Left as an exercise for the reader
Quakers and querying
My husband suggested, recently, that liberal Quakers are a “secular religion.” I told him that’s not so. A lot of Aotearoa-New Zealand Quakers are in fact quite insistent that we are the Religious Society of Friends, and in my own worship group I have heard many people remark that there is something at the centre of our practices that it is very important not to lose. We might not insist on any particular name for that something — there are lots of good reasons why one might not want to say “God” — but becoming “secular” in our religion would be a problem.
To this, my husband quipped, “Right, right. Unitarians are the secular religion. Quakers are the religion in which the doctrines are left as an exercise for the reader.”
Well, yes. In case you don’t know, my husband was joking upon a common phrase in mathematics textbooks. Occasionally, after introducing a concept or method of proof, a mathematics textbook will state a related example without showing it to be true, and say that this is “an exercise for the reader.” Some textbooks do this with side notes that aren’t important to the main point; bolder ones may ask the reader to prove something that will be used later.
Sometimes this phrase is used because the author of the textbook didn’t want to waste space on a proof very similar to those already seen. In a good textbook, though, things will be left as an exercise because it really will improve your understanding to work it out for yourself. One of the better mathematics lecturers that I’ve had made extensive use of this, setting aside regular “exercises for the reader” and asking students to complete a certain percentage of them in order to receive full credit.
Mathematics is not just the words on the page but the insight that comes from seeing why something is true. Working things out for yourself is an essential part of learning mathematics. Quakers would say that something similar is true of religion.
In 1682, when the Religious Society of Friends was still taking form and when many Quakers were in prison, London Yearly Meeting asked representatives of Quarterly Meetings to respond to three questions about the welfare of Friends in their areas. In subsequent years these questions became more numerous, and more devotional in character. A century later they were supplemented by separate paragraphs of advice, thus forming what was known as ‘Advices and Queries’. The present document is one of many revisions and re-workings that different groups of Quakers have made over the centuries.
— Advices and Queries of the Aotearoa-New Zealand Religious Society of Friends
Quakers put some favourite “exercises for the reader” in the Advices and Queries. Specifically, the “Queries” are the exercises in question, and the “Advices” are, among other things, advice on how to go about answering them. It is characteristic of Quaker teaching to provide at least as many questions as answers.
Many of these queries were obviously formed with a desirable yes/no answer in mind. “Do you make time for regular meditation, prayer and reflection?” is one example. Some are questions for which an affirmative answer will never fully be attained, such as “Are you following the example of love in action shown by Jesus?” Other questions are a little more open. A question like “How can you best prepare yourself for worship, in heart, mind and body?” implies that some preparation may be called for, but does not dictate what such preparation ought to be for a given person.
Even a leading query still leaves room for an answer that begins “Actually, no,” and goes on to give a considered reason why not. Like many Friends, I am very fond of “Are you open to new light from whatever source it may come?” But I can think of several sympathetic reasons to answer with a partial “no.” Someone might say “No, because I recently left a cult and I need to block out everything they said to me in order to get free.” Another possibility would be “No, because the anxiety voice in my head is a nincompoop and just needs to shut up.”
At this point, some readers may be thinking that it’s a bit persnickety to even bother answering “No, I am not open to new light from whatever source it may come,” just because you have an anxiety voice in your head that you attempt to completely shut out. Surely, you might say, the question doesn’t mean that? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just interpret the question sensibly?
Quakers like being persnickety. Words are chosen carefully. Scrupulous honesty is common, even about little things. When Ozy remarked here about Effective Altruism not being “a support group for people too precious to become Quakers,” I found myself thinking that anyone capable of framing the phrase “too precious to be a Quaker” is a potential candidate for their nearest liberal Quaker meeting. Liberal Quakers will totally respect if you don’t feel you can worship with us because you don’t want to imply beliefs you don’t have, but this is also precisely the kind of scrupulousness that Quakerism runs on1.
Liberal religion sometimes falls into the trap of telling people “don’t think about it too hard.” Quakers, whether liberal or not, would advise thinking very seriously about religion. There may not be an official “orthodoxy,” but the assumption is that there absolutely are limits. Freedom of conscience is not the same as freedom to do anything at all.
Persnickety thinking, with a free conscience, can allow a query to be useful even if you don’t answer it the way the questioner might have originally intended. Let’s go back to “Are you open to new light from whatever source it may come?” If you answer in the negative because you are being particularly scrupulous in your interpretation, then that allows you to consciously decide whether you want to be more open. Perhaps someday you’ll be able to make peace in your own heart with someone, or something, that you can’t yet be open to. Perhaps not. Either way, the question is worth asking.
Like the post. Is the footnote text supposed to be slightly obscured here?
https://ibb.co/mV0chM6N