Asking the Right Questions -- The Problem of Evil

One last big question religion pretends to answer is: Why is there evil in the world? We might consider "evil" to be synonymous with suffering, for the sake of clarity. Why do people suffer? Religious imagination actually makes this question more complicated that it needs to be.

Some answers offered through religion imagine a whole array of supernatural beings, good and evil, fighting for the precious commodity of human souls. It makes sense that if you're going to invent a supernatural to worship, you would also find it convenient to invent other lesser supernatural beings to answer other troublesome questions. That angels and demons and souls are not real things hasn't stopped religious institutions from perpetuating the idea that human suffering is caused by supernatural activity. Some religious communities even encourage people to invent their own personal stories of encounters with angelic or demonic forces, and the community accepts these inventions as fact in order to bolster a framework that is easily dismantled by thinking through how poorly it aligns with measurable, observable reality.

Other religious answers are less complex, keeping the supernatural involvement down to one entity who controls all things. In such a mythology, one god is responsible for all of the helpful and harmful experiences people have. The question then becomes why a god would cause harm to weaker, less capable beings. Some conclude that a god is punishing and rewarding people for their behavior, but this idea also becomes difficult to maintain unless the god in question is either capricious or outright malicious. In other words, the idea of an omnipotent supernatural punishing and rewarding people only works if the character of that supernatural makes it unworthy of adoration and admiration.

Observing that people who are devout in their practice of a religious tradition suffer just the same as heathens without a religious tradition should be a fly in the ointment. Some religions answer this complication by suggesting that their god tests the faithful by causing or allowing suffering, and that the reward for this testing happens in an afterlife. We've already dismissed the idea of an afterlife, but it is an easy last resort when a religious leader doesn't want to have to answer for promises of reward. Who can call a person to account when there is no way to verify or deny such a promise of posthumous reward for suffering? One can also perhaps bear the suffering of others more easily (or even callously) if one clings to a belief that an afterlife reward awaits those who suffer in their actual real life.

What all of this boils down to is that religions can't satisfactorily answer the question of suffering, but they are all equipped to make something up that can't be verified or falsified. Any valid attempt to refute answers that rely on supernaturals are met with nonsensical replies, like suggesting that one's faith must be strong in order to understand spiritual truths. Or, the oft-abused retort, from New Testament writings, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness to god." So, indoctrination in many religious traditions includes learning rebuffs to protect one from thinking through one's assertions with any sort of integrity to reality. Maintaining a particular religious mythology is more important to some people than finding an answer to human suffering that aligns meaningfully with reality.

One convenient facet of basing answers to suffering on supposed supernatural will or promised reward in an afterlife is that human beings are off the hook. If a god wants someone to suffer, then there is nothing for a human being to do, although perhaps the person experiencing the suffering should be told to straighten up and fly right so that their suffering would end. Likewise, if suffering now leads to reward in an afterlife, there is no reason to address human suffering. Human beings can ignore any suffering of others they find distasteful, confident that those individuals will be well rewarded after they die.

Even more convenient, when religious institutions connect human suffering with their concept of sin, they can justify the mistreatment or oppression of others. When you believe that an individual's suffering is directly tied to that individual's sinfulness or wrongdoing, then the individual can be blamed for whatever harmful experiences happen in their lives. While people within the religious tradition are seen as being tested by suffering, people outside that religious tradition -- experiencing the same suffering -- might be seen as being punished by a god for bad behavior. This allows religious leaders to use religion to encourage the dehumanization of other people. In other words, their answer to human suffering is to willfully cause more suffering.

For this reason, religion cannot meaningfully answer the question it poses regarding the existence of evil or suffering. Even though some religious groups imagine supernaturals that are benevolent and engage in practices that seek to create wholeness, the non-real foundation of their actions is easily corrupted and abused by those who imagine a different sort of supernatural or refuse to address their own culpability. We must look outside religious constructs to find meaningful answers.

Human suffering might be put into two categories: suffering caused by nature, and suffering caused by human action. Natural suffering would include all of the hardships people face that are not caused by human activity: weather events, genetic conditions and many diseases, attacks from wild animals, etc. Nature has certain features that are unpleasant for individuals to experience, but overall contribute to a balanced ecosystem. The suffering of human beings because of natural events has no greater meaning, although people can potentially learn things from the experience. Natural events are amoral -- there is no will or purpose behind them. Natural events are just things that happen, and human beings have to supply their own meaning as they recover and rebuild in the wake of such an event.

We still feel grief and pain at this kind of suffering, and that grief and pain can connect us with other human beings or isolate us. We can better manage our grief, though, when we are honest about the source of our suffering.

Suffering caused by human action is different. Sometimes, suffering is the result of human ignorance or negligence, but people are still accountable for their actions. A person might say that they never knew there was a connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, but their actions are still a contributing factor to their suffering. There is some evidence to suggest that even some "natural" events like wildfires are exacerbated by human activity. The answer to this sort of suffering caused by negligence is two-fold. First, we must learn to more accurately predict the consequences of our actions. Second, we must choose to act in such a way that minimizes suffering and increases well-being for the greatest number of people. There is nothing supernatural in any of this. This way of thinking places responsibility squarely on human beings. This is less convenient than most religious responses to suffering, but it is more realistic.

Again, our pain and grief at this kind of suffering is also very real. Recognizing human responsibility is not a way of alleviating that grief. We need one another for that very reason; expressing grief and caring for one another in times of suffering is one of the functions of meaningful, authentic community.

There is another category of suffering caused by human action, however, and this is the most challenging to address because it seems closest to a traditional definition of evil. Some suffering is caused by human beings willfully and knowingly doing harm to other human beings. When a human being uses a weapon to hurt another human being, there is no question of ignorance or negligence. When human beings willfully use chemicals or artillery or biological agents to cause harm, there is no question of ignorance or negligence. There may have been a time when human beings could claim ignorance when they oppressed or marginalized a population, but that time has passed. Human beings have a propensity for willfully and knowingly causing harm to other human beings, and this suffering requires a different response that either natural suffering or suffering caused by actual ignorance or negligence.

We cannot blame supernatural forces for the harm that human beings perpetrate on one another. We must look to ourselves in order to find meaningful answers and solutions. The most succinct answer as to the cause of this suffering is that when people experience fear, they react. Fearful people often create suffering. This may seem overly simplistic, but the solution to irrational fear is rather demanding and counter-cultural. When people are accustomed to reacting to their fear (and justifying or dismissing any harm done as a result of their reactivity), suffering is guaranteed. The only way to address human suffering caused by human fearfulness is to address the root fear. While this would ideally become a societal practice, it's more likely that change will begin (and is beginning) with individuals committed to living more intentionally.

There are countless examples regarding how fear connects to human beings causing suffering. People are afraid of all sorts of things. We fear scarcity of resources and power. We fear being ignored or taken for granted -- being invisible. We fear being oppressed or exploited. We fear being unlovable or unacceptable because we fear being ostracized and cut off and alone. We fear not having our needs and wants met, and we fear being unworthy of having our needs and wants met. Human beings live in an environment of constant fearfulness. It take real work to recognize what fears are driving us, what we actually want, and how we can move toward what we want in a way that creates wholeness. This is the most meaningful answer to suffering that we can possibly embody, and it will take some time to learn to do things differently, especially if we are accustomed to reacting to fear on a regular basis.

As we proceed beyond clarifying the right questions, the goal of dismantling irrational fear, decreasing suffering, and increasing well-being will be a primary topic. For now, it can suffice that we have a viable way of asking questions about suffering that don't resort to religious imagination or the invoking of supernatural will and afterlife rewards. Moreover, we actually have a more meaningful question than Why is there suffering? It is much more potent and evocative for us to ask What fears are prompting me to create suffering instead of creating wholeness? and What am I going to do differently? If a growing number of people are willing to ask the right questions, we can find more meaningful and transformative answers for our lives and for our world.

To summarize the interrelated questions we can meaningfully ask and address in the weeks ahead:

How do I live in such a way that I'll be satisfied with how I influence the world around me?
What am I passionate about? What is my personal life dream that creates greater wholeness in the world?
Where do I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where do I find authentic community? 
What fears get in my way? How can I dismantle those fears and understand what I actually want?
How can I get what I most deeply want and need by creating less suffering and greater wholeness?

Asking the Right Questions -- Afterlife

Some people have a problem discarding the idea that a particular book is more sacred than any other. At first glance, discarding a sacred text seems to mean that there is no way to gain authoritative information about some important things. Who decides what's important, though? Many religions make assertions about what questions are important, because those are the questions religious doctrine can answer. But if the questions are nonsense in the first place, the answers can't be very meaningful or valuable. Apart from blindly trusting the assertions of a religious tradition, how do we determine what questions are meaningful? Until we do that for ourselves, we won't really know whether it's safe to discard a potential source of meaningful answers.

One question that religion seems to spend a lot of time on is, "What happens after I die? And how do I make sure that it's pleasant for me?" This is a nonsense question. First of all, after you die, you start to decompose, and possibly you nourish the earth a little bit. That sounds painful, but you won't feel it. Because you'll be dead. Dead people don't have brain activity. It's part of the definition of being dead. No brain activity, no sensation. Once your brain stops functioning, you're pretty much done experiencing anything you're going to experience. Death is an ending.

But what about the soul? Where does my soul go when I die? Another nonsense question. Of course, we would have to define "soul" to know how much nonsense the question is, but there are really only two definitions that make any sense in this context. Sometimes when people say "soul" they mean an spirit or immaterial part of a person. This suggests that people are essentially some sort of ether inhabiting a physical form for a time, and that they continue to exist ethereally after the physical body is used up. The problem with this idea is that rigorous examination has never yielded any evidence that people have such an immaterial component.

Wait a minute, you say, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Wrong again. I know it's a clever phrase, and there's some truth to it, but when rational and scientific inquiry has examined a matter over and over again with consistent results, one can draw some reasonable conclusions from that consistency. Ghosts, spirits, and other supernatural entities make for great stories, but they are not part of reality. A part of us does not actually continue to exist once our bodies cease functioning. So the question of where our soul goes is a meaningless question, if by "soul" you mean an immaterial and immortal part of a person.

"Soul" can also mean a person's essence -- not an immortal intelligent part of them that continues to have will after their bodies are used up, but the core qualities and ideals they embodied. In this case, one can say that a person "lives on" in the memories of others. A person can leave a legacy that continues to influence the world long after they have died. People create works of art, initiate or contribute to institutions and organizations, usher in social change. All sorts of things that people do continue after they have died. Just in influencing one's own children, family, and friends, we continue to have influence after we are no longer alive. We don't have any choice about how that influence happens once we're dead, but we might consider that our essence continues to persist in this way.

So nothing happens to an immaterial part of you when you die, but your influence continues in the lives of other human beings. That means that what matters most is not some eternal destiny, but how you influence things in the present tense, while you are still alive and aware and making decisions. The question, then, is not, "How do I ensure a pleasant afterlife?" because there is no such thing. The question is, "How do I live in such a way that I'll be satisfied with the influence I have in the world and with the legacy I leave behind?"

Wait a minute. What about Heaven and Hell? You know that I'm going to say this is another meaningless question if you're asking about your own actual future existence. It makes sense that we would have developed these ideas as a species. We've never really known what to do with death. Some of the most ancient human-created structures that still exist were built as tombs, places to honor the dead and usher them into some sort of afterlife. Whatever beliefs we developed were designed to provide comfort to the living, though. These beliefs do not describe reality. And it doesn't matter how many people believe in something, just believing something doesn't make it true. Heaven isn't going to pop into existence just because a lot of people believe it exists. And you're not going to develop an immaterial immortal essence just by believing hard enough.

Religious ideas do offer us some great metaphors, though. The idea of heaven and the idea of hell are very useful. The problem is that so many people seem incapable of understanding what a metaphor is. When you start taking things literally, you abuse the image. Now, people use the idea of heaven as a spiritual carrot and the idea of hell as a spiritual stick. The metaphors have become tools of coercion. If it's possible to free the idea of heaven and the idea of hell from the literal interpretation that seems so prevalent today, they can still be useful metaphors. If we use them as metaphors, though, it's our responsibility to be clear that we're doing so.

Knowing that a large number of people interpret these ideas literally means that we have to be overly cautious if we want to communicate clearly. Just like we might be sensitive that young children are in the room while Santa Claus is being discussed. It's a shame that our culture encourages people to be rational about believing in Santa Claus, but then discourages rational thought in so many other areas, particularly where religion or consumerism is concerned.

"Where do I go when I die?" should certainly be on a list of meaningless questions. Any resource that seems to make that question important is a resource we can safely discard. That is, unless we find it useful in a more metaphorical sense, in which case we ought to be very clear about how we're using it. A more meaningful question is, "How do I live in such a way that I'll be satisfied with how I influence the world around me?" A resource that seems to speak to that question is worth examining. That doesn't mean every answer is equally useful or credible, but at least we can begin to articulate the question more clearly.

We'll articulate some other big questions before looking at where to discover meaningful answers.

John 14: The Road to Shambala

Any interpretation of the seemingly mystical words of John 14 depends largely on the reader. Those who are less inclined to read thoughtfully may accept a traditional interpretation impressed upon them by a religious leader, but this would still be a human interpretation of an ambiguous text. Interpretation begins with some assumptions on the part of the reader. Some assumptions might be that there exists an eternal soul which persists after death, that there is an actual effective process of petitioning a supernatural for aid, and/or that Jesus was a uniquely divine individual. John 14 says none of that, but some readers believe that it does because they bring those assumptions to the text.

We will begin from a different set of assumptions. Based on the current evidence we have from scientific inquiry, there is no eternal soul; when people die, they are done perceiving and experiencing, even though they may "live on" in the memories of others. There is no supernatural considering requests from natural beings; sincere prayers made to a stapler will result in the same experiential answers as sincere prayers to a deity. Whatever the stories may say about Jesus, every person is capable of living with integrity to a set of meaningful principles that emulate those demonstrated by the gospel narratives. If Jesus exemplifies behavior that other people cannot hope to achieve, then the New Testament and Christianity have little value.

Jesus' behavior as the gospel narratives tell it does strike a chord with us, however. There is something admirable and inspiring about the basic principle to love authentically. When we look at this text through a Humanist lens, assuming that every person has inherent worth and dignity, we can still find meaning and a compelling invitation regarding how we might live.

Yes, it's still true that the authors lived in a particular culture with a particular religious identity, and so Jesus refers to a cosmology that is representative of that culture. To translate the use of "Father" in this passage directly into a sense of "deepest, most noble self" doesn't quite work. That sense is still largely useful, however, and places where it seems less than effective to translate things this way can be attributed to the authors aligning with cultural assumptions about reality.

Incidentally, before taking any seminary courses, I would have felt a little sketchy suggesting that we can interpret things one way in one instance and another way in another instance, based on a pre-selected set of assumptions. After reading numerous theologians, it has become clear that this is common practice, however, and there is no reason to hold to an arbitrary restriction that believing "professional interpreters" dismiss.

Thus, we have something of a commissioning here, issued in the narrative by Jesus to the disciples, but presumably intended by the authors to be appropriate to all readers. There are several phrases here that require definition. "Believe in," for instance, has often been misconstrued as passive trust that never entertains doubt. More useful to us would be interpreting the phrase as "trust in the values and example of." In other words, "Trust in the underlying values of your deepest most noble self, and trust also in the example that I have set for you in living out those values."

Then there is this business about Jesus going somewhere, and preparing the way for others. For readers who assume that there is a heavenly afterlife, this can be a comforting excuse not to worry about too much in this life, because the next life is all set up, comfy and cozy. While there is an element of reassurance here, the point doesn't seem to be to tell the disciples to just relax. If we begin with the assumption that there is no afterlife, and that this life is all we have, then there is some element of metaphor at work here. (Imagine, metaphor in a work of literature.)

Preparing the way for someone often means that a precedent has been set, that an example has been provided to emulate. This would seem to be the most useful interpretation here as well. The Exemplar has modeled a way of being that maintains integrity even at apparently great personal cost, because we give life meaning by establishing clear values and living like we mean it. That is how the way has been prepared. Readers know what that might look like by observing the (mythological and sometimes metaphorical) examples of the gospel narratives.

Of course, the real elephant on the page is that proclamation, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Whether the authors intended it or not, these two short sentences have led to an insane degree of exclusivity and harm perpetrated by believers on those who practice other traditions, or no tradition at all. The "Father" of this passage is what we have equated with our deepest, most noble self, not an external supernatural. We might get distracted into fruitless debate about whether Jesus (or the authors of John) knew this, but even in this very passage, the writers have Jesus spell it out. "I am in the Father and the Father is in me." "The Father who dwells in me does his work." This is not an external supernatural. This is something within the person -- within every person.

So, the example set by Jesus demonstrates an understanding of deep guiding principles, which are perceived to be aligned with the core values underlying Jewish identity, but are humanist enough to resonate with all people. By acting consistently with integrity to these deep guiding principles, Jesus models a startling degree of authenticity and personal power. The example is one of a person fully alive.

You cannot connect with your deepest, most noble self if you are not willing to be honest. You cannot connect with your deepest, most noble self if you are living on autopilot or even passively acquiescing to someone else's values. You cannot connect with your deepest, most noble self if you are unwilling to take personal responsibility for your decisions and own your authentic power. That is what these words could mean to us. 

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The Exemplar said to his closest friends, "Don't be defined by fear. Seriously, don't let your fear and anxiety guide your identity or your actions. Trust your deep values; trust the guidance of your deepest, most noble self. You've seen me live with integrity. Now it's your turn. There's not one right way to live on purpose. There is more room for diversity than you can imagine. I haven't prescribed a specific way of doing everything because it isn't necessary. If it was, I care enough about you that I would have mentioned that. You get to decide how you will be, in alignment with your deep values.

"I want you to experience life as I do -- fully alive, fully aware of a best possible version of myself, and fully aware of how what I do connects with what I really care about. You know how to do this." Thomas said to him, "We don't even know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

The Exemplar said to him, "I am where I am going. I've shown you the way in every moment we've spent together. Have you been paying attention? You have to be honest with yourself. You have to be willing to confront your fears and claim your identity from deep within yourself. You have to be willing to take responsibility for living into that identity. If you've seen the way I live, you know what I'm talking about. From now on, you know how to connect with your deepest, most noble self and you know how to live with integrity."

Philip said to him, "Tell us the secret of your deepest, most noble self. Show us what to do specifically, and we'll do it."

The Exemplar said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still don't know me? If you know me, you know what I value. If you've seen the way I live, you've seen my guiding principles. How can you say, 'Show us your secret self'? Do you not believe that I live with integrity to my deepest, most noble self? I don't come up with clever things to tell you, but I speak from my deepest values -- from the love and compassion that my deepest most noble self prompts from within me.

"Believe me that I'm behaving with integrity to my deepest most noble self; but if that seems too far-fetched, believe me because of what you've seen of my life. I've been completely authentic with you. It's time for you to take all of this seriously for yourselves, because if you commit to living with integrity to your deep guiding principles, you're going to be the same kind of example to others that I have been to you. In fact, you're going to do even more than I have done, because I'm not going to be around much longer.

"If you can reach a point of fearless integrity that authentically recognizes the inherent value of every person, if you are willing to strike a balance between unconditional love and absolute honesty, and if you are able to embrace a definition of success in life based on how well you align your actions with your deepest values, you're going to be satisfied. There is nothing more valuable that a person without fear could desire."

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Sure, there is still plenty of terminology in there that leaves room for interpretation, and some intentions take a lot of work, even though they may be simple to express. Still, this captures the gist of what this passage seems to be saying, with full awareness that I'm choosing to read it through a Humanist lens. Actually, it seems clear through any lens that these words are intended to inspire and challenge both the disciples and the reader. I'm also not sure how the principles demonstrated by Jesus in the gospel narrative are different from the Humanist assertions that all people have inherent worth and dignity, and that human life is lived fully when people accept responsibility for honoring their intrinsic connection with other human beings.

The bottom line seems to be that we need to know ourselves as fully as we can in order to live the most meaningful lives possible. I don't see a lot of people doing that, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.

Interlude: Good People and Bad People

Our perusal of the gospel of John has brought us to a story in which Jesus heals a blind person. Before we get into the specifics of the story, it occurs to me that some people still wrestle with questions like, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Some people might wrestle with the complementary question, "Why do good things happen to bad people?" especially in a time that once again finds wealth and power concentrated among a very small percentage of people.

In the first century, when a person was blind or otherwise impaired, it was often interpreted as a sign that that person or the parents of the impaired individual had done something wrong. Blindness was a punishment. So was leprosy, infertility, headaches, mobility issues, dementia, and just about anything else that seemed undesirable. Some people still think like this. If something is "wrong" in a person's life, that person did something to deserve it. The Bible (and the religious writings of other faith traditions) even suggests that a good person receives rewards in life and a bad person receives punishments.

This causes a quandary, however, when such thinking is challenged by reality. Sometimes bad people seem to be rewarded, and sometimes good people seem to be punished. This was even a problem for people in ancient Israel. The Wisdom books of Hebrew scripture highlight the struggle. Even as it is asserted that wise, good, faithful, honorable people will be rewarded and foolish, wicked, malicious, people will suffer, there are books that point out that this isn't always so. Job and Ecclesiastes, for example, are writings that directly wrestle with the realization that reality doesn't line up with simple expectations. Good people don't always have an easy life; bad people don't always suffer. The conclusion of Job is that Yahweh is in charge and shouldn't be questioned. The conclusion of Ecclesiastes is that we should enjoy life while we have it and trust that all will be balanced out as Yahweh sees fit.

Over time, people started to think that maybe things wouldn't be judged and balanced in this life, but that people would receive their reward or punishment after this life was over. An eternity in heaven or an eternity in hell would be the ultimate consequence of life. Good people will be rewarded, and bad people will suffer.

The New Testament expresses that we can see who the good people and bad people are by their actions. As a typical example, Matthew 7:16-20: "You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits." Another example is 1 John, in which the author proclaims that the distinguishing characteristic of "children of light" is that they live out the commandment to love. By contrast, "children of darkness" can be clearly distinguished by their expressions of hatred.

Lots of people still believe that there are good people and bad people, and they might even agree with the idea that you can tell the difference between good people and bad people by their actions. Some people are convinced that the eternal souls of good people will go to heaven and the eternal souls of bad people will go to hell. (Incidentally, this is not the message of most Christianities, but that's another matter.) We look around us and it makes perfect sense to say, "That murderer/extortionist/ rapist/thief was just a bad apple," or to be equally impressed by what a "good person" someone is when we see them being generous or helpful. This either/or mindset makes a lot of sense to our brains, and we can often make it fit with our experience if we don't look at people too closely. And it's wrong.

There are no good people. There are no bad people. The allegory doesn't hold that "good trees" only bear "good fruit" and "bad trees" only bear "bad fruit." People make choices. People are capable of making choices that contribute to the well-being of themselves and others. People are also capable of making choices that seem to benefit themselves at the expense of others. The specific actions of people might be reasonably labeled as good or bad, but then you have to define what that means. Maybe good actions are those actions that increase well-being and bad actions are those that cause harm. Some actions would seem to be neutral. The point is that every person is capable of choosing from a whole array of potential actions.

Thus, there are no good people, and there are no bad people. There are just people. People make choices. We like some of the choices that people make. We don't like other choices. We feel badly about some choices we make, and we feel happy about other choices we make. We are people. We make choices. We are not good trees or bad trees, and the fruit of our lives is a whole array of flavors.

As we are able, may we have the confidence and courage to make choices that contribute to the genuine well-being of ourselves and the people with whom we share this planet. And when we choose otherwise, may we have the humility and perseverance to try again. You are not a good person. You are not a bad person. You are a person, and you have the capacity to choose what you will do.

Mark 12: Trick Questions and Clever Answers

So much of what passes for theological debate involves asking insincere trick questions or providing ambiguous clever answers. Such debate rarely increases understanding, but the smugness of participants in such debates seems to thrive on trick questions and clever (albeit unhelpful) answers. It is perhaps passages like the challenges to Jesus in the gospel narratives that have convinced people that the right clever answers can eventually win over a skeptic, although psychological research has demonstrated that debate only increases the persistence of one's belief, whether or not that belief is warranted. In Mark 12, the authors write of three questions that were allegedly intended to trick Jesus into saying something that would get him arrested. Of course, since Jesus is the hero of the story, the authors write his character as more clever than anyone who questions him. The authors of Matthew include these stories as a unit, almost verbatim as they appear in Mark, while the authors of Luke excerpt the third challenge to Jesus, appropriating it as an introduction to the parable of the good Samaritan (which does not appear in the gospel of Mark). We'll get to the good Samaritan story another time.

The first trick question in this passage deals with taxes. Roman taxes were debated quite a bit in Jewish society, mostly because the Jews saw the Romans as foreign occupiers and didn't want to give them anything. There are various teachings about taxes in the Talmud, and Jewish teachers were not of one mind. In the gospel stories, words put in Jesus' mouth are often very similar to the words of prominent Jewish teachers, primarily those who agreed with the views of Hillel the Elder, a well-known Jewish teacher who lived a generation before Jesus' supposed lifetime. From the perspective of these teachers, worrying about taxes was often seen as a distraction from living the kind of life one was supposed to live. The authors of Mark seem to echo this, although the answer given by the character of Jesus is far from clear.

This business about giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and giving to God what belongs to God is so subject to interpretation that it resolves nothing at all. It is the sort of answer that essentially says, "make up your own mind about the matter," but has all the appearance of a wise and clever answer. Many people seem to enjoy drawing the conclusion that everything belongs to God, but then they continue to live their lives as though they have rights of ownership. Some people imagine that they have been granted "stewardship" over a portion of what belongs to God, which entitles them to act as surrogate owners of a piece of God's property while he isn't using it. All of this, of course, is being taken completely out of the context of first century society, in which private ownership wasn't even a consideration. Kings and lords owned land and everything on it; the people were granted rights to live and work on the king's or lord's property. One cannot directly translate the lessons of a feudal society into an economic system that hinges on the concept of private ownership.

If we approach the concept with the idea that gods don't need money or property, not least of all because they are the products of human imagination, the answer to such questions becomes much easier to address. Pretending that there is a supernatural who must be taken into consideration with all human decisions is often just an excuse for people to claim entitlements that otherwise seem completely without foundation. Should one pay taxes? Does one benefit at all from the services those taxes fund? What would be the most equitable, just, and compassionate response to the needs of one's society? Is one prepared to suffer the legally enforceable penalties for non-payment of taxes? These questions may evoke differences of opinion, but they lead toward a more warranted response to taxation than questions based on subjectively interpreted religious constructs.

The second challenge is also an obvious trick question, pertaining to myths about the afterlife. One might think that the challenge was about Levirate marriage, but if the gospel writers were concerned about that issue, they would have had Jesus comment on that instead of on the conditions of the afterlife. Lots of people still make a considerable amount of money publishing books and speaking about an afterlife. It's very convenient, since no one can really contradict what anyone claims about afterlife, since any claims come out of the human imagination. Jesus' answer plays into the mythology of the day because the gospel authors bought into the mythology of the day.

In the twenty-first century, we wouldn't ask, "How can Pegasus fly, being the size of a normal horse?" If someone were to ask such a question, though, we would have a choice. We could say, "Pegasus has lighter bones than a regular horse, so he doesn't weigh as much as a normal horse." Or we could say, "There's no such thing as a flying horse. That's a story that came out of human imagination. Don't worry about how the horse flies, just enjoy the story for what it is." When it comes to questions about the afterlife, we seem much more inclined to make up answers that sounds good, even though we have no evidence or justification outside of our own imaginations. It's certainly a marketable option. If we were more honest, we might say, "There's no such thing as an afterlife. When we die, we're done. But if there were an afterlife, I would hope for it to be like _________." Instead, like the gospel writers, we pretend to know something that we don't know.

This doesn't seem like such a bad thing on the surface. Believing in an afterlife gives people comfort and hope, right? Well, sort of. If your heat goes out in the dead of winter and the temperature stays way below freezing for weeks on end, you might be comforted by the idea that the heat will come back on (or even that a supernatural will protect you from the cold). Being comforted and hopeful doesn't bring the heat back on, though. If you believe in a pleasant afterlife, maybe you will be comforted and hopeful enough that you won't mind freezing to death. That seems delusional, but there are an awful lot of people who spend an awful lot of money trying to communicate with people who have died, or who resist opportunities to improve their well-being because they believe that their afterlife will be filled with rewards for the hardships they face in this life. If comfort and hope are based on imaginary claims, then the comfort and hope are insubstantial and potentially harmful.

The gospel writers do indicate something important in this exchange, however. The idea that the Jewish god was not the god of the dead but of the living can have some traction beyond satisfying this trick question about mythology. Our deepest, most noble selves are not adversaries; deep down inside, we are not lifeless. While we are sometimes our own worst enemies because of the false beliefs we develop about ourselves, other people, and the world around us, at our core, we know what makes life satisfying. We hold the truths about our passions and we know what the best possible versions of ourselves would look like. When we turn inward, we are not looking to discover all the things we have done wrong or catalog regrets and failures. Connection with ourselves places us within a context of growth, of becoming, of abundant life. We don't need to be bolstered by mythology to create the lives we most want -- to develop into the best versions of ourselves possible.

When we consider the third challenge in this passage, the gospel writers have thrown an easy pitch. It was a major theme of Hillel the Elder (and the rabbis that followed his school of thought) that the whole of the Torah could be expressed in what we know as the "golden rule." So, this idea that the greatest commandments were to love Yahweh and to love others was a prominent ethic in first century Judaism. If this question had actually been asked of a historical Jesus, perhaps it was merely a way of asking, "Does what you teach agree with what I believe?" Perhaps all of these challenges were originally along those lines. The end result is that we get an impression that our loving actions are much more important than our religious practices.

Recontextualizing this portion of the passage to accommodate the understanding that there are no supernaturals for us to love or worship, and that any characteristics we call "divine" are human characteristics that all people possess, we wind up with something like this:

One man approached, overhearing the subject matter of their conversation, and seeing that the teacher was wise, he asked him, “What's the most important thing?” The teacher answered, “The most important thing is, ‘Pay attention: at your core, you are capable, beautiful, and creative; love yourself enough to connect with your deepest, most noble self and become the best possible version of yourself.’ The second most important thing is this, ‘Love other people with that same depth of connection, and see the capability, beauty, and inspiration in everyone else.’ There is nothing more important than these.” 

The question about the mythical messiah being David's son is a bit anticlimactic, but it seems to belong to this passage, at least as the passage was edited and rewritten over generations before it became the document we read today. It's a nonsense question, based on a poetic expression in a psalm. The psalms are as much poetry as anything else, and their language is poetic language. When we read that Yeats had a fire in his head, or that a trout he caught turned into a girl, or that he was going to pluck the silver apples of the moon and the golden apples of the sun, we don't take all of that literally. We don't believe that Yeats' head actually contained a fire, or that he actually caught a trout that actually turned into a girl. We don't believe that the moon and the sun have silver and gold apples. Such questions would miss the point of the poetic language. The same is true of the psalms. Perhaps that was the point of the gospel authors: all of these challenges are as silly as trying to pick apart the poetic language of a psalm and draw some sort of logical conclusion.

If there is anything to be gleaned from this passage, it is that we can get distracted by theoretical debates that have no foundation in reality, and in so doing, we can miss the more important things: Being the best versions of ourselves possible and empowering the people with whom we share this planet to do the same. The most important thing we can contribute to the world is to know ourselves well enough to recognize what we are really passionate about, to nurture our own ability to bring our own selves forward, and to create the kind of world we most want to live in. Incidentally, this also involves dismantling the fears and the false beliefs about ourselves and other people that keep us from connecting with our deepest, most noble selves. The second most important thing we can contribute to the world is to be present in the lives of the people around us. To see them as human beings of inherent worth, to listen to their dreams and challenges, to bear witness to their creativity and beauty, and to encourage and empower them as they grow and develop into the best versions of themselves possible. This is a lifelong engagement, and it's also what brings meaning to our lives. It's easy to get distracted by clever questions and answers, but how well we love ourselves and how well we love others is the answer to the most important questions.

Mark 4:35-5:43: If Someone Started Handing Out Miracles, Everybody Would Want To Be First in Line

The miracle stories in the gospels reflect many myths about healers and miracle workers in the ancient world. For instance, close parallels to the gospel accounts can be found in the legends of a Greek demigod of healing, Asclepius. The symbol associated with Asclepius is a serpent coiled around a staff, which is similar enough to the "caduceus" of Hermes (two serpents coiled around a winged staff), that many North American medical practitioners have mistakenly adopted the caduceus as a symbol of healing. Hermes, incidentally, was a protector of merchants, thieves, and liars, but we need not read too much into an honest mistake of the medical community. Asclepius, on the other hand, was a supernatural healer who traveled around performing the kinds of miracles we read of Jesus performing in chapter 5 of the gospel of Mark. In fact, various bits of mythology about Asclepius suggests that raising people from the dead got him killed at the hands of another god who was upset about the healer's intervention.

The comparison to Asclepius is particularly relevant because the gospel stories so closely resemble tales of this Greek figure, but every human culture has stories about miracles and magic. We have always been fascinated with stories that suggest the possibility that a loved one could be brought back from the dead, or be inexplicably healed when all seemed lost. Many stories even suggest the penalties or curses that must accompany tampering with the natural order of things. We are still drawn to tales about individuals who can perform miraculous or magical feats, perhaps because there is a part of us all that longs for the ability -- or at least to know someone with the ability -- to defy the natural order of things on our behalf. We want to be exceptional, or at least well liked by someone who is exceptional.

People everywhere have these stories, and yet so often we get wrapped up in which stories are truth and which are fiction. Today, no one actually believes that there is a sun god Apollo, much less that he had a half-human son who went around performing miracles until his beneficent actions crossed a line that worried Hades, god of the underworld. Some of those who insist that any tale of Asclepius must be patently false would believe the story, however, if the names were changed a little bit. Tell any story of Asclepius and substitute the name "Jesus," and suddenly the miracle story seems more believable. This is a rather remarkable phenomenon, actually. Instead of recognizing how much people everywhere long to be exempt from the natural order of things, some people insist that they are, in fact, exempt from the natural order of things.

Here is something to consider: If every culture has stories about magic and miracles, and we do not witness any magic or miracles on the scale of these folktales, then perhaps all these stories say more about human culture than about any specific miracle worker. "But miracles do still happen!" Sure, if you want to shift the qualification of a miracle to "something I didn't expect," then we have modern-day miracles. However, none of the "miracles" we might see in the world today are on the scale of these mythological stories of Jesus, Asclepius, and others. We have lowered the bar on what constitutes a miracle, perhaps, but this also says a great deal about our longing to ignore the complexities of the natural world in order to consider ourselves in some way exempt, special, important, or even powerful.

After all, why do people believe that God will answer their specific prayers? Is it not because they believe that they are in some way special? More beloved, more important, more powerful than other people? Perhaps some people actually expect that God will defy the natural order of things for anyone who prays sincerely, but most people are keen enough to realize that this would mean God could favorably answer the prayers of people they don't like -- or that God could potentially be faced with sincere yet contradictory prayers. In other words, there would be no natural order of things if God disrupted the natural order of things in response to everyone. Which means that, if God works miracles for anyone at all, some people must be special, set apart, chosen, better than everyone else. At some level, we all want to be exceptional enough that someone considers us worthy of being exempt from the natural order of things.

Miracle stories are wonderful tales that can grant us insight into the things we want and fear most. When we begin to insist that they are factual accounts, and that we can realistically expect the same sorts of results in our own lives or the lives of people around us, we miss the point. Religious justification keeps us disconnected from reality and from the people with whom we share this world. We are all the same, at the end of the day. Whether one believes in God or not, mature wisdom will lead one to reconcile faith with the reality that everyone fears sickness and death to some extent, and everyone is attracted to some sort of story that suggests that sickness and death -- even the weather -- can be overcome. Tales of boy wizards or fantastic stories of Middle Earth touch on this very thing. We want to believe that someone we are exceptional enough to be free of pain. If the miraculous is possible, then perhaps we can be the beneficiaries. Isn't that better than not believing in the miraculous at all?

Actually, no. Recognizing that the unexpected can happen is a brilliant way to bear witness to the wonder and complexity of nature. Belief in the truly miraculous, though, usually comes with a set of false expectations about life. When we are honest, we realize that people are all pretty much the same. No one is more worthy of a miracle than anyone else. We are responsible for our own well-being. We must care for ourselves in a way that does not consider an "escape hatch" miracle to be a plausible way of handling our lives. We must bear our grief and our pain, and hopefully we can do so in connection with other people. There will be pain, and no one is exceptional enough to avoid it. And while it is comforting to believe in an afterlife, we do not have any convincing evidence that people experience anything at all after the brain shuts down. Quite the opposite, actually. We know with certainty that we have this life, though. If there are no miracles in store for us, and we may have just a brief time in this life to experience all that we can, learn all that we can, and love all that we can, let's do that.

If we truly live our deepest intentions and do all that we can to make this world a better place, then we will actually be quite exceptional. But it still won't mean anyone's worth more than anybody else.

Mark 1:9-14: Trials and Temptations, and Recognizing the Challenges that Matter Most

All mythological heroes, from Sumerian tales through modern movies, face what Joseph Campbell has termed the "Road of Trials." In the prototypical ordering of hero myths, this time of testing begins after the hero has crossed the threshold of normal life and experienced a "rebirth" into a heroic identity. In the Jesus story, baptism by John the Baptist serves as this crossing of the threshold. Jesus' heroic identity is announced, and he immediately goes into the wilderness to be tested.

The Gospel of Mark is the earliest written Jesus myth that made it into the canon of the Bible. In just a couple of verses, we learn that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, where he was tested by an adversary, and that angels tended him during this time when he lived with wild animals. Mark indicates that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, which in terms of Jewish storytelling was a shorthand for "a very long time." It is also thought that the number 40 referred to a period of testing or punishment, which makes it perfect in the context of the Jesus story.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the story becomes fleshed out a bit, with three specific temptations indicated, and the author of the Gospel of Luke borrowed heavily from the Gospel of Matthew for his version. (Incidentally, the writers of the Gospel of John had little use for the temptation story.) Many people have extracted lessons from this story about Jesus' character and how to follow his example. For instance, some people observe that Jesus used scriptural references to resist the temptations, and thus assume that knowing the Bible inside and out will lead to a more "holy," temptation-free life. In the Gospel of Matthew, however, there is a constant effort to prove the identity of Jesus by referring back to Jewish scripture, often taking the original scripture completely out of context in order to legitimize Jesus as the Jewish "messiah" of legend. Perhaps more significant is the implication that Jesus understood the temptations of wealth (bread is frequently symbolic of money in Jewish literature), fame, and power, and realized that these things frequently distract people from true wisdom and happiness. More on these things in a moment.

Some people are fond of the idea of being tested. After all, overcoming challenges makes us stronger and more capable people. When we prove ourselves to other people, we might get a promotion or a closer relationship or some other desirable privilege. Some of these challenges are very clear, with distinct rewards for success, and we choose to take them on because we want the reward. Of course, some individuals focus on how to get the rewards with a minimum of effort, overlooking that the designated trials are often intended to reflect inward character. We can go through our lives as if our only goal is to pass the next test in a long series of trials, neglecting our responsibility to infuse our lives with meaning. It might be said that part of the test is knowing how unimportant some tests are.

Of course, if we interpret tests as being spiritually significant, we can perceive a great deal of importance -- even eternal importance. There are those who believe that if they pass the trials of this life, they will be rewarded with greater joy and pleasure in an afterlife. Obviously, failing the trials of this life will yield a different result, but most folks believe that Hell is reserved for other people. Reward or punishment in an eternal afterlife certainly seems to be more motivating than anything that could happen in our temporally restricted physical life on Earth. Here's the thing though: there is a lot of good that can be done in this life, and there is a lot of joy and gratitude and satisfaction to be felt in this life. We don't really need to use belief in an afterlife as motivation. If we are doing the things that align with our deepest selves and honor our connection to the people around us, we will be creating what the gospel writers called the "kingdom of God." Since this term was often put in Jesus' mouth, we'll have more time to explore it in later entries. For now, the appropriate point is that there is no great trial-giver in the sky sending tests into our lives and scoring us on our successes to determine any sort of eternal destination.
 
We can absolutely test ourselves, setting goals and action plans that challenge us. There may be a great deal of personal satisfaction in overcoming challenges, even when the tangible rewards are slight. Sometimes building our sense of our own capability is an effective reward. When we start looking at our lives as a series of tests from something beyond ourselves, however, we risk losing that sense of our own capability. Not everything in life is a test. Illness is not a test, for instance. We cannot overcome most actual illnesses simply by our own efforts -- we rely on doctors to prescribe medicines and treatments so our bodies can heal. Illnesses may occur for any number of reasons, but there is no intentionality behind an illness -- no one decided to give us an illness to test us.

Likewise, things that happen because of someone's irresponsibility are not necessarily tests either. Being injured in a traffic collision because someone ran a red light is a result of human carelessness, and while we may face challenges as a result, our circumstances are not designed by anyone just to test us. We may find it challenging to pay our bills on time, and we may justifiably consider it an accomplishment when we pay off our last credit card and become debt free. However, there is no one orchestrating those financial challenges as some sort of Herculean trial. There are many things in life that are simply facets of living. We exist in a complex society with a lot of other people, and there are very real challenges that emerge in that system. That in no way implies an intelligence on the other end of these challenges waiting to reward or punish us. We ultimately decide which challenges in life we will tackle, and what our success will mean to us.

Which is why the story of Jesus' trials in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke are potentially more spiritually valuable for us than the earlier version in the Gospel of Mark. The spiritual truth in the tale has nothing to do with an intelligent spiritual adversary who is out to trick us -- we do well enough at tying our own spiritual shoelaces together in knots. The spiritual truth in the tale has nothing to do with how well we must memorize the scriptures of a particular religion. There are plenty of spiritual leaders who know their scriptures very well and still wind up in scandalous or violent headlines. Being able to recite words does not necessarily guarantee that we understand their meaning. The interesting spiritual piece in the temptation story is about the temptations themselves.

We are still living in a society that glorifies wealth, fame, and power over other people. It has apparently been a reality of human community for a very long time if these three things were considered the primary distractions from spirituality two thousand years ago. As many people have said, none of these three can provide happiness or satisfaction in life. Money is only as valuable as what one does with it, and the same goes for fame and power. The more time we spend worrying about our popularity or our bank accounts or our titles, the less time we have for the things that are truly meaningful. Money and popularity and power are not bad things, though, despite what one may infer from the gospel writers. These three temptations simply have incredible distraction potential. When we give them too much importance in our lives, we run the risk of missing the things that have true value: our integrity, our relationships, our connection to the world around us.

In the hero-myth of the gospels, Jesus knew what was important to him. He had a level of self-awareness that comes from intentional, honest introspection. While wealth, fame, and power hold some allure, there are more important things in life. At a very deep level, we know that, but we often forget it. We might try to fool ourselves with the justification that we can do more good in the world if we have more resources, but the truth is that we already have enough. The challenge of knowing what has value in life is not a test from on high, nor is it trial we can bluff our way past. It is a challenge issued from deep within ourselves, and if we answer that challenge with a life that focuses on what matters most, our rewards will be immeasurable, not in some distant afterlife, but here and now.