The theme for this sermon was set by a brief skit performed by Rev. Charlie Ross and Rev. Brooks Berndt. The skit was entitled “Moses Visits a Therapist.” To listen to it, click here.
The sermon itself can be heard by clicking here.
Hebrew Scripture Reading-Exodus 4: 1-9
In the 1960s, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania named Martin Seligman became involved in a project inspired by Pavlov’s famous experiment with dogs.
If you will remember, in Pavlov’s experiment, dogs would hear a bell when they were fed. Soon these dogs would become conditioned so that simply hearing the bell would cause them to drool even if they didn’t get any food. Well, Seligman became involved in an experiment that looked at how dogs responded to the negative stimulus of a shock. It worked like this: Dogs placed in a box would receive shocks to their feet through the floor. They could prevent being shocked if they jumped over a small barrier into another box. Typically, they learned to do this quite fast. However, by accident, Seligman and his colleagues discovered that this didn’t happen if the dogs had been previously conditioned by receiving shocks while restrained in a harness. These dogs would often simply lay down and passively whine while they were repeatedly shocked. (I know awful when it comes to animal rights). At any rate, according to Seligman, these dogs had what he called “Learned Helplessness.”[i]
Later, Seligman would do studies involving humans, but no shocks. These studies revealed that learned helplessness was a human phenomenon as well. Seligman ultimately connected learned helplessness to depression. With humans, the problem wasn’t so much their previous experiences as it was the story that they told about themselves after these experiences. Depressed people tend to develop an outlook based upon a particular story of themselves in which they see themselves as perpetually and inescapably facing difficulties that are linked to their own shortcomings. For the depressed person, as one author explains, it seems “there’s nothing to be done because nothing can be done.” The “master narrative of their lives excuses inaction; it provides a rationale for remaining helpless.”[ii] In other words, when they look in the mirror, they have become conditioned to see someone who is powerless. So, how does one treat this malady? How does one cure Moses?
The story of a woman named Virginia Ramirez offers some insights.[iii] Over the course of her life, Virginia developed a learned helplessness. She lived in a poor Latino neighborhood in San Antonio. Most of her life was devoted to raising her five children while her husband worked. On the side, she would help make cookies for the PTA or look after neighbors. One of those neighbors was an elderly widow who would get sick every winter due to the dilapidated state of her house. Virginia tried to get her help through city services, but they would just push her from one department to the next. Eventually, the neighbor died of pneumonia, and the paramedics confirmed that she would have lived if her house had been warmer.
Upset by this Virginia sought out the help of a local organization that worked through churches to bring together people in poor Latino communities so that they could push for more equitable investment by the city in their neighborhoods. The group had had a number of successes when it came to neglected storm sewers, parks, and schools as well as local businesses hiring community residents. When Virginia first attended one of their meetings, she told them the story of the widow and said she wanted “someone to do something about it.” An organizer in turn said, “What are you going to do about to about it?” One might say this is when Virginia was first compelled to face her snake. Unlike Moses, however, she didn’t flee in fear, she left in anger. She had become convinced that no one cared about her community. No one would do anything to help because that was all she had ever experienced. She had developed learned helplessness.
Later, a nun who was a community organizer at the meeting paid her a couple of visits to talk about her feelings and to eventually nudge her to hold a gathering at her house. At the gathering, nine people from the neighborhood came to talk about the problems they faced. Over time, Virginia became more and more involved and found great success in advocating for change. Eventually, a woman she met through the community organization encouraged her to get an education while staying involved. She decided she would. Her family objected. Her husband said, “That’s not your role.” Her mother said, “This is not for you. What are you doing to your family?” Of course, by this point, Virginia’s kids were mostly grown.
Virginia came face to face with her snake once again the day her husband arrived home and with disgust showed her the dust on their furniture. He yelled that the house was going to ruin because of what she was doing. At that point, Virginia could have fled away from her active new life and returned to life as it had been, but instead, Virginia decided to grab the snake by the tail. She told her husband that she wasn’t changing her mind, and if he didn’t like it, that was too bad. Slowly, he accepted this. Eventually, he “even took pride in it.” Thus, Virginia’s snake turned into a staff of power. Virginia now looked in the mirror and saw someone different than the helpless woman she once believed herself to be. She said, “I’d begun to think of myself as a person. I’m Virginia Ramirez, not just someone’s wife, mother, or daughter. My husband realized I was getting involved for both of us.”
For Virginia, this was a spiritual experience. Over the course of this difficult transition, she prayed to God for guidance. She would ask God what she was doing with these crazy organizers. Where was it going to lead? Soon she realized that her faith was becoming stronger through her involvement and that the stories in the Bible were becoming more meaningful and relevant. She said, “Suddenly you read these stories about injustice from thousands of years ago, and it seems like they’re talking about today. You feel like you have a chance to be one of God’s instruments, to do [God’s] work by helping your community. You feel closer to [God] in the process.”
When it comes to being active, engaged members of society, learned helplessness isn’t something that just afflicts people who have been through extreme hardships or experienced poverty and discrimination their whole lives. It also afflicts people who are “materially comfortable and professionally accomplished.” For some people, it might mean throwing up their hands in despair over the troubles of the world and retreating into their private lives. For me, it has been different things at different points in my life. For example, there were the early years of my college career. I had these deeply rooted values and ideas about what a just world should be like, but the story I told myself was that I was a busy college student who couldn’t afford to get involved. I feared my grades would suffer. Over time, however, things changed. I came to realize that being an active student was a much better life. It was more meaningful, I had more friends, and my grades never suffered. As my life transformed itself, I began to develop a new story of who I was. I went from a passive learned helplessness to an active learned hopefulness. In essence, I began to look in the mirror and say, “Yes, this is who I am. I am someone God can use to make a difference in this world.”
This morning I want to give everyone a chance to look in the mirror and feel good about themselves as we embark on the Moses Project, so we’ve placed a mirror up here behind the ballot box. We are going to go row by row as you come forward to place your ballot in the box. If you already submitted a ballot, that’s okay. Grab a blank ballot and stick that in the box. As you come forward, we are going to sing the hymn “Who Am I.”
[i] Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, (New York: Pocket Books, 1998), 19-20; Christopher Peterson, Steven F. Maier, and Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control, (Oxford University Press, 1995), 11.
[ii] Paul Rogat Loeb, Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times, New and Revised Edition, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2010), 32.
[iii] Paul Loeb tells the story of Virginia Ramirez in Soul of a Citizen, see pages 22-26.
