Unitarian Universalist religious education is wide-ranging.\u00a0 UU youth are introduced to many faith traditions, supported in formulating their own beliefs, and urged to respect what others believe.\u00a0Actually, all UUs, young and old, are encouraged to look for wisdom beyond what\u2019s immediately available.<\/p>\n
This approach is illustrated in a story about a group of adherents from different religions who were arguing about God, the afterlife, and other theological questions–each defending different answers.\u00a0 Whenever one said, \u201cThis is the truth,\u201d another replied \u201cNo, that\u2019s wrong; listen to me!\u201d<\/p>\n
To resolve their disputes, they asked a respected elder whose answers were correct.\u00a0 Instead of choosing, he provided an eye-opening experience.<\/p>\n
He had them put on blindfolds, and took them to an elephant pen.\u00a0 He asked each to touch one of the animals and describe it to him. He put one participant at the elephant\u2019s head; another touched an ear, and others touched the elephant\u2019s s tusks, trunk, side, legs, and tail.<\/p>\n
The one who touched the head said, \u201cOh my, this animal is like a large waterpot.\u201d\u00a0\u201cNo,\u201d countered the ear-toucher, \u201cThat\u2019s wrong;\u00a0it\u2019s like a flat basket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each of the others insisted\u00a0upon a description based on his own limited experience.\u00a0 The tusk-toucher said the animal is \u201cLike the sharp end of a plow.\u201d \u00a0The trunk-toucher retorted, \u201cWhat? It\u2019s like a\u00a0giant snake.\u201d \u00a0The side-toucher insisted, \u201cIt\u2019s like\u00a0a big crib full of wheat.\u201d \u00a0The leg-toucher said, \u201cAbsurd, it\u2019s a thick pillar.\u201d And the tail-toucher added \u201cNonsense, it\u2019s a thin rope.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sage told the seekers to remove their blindfolds and see that each had touched a different part of the same animal.\u00a0 He explained, \u201cYou all were partially correct in your answers, yet none of you was fully right.\u00a0 From your respective positions, you could only know a portion of the truth.\u00a0 Why quarrel over what none of you could be sure of?\u00a0 Better to be humble about what you know and learn what you can from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Unitarian Universalist religious education is wide-ranging.\u00a0 UU youth are introduced to many faith traditions, supported in formulating their own beliefs, and urged to respect what others believe.\u00a0Actually, all UUs, young and old, are encouraged to look for wisdom beyond what\u2019s immediately available. This approach is illustrated in a story about a group of adherents from … Continue reading What UUs Teach Their Children (#121)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8691"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8930,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691\/revisions\/8930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sedonauu.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}