not be considered complete. There are probably many more, but at least these
are enough to keep us very busy for the time being, until we discover other
basic needs of man.
Now our purpose in listing
all these physical and personal and social needs, then is to find a basis for
testing our religion, whether or not it is answering these needs; and to change
our religion, so that it will answer these needs; and perhaps, for some of us,
to build a new religion, if need be, which does answer these basic human needs.
With regard to testing our
religion as to whether or not it is answering these needs; that, of course,
must be the job of one of us. No one else can do that for you. But let me ask
these questions: Does your religion pass this test? Does it answer your needs
or build up your life in fulfillment of all these human needs we have
mentioned? Analyze it carefully. Does yours work well? This is important, for
the reason that religion is important. The right kind of religion can guide you
into the greatest happiness, success, and life fulfillment that you have ever
known.
Now, it is evident that we
people of today need the kind of religion which is dedicated to us, to our
well-being, to the fulfillment of our lives. There is no other honest or
legitimate purpose for religion. Now I have no doubt but that the overwhelming
majority of us need to do something to improve our relation. It probably needs
some rather drastic changes. It probably needs some major improvements. Some of
us may find that we need a complete change – that we
should build our religion upon our basic needs, instead of as it is. And I
might say that I know of no religion which passes this test very well, not even
my own. I think all of us need to examine and improve our religion, and thus
improve our living.
What concern should religion
have for all these needs? What concern should the church have for the physic
needs of man, for example? What business has the church delving into those
matters? Well, I say unto you that it is high time that religion became deeply
concerned about man’s physical needs, and his physical well-being. I know it is
written, “Man liveth not by bread alone….” And that is true, but that does not
say that bread is not important. It is important. And everyone must have an
equal opportunity to satisfy his physical needs. Without this reasonable
satisfaction of man's physical needs, there can be little hope for the
satisfaction of other needs; and where man does not have opportunity to provide
economic security for himself and his family, then to him the whole life of man
is out of adjustment; and, it is. If we had a religion that was genuinely
concerned for man’s physical needs, purely for the man's well-being, we could
effectively oppose the greed and exploitation which is manifest in so many ways
about us.
And we need to be concerned
about man’s physical needs for yet another reason: that without the
satisfaction of these physical needs man simply does not live well, and it is
necessary that those needs be satisfied, for man’s well-being. Anything that is
necessary to the fully developed life is, and must be, a concern of religion.
What concern should religion
give to personal and social needs? Isn’t it enough that man be
given a set of beliefs, handed down from some church or authority, that he must
accept as the way he should live? The difficulty here lies in the fact that
many of these religious beliefs which are handed down for us to accept have
little or nothing to do with the personal and social needs of man; but they
have to do with ancient theological doctrines which have little value today
except as a record of what some men believed many hundreds of years ago. What
we need today is a religion for today, not a museum-piece.
Now, out of all this can we find one or two important truths, possibly
the central truth around which all of what we have said revolves; or a great
truth from which all the lesser truths are derivatives? I think we can. I think
the central truth of all we have been saying is that man needs today a religion
which will guide him into the satisfaction of his need to love and to be loved,
to live in cooperation and relatedness and security with his fellow men.
Jesus said this same thing
1900 years ago. He summed up all of his religious teaching in this one great
central truth, in different words, that fateful night in Jerusalem, just before
his arrest and execution, when he had his last supper with his disciples. As he
talked with those twelve men about that table, giving them the best that he
had, he said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even
as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know
that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John
We need this very same
principle today. This is the central truth of the religion we need. For we need
a religion which has as its central truth the principles of love and
relatedness and cooperation and security, which fills man’s deepest needs, and
which guides man into the way of life fulfillment.
If we would only change our
religion, ourselves, to be like that, and if we could only get enough other
people in this world to do so, we then could hope for a world at peace,
forever.
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