The Berenstain Bears are not often recognized as theologians, but their children’s stories point to important religious questions. “Inside, Outside, Upside Down,” the story of the friendly family of bears dealing with a large cardboard box, tries to teach children the concepts of “within,” and “outside.” It is a story about boundaries, about personal identity and about opposites.

The bear cub gets “inside” a large cardboard box, the kind you get from U-Haul, on moving day. The box is closed up and loaded, with him upside down, into an open truck and bounced along the dirt road leading from the bears’ tree home. The story deals with what is “right side up” and with getting bounced around as you sort all of this out. There are sermons aplenty waiting to be preached here.

Last month, as we reflected on the theme of prayer, I spoke of the “spark of divinity” within each of us, that most universalist of ideas. That theological notion locates the “Source” within us, rather than, or in addition to, outside of us. To locate the divine within us can feel both complementary and empowering, at least on the surface. It is easy to respond: “Sign me up.”

Much contemporary theological reflection takes that “spark of divinity” notion and extends it. Does that spark reside just in humans? Is it present in other animals? In the natural world where many of us find our spiritual renewal? Here too, it is easy for many of us to nod our heads in affirmation.

Reza Aslan, in his new book “God, A Human History,” urges a reclaiming of just this way of understanding the world. He calls it “pantheism,” but there are other theological terms that point to the presence of “the Source” in us and in everything around us. In a very real sense, this idea takes our theology of process (process theology) into a very embodied place.

Aslan concludes the book: “And so, at last, we arrive at the inevitable end point of the monotheistic experiment—the climax of the fairly recent belief in a single, singular, nonhuman, and indivisible creator God…: God is not the creator of everything that exists. God is everything that exists.”

Aslan who has claimed a religious identity as an evangelical Christian and as a Muslim on his personal journey, is no fan of traditional interpretations of any of the three Abrahamic faiths.

There are sermons aplenty here, but questions aplenty as well.

This month we turn our attention to the spiritual theme of “evil,” in a time when it is so tempting to locate evil “outside” ourselves.

Is evil, or at least the potential for evil, equally as inherent as that spark of divinity within us?

Both the Unitarians and the Universalists have had things to say on this subject. This month we will try to move beyond the simple location of evil in some “other,” as tempting as that approach may be in these political times.

Remember Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s reflection:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.”

There is also the question of how we deal with structural evil…the culture of white supremacy, for example. How does that relate to our own decision-making, our own discernment of what is right and wrong, good and “evil?” Where does our power and our agency live in cultural constructs we can barely see?

Sermons aplenty, with more practical implications than the abstract and traditional notion of evil suggests.

Blessings,

Bill