Taking God Out of Justice Conversations

Recently, a number of states have passed legislation that demonizes transgender people. Hopefully, it's obvious that these laws are driven by fear, and that this is not a way to get what people most deeply want and need by creating less suffering and greater wholeness (one of our big questions). Marginalizing and oppressing people who seem different to you may be satisfying in the moment, but it certainly cannot be said to create greater wholeness in the world. Many people have made some very insightful critiques of this trend, and I don't need to repeat them all here. However, I do want to explore briefly how God-based arguments contribute to the problem of persecution more than to the solution.

I know that when people feel powerless, they look for ways to make themselves feel powerful. And one thing that makes people feel powerful is bullying, and legislation that limits the rights of a minority group in order to make emotionally immature people feel safe is bullying. The whole argument about who is allowed to use which restroom is ludicrous from the start, and it's clear from people's behavior that folks are really not all that concerned about who uses which public restroom. 

If a predator wanted to hurt your daughter in a public restroom, they could do so at any time. They'd have to break the law -- it has never been legal in this country to assault a person in a public restroom -- but they could do it. If you were that concerned about your daughter being harmed in a public restroom, you'd make sure she never went to the restroom unaccompanied -- which is kind of weird, but it's what you would do if you were really that afraid that public restrooms are havens for predators.

The most important point in all of this is that transgender people are not predators. They're people. Moreover, they're people who use the appropriate restroom for their gender. The fear is not really about predators in the restroom (which has nothing to do with transgender people), it's a fear of transgender people -- which is really ironic, since transgender people are the ones who are being harassed and threatened in this scenario. And this fear of transgender people is connected to a fear of homosexuality, which is less severe than it used to be in the United States. Still, you can hear many a preacher on Sunday morning riling up a congregation from the pulpit by bad-mouthing LGBT folks. 

And that's really where all of this fear gets its legitimacy. When religious leaders fill people with irrational fear (or amplify people's fears), it isn't to create greater wholeness in the world. Fear doesn't do that. Religious leaders have an agenda that is more about preservation of an organization or ideology (or less scrupulously, the preservation of their own lifestyle), and they think that fear is a powerful motivator. Or these religious leaders are so fear-driven themselves that they can't help but spew it all over people.

Thankfully, there are other religious voices who are less fearful. Amid the persecution and marginalization of transgender people and others, some religious leaders speak out for the oppressed and call for an end to the harassment and fear. They speak of love and connection and community, and all of this is well and good. They see transgender people as human beings worthy of the same rights as any other human being. If they were to stop there, the argument would be sound. Some people choose to bring God into the argument, however, and it immediately becomes a less fruitful conversation.

When a fearful person claims that God is angry about transgender people or homosexuality or anything else, they have an unassailable conviction. You can say, "Where does scripture say that?" and no matter what the claim is, a person can indicate a scriptural text that supports their belief. The Bible says to love, but it also says to kill people who do anything that isn't good for the preservation of ancient Jewish culture. So, when a person says, "The Bible condemns homosexuals to death," they're right. When they say, "God wants us to kill homosexuals," then we have a problem. And loving believers try to resolve that problem in a number of ways.

You may say, "The Bible also says x." This simply discredits the Bible to a rational person, because it's making contradictory assertions or commands. A person who has committed themselves to fear is often impervious to this sort of argument. They'll stick to their guns because they believe that they're right, just like you probably will. 

You may say, "That isn't what the Bible means in that passage." Then you have an unresolvable conflict of interpretation. Since everyone makes up their own meaning for scriptural texts, there's very little to be gained from an unwarranted assertion one way or the other. Even biblical scholars who have spent years studying a text disagree on the basic meaning, sometimes proposing outlandish assumptions to justify their view. You don't know what the Bible means any more than anyone else does.

You may say, "No, God wants us to love." This is a much healthier way to live, and a person who bases their actions on love rather than fear will certainly create more wholeness in the world. There's no solid defense for this claim about God, though. If you can't know what a scriptural text actually means, why in the world would you think you can know what God wants? You think God wants one thing, they think God wants another thing, and neither of you has any evidence one way or the other apart from your own assumptions, feelings, and imaginations. 

I've heard well-meaning theists claim things like, "We are all God's children," only to turn around and hear other people talk about how being God's children means we have to be obedient to God's law or be disciplined by God. I've heard liberal Christians talk about universal salvation -- that Jesus has paved the way for everyone to go to heaven -- only to turn around and hear another prominent Christian voice talk about hell with equal conviction. Using God to justify any behavior is dishonest, because you are the one who decides how to interpret your scripture, and you are the one who determines for yourself what you think God wants. You are the one who decides.

Now, I've also heard people say that you can define God however you want to. God is a universal force of love. God is nature. God is your conscience. God is the space between us. If you're going to use so flexible a definition for a word that no one knows what you mean unless you define it for them, then the word is useless. Why use it at all? When you know that so many other people in the world define "artichoke" a certain way, why would you decide that when you use the word "artichoke" you actually mean "surround sound speaker system"? Sure, you can allow for everyone to define "artichoke" in a way that is personally meaningful to them, but then meaningful communication between people is impossible. Your personal definition for God is only useful for you. The moment you try to have a meaningful conversation using your personal definition with another person using their personal definition, you will fail. We have to share a common definition for the words we use if we want our communication to be meaningful.

If you stop using "God" as a stand-in for another legitimate concept, your communication can be more meaningful. Say "love" when you mean love; say "nature" when you mean nature. If we use the words we actually mean, we'll have a better quality of communication. The same is true when it comes to issues of justice. If you believe people should be treated with love and respect, then say "I believe people should be treated with love and respect." Don't try to legitimize your belief by pinning your values on God. People who believe the exact opposite of you will attribute their beliefs to God too, and neither one of you will have any ground to stand on. 

The truth of the matter is that we co-create a society together, and when people are mistreated, marginalized, or bullied, our entire system has to deal with the problem. Some organizations are shifting to unisex restrooms, which is an amazingly loving and affirming way to make oppressive laws obsolete. "We don't care who you are or what gender you are, we recognize your right to use the restroom." How silly that it's necessary to express that, but how wonderful that it's being expressed. Nothing religious need be added to that. 

Perhaps you have ways available to you to ensure that transgender people -- and other folks who are marginalized in our society -- are treated as human beings of inherent worth and dignity. You don't need to justify loving behavior with scripture or claims about God. You can justify any behavior with scripture, so that's meaningless. And you can't legitimately justify any behavior with claims about God, so that's meaningless too. Take a step back from your fear, re-align with your deepest values, and create wholeness in the world. Every person has inherent worth and dignity, and when that is affirmed in our lives and in the systems we co-create with one another, we live into greater wholeness. Anything less than that is fear, and fear has no place in a world made whole.

Bold Honesty, Part 3

Just as it's important to be boldly honest about what you really care about, it's important to be boldly honest about our answers to some other questions, especially the questions Where do I find a genuine sense of belonging? and Where do I find authentic community? When we aren't honest about what we really want from community, we wind up in places that aren't authentic for us, where we don't feel like we genuinely belong. When we adopt other people's ideas about what we should want, we aren't likely to get what we actually want and need.

It may be that what you really want from community is to be told what to think and believe so you don't have to think for yourself. If that's what you want, be honest about that. Other people may criticize you -- hell, I may criticize that desire -- but it's better for you to be honest about what you actually want rather than pretend someone else's expectations are your own. There are plenty of places where you can be told what to believe and where you'll be discouraged from thinking for yourself, so one advantage is that your desire for community will be easily satisfied.

There's a challenge even in those communities, though, because many times people want to pretend that they are being intellectually honest when they're actually being quite lazy in their thinking. Some people feel some shame about just wanting to be told what to think and believe, so they pretend that they are making rational, well-thought-out decisions. Some people don't want to be seen as stupid or foolish, so they pretend to have rational reasons for believing irrational things. People even make up evidence (read: lie) in order to make the irrational seem rational.

People say, "Prayer works!" instead of saying, "I just prefer to believe that my prayers have some effect on my relative's illness because otherwise I would feel powerless and grief-stricken. By pretending that I'm doing something useful and meaningful, I feel less anxiety." It's tough for one person to keep up the pretense that prayer has an effect on external reality, but when an entire community repeats an irrational assertion over an over again, it can almost seem rational. OK, not "almost". People literally brainwash themselves into believing something irrational. Despite documented research that suggests that prayer has either no effect or a negative effect on the health of a patient, many people still prefer to pray rather than feel helpless. 

Bold honesty can come into play at so many different points in this process. And the outcome doesn't even have to change just because people are boldly honest. People could be honest about their community and admit, "What we say here doesn't actually line up with reality, but it makes me happy, and I prefer being happy." Or people could say, "I don't really believe this, but I like the people here, so I'm going to pretend that I agree with them." That level of honesty would probably stop inside a person's head, but imagine the effect on a community if just one person came out and said, "What we say here doesn't actually make any sense, but I feel happy when I say it. So I'm going to pretend that it makes sense." If what you want from community is for people to reinforce an unreasonable belief that you have the power to alter reality through your intention and words (or your "faith"), be boldly honest that that's what you really want.

When we listen to the rhetoric of some political and religious spokespeople, we hear blatant lies about public figures, about history, and about supernaturals. Many people are fine with those lies, because the lies match the way they choose to see the world. I know that it's a lie, for instance, that LGBT people are going to hell. For one thing, hell isn't real. For another thing, a lot of LGBT folks are already going through hell just to exist. Some people prefer to believe that their imagined supernatural hates gay people, and is going to punish them for eternity (loving supernatural that it is). 

They may say trite things like, "Love the sinner, hate the sin," and they may say that their love for the LGBT community is why they fund the psychological torture known as conversion therapy (now, reparative therapy). The truth is that they prefer to pretend certain things about reality, and they prefer to indulge their fear of people who aren't like them. Say so. If you want to participate in a community that either overtly or subtly rejects, persecutes, and marginalizes people who identify as LGBT, be honest. Just say, "I don't understand gay people, and I don't want to take the time to understand them. I prefer to think that they're going to burn in hell than think that they are human beings with inherent worth and dignity." Don't make things up about what your supernatural thinks, because you couldn't know that even if there was supernatural to know something about. Be boldly honest about what you actually know and want, and own it.

Now, I know you probably read all of that as being a bit of a rant, and that's fine. The point is that there's no reason to pretend to have noble reasons for wanting what you want. There's no reason to pretend that there's evidence for something just because you want to believe it. Some people may see this as a postmodern nightmare of making truth so relative that it has no meaning, but let me be clear: I'm not saying that just because you want prayer to work, that means it's true for you. The true part is that you want prayer to work, and you're willing to pretend that it does even though you have no falsifiable, replicable evidence. I'm not saying that for some people it's true that LGBT folks are evil. I'm saying that it's true that some folks prefer to believe that LGBT people are evil. If we can get to that level of honesty about the difference between what we know and what we prefer to believe, we will have made great strides forward as a species.

This all works the other way, too. If you can be boldly honest about what you actually want from meaningful, authentic community, you'll be more likely to find it. A community that lies to you is not authentic, and you won't find a genuine sense of belonging there, unless you honestly want to be lied to. If you want to be in community with people who allow you to express what you believe and accept you openly as your authentic self, be boldly honest about that being what you want. Don't settle for a community where you have to hide who you are just to be around people who seem nice and treat you kindly. It is not nice or kind for people to insist that you believe as they do and encourage you to hide who you are. Keep looking. Now, perhaps more than ever before, there are places where you can find genuine belonging -- not just a sense that if you play by the rules and pretend to be just like everyone else, you can get a false feeling of acceptance. Acceptance is not the same as approval for doing what someone else wants you to do.

I spent years of my life pretending to be something I wasn't because Christian churches paid me well as a musician, but I couldn't safely say, "I don't believe most of this stuff you sing about and teach, and I actually think a lot of it is harmful." People thought I was wonderful, as long as I pretended to believe what they believed. Their acceptance of me shifted sharply when they learned otherwise. If I am boldly honest, I sometimes even wonder whether my level of atheism and Humanism is welcome in a Unitarian Universalist context. There are so many options for atheists and Humanists to find community now -- authentic community where they are not only accepted as they really are, but encouraged to be even better versions of who they really are. So many churches encourage people to be better versions of who the church says people are supposed to be. Don't settle for that unless it's what you actually honestly want.

If you want to find a genuine sense of belonging, be boldly honest about who you are and find the people who receive you without reservation. They exist. If you want to find authentic community, be boldly honest about what you want. Some folks may want to echo Kennedy and say, "Ask not what your community can do for you; ask what you can do for your community," but I've found that people who are nurtured by their community wind up giving back to that community. It really is alright to start off by asking, "Where do I find community that actually meets my needs?" 

And please, please, please: be boldly honest about what you prefer to believe. Don't shore up your irrational preferences with false data or made-up anecdotes. Just be boldly honest about your biases and prejudices. Be boldly honest about what makes you feel safe and happy. Too much time is spent arguing nonsense with one another, when we could just be honest and say, "This is what I prefer to believe, despite any evidence to the contrary." At the very least, it will make for a more honest world. 

Asking the Right Questions -- Community

Another question that religion often seems to answer has to do with people's search for community -- a sense of belonging. Religion answers the questions, "Where can I find community? Where can I feel like I belong?" with caveats. You can find community here, if you believe the things we tell you to believe, or at least claim to. Religions are largely based on a set of beliefs, beliefs that often run counter to reality, and in order to be part of the community, you have to at least pretend to buy into those beliefs. Some people are so desperate for a sense of belonging that it seems like a pretty good deal.

A person looking for a sense of belonging enters into religious community and is told what to hope for in an afterlife, how to find a sense of purpose in service to an imaginary supernatural, and what to believe about the way the world works. It's very convenient to have someone tell you what to think, because then you don't have to go through the trouble of thinking for yourself. Some people appreciate that. So, we wind up with entire communities of people who have stopped thinking for themselves, willingly participating in a joint delusion that their emperor is wearing the latest high couture, because it's easier than wrestling with the messiness of reality.

The relationships people develop in these kinds of religious communities often wind up falling short of authentic connection, because the delusions offer easy responses to any concern that might be raised. People say, "I'll pray for you," because it's easier than actually diving into the muck of someone's pain. People say, "Trust God and it will all work out," because they have given up the capacity for taking personal responsibility in their lives. People say, "Those evil people who don't believe the same things we believe are going to hell," because it's easier to write off people who don't conform than it is to engage with people and learn from different perspectives.

And it's no wonder that people opt for easy, quick-fix answers. If they started trying to figure out the nuances of their religion's beliefs, they'd only confuse themselves. Out of one side of their mouths, religious leaders speak about infinite love, and out of the other side of their mouths, they speak with contempt for other human beings. It's more about power and influence than it is about helping people take personal responsibility for their lives, but because people have what seems like a reasonable substitute for community, they don't question it.

Of course, there are some religious leaders who say exactly what I'm saying here. They see possibilities for their tradition to take a different path that focuses on authentic connection and personal empowerment. Yet, they want to hang on to the same delusional foundations in order to create something different. They still want their communities to believe that prayer changes reality, and that a supernatural can take care of things that people are too weak to handle for themselves. It's hard to build a community of personally responsible human beings when you reinforce the belief that there is ultimately a supernatural who is in control.

Even in liberal religious communities, gaining a sense of belonging often requires conformity. It may not even be about belief in a supernatural or the power of prayer. Some religious groups require that their participants be passionate about fighting back against oppressors -- their version of "evil" people. Some religious groups expect people to use non-judgmental, politically correct language. In order to fit in and find community, people have to meet certain belief standards. While the motives may be noble, the end result is often just another set of trite phrases and pat answers.

Whether a religious community leans toward fundamentalism or liberalism, there is a tendency for individuals to stop thinking for themselves and go along with the herd. Those that don't, leave. This isn't just a feature of religious groups, of course. Groups of human beings tend toward homogeneity and mindless conformity. Religious communities amplify the issue by insisting that they know things that they don't actually know -- and often just plain aren't true. A homogeneous, mindless herd of people who believe that an all-powerful supernatural is on their side and is directing their actions can do a lot of damage.

At the same time, communities need clear identities. It's appropriate for a group to make a claim like, "We are people who first and foremost believe in shaming oppressors and fighting back against oppressive systems." Or even, "We are people who believe that prayer is an effective means of changing reality." If you share that belief in common, then you might find a sense of belonging with like-minded folks. Some groups even claim to be welcoming to everyone, but what this claim of hospitality actually means is, "We welcome anyone to come and be like us, and believe what we believe, and do things the way we do things."

Unlike the question of hope in an afterlife (which is better focused on hope in what we can do in this life), and unlike the question of purpose (which is better framed as one's decision rather than a destiny prescribed by a supernatural), the question of community and belonging is an appropriate question for people to ask. "Where can I find a genuine sense of belonging?" and "Where can I find authentic community?" are important searches that everyone engages in. Too often, though, religious communities require people to take the words genuine and authentic out of those questions, and people settle for a less than authentic community because they fear that there isn't anything else for them. People give up their own sense of personal responsibility, their own sense of self, in order to have a sense of community, because there are plenty of places that say, "You're welcome here, if you believe what we tell you to believe. You can belong here, as long as you do things the way we do things."

This question of community is worth a great deal more exploration, but for now it can suffice to say that the right framing of these questions doesn't leave out the most important words: Where can I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where can I find authentic community? We need connection with other human beings that empower us to live into a best possible version of ourselves, not restrict us to living into a best possible version that someone else imagined for us after reading an ancient text through a particularly warped lens. We need community that affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person and allows for people to deepen their own connection to their deepest, most noble selves. Our sense of belonging is most meaningful when we are able to bring our whole selves into that community and find resources to grow and develop as individuals.

As we'll see moving forward, meaningful community includes five important characteristics: (1) mutual self-disclosure, (2) mutually expressed active and unconditional love, (3) mutual hospitality -- or willingness to be of service and to receive from others, (4) mutual honesty in communication, and (5) sincere affirmation. Healthy communities also have the ability to set clear boundaries and to define a central shared purpose or vision, but boundaries and purposes that create wholeness aren't based on delusions. Meaningful community does not require belief in anything beyond humanity. Meaningful community does not need to involve a supernatural. Meaningful community is possible if a group of people chooses to be intentional about putting these ideals into practice.

Before we look more deeply at how we might locate our hope realistically, take personal responsibility for our sense of purpose, and find a sense of belonging and create meaningful community without buying into mass delusions, there is one more basic question that religious pretends to answer. We'll take a brief look at the problem of evil next. In the meantime, don't leave out the most important words in your questions. Finding meaningful answers requires asking the right questions:

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? 

John 20: Our Resurrection and Meaningful Hope

We blew right past a lot of the mythological details in the passion narrative. Some believers focus much more on the details of John 19, and there are legendary tales regarding the mystical powers of the spear that pierced Jesus' side. Since this is rather like spending time dwelling on the actual powers of a harp played by the Norse god Bragi, we've quickly arrived at John 20, which is a somewhat altered resurrection story than what we find in the synoptic gospels. Again, we need not worry about comparing the details of who arrived where first and who said what; these are authorial creations intended to tell a story a certain way. We can turn our attention in other directions.

Most importantly, there is a resurrection. We observed previously that the suffering of the crucifixion was a result of remaining self-differentiated and maintaining integrity in the midst of anxious people who allowed fear to drive them. Here we see that suffering was not the end of the story. The outcome of suffering for the Jesus character is that he rises and assumes an exalted status. Perhaps we too might expect that on the other side of our suffering is a sense of renewed life, not on the other side of the grave, but while we are still alive and walking around.

The persecution we might face for creating a life that aligns with our deepest, most noble selves is painful, but we also gain something greater than that suffering -- namely, the more fully alive life that we create. We gain alignment with our deepest, most noble selves, which is a way of being that allows us to be more fully alive -- as the Jesus character seems to be in the resurrection story of the gospel of John. He is barely recognizable to people who knew him well, just as our way of aligning with our deepest, most noble selves may be barely recognizable to people who knew us when we were less fully alive.

There are a few other details in the story from which we might also draw some meaning. For instance, Mary arrives at the tomb, sees something she doesn't expect, makes some assumptions (based primarily on fear), and runs off in reaction to those assumptions. She finds two other people, who hear her anxious conclusions and run off in reaction to her story. These two people make their own assumptions and -- without fully understanding what is happening -- go home, satisfied with the reliability their conclusions. At this point in the story, none of these characters know what is happening, but they all are convinced that they have a full grasp of the situation. They aren't happy about it. In some cases, they are overwhelmed with anxiety. But they believe that they understand the situation fully.

We don't ever understand a situation fully. We might understand things accurately in part, but we can't know all that there is to know about a situation. There are historical events that contribute to a situation and yet their connection might remain unnoticed. Each person in a situation brings their own perspective and baggage into it, and we can never know fully what goes on in another person's head. Before our anxiety carries us off into Autopilot Reaction Land, it's worth remembering that we don't know all that there is to know. If we can remain curious and ask questions, we might just short circuit our anxiety, even if we still fail to grasp a situation completely.

The second portion of this passage from the first half of John 20 has a lot of mystical implications, which were probably very important to the community for which the gospel was originally written. The dialogue between Mary and Jesus indicates that the community thought some very specific things about a post-resurrection Jesus. These ideas are not based on factual data, but rather on the assumptions of a community -- what made sense to those people at that time. We follow the same process too, often arriving at strange conclusions.

For the community in which this gospel was written, it made sense for Jesus to be unrecognizable and to say, "Don't touch me because I haven't yet ascended." They essentially made things up about what a resurrected person might say, based on their assumptions about the world. Some people today think it makes sense to conclude that wild conspiracy theories have merit, or that alien visitation is a viable explanation for some experience. These conclusions make sense to the people making them, even if they don't hold water under objective scrutiny. People today believe a literal interpretation of biblical stories, even though such an interpretation is incompatible with what is demonstrably true about the world.

Anxiety can make us forget things we actually do know. When we are anxious, our brains find it easier to latch onto any explanation -- even explanations that don't make a lot of sense -- because we want our anxiety to go away. When we think we understand something, we feel like we can have some control. We can put tin foil on our heads to protect our thoughts. We can amass a stockpile of resources in a fallout shelter to prepare for a societal breakdown. We can do something based on what we think we know, forgetting that there are pieces of contradictory evidence we aren't considering.

Sometimes, we hold two mutually exclusive competing ideas in our head without even realizing it. We think that our bosses hate us no matter what we do, yet we keep trying to find ways to please them. We think that our spouses love us, yet we behave as if they are our enemies. We believe that we are part of a religion founded on unconditional love, yet we pronounce hateful judgment on people who seem different from us. Somehow, these contradictions make sense in our anxious mind.

Our anxiety makes us forget what we know about people or about ourselves or about reality, and we go off on some fear-driven tangent without even realizing that we aren't acting in accord with what we believe most deeply. If we are willing to stop and think through our behavior, based on a deeper connection with our clear guiding principles, our actions might more often align with our vision of a best possible version of ourselves.

Now, there's no way to know what the characters in this story believed most deeply. One thing that is clear, however, is that there is some emotional volatility at play. Their anxiety is powerful. Yet, at the end of this particular passage, Mary's behavior is very different from the ending of the gospel of Mark, in which the women run away scared and tell no one what they've seen. Mary finds a sense of hope and runs to share that hope with others.

Obviously, hope is more uplifting than fear. Our hope can still be based on unrealistic or dishonest beliefs, though. In the story, of course, Mary accurately identifies a resurrected Jesus. This is just a story, not a historical account. In our own lives, we might be tempted to invest a lot of hope in things that we know aren't likely to happen. Hope in the impossible is not useful hope. In fact, hope in the impossible is most likely an anxious reaction in disguise. We feel powerless, so we place hope in something beyond our control.

An overwhelming majority of parents think that their high school athletes will have a career in professional sports, when it's obvious that only a minuscule percentage of high school athletes will go pro. Often, we expect that people in our lives are going to change into the people we want them to be. While we will surely influence people, we can't control how they will change as a result of our influence. We might hope for a mystical experience with something supernatural outside of ourselves, but every piece of evidence we have points to the conclusion that what we consider to be mystical experiences happen inside our own brains. We mistake internal chemical reactions that we don't understand for external supernatural experiences -- which we somehow believe we do understand.

It's important for us to share our hope with others, and it's important for us to maintain a sense of reality in the midst of our hopefulness. Realistic hope can prompt us toward actions that align with that dream of what could be. And it's important for us to share our anxiety with others too, if we're conscientious enough to share our anxiety with people who will help us shift out of autopilot and back toward a more intentional approach to how we manage our anxiety. Mary is a great example of connection in this passage. Everything that happens, she runs to tell someone. She isn't a great example of personal responsibility, though. We can forgive a fictional character in the throes of grief for not being grounded and centered. In our own lives, we can strive for a sense of connection with ourselves even as we foster connection with other people.

We can draw a lot of lessons from these short paragraphs, then. First -- even though our integrity may be seen as sedition and anxious people may persecute us for our intentional alignment with our deepest, most noble selves -- when we engage in fully alive lives, our experience might be beyond what we ever dreamed life could be.

Second, our anxiety can convince us that we know things we don't know. It's important for us to remember that we can't know everything. Our sense of curiosity can help us manage our reactivity.

Third, our anxiety can make us forget things we do know. We can become sharper about examining our beliefs and identifying when we are holding two mutually exclusive ideas in our heads. We can choose to follow the belief that aligns with our deepest values and let the other one go as a product of our anxiety.

Finally, hope is important, and it's most powerful when it's balanced with reality. When we hope for things that are impossible, we can't move toward them in any meaningful way. When we hope for things that are possible, we can act in accord with that hope and create more meaningful lives for ourselves and for the people around us.

John 7:31-52 Being Living Water

In the second half of John 7, lots of different people are discussing Jesus and prophecy. It's obvious that the authors want the Pharisees to be seen as the ignorant villains of the story itself, but there are some interesting statements that suggest the authors may have been arguing with some of their contemporaries as well.

For instance, one of the points of Jewish messianic prophecy seems focused on the birthplace of a messiah. It's clear that Jesus doesn't fit that prophetic mold, because (according to the authors of John) he wasn't born in Bethlehem. He doesn't fit the prophecies, yet the authors clearly think of him as the messiah. This is a different approach than what the authors of Matthew and Luke seem to take. (The gospel of Mark doesn't have any sort of birth story for Jesus.)

It would seem that the authors of Matthew and Luke invent a story about Jesus being born in Bethlehem, including genealogies that don't even line up, just to have the tale agree with prophecy. The authors of John, however, point out that prophecy is less reliable than what people are able to witness for themselves. The people in the story of John 7 believe what they believe about Jesus because they have seen something, not because circumstances line up with predictions from long-dead forecasters.

The criticism of these believers in the story comes from the Pharisees who say that the crowds don't understand religious law, so they can't possibly know what they're talking about. Yet, the Pharisees were supposed to be among those Jewish authorities who instructed others. Any indictment about the ignorance of the students is a denunciation of the teachers. Maybe these fellows weren't really all that bright after all. Or at least, maybe the authors of John wanted them to seem stubbornly unenlightened and ineffectual. In any case, the authors of John point out that prophecies aren't always to be trusted.

Some theological debates seem to have little value. Dare we even go into the business about there not being a Spirit yet? Trinitarians assert that their god is a three-fold entity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One deity, but three somethings. Personalities? Functions? States of existence? Trinitarians don't agree, and it isn't always clear to them what they're talking about. Many Trinitarian formulas, however, assume that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all in some way eternal. Usually, the challenge is to the Son part of the equation, since they equate the Son with Jesus. Being human, Jesus had an obvious beginning, and eternal things do not have a beginning. The observation of John 7, however, seems to be about the Spirit. The Spirit apparently wasn't around at some point, and thus had a beginning, which means that the Spirit cannot be eternal. If you believe John's accounting, that is. All of this is rather pointless unless you are trying to prop up a Trinitarian belief system, which is based on a whole lot of other problematic assumptions before you even get to the bit about people being eternal. But in case it comes up in conversation, John 7:39 challenges the concept of an eternal Spirit.

I would challenge the existence of an eternal Spirit for the same reason that the gospel of John says that people believed what they believed about Jesus. We know what we know about the world by observation and rational analysis. Science continually improves our ability to observe well, but even in ancient times, there was obviously a sense that witnessing something first hand was a key to belief. The people in the gospel of John's story believe because of their own experience. Even Nicodemus, who is among the Pharisees, defends Jesus because of a personal experience.

We know what we know about the world by observation and rational analysis. This is problematic in and of itself, of course, because we don't always know what we're observing. As we mentioned last week, our brains are lazy. If there is an easy answer available, we often stop looking for more complex answers. Lights in the sky? Must be a UFO. No need to consider any other options. An infected person with a 50% survival rate gets better and goes on living? Must be a miracle. It's cold outside today? Must be global cooling. We aren't all good scientists, and even good scientists make mistakes in their observations sometimes.

In our own personal experience, we might find it easy to believe that there are supernatural forces at work. Anything that we cannot rationally explain in the first few moments we think about it seems extraordinary. We have to rely on people who have done the hard work of figuring some things out through intentional observation and rational analysis. There are actually scientists who have studied things like prayer and miracles, and the conclusions of every investigation to date that has followed strong experimental standards has been that what we experience falls within natural parameters. Some people do recover from really serious illnesses. Sometimes people do experience the things that they pray for. These experiences may seem extraordinary to the individuals experiencing it, but they are not unnatural. If an illness has a 1% recovery rate, it stands to reason that out of every hundred people who become infected, one of them will recover. To that one person, it seems miraculous, but someone has to be that one survivor out of a hundred infected, even though the physician can't tell who's in that one percent until they recover.

We all have assumptions and beliefs about how the world works. Some call our set of assumptions and beliefs a mental model. We've mentioned mental models before. One major difference between scientific predictions and prophecy is that scientists allow their mental models to be corrected, while people who adhere to prophecy expect reality to conform to their own mental models. Sometimes, scientists change their mental models very reluctantly, but a basic premise of scientific knowledge is that our beliefs have to adjust to new information. A tendency of prophecy is that, when a prediction fails to come true or seems impossible based on new information, any explanation that maintains old assumptions and beliefs is preferable to changing the mental model.

If we are not willing to change our mental models from time to time, we will be stuck in a perspective that doesn't grow. We will be stunted. We won't bring our best possible selves forward. The gospel of John is a story, but the characters in that story reveal some truths about us. When we see a truth right in front of our faces, and we choose to reject that truth in favor of our old familiar beliefs and assumptions, we are like the Pharisees in the story. When we do this, we miss opportunities to create the kind of lives and the kind of world we most want. We miss out on living into a best possible version of ourselves when we don't let reality and truth outweigh our assumptions.

In the story, though, the Jesus character reflects another possibility. "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, 'Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water.'" Incidentally, this isn't a quotation from any known Old Testament scripture, so we don't know what scripture the authors are quoting here. The book of Jeremiah does refer to Yahweh as a fountain of living water, but that's about it. "Living water" refers to clean, flowing water that comes from a spring as opposed to dirty, stagnant water in a cistern. Some people take these words attributed to Jesus as self-referential, as if Jesus is referring to himself exclusively as "living water." The actual words suggest something different.

We've said that to "believe in" someone is to fully trust that person's example as the appropriate way to live. In other words, believing in a person is reflected by emulating what that person does. So, if anyone is not satisfied with a current experience of life, consider another way of engaging in life -- a way that expresses unconditional love for others while clearly defining one's own values. If your mental model isn't allowing you to live into a best possible version of yourself, try on a new mental model built on the premises that all people are worthy of love and that you are beautiful, creative, and capable. If you adopt this new way of seeing yourself, other people, and the world, the effects will flow into the lives of other people around you as well. This isn't a selfish vision, but a vision of transformation.

Old inaccurate assumptions and beliefs cannot contribute to a better world. They will only get in our way. If we want to live into a best possible version of self, we have to base our mental models on truth about ourselves, other people, and the world we all share. This also means that we have to revise our mental models as we get new information. All of this goes back to living more intentionally, considering our values and being purposeful in how we act with integrity to those values. When we do that, we are like refreshing water from a pure spring in the lives of others around us.


A Little Experiment: Assuming. As a way of demonstrating to yourself how many assumptions you make about others, notice a stranger at a meeting or restaurant and make a mental list of all the assumptions you can make about that person. Some of your assumptions may be right. If you're at a conference for accountants, you might assume a person's career pretty accurately. Make your list more detailed than that, though. You probably assume some things about a person's education, family, hobbies, faith, and political affiliation too. Notice how many things you assume about a person you actually know very little about.

A Risky Experiment: Verify. Introduce yourself to that stranger from the previous experiment and see how many of your assumptions were accurate. You might even tell the person that you are working on not making assumptions about people.

If you really want to learn something about yourself, repeat these two experiments with as diverse a group of people as you can for a month.

A Big Experiment: Inquiry. Consider one of your beliefs. If you want to play it safe, use a belief in Bigfoot or something like that. If you are willing to go deep, take a belief in which you've invested a little more emotional energy. Examine the evidence for that belief using the SEARCH formula introduced by Theodore Schick, Jr. & Lewis Vaughn in their book How to Think about Weird Things:Critical Thinking for a New Age:

State the belief clearly.
Examine the Evidence for the belief.
Consider Alternative possibilities.
Rate, according to the Criteria of adequacy, each Hypothesis.

The "criteria of adequacy" is a way of saying that an idea (1) can be tested, (2) yields observable predictions, (3) is the simplest explanation [that is, makes the fewest assumptions], and (4) is consistent with other trustworthy observations about the world.

As I said, a big experiment.

John 4:43-54 Who We Know and What We Know

Much of the "travelogue" passages in the Bible are easy to gloss over, since Westerners living in the twenty-first century have little awareness of or attachment to the cities of ancient Israel. John 4:43-54 has a bit of that travelogue feel to it, but it may help to note that many people have compared the area in which Jesus was traveling to the size of New Jersey. That's not a value statement one way or the other. The two areas are just very similar in size. You don't have to know the locations of the geography and how they relate to one another to get the gist of the story. People are not traveling in particularly awkward or unusual paths here.

This passage follows immediately after the story of Jesus' encounter with the woman in Samaria. On the surface, it probably seems that the main point of this passage is about Jesus' power to heal. This may have been a part of the intention of the author, but healing stories like this are abundant and are told about a wide variety of people in the ancient world. Rather than picking apart the healing story itself, it may be beneficial to dig down to different level and notice another focus of the passage: belief.

First we see that people in a prophet's hometown are not likely to believe what he has to say. Then, we see that people who have witnessed something first hand have a persistent belief. The Jesus character levels an accusation that unless some demonstration of power is offered, then people will refuse to believe. Yet, the royal official believes Jesus' words, seemingly because they are spoken with authority. He then receives information that seems to confirm that his belief was well-founded. Let's look briefly at each of these problems of belief.

"A prophet has no honor in the prophet's own country." Once people think they know you, it's challenging to get them to see beyond what they think they know. Likewise, once you think you know a person, it's tough to notice when that person develops in new ways. There is some truth to the observation that people don't change, which makes it all the more challenging to recognize when a person does change. The reality is that many people continue along a predictable path in their lives, journeying toward a "default future." People who become more intentional in their lives, however, have the capacity to journey in new directions.

Sometimes, we form snapshots of people -- we get an impression of them based on a particular moment in time, and we draw conclusions about their entire being from that impression. In our minds, those people always look like their snapshot. Often, we might wind up being pretty much on target when we do this, because many people keep following the same unconscious patterns throughout their life. A prophet is someone who has something important to say, though. And prophets learn their wisdom somewhere. They are changed people once they learn something they didn't know before, and they have the potential to express what they've learned in a meaningful way. People who are only willing to hold an old snapshot in front of them aren't able to hear something meaningful, though. They are stuck on an old impression of the person.

We may have some prophets in our lives. It's important for us to listen. There may be people who have learned something and are living their lives differently as a result. If we mentally trap them in an older version of themselves, they don't suffer from that -- we do. They have learned what they have learned, and they're going to use that knowledge in their lives. By dismissing them, we miss out on sharing in their wisdom. It pays to be awake to the people around us -- to pay attention to people and notice when they seem to be outgrowing our old impressions of them.

We may be prophets for others. We may have learned some things in our lives that we want to share with the people close to us. Some of them aren't going to listen. They have an impression of us that was formed a long time ago, and they aren't able to see past that. We could spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get through to people who can't see us clearly, or we can spend our "prophetic" energies on people who are more willing to listen intentionally. The choice the authors of John commend is to speak to those who will listen.

"Until you see signs and wonders you will not believe." This statement has a double edge to it. On the one hand, it seems to suggest that if you don't see something with your own eyes, you will doubt that it happened. On the other hand, it seems to accuse people of wanting to be entertained and amazed -- "If I don't entertain and amaze you, you won't place any value on the spiritual truths I have to offer." Both of these concerns are problematic in their own ways.

Taking the latter issue first, it still seems to be a problem that we are more willing to accept "truth" from someone who can entertain and inspire us than we are willing to accept a potentially less appealing "truth" from someone who doesn't take the time to amaze and captivate us. From mega-churches to TED talks, we are more prone to believe things said by people who in some way entertain us and keep our attention. Entertaining delivery does not make something more true, however. We connect a person's ability to be entertaining with their ability to have meaningful insights, and there is simply no connection there.

If we want to know truth, we have to assess truth statements based on our experience of those statements and our thoughtful evaluation of those statements, not based on how entertained we were when we first heard them. We are swayed by shock jocks and talking heads because we are in some way being impressed and entertained. They could say anything that generally fits with our worldview, and we believe it because we are being entertained. This is irresponsible on our part. If we never seek objective sources to verify what we are told by an entertaining person, we are most likely believing a number of things that are not true. It is better to evaluate our beliefs carefully, so that we can have a more accurate assessment of reality.

Seeing is believing? The other issue of not believing something if we don't see it with our own eyes is problematic for different reasons. To begin with, what we see with our eyes is not always what we interpret with our minds. The royal official in the healing story experienced a series of events that had no clear correlation -- there was no  direct link between Jesus saying something and the little boy's turn toward better health. The official's mind, however, interpreted a cause-and-effect relationship for which there is no evidence. This is, apparently, the interpretation of events that the authors of John intend.

It is popular among some circles of believers to discount empiricism -- the idea that knowledge comes from sensory experience. Some people create a straw man definition of empiricism in order to demonstrate a perceived flaw. "We can't see oxygen in a room, and yet we know that there is oxygen in the room. See, empiricism is bogus." Just in case it needs stating, empiricism includes sensory experience that is provided by all senses, and it includes information that we can collect through machinery. If we can measure the oxygen levels in a room in any way (including by using a piece of scientific equipment or by breathing comfortably enough to assert that the air is breathable), we can have empirical knowledge that there is oxygen in the room, If we can't measure it in any way, we can't actually say that we "know" it.

The problem, of course, is that we rely most heavily on our natural senses, and we draw conclusions based on incomplete information. We see something or hear something and our brains fill in the gaps between what we experience and what reality must be. We see lights in the sky and sometimes our brain leaps to UFO, for instance. Just because we have seen lights in the sky doesn't mean we have seen a UFO, but we often don't make that distinction. We think we know things that we do not know because we are not clear about what we have actually experienced. Some people believe that David Copperfield actually made the Statue of Liberty disappear in 1983. They aren't clear about what they actually experienced, and so they have a belief that isn't based on reality.

With some things, we have to trust authorities. For example, scientists conduct experiments to arrive at some knowledge, hopefully under controlled conditions that eliminate their personal biases as much as possible. We can't repeat a lot of those experiments, so we are left to trust the scientists within limits. Even scientists have biases, and new knowledge emerges all the time. One facet of empiricism is that we are never done making observations about reality, which means that we are never done understanding new things and revising our beliefs about the world.

Clearly, it's a good thing that we develop a healthy skepticism about things that we don't experience and can't measure, and it's also a good thing that we develop thoughtfulness about the conclusions we draw from what we experience. The authors of John do not necessarily agree with this statement, and that's fine. Even though some of our information must necessarily come from other people's observations, our lives can be more effectively lived if we do our own thinking rather than allowing other people to think for us.

So, we recognize that our beliefs are fraught with challenges. We dismiss people and the things we might learn from them because we think we know them well enough based on where they came from. Some people will do the same to us. We sometimes mistake being entertained for being enlightened, and the two experiences are not synonymous. We have to trust authorities on some matters. Yet actual knowledge only comes to us through experience, and even our experience can be misinterpreted by our minds. We have to be thoughtful, then, and examine our beliefs to make sure that we aren't living by a set of ideas that don't line up with reality.

A Little Experiment: Listen. Take some time and listen to someone you've known for awhile. Reevaluate your "snapshot" of that person and see if it might need some revision. Is there any growth or change in that individual that you haven't noticed until now? What can you learn and apply in your own life?

Another Little Experiment: Cause and Effect. Pay attention the next time you interpret a cause and effect relationship. Is it possible that you are seeing a connection where none exists? Or is it possible that there are other causes for the results that you notice? Sometimes our assessment of cause-and-effect is spot on, and sometimes we unintentionally let our brains fill in gaps in our knowledge with assumptions.

A Big Experiment: Knowing. Sharpen your sense of what you know. Examine your beliefs and ask yourself "How do I know this?" Maybe some of your beliefs have been handed to you by sources you trust. Is there a better word than "knowledge" you could use for these beliefs? Maybe some of your beliefs are based on personal experiences that you have interpreted a specific way. Are there other ways your experience could be interpreted? Are there other things that could be true about your experience? If you become sharper about asking and honestly answering "How do I know?" it could change your life.

Isaiah 15-16: Contextualization and Imagination

Recently, I've been accused of taking out of context some of the biblical passages on which I comment. This is a charge worthy of discussion, given the nature of books like Isaiah. Let's consider the context of Isaiah 15 and 16, for instance, in which some predictions are made about Moab, a nation neighboring ancient Israel (Judah) to the east. Moab and ancient Israel were not often friendly with one another, as we have seen in the way Moabites are represented in the Genesis narrative and in the myth of the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Genesis mocks Moabites as descendents of Lot and his incestuous daughter, which would mean that the people of Moab have a common ancestry with Abraham and his children. Some archaeological evidence also points to conflict between Moab and ancient Israel, with the Mesha Stele proclaiming Moabite victory over one of the sons of Omri (9th century BCE).

Within the context of the ancient world, then, there is some evidence that the people of Israel had political reason to foster some prejudices against the people of Moab. The Moabites also held different religious beliefs than the Israelites. There is some mention of Moabite worship in 2 Kings, in which they are accused of human sacrifice to Chemosh. Then again, Solomon built a site dedicated to Chemosh too, and that site remained until Josiah's reign in the late seventh century BCE. (So, people in and around Jerusalem were apparently engaged in Chemosh worship during the time that the prophet Isaiah was alleged to have written these early chapters of the book that bears his name.)

Contextually speaking, honest readers must acknowledge that the Hebrew scriptures represent particular biased points of view by particular people in particular circumstances; these writings cannot be assumed to objectively represent the culture of their neighbors. Unfortunately, we have very little objective evidence about Moabite religion. It can be said that they were polytheistic, like most of their neighbors. Archaeological evidence indicates that, in addition to Chemosh, the Moabites revered the goddess Ashtar-Chemosh, and the god Nebo, which may have been the Babylonian god Nabu. The Israelite authors of biblical texts obviously expressed consistently negative opinions about these religious practices, based on the Israelites' beliefs about their own god.

This is a tricky statement to make, however. The Bible does not reflect a consistent impression of Yahweh, but rather suggests the growth and development of a belief system over time. As the people of Israel continued to experience different circumstances, their ideas about their god had to develop as well. The alternative would have been for them to abandon their religion and take up other practices, and there is some evidence that people did just that on more than one occasion. It's a major theme for some of the prophets, at least. So, Israelite belief about Yahweh is not an inflexible concept that leapt fully-formed from the minds of the earliest religious practitioners. We can see throughout the Hebrew scriptures that their religious concepts evolved over time.

That being observed, one cannot simply assert that there is a fixed context within the Hebrew scriptures. The writings were composed and assembled over centuries, and they reflect centuries of development in terms of thought and practice. Some attempts by later editors and compilers were made to harmonize the material, but even that process is something we can't accurately discern. The book of Isaiah, for example, claims to be the work of a prophet who lived in the last half of the 8th century BCE (based on the kings named in the first sentence of the book). Later portions of the book contain details about events that happened two centuries later, and then some. Some people would like to claim that the same person wrote the entire book, having been gifted with supernatural foresight by a supernatural. This would be a reasonable claim if we had any copy of the text from the 8th century BCE, but we don't. Most scholars believe that the book is the work of at least three separate authors writing at different times, along with an unknown number of scribes and editors.

What we have of the book of Isaiah is a completed version dating from the early 1st century BCE. This version shows obvious signs of editorial work, but it's impossible to trace the 600+ year journey of the material from inception to our earliest extant copy. We simply cannot know how the material developed, and we may not ever be able to know. In a very honest sense, this means that we cannot know with complete assurance the context(s) within which the material was written, nor can we know how many pens were involved in the process. Moreover, the different ancient copies of Isaiah that we actually have are not identical. There are over 5000 differences between the most "reliable" versions of the book of Isaiah.

The Bible as an overall whole is what some people prefer to consider as context--the canonized works that men approved as authoritative expressions of their faith. This could prompt the question: Which canon is the appropriate context? The Hebrew canon was determined over a few centuries from around 200 BCE to 200 CE, but there are still variant canons among Ethiopian Jews and the descendants of Samaritan Jews. The Christian canon was supposedly fixed by 350 CE, but variations exist all over the world. Eastern Orthodox canons differ from the Roman Catholic canon. Oriental and Assyrian Orthodox canons differ from one another, as well as from the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic canons. The Protestant canon has some major differences with all of the Catholic and Orthodox canons. So, when one speaks of the "biblical context," one is already speaking of something rather subjective.

Most people, including the people who determined various canons, develop an idea of what they believe first, and then they assess their scriptures accordingly. People formulate ideas about God, and then they latch onto supporting scriptures (or other data) and dismiss all of the information that disagrees with what they have already decided. For instance, some people have decided, completely apart from scripture, that it's immoral to sell their daughters. The Bible doesn't tell them this, but they interpret the parts of the Bible that refer to selling a daughter as being antiquated and no longer applicable to them. In some parts of the world, in the twenty-first century, people are still selling their daughters into slavery. Based on biblical testimony, there's some support for their actions. If we wish to confront the practice of selling one's daughters into slavery, we can't do so on the Bible alone. We must rely on some additional moral understanding. We rely on our personal perspectives every time we read anything, but especially when we read scripture.

Accusing someone of misrepresenting the context, then, may mean nothing more than, "I disagree with you." It just sounds more damning to suggest that someone has made a grievous error of interpretation rather than to merely state a difference of opinion. Millions of people claim to believe in the Bible without going through the trouble to define what they mean by that. The Bible cannot be completely morally accurate, because it is not completely morally consistent. The Bible cannot be completely historically accurate, because it internally conflicts with itself and it externally conflicts with evidence. The Bible cannot be completely spiritually accurate, because its depiction of divinity develops over time as the beliefs and circumstances of the people who composed it changed.

When someone says they believe in the Bible, then, what must they really be saying? My suspicion is that they have developed a set of beliefs, and they read the Bible through the lens of those beliefs. For those portions of the Bible which can be read in support of their beliefs, they consider the Bible authoritative. For those portions of the Bible which seem to contradict their beliefs, they discover or create justification to ignore what is written. Add to this a coating of self-assurance, indignation, or superiority whenever one's assertions about the Bible are questioned, and a rather tidy illusion has been created. It seems to be a biblical context, since support can be found in the Bible, but it is actually a context created by the individual's imagination, since personal beliefs have the ability to trump what the text actually says. There is no way to deny that this is the reason for a multiplicity of denominations and sub-denominations within Christianity. If everyone went with exactly what the text said, wouldn't every Christian believe exactly the same thing?

Of course, that is a trick question framed a bit dishonestly. The sad truth is that one must formulate beliefs external to what the Bible says, because the Bible says such a great many things that do not fit neatly into one system of beliefs. There is no secret formula or correct answer to determining how to interpret biblical texts accurately. Some of it is simply the result of a great number of people writing things from their own perspective. Some of it was only relevant to the particular culture in which it was composed, and it cannot have any real meaning for people who are not members of a pre-scientific patriarchal monarchy. There is no single biblical context. There are lots of people with individually developed beliefs looking at texts and drawing the conclusions they prefer.

This is, in fact, one of the reasons I undertook this commentary in the first place. If we want to draw some wisdom from any text, we have to engage it from an honest perspective. Part of being honest involves recognizing that there is an objective reality in which we exist, and that objective reality is going to be what it is, whether we like it or not. If we try to reject reality, we create problems for ourselves and the people around us. Imagining something different doesn't change what is. If we recognize reality and align our own values and intentions with what is, we stand a much better chance of creating the lives that we most want and having a positive influence on the people around us. Within the context of reality, no person has been able to make consistent accurate risky predictions about the future. Within the context of reality, no god has ever been demonstrated to be observable by any objective means. Within the context of reality, the (approximately) 4.3-billion-year-old earth goes around the (approximately) 4.6-billion-year-old sun, and life has been evolving on this planet for (approximately) 3.6 billion years. Within the context of reality, human beings behave as they do for natural reasons. Human beings wage war for human reasons, and human beings can create peace for human reasons.

So, Isaiah 15-16 in its context? The Moabites were another little Ancient Near East nation that was around before Israel as an Egyptian vassal state and most likely fell during the Persian Empire in the 6th century BCE. The Israelites didn't like the Moabites because they were different, most specifically in terms of their religious practice. The authors of these passages of Isaiah, being a little more ignorant than we are today about the way that the world works, saw every event as being ordained by their supernatural, which they naturally thought of as superior to every other supernatural. Yet, the general message is for the Israelites to be hospitable to the Moabites fleeing destruction at the hands of the Assyrian army (late 8th century BCE).

These neighbors of Israel would most likely have been treated like illegal immigrants are often treated in the United States today, and yet the prophetic words are to shelter them and mourn with them. Perhaps the Moabite king, seen by the authors of Isaiah as arrogant, has made Moab a target by allying with Philistia, Judah, and Edom to revolt against Assyrian ruler Sargon II (r. 722-705 BCE). Or perhaps this is written in reference to the Moabite king Salmanu paying tribute to Tiglath-Pileser III (r. 745-727 BCE). As previously mentioned, the precise historical context is impossible to discern; these passages may actually refer to multiple historical contexts, as Isaiah 16:13-14 may indicate. These last phrases seem very much like the addition of a later scribe.

In any case, it's obvious that the authors see no hope for Moab's prayers to be answered, because they are praying to the wrong god. This is interesting, since Yahweh wasn't any more forthcoming in sparing the Israelites from being conquered and taken into captivity. If Yahweh has justifiable reason for allowing his people to be disciplined by foreign powers, might not the gods of Moab have been displaying equal power in the situation? It's interesting how the same ideas that we use to bolster our own belief systems, we also use to mock the beliefs of others.

We all have biases, and yet we can work toward objectivity. To say that we all bring our own beliefs and perspectives into a situation is not grounds to throw up our hands in futility. Knowing that we have biases helps us see how those biases may be affecting our perception, and we can perhaps conduct an experiment or two to see whether what we believe is congruent with reality or if our beliefs are more products of our imagination. The Israelites had obvious biases against the Moabites. They probably looked at them as lesser human beings. Although Isaiah doesn't come out and say so, the words admonishing Israel to compassionately welcome Moabite refugees challenge the people's biases against Moabites. They were fellow human beings, worthy of compassion, even if they were praying to ineffectual gods. Perhaps these words were an attempt to contextualize the presence of these strangers flocking across Judah's borders.

There's nothing we need to know about Moab that will make any difference in our day-to-day lives. We don't need to know about Chemosh or Yahweh or any other god in order to create meaningful relationships and lives. What we might draw from these chapters, though, is the idea that there are still people around us who are suffering as a result of other people's actions. There are refugees of all manner and stripe around us every day: from actual immigrants, to people who are seeking refuge from domestic violence, to people who are suffering economically. We can imagine stories about these people that will keep us from feeling any obligation toward them--

They deserve what they get...

If I give them a little bit, they'll just want more...

They don't really want to work for a better life... 

We can imagine stories about ourselves that will keep us from feeling any obligation toward them--

I have to take care of myself first...

It's not my problem...

I don't have anything to offer... 

Or we can engage our compassion, see human beings of inherent value, and treat them accordingly. There doesn't actually have to be any sense of obligation in that at all.

Honestly, all of the people around us are our context. They are part of our reality. We can imagine whatever we like about the world in which we live and the lives we lead, but the reality is that we share this world with a lot of other people. Some of those people make a difference in our lives that we may not even recognize, and we can make a difference in other people's lives whether they recognize it or not. We don't need a religious book or a contrived belief system to know that people matter to one another -- we matter to the people around us, and they matter to us. We can choose to be more discerning about the difference between what things we have good reason to believe and what we just like to pretend about ourselves, other people, and the world we share. The sharper we are willing to be about these things, the greater our opportunities to build a better world.

Isaiah 11-12: Common Ideals (and the "law of attraction")

It's said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. One reason for this is that sometimes when we know a little bit about something, we misconstrue that as expertise. We often think that we have a fuller picture than we actually have -- that our grasp of a concept is more complete than it actually is. This is one reason that some ancient passages like Isaiah 11-12 get interpreted to mean things they were never intended to mean. Of course, this stretch of Isaiah isn't unique in this regard; we are often contentedly ignorant of the larger context of our knowledge. We enjoy having a certain degree of ignorance, because then we can make things mean what we want them to mean. Although it can be a challenge, it benefits us to take a broader look before we draw conclusions.

In the midst of a discussion this week, a friend of mine made reference to using the scientific method to prove the "law of attraction." Essentially, the "law of attraction" suggests that positive or negative thinking can create positive or negative results, to the extent that what one finds in the day's mail can be determined by what one expects to find in the day's mail. The idea started in the early nineteenth century as part of the New Thought Movement and has been promoted by a mixture of well-intentioned believers who are adept at fooling themselves and outright charlatans who are adept at fooling others. Recently, the idea of the "law of attraction" was promoted in the film The Secret and a variety of books that promise to show people how to think themselves into health, wealth, and happiness. They claim that the concept is based on scientific principles, but unfortunately, it's nonsense.

Why do people believe such things? Why do we latch on to an appealing idea and then seek to make it true in our lives, when we know that it doesn't quite make sense? If we were to actually employ the scientific method, we would take this "attraction" hypothesis and develop genuine experiments to disprove it. We would consider other possibilities that would better explain the results we experienced. We would honestly recognize all of the times when our thinking had not produced the reality we most desired, as well as all of the times when our thinking had effectively formed reality. Of course, we would need a controlled way to determine whether our thinking had effectively formed reality. We would not be able to take any actions toward creating what we wanted if we were genuinely testing the theory. We would have to limit our engagement to the realm of thinking positive thoughts and honestly examining the results in our lives. This would possibly be a scientific evaluation of the theory. I encourage you to test it out if the "law of attraction" seems compelling to you, but test it honestly.

There are a number of things we should take into consideration when we draw conclusions. One is that we are susceptible to confirmation bias; we know what we want the answer to be, and we orchestrate our experiments or our results to "prove" what we already want to believe. Another is selection bias; we ignore evidence contrary to what we want to believe and concentrate our attention only on those pieces of evidence that support what we want to believe. We might also consider what our conclusions mean in a broader context. For instance, the "law of attraction" sounds great when it's about getting rich and being healthy, but what happens when you get a diagnosis of cancer or get into a traffic collision? If the "law of attraction" is taken seriously, you thought those realities into being; your negative thinking caused your cancer and your collision.

Our beliefs have consequences because our beliefs inform our actions. Most likely, positive thinking plays a role in success, but not because of any "law of attraction." Positive thinking may encourage people to exert more effort toward their goal, to keep pressing toward a desired result even when the path is difficult. Our belief in our ability to accomplish what we have set out to do fuels our actions, and our actions create results.

So, what does any of this have to do with Isaiah 11-12? For one thing, people often read the Bible or other scripture and assume that what they read there is unique, that their own sacred text is superior to every other source of truth. Our assertions about where truth can be found are often susceptible to confirmation bias, selection bias, and lack of thorough examination. We often choose to believe that we have access to some special knowledge, when honestly, what we see is just one thread of a much larger tapestry.

Nearly every Ancient Near East culture expressed an ideal ruler in language similar to Isaiah 11. Many cultures connected kings with divinity, often in terms very much like Isaiah 11:2, in which the divine grants authority and capability to the ruler. Every Ancient Near East culture praised their deities for victories and successes. Many cultures had a concept of a "peaceable kingdom" in which the threat of dangerous animals was removed, and thus fear had no place. Some of these cultures foresaw a removal of the animals themselves, but Egypt's version matches Isaiah very closely: The animals remain, but their ferocity is removed. The ideals expressed in Isaiah (with the exception of a reunited Israel and Judah) are common to all of the peoples living in that area at that time. Rather than assume that Isaiah is somehow superior, it may be more informative to consider why those ideals resonated with these different cultures.

Even for people who engaged in a lot of bloody warfare, the ideal was for there to be a ruler who was wise enough to value peace. The ideal ruler is less concerned with personal gain and pride and more concerned with doing what is just and right. Justice, equity, and compassion will be valued more than wealth, power, and prestige. Peace and partnership shall gain priority over conquest and claims of superiority. Isaiah envisions this future idealized partnership between Judah and Israel as crushing their enemy nations to the point that they are no longer a threat. None of these nations ever realized these ideals, however, perhaps in part because they only envisioned justice and righteousness for themselves. Just thinking those ideals had value didn't bring them into reality.

Isaiah sees this idealized ruler as emerging from "the stump of Jesse," Jesse being David's father. From Isaiah's perspective, things had really gone awry for Israel. Although there was a perceived agreement between Yahweh and David, Isaiah was hoping for something even more than the fulfillment of that agreement. Isaiah is suggesting that there will be a new David, even better than the first -- a divinely ordained ruler emerging from what seemed like a spiritually dead line. His interest in a restored and united Israel (meaning both Judah and Israel, which he distinguishes here euphemistically as Ephraim) distinguishes Isaiah from other Ancient Near East writers, but the ideals are not exclusive to Isaiah or Israel.

Some people still hold these same ideals, or at least claim to. Some of us still recognize that peace is better than violence, although we keep finding excuses to solve our problems with violence rather than through peaceful means. Some of us still hold justice, equity, and compassion as ideals in human relationships, although we keep finding reasons to be absorbed by our fears around wealth, power, and prestige. Here's the real secret: just thinking that peace is better will not make us more peaceful. Just thinking that we value justice, equity, and compassion will not create a more just, equitable, or compassionate reality. If we really value these ideals, we have to act in accord with them. If we recognize that violence is not the best solution to our problems, and that struggling to gain or preserve wealth and power cannot create the kind of world we really hold as an ideal, it is our responsibility to do something different.

We can't change the world by just thinking of a better world. We can't even change our lives by just thinking of better lives. We can take our ideals seriously, however, and we can act like we actually value the things we claim to value. If we want a more peaceful world, we start by living more peaceful lives. If we want a more just, equitable, and compassionate world, we start by living more just, equitable, and compassionate lives. Our beliefs and our values matter, because our beliefs inform our actions, and our actions contribute toward creating the reality we most want.

What do you really believe in? What do you really value?
Are you willing to act accordingly?

Mark 9: Faith

After the scene of the mystical transfiguration, Mark 9 continues with another exorcism scene. This same scene is duplicated in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but there are some striking differences. For one things, the authors of Matthew and Luke do not include the father's famous quip, "I believe; help my unbelief." Perhaps an even more obvious omission is the apparent disagreement between authors about why Jesus was able to do something that his disciples were unable to do. The author of Mark has Jesus say that the kind of demon he exorcised from the boy can only be cast out by prayer (even though the story doesn't say anything about Jesus praying in this scene). The scene is truncated a bit in the gospel of Matthew, but when it comes to this question of why the disciples were unable to help the boy, the author takes the opportunity to have Jesus criticize the disciples' lack of faith. It is such an obviously different answer than the original version of the story recorded in the gospel of Mark that some scribe(s) at some point inserted the bit about prayer and fasting into the Matthew version. (In most translations, this inserted verse is omitted and relegated to a footnote). The author of Luke leaves out the question altogether, choosing not to include anything about the disciples' inability to help the epileptic boy, which makes it a bit awkward when the Jesus character bemoans putting up with the "faithless and perverse generation."

Some "perverse" people in the twenty-first century still consider demonic possession to be an actual thing. Considering the vast amount of research and evidence on the subject, as well as our previous critique on the abusive and manipulative practice of exorcism, we can leave that aside. It is reasonable for us to forgive people living so many centuries ago for thinking that some neurological disorders were caused by supernatural forces. Instead, there is a theme that emerges from the versions of this story in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that seems worthy of a bit of attention, namely the father's plea, "I believe; help my unbelief," and the line about a mustard seed of faith being enough to make a mountain move (which is also duplicated in Luke 17:5-6, just not in connection to this exorcism scene).

Faith is a tricky subject. It essentially means believing something that cannot be proven by available data. Faith isn't intelligent, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. It's important to realize that a statement of faith is necessarily a claim without any empirical foundation. This trips some people up. They want to believe that their statement of faith is absolutely true, that they can prove it to other people, that they can make other people agree with them, even though there is no actual evidence for the claim. If there were ample evidence to demonstrate the validity of a claim, it wouldn't need to be taken on faith.

Faith can work for us or against us. Some people flatly reject cold, hard data in order to maintain a faith-based perspective; other people manage to incorporate the available facts into a fluid faith that grows and changes as their knowledge grows and changes. There are people in the Creationist (or Intelligent Design) camp that fall into the first category, blatantly disagreeing with scientific evidence in favor of the text of an ancient religious document. Others revise their version of faith in a creator so that it remains compatible with scientific conclusions.

It isn't so dangerous when people are just engaging in fruitless arguments about the age of the planet (although it is dangerous to teach children that they can ignore actual facts in order to keep believing what they want to believe). Thoughtless faith can put people in serious danger, though. Some people have faith that their supernatural will protect them from the venom of poisonous snakes, even if they antagonize said snakes. Some people have faith that their supernatural will heal their child, provided they don't give in and seek competent medical assistance. A recent outbreak of measles within a religious community in Texas that opposes vaccination in favor of "faith healing" is just one more senseless piece of evidence that it's dangerous to rely on a supernatural to do the work of a doctor. Faith that refuses to incorporate verifiable evidence is, frankly, abusive and evil.

Blaming faith isn't really helpful. Intelligent faith helps us create meaningful lives. Insightful faith helps us connect with people and build incredible communities. Faith isn't the problem. Human egoism is. Why in the world would a spiritual leader advise his flock not to get vaccinations or professional medical attention? My guess would be either hubris or stupidity. What do you say to the parents of a 4-month-old infant who contracts measles because a spiritual community refused to take appropriate health precautions? Was the faith of the parents faulty? Or perhaps the 4-month-old had faith that was too weak? I try not to be critical of other people's beliefs, but I get angry about children suffering needlessly because of adults with nonsensical religious convictions.

Still, it's the people who are responsible for the consequences of their actions, not whatever they had faith in. The father who brought his son to Jesus' disciples in the story was looking for a solution. He wasn't committed to pursuing some tenacious assertion about the supernatural, he was trying to get help for his son wherever it might be found. By the time Jesus questioned the father's faith, the poor man was probably exasperated from trying to find someone who could do some genuine good for his boy. And yet, he couldn't just confess blind faith. Even Jesus' disciples had failed him. He had hope, but he wasn't an idiot. His son was seriously afflicted. He believed in the possibility of his son's healing enough to get him to a healer. Whatever he lacked in faith, he certainly expressed a willingness to be persuaded.

We can approach faith like that. We can stake our claim and say, "based on available evidence right now, I believe this." When further evidence presents itself, we have the freedom to adapt our statements of faith. By "evidence," I mean falsifiable data, information that can be verified by outside sources, not just another person's opinion or a slippery thread of logic. For instance, believe in God if you like, but don't ignore scientific data about vaccinations or geology in order to cling to a primitive version of that belief in God. We can allow our God to be as vast or impressive or intelligent or insightful or loving as s/he needs to be in order to accommodate the actual knowledge we have about our natural world. We cannot restrict verifiable data based on our personal beliefs. If we try to do so, we wind up with things like measles outbreaks that could easily have been prevented.

So, since our beliefs don't have the power to modify actual scientific evidence, it only makes sense to allow actual scientific evidence to modify our beliefs. This doesn't diminish our faith in any way; it makes our faith more credible. This doesn't weaken our faith; it strengthens our connection to reality, and thus increases the value of our faith. Digging in our heels and refusing to reconcile our beliefs with cold, hard facts is just another way of refusing to grow. When we refuse to grow, we stagnate. Life is not stagnant. If we are going to have faith, doesn't it make sense to have faith that is alive and able to grow?