John 18-19: External Challenges to Internal Integrity

Once again, we might find ourselves relating to various characters in the next portion of the passion narrative in the gospel of John, in which the characters of Jesus and Pontius Pilate interact. This passage is very dramatic and weaves a compelling tale, and although we have noted this time and again, it bears repeating once more that there are no transcripts of a conversation between Jesus and Pilate. The dialogue here is creative license on the part of the author.

We do have a bit of evidence that Pontius Pilate was an actual historical figure (more evidence than we have that Jesus was an actual historical figure, to be frank), but at this time there is no authentic artifact reflecting what the historical Pontius Pilate thought of a historical Jesus, or even that the two interacted at all. What we know of Pilate, however, is that he became increasingly unwilling to bend to the will of Jewish mobs, preferring to have soldiers kill unruly crowds of locals who disagreed with his decisions. The pleading, reluctant procurator depicted in the gospel of John might therefore be a bit of wishful thinking on the part of the author, or this depiction may have been an effort to avoid persecution from Rome, or it may have been to heap the full weight of blame on the Jewish religious leaders in the story. No one can say with certainty what the author was thinking, but we can at least be sure that the image of Pontius Pilate here is not a full picture of the man's behavior in historical reality.

Since we cannot know the full intention of the author, we might as well see what we can draw from the story for ourselves. Can the figure of Jesus still serve as the depiction of an idealized us? Is there something else for us in this passage? As we have observed, the passion story is a central element to most Christianities, but the themes and metaphors of the narrative are present in the tales of many religions and mythologies. Here, strength takes on a distinct quality when anxiety and fear are not the driving forces behind a person's decisions and behavior. The Jesus character might represent to us a self-awareness that goes beyond self-preservation -- a commitment to one's identity and principles that matters more than personal safety.

We plan much of what we do based on the risks involved. Do I say this difficult thing, if it might provoke a reaction I don't like? Is my authenticity worth facing rejection? Are my principles worth dealing with hostility? Are my needs important enough for me to be vulnerable and say them out loud to another human being? Often, our answers are No. We decide that our deepest values are not worth the risks we might face -- that we are not worth the risks we might face -- if we live with authenticity. Our integrity winds up being less important than our sense of personal safety and acceptance.

The passion story may not serve as much encouragement for us to do otherwise. After all, the character who represents us in the story winds up suffering more than we ever want to. The lesson is not that our authenticity will get us crucified, however. The complete perspective of the lesson, as we will acknowledge in the weeks ahead, is that our authenticity leads to being fully alive -- more alive than we can be when we play it safe and act based on a fear for our own safety. Fear and anxiety limit us from being fully alive in our relationships and in our actions.

Impulsive, "honest" words and behavior are not really much better. Just saying or doing the next impulsive thing that crosses our mind doesn't lead to a fully alive life. In fact, most of our impulses are still going to be driven by fear. That's just the way our minds work. The goal is to be intentional and to have integrity between our actions and what we care about most deeply. In the story, then, we see an example of a person who knows themselves so fully that there is no place for fear to drive their behavior.

You might also notice that the Jesus character doesn't insult or provoke Pilate in the dialogue. He states clearly that his purpose as a leader has nothing to do with political power (contrary to what those who claim to follow him have done with his legacy). He clarifies that he is interested in truth, unadulterated and untainted by fear. He suffers torture and abuses at the hands of those who are less emotionally mature, and even in the midst of that profound pain, he doesn't give himself over to anxiety and fear. His integrity is not just about his internal state of being, it has ramifications for how he relates to the people around him.

The author does have Jesus say something interesting, to pursue a theological rabbit trail for just a moment. The last words the Jesus character speaks to Pilate here are, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin." The gist of the argument here seems to be: (1) God authorizes people in their positions of power, therefore (2) people are not culpable for exercising that authorized power, and yet (3) those who interpret their power based on biblical principles from the Hebrew scriptures are more guilty than political leaders who use their positions of power to do harm. There is no way around the conclusion that God authorizes people to do harm to others (which is really nothing new from the Old Testament), nor is there any way around the idea that those who do not use their power ethically are guilty of "sin." If the same rules apply to God, then, the only logical conclusion from this theological statement is that God is guilty of the greatest sin, authorizing harm and failing to use power ethically. Of course, none of that really matters if God is a fictional supernatural, but these theological diversions are sometimes intriguing.

What can we say about the Jewish leaders and Pilate in this story? Do we find ourselves in these characters as well? Certainly, the Jewish leaders continue to be caught up in their fear. When a more rational voice tries again and again to offer a more reasonable course of action, they dig in their heels. There are all sorts of fears that could have been fueling their drivenness. At the same time, they are anxious to be technically clean even though there is nothing life-affirming about their behavior. They want to maintain an appearance of being beyond reproach by abdicating the harmful action to someone else. They do not want ownership of their decision, but they are committed to getting what they think they want.

In many cases, we still attempt to use the government in this way. We don't want to be responsible for making the changes we think are necessary, but we want someone to be responsible on our behalf. We don't want to be culpable for the harm that is done to others, but we are strangely comfortable with other people being harmed so that we feel safer. All the while, our own anxiety continues to soar, and our integrity is practically nonexistent. The two operate at inverse proportions. When we are committed to greater integrity and intentionality, our anxiety necessarily shifts to lower priority -- we cannot serve our fear and our deepest values at the same time. The question is whether we will be intentional about which we are serving or whether we will let our fear drive us as the Jewish leaders of this story are unequivocally driven.

Pilate, as he is characterized by the author, seems to be aware of what his values dictate and yet is still unwilling to take responsibility for living with integrity to those values. Where the Jewish leaders have completely lost touch with their deepest, most noble selves, Pilate seems to engage in sincere wrestling between his authentic, life-affirming values and the safety of pleasing other anxious people. (Again, this is a literary fictional character we're talking about and not the actual historical Pontius Pilate.) If his integrity were simply a matter of being internally aligned with deep guiding principles, he would seem to be on track. When his integrity requires managing himself in relationship to other people, however, he faces difficulty. The bizarre picture here is of a person with the greatest amount of authority and legitimate power bows to the most anxious voices in the room, because life-affirming values were given less priority than fear of the consequences of disappointing the least emotionally mature people involved.

This is clearly a picture to which we can relate. We like it when we are the most anxious voices in the room because it feels powerful to get our way. Screaming at someone until we get what we want can feel very vindicating, as long as we get what we think we want. Outrage and indignation seem to be preferred methods for people to force others to bend to their will. These are all fear-driven behaviors, however, and thus they cannot be reflective of our deepest, most noble selves. Whatever life-affirming values you think you have, these go out the window when you choose outrage and hostility as weapons of coercion.

When we fail to exercise our authority in the midst of hostility and coercion, however, we fail everyone in the scenario. Just as the Pilate character in this story, we can become so focused on making angry people go away and stop threatening us that we forget ourselves. We forget that what we care about most is not that every outraged person is mollified. We lose sight of our deepest principles because it seems risky to live with integrity to them when people are screaming at us. We become more interested in defending ourselves and being safe than we are interested in integrity.

We could spend eons peeling back the layers of Pilate's deceptively simply musing, "What is truth?" He is in the midst of an internal conflict, as we all most likely are. The Jesus character seems to know truth, however, and he is apparently calm in the midst of the chaos around him. We might assume that he experienced some internal conflict, especially as he was experiencing the pain inflicted on him. Perhaps he called himself names, as we so often do. Stubborn Fool. Idiot. Masochist. The end result, though, is that the truth he knows is more powerful than the suffering he experiences. The truth he knows is worth his integrity, and while some people assume that this truth has something to do with a supernatural, we will see next week that there is another, more useful possibility for us.

Today's passage shows us three possible points on a spectrum. The Jewish leaders are so driven by fear that they are completely unaware of their deepest life-affirming values. Pontius Pilate is aware of his deepest life-affirming values, and he tries to make them important; he foregoes integrity in the face of anxious aggression, however, and loses himself in order to appease other people. Jesus is not only aware of his deepest life-affirming values, he is unwavering in his integrity, making the moment-by-moment intentional decision to live according to the guidance of his deepest, most noble self rather than living according to other people's anxiety, even though he experiences some pain as a result.

Where are you on that spectrum? Are you aware of your deepest values? Do you place them as a higher priority than your anxiety? Do you find artificial power in using outrage and coercion to alleviate your fear in the moment? Are you prone to give in to other people's anxious demands rather than exercising your personal authority to live with integrity? Or do you live by a standard of authentic power and intention that reflects a vision of a best possible version of yourself?

Wherever you place yourself on that spectrum today, where do you want to be? When you consider what leads to long-term well-being for yourself and the people around you, in what direction would you like to move? If you want a more deeply satisfying experience of life, what will you need to do to move toward that? And what little step are you willing to take today to move in that direction?

John 15: Criticism Is Not a Righteousness Indicator

Immediately after having Jesus telling the disciples to base all that they do on love, the author of John observes a dichotomy between the way the disciples are supposed to live and the rest of the world. The author of John asserts in John 15:18-27 that the world will persecute the followers of Jesus because they do not know (or willingly remain ignorant of) the truth of Jesus' message.

Some people wear persecution as a badge of honor. Some people even read in the Bible that they should expect persecution if they follow the example of Jesus, and then they go out of their way to make sure others will criticize them. The problem is that some people believe that if other people criticize what they are doing, they must be doing something right. They use persecution as confirmation that they are being righteous. This is horribly misguided.

When we decide that other people's derision is a sign that we are headed in the right direction, we walk a very dangerous path. We need other people's insights and observations, because we cannot see everything ourselves. We have blind spots. When we refuse to consider the feedback other people offer to us, we miss opportunities to adjust our behavior when we are misaligned with our deepest values.

The author of John is suggesting that if people take seriously the call to radical love, then there will be others who attack that position out of fear and ignorance. The point is not that if people criticize you, you're doing something right. The point is that if you're doing what is right, some people will criticize you. There is a huge difference. Criticism is to be expected, and we should prepare for it so we don't get knocked off course. Criticism is not a measurement tool, though. We can't assume that all criticism is an indication that we are effectively basing all that we do on sound principles in alignment with our deepest values. 

Anxiety causes people to base their decisions on all manner of things that are worthy of criticism. People crave more wealth, more exclusive neighborhoods, more toys, more isolation from people who seem different, more access to high quality healthcare and education and food and entertainment. We see suffering and we often run the other way, trying to escape it in our own lives because we can't stand seeing it in other people's lives. We build walls of protection around ourselves so that we don't have to face a reality that might cost us something. We fail to love because we are too busy being right, we just don't always know what we're trying to be right about. We lose our sense of our principles and our values because we are too focused on making our anxiety go away.

We have to know what we value first and foremost, and we have to live with integrity to those values. If we envision ourselves as loving people, for instance, that value is the guide by which we evaluate our behavior, not people's criticism. If we want to be loving, and other people give us feedback that we aren't being very loving, we need to pay attention to that feedback. Using criticism as an indicator that we must be on the right path can lead us far astray from the principles upon which we most want our lives to be built.

As the author of John suggests, we have within us an internal guidance system. Some of us may not pay a lot of attention to it, especially if we are accustomed to writing off criticism as validation. Yet, we know when there is something off about our behavior, or when there is something off in our relationships. The author of John probably experienced some persecution as he and his community strove to build their behavior on the foundation of radical love. The radical love was the goal, though, not the persecution.

There are those today who believe that their religious liberties are threatened when other people gain equal freedoms under the law. When they speak out in hatred and fear, they are sometimes criticized, and sometimes they turn to passages like this one and claim that the people doing the criticizing are misguided and ignorant. Such fearful and hateful people often miss the context of the passage, that love is intended to be the foundation of every action. 

Hatred and violence are worthy of criticism, and any belief system that promotes fear and violence is worthy of all the admonishment we can muster. We can speak words of admonition without becoming hateful and fearful ourselves. We can be loving and still provide strong corrective feedback when others allow their fear to run away with them. We absolutely must offer boldly loving admonition if we want our world and our relationships to be just and equitable.

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"If people hate you for being loving and for living with integrity, be aware that people have always done so. If you had their level of unchecked anxiety, you would fit right in and people would accept you more easily. Because you have taken on a more intentional way of being, some people are going to hate you. You are not alone. Many other people before you have been persecuted by fearful people. But there have also always been people who sought a better way of living.

"If people had no resources to manage their anxiety and live more intentionally, it would be easier to forgive their ignorant hatred. By now, though, there have been plenty of examples in every religious tradition that could equip and empower people to live with integrity to the deepest value of love. When they hate you for being loving, they wind up hating the very thing they say they most value, even their own gods. They have no justifiable reason to be anxious, but they refuse to realize it.

"You have a connection with your deepest, most noble self. Nurture that connection and let it guide you into integrity with what you value most. Your very life will be a testimony to those who are willing to listen, and a model for those who are willing to follow your example."

John 8:12-30 Being Light

After the story of the woman caught in adultery, the gospel of John narrative continues in chapter 8 with more arguments between Jesus and the Jews. The Pharisees and Jews in these sorts of passages in John almost serve as a sort of literary device. Their words offer nothing new, but they break up Jesus' words and prompt what he says next. Their interjections perhaps help with the flow of the passage, but the actual meat here is what the authors attribute to Jesus.

Recall that our basic framework for John is that the Jesus character is an example of the kind of people we can be. So, the words attributed to Jesus in John 8 are intriguing. He claims to be light for the world, to have valid testimony because he knows who he is, to be non-judgmental, and to live by a different standard that the world's standards. He also makes claims about the Father. Let's take that concept first, because the others will flow more easily from clarifying what that may mean.

Sure, when the gospel of John was written, it was in a Jewish context, which assumes the existence of an almighty supernatural. Lots of people still believe in such a god, but there are certainly other valid lenses through which one might look at the world and oneself. I would suggest that when people refer to "God," they are referring to a deep part of themselves. This may be one reason God always seems to agree with the perspective of whoever is speaking. Many people have written convincing enough arguments against the existence of God, but the idea may still be a useful metaphor for some individuals, especially those who haven't done much work to connect with a deeper part of themselves. From a Humanist perspective, we don't need to toss out the concept completely. We can interpret "Father" here as shorthand for a deepest, most noble self -- a part of ourselves that is a source for our values and guiding principles, a source for our vision of a best possible version of ourselves. 

I say a "deeper" part of ourselves not in terms of a physical location, but in terms of psyche I suppose. Most of the time, we operate out of very surface level reactions to the world around us. We don't always give a lot of thought to how our moment to moment decisions align with our guiding principles. Many of our moment to moment decisions may not even seem to have anything to do with our values or with being a best possible version of ourselves. It takes effort to think through our guiding principles and consider how best to apply them in a particular situation. Most of our thinking is pretty lazy. So, I use "deeper" part of ourselves to indicate a more intentionally thought through identity than our lazy, automatic kinds of decisions.

The Jesus character in John 8 says that he is in agreement with the Father, which we can interpret to mean that his identity is well aligned with his deepest, most noble self. He is claiming that he lives into a best possible version of himself -- that his actions and decisions are impeccably congruent with his guiding principles. This is why we might look to the narrative as a framework for how we can be as human beings. The idealized character of Jesus reflects our potential to live with the same level of integrity, the same degree of alignment to our guiding principles. 

Should we take on that potential and live more intentionally, the claims attributed to Jesus here are a part of the outcome of having greater alignment to our own values. We become light for the world, shining an example of a different way of living than people who are stuck on autopilot and never even consider a best possible version of themselves. Our testimony is consistently valid, because we learn to express what is so for us without demanding that other people agree with us. We know better where we come from and where we are going. In other words, we have an awareness of our own habits and tendencies, and we have a clear vision of who we want to be in the world. 

Perhaps most importantly, we don't need to judge anyone, because our identities are valid in and of themselves. Most of the time, judgment of other people is a reflection that we don't agree with them. They are doing things we don't approve of, and our judgment is a way of lifting up the merits of our own perspective by tearing down someone else's perspective. This is irrelevant when we live with integrity to our own guiding principles. Other people doing things differently than we would is not a threat to the value of our own vision of a best possible version of ourselves. 

Should we choose to judge someone, though, that judgment would look different. The foundation is that we live with congruence to our deepest values and we refuse to be threatened by other people's ideas and behaviors just because they're different from our own. From that space, we might still look at other people's life and recognize that they are acting on autopilot, that they are caught up in the throes of anxiety, or that they don't have a clear sense of their own guiding principles. In a way, this is a judgment against them. Some might call it awareness or even discernment. Maybe it's really just observation. 

When we use this judgment to be of service to others, it looks different from using judgment to bolster our own identities at the expense of someone else's. We might actually help people clarify their values. We could gently knock people out of autopilot mode. We can even help other people to develop a vision of a best possible version of themselves. From one perspective, we'd be using the same processes that we use to judge other people, but now we would approach that process with a clear sense of our own identity, and perhaps with a heavier dose of love and empathy thrown into the mix.

Here we go, then, with a possible interpretation of John 8:12-30.

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “The way I live shines as an obvious example to everybody. Whoever follows my example will never have to worry about fear or confusion, but will have the ability to live with clarity and integrity.” Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.” Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I am telling you what is so for me. I know my habits and tendencies, and I have a compelling vision for my life, but you do not know my history or my future. You barely have a sense of your own habits or a vision for yourself. You judge other people in order to validate yourself; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for I don't need to judge others to build myself up. I operate from a guiding principle of love that stems from my deepest, most noble self.

Then they said to him, “Where is this deepest self?” Jesus answered, “You haven't really seen my actions or heard my words clearly because you look through a lens of fear. If you let down your guard and take an honest look at my life, you would know my deepest, most noble self.” He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.

Again he said to them, “I'm not always going to be here, and you will search for me, but your fear will persist for the rest of your lives. You can't take the journey I'm taking.” Then the Jews said, “Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, ‘You can't take the journey I'm taking’?” He said to them, “You are operating out of habit and anxiety, I am operating out of my guiding principles and a vision of a best possible version of myself. I told you that your fear will persist for the rest of your lives, for you will live the rest of your days with the same fearfulness unless you take responsibility for doing something differently in your life.” 

They said to him, “Who are you to tell us what to do with our lives?” Jesus said to them, “Just talking to you is frustrating! I see your anxiety and your ingrained patterns clearly, and I hate that you keep choosing to live by those things; but my deepest, most noble self is not a source of hatred. I can only tell you what I know for myself, that living from a space of love and integrity is possible. I can't live your life for you, I can only tell you that you have the potential to do something different in your own life." They did not understand that he was speaking to them about clarifying their own guiding principles. So Jesus said, “When you take a step back from your anxiety and imagine an ideal way of being, then you'll realize that I'm living out that ideal, and that I'm not trying to build myself up, but I'm communicating what makes sense to me about living intentionally with integrity to my own values. And my values and guiding principles don't leave me doubting what I've done or said. I have confidence in who I am, and you could too.” As he was saying these things, many began to follow his example.

A Little Experiment: Be nonjudgmental. You don't need to judge anybody in order to validate or bolster your own identity or perspective. Catch yourself in the act of judgment this week and stop yourself. Maybe you want to prepare a phrase like, "We see things differently, and that's alright."

Another Little Experiment: Judge. When you catch yourself being judgmental, consider what the other person may be experiencing. Are they afraid of something? Do they perhaps feel unheard or un-valued? Is there a way you can be compassionate or loving to someone who sees the world through different lenses than you? 

Isaiah 30: The Hazardous Influence of Anxiety

One popular way to interpret some of the promises and threats attributed to Yahweh in the Hebrew scriptures is that Yahweh is a subtle and hidden god who artfully orchestrates circumstances and influences behavior so that his promises and threats are fulfilled in ways that allow his action to remain secret, behind the scenes. Rather than any blatant acts of supernatural power, people claim to see God at work in the actions of human beings and natural processes. The strange thing is that the flow of nature and the behavior of human beings don't need to be explained through some supernatural influence. Nature and people can be understood just fine without assuming that there is a deity behind the curtain, subtly ensuring that what he wants will come to pass.

When the authors of Isaiah were writing passages like the collection of disparate writings in Isaiah 30, their perspective of the world was that, whatever happened, Yahweh was in control. If something bad happened, then Yahweh was punishing people for something, and if something good happened, then Yahweh was rewarding people for something. The only real challenge in life was to figure out what Yahweh wanted, and then to do it. In this ancient and superstitious time, it was wholeheartedly believed that a people's supernatural would respond with clear answers when asked a sincere question. Since Yahweh never communicated directly with people except in folklore, Jewish priests even had their own version of casting bones or reading tea leaves in order to determine what Yahweh wanted. They called it "consulting the Urim and the Thummim," and it was a form of casting lots to get a Yes or No answer to a question, kind of like a sophisticated coin toss. If Yahweh reliably communicated clearly and directly with people, they would never have needed to devise such a method of "consultation."

Of course, we know more now about the psychological factors and ideomotor effects that influence supposed means of communicating with something beyond the natural world, and we know that human beings invent interpretations for events that often have little to do with the actual causes of the effects we perceive. We are, by nature, creative entities. If we want to understand the world around us, though, we have to be more honest than those who attribute things to a supernatural who is willing to bend reality to his will. Armies do not attack because a deity told them to, but because politically minded human beings decide to wage war. Human beings do not wage war because a supernatural has influenced their thinking, but because they believe that violent action is the best way to get what they want. When an ancient city was burned or besieged, it wasn't because a deity was lashing out or fighting alongside a military force. People are capable of causing destruction without any help from a god.

What shall we make of these rather disparaging words of precaution in Isaiah 30? A fearful people react to their anxiety by fleeing to a powerful neighbor, Egypt. Now, it is quite possible that negative consequences of this action were already known at the time this passage was written. When biblical prophecy reveals a particular outcome, often it was written after the fact, even though it was composed in a way that appears to be a prediction of the future. Still, the implication is that if the people had consulted Yahweh, they would have known better. The chapter goes on to suggest that Yahweh is taking the people's behavior rather personally; he seems to be feeling a bit rejected. According to the authors of these passages, the people were not interested in truth, but only wanted to hear affirmations. Comfort and positive promises were valued over honest and challenging admonitions. Then, in Isaiah 30:18-26, a promise is made that Yahweh will stop hiding and will communicate more clearly with people. Like a contrite abuser, he will "[bind] up the injuries of his people and [heal] the wounds inflicted by his blow" (Is 30:26b). There is no indication that this ever actually happened, of course.

In the absence of an external deity (or any supernatural) communicating with us, directly or indirectly, the lessons we might draw from this chapter seem to stem from the dangers of reacting in anxiety -- allowing our anxiety to control us rather than the other way around. When we put our anxiety in the driver's seat, we fail to pay attention to what we already know, we fail to assess our circumstances honestly, and we often create more trouble for ourselves. When we manage our anxiety well, we can better tune in to our guiding principles and our values, and we can more thoughtfully discern appropriate responses to the challenges we face. Anxiety has no integrity, and when we let our anxiety run rampant, our only real motivation is making the anxiety go away. Values and guiding principles often go out the window when we get to that point. If we want to be intentional people who act with integrity to our guiding principles, we have to learn how to manage our anxiety.

Some would suggest that the first step in managing anxiety is recognizing the times when we give control to our anxiety. Like the people of Judah reprimanded in Isaiah 30, one common reaction is to run away. Sometimes, we might make a choice to distance ourselves from a toxic situation or person. That sort of thoughtful response is not the same as fleeing from a perceived threat before we've given ourselves a chance to think. So, the goal isn't necessarily to always stand in the midst of our challenges and take whatever comes our way. Rather, the goal is to make choices with integrity to our deep guiding principles.

Standing and facing our challenges is another reasonable option. Sometimes, in the grip of our anxiety, we automatically fight back against perceived threats. This doesn't have to be physical (although it could be). Verbal arguments, and even trying to convince someone to admit that we're right are reactive ways of engaging in conflict. When our anxiety prompts the action, we can be pretty sure that it's not going to line up with our guiding principles. There are times when our guiding principles prompt us to take a stand for something. This looks and feels different from the conflict we create out of anxiety. When anxiety is in control, we are out of control. When we understand our values and act with integrity to those values, we can take a stand with a sense of purpose, groundedness, and calm.

In addition to fleeing or fighting, there are a couple of other ways that anxiety shows up in our behavior. Sometimes we shift into "overfunctioning" -- trying to fix situations that aren't ours to fix, trying to manage other people's problems for them, or taking on excessive responsibility. When we want our feelings of anxiety to go away, we can go overboard with our efforts to do something -- anything -- to take care of whatever we think is causing our anxiety. This is harmful behavior. It hurts us because it takes on more than what we can reasonably manage, and it hurts other people because it allows them to "underfunction," which is another way that people typically react to anxiety.

As you might imagine, underfunctioning is the opposite of overfunctioning. When we underfunction, we pretend that we are not responsible for our own feelings and behaviors. We let someone else try to fix our problems, while we pretend that we aren't capable of taking responsibility in our own lives. When we underfunction, we often think of ourselves as victims, blaming other people or our circumstances for preventing us from living the lives we want to live. The truth is that if we aren't living with integrity to our own values, that's on us. Anxiety can make it seem otherwise, but when we allow ourselves to be honest and thoughtful, it's easier to recognize our role in creating our lives.

Sometimes, we have a combination of reactions. In Isaiah 30, the people of Judah ran away from the hostile military forces without thinking, and then they slipped into underfunctioning by asking Egypt to solve their problems for them, assuming that they were too weak to do so for themselves. To be fair, their anxiety was in response to a very real threat. There are people today in many parts of the world who are running from extreme violence, and it makes perfect sense for their first priority to be to get to safety. Their anxiety about their own lives being in danger is very real. In such situations, automatic pilot reactions can help people survive.

Most of our anxiety is not in response to real threats, however. Most of our fear is concocted in our own minds, and we still react as if the threats are real. We aren't going to stop being anxious, but we can learn to recognize when we start feeling like fighting back, running away, hyperactively fixing everything, or divesting of our own responsibility for our lives. In those situations, we can't reliably seek the counsel of a supernatural, but we can look within ourselves and determine if what we are doing really matches our values. When we have a clear picture of the kind of people we want to be, we can check our anxious reactions against that vision of a best possible version of ourselves. If we are willing to be thoughtful, we can ask ourselves what would better represent our guiding principles. Maybe getting out of a particular situation or taking a stand are the kinds of things we need to do in order to have integrity with our guiding principles. If so, we can choose to do so thoughtfully and intentionally rather than anxiety-fueled reactivity.

One last thing to keep in mind. Reacting is easy. Letting our anxiety run the show takes almost no effort at all. Lots of people live from reaction to reaction, and they don't know any other way to manage their anxiety. They just do all that they can to make the anxiety go away. Having a clear sense of our guiding principles and our deep values is a little more challenging. Living with integrity and intentionality requires a little more of us than reacting to anxiety requires. The payoff is that we get to create the lives we most want, that we get to be the kind of people we most want to be. We may never hit 100% of our vision of a best possible version of ourselves, but we can only journey toward that vision by recognizing when we are shifting into auto-pilot, checking in with our guiding principles and our values, and adjusting our responses to life accordingly. We already know what kind of people we most want to be. We just need to be willing to pay attention to our own reactions and adjust our course when our anxiety causes us to swerve out of alignment with the things we care about most.

1 Samuel 13-31: More about Fear and Abdication

Fear is the hallmark of Saul's reign as first king of Israel.  Although the narrative in the book of Samuel gives God credit for selecting him as king, right out of the gate he's told that God is disappointed in him.  The Jewish folklore recorded in the Bible paints Saul as a madman, possessed by demons that induced fits of rage.  Perhaps he had a bona fide psychiatric condition.  Or perhaps if there was a historic King Saul, he became a fictionalized caricature to serve as a literary foil to David, arguably ancient Israel's most legendary folk hero.  Whatever the case, the writers of the book of Chronicles relegate Saul's entire existence to a suicide and posthumous humiliation contained in a single chapter.  This was not the great leader the Israelites had in mind when they asked to have a king appointed to keep order.

Still, there are a couple of things we can learn from the story of Saul.  To begin with, he displayed a profound lack of trust in the people who were in his life to help him.  Fear that his army would desert him led him to take over Samuel's job, fear about the might of the Philistines paralyzed Saul on the battlefield, and fear about David's popularity and cunning drove Saul to spend a significant portion of his reign chasing David around the countryside.  Fear that God was on David's side provoked Saul to kill all the priests that could have guided him, and fear that God had abandoned him led him to consult a medium, against his own proclamations.  When he was mortally wounded in battle, alongside his son, he took his own life out of fear that he would be humiliated if his enemy killed him.  The Philistines took his corpse and humiliated him anyway.

Saul accomplished nothing, according to the biblical narrative.  He was so subject to fear that his entire reign was spent reacting to it.  It must have been a frustrating and exhausting life, constantly fearful and paranoid, never quite realizing that his reactions were only going to make matters worse.  Saul could have addressed his fears differently, but unfortunately there was no one in his life who could be trusted to tell him how.  Samuel was all but useless as a spiritual advisor, ready to condemn Saul the first time he stepped out of line.  And as far as we see in the story, Samuel is the only real spiritual presence after Saul's coronation.  If Saul had recognized divinity as an inner characteristic rather than an external entity, and if he had been guided by some insightful spiritual teacher, his fears may not have had such power.  Of course, Saul's behavior was an important aspect of the story to show how incredible David was by contrast, but we aren't bound by the same rigid cultural identity as ancient Israel.

Imagine for a moment that Saul is a real, flesh-and-blood human being with choices.  In every moment, he can choose whether to react or respond, whether to take action without thinking or contemplate his options and their consequences.  If Saul believes that divinity is an intrinsic part of his identity as a human being, he might be more inclined to reach inward and find meaningful, centered guidance.  But, if Saul has been told that everything in his life is under God's control, that he is essentially powerless to accomplish anything on his own, that belief might contribute negatively to his leadership ability.  If Saul is told that God made a mistake in appointing him to his position and that God now stands against him, what ammunition does Saul have against his fears?  Given the culture of his time, Saul's inability to conceive of personal power and personal responsibility cripples him when his concept of the divine is turned against him.  Placing God outside of ourselves means that he abdicates his authentic control over and responsibility for his own life and choices.

People aren't born knowing how to take personal responsibility, though.  People do not automatically see clearly the bounds of their own control.  Some people want to control more than they can, and some people give up more control in their lives than they have to.  Most people benefit from meaningful wise counsel in order to hone their ability to accept appropriate control over their own lives and decisions.  Based on the story told by the biblical writers, Samuel was the one person Saul should have been able to count on in his early kingship, and Samuel was unfortunately poor support.  Perhaps he was insecure in his own ways, too preoccupied with his own fears to be of service to Saul.  That doesn't change the fact that their relationship could have been something more.  

For the ancient Israelites, it was a challenge to acknowledge personal responsibility.  It isn't often in the biblical narrative that consequences are logically connected to the actions of human beings.  Instead, consequences are a response from God when he is upset about what one of his subjects has done.  He punishes and rewards with fickle intelligence in the Bible stories.  In reality, consequences are directly tied to the actions that produce them.  We muddy the waters of our own personal responsibility and control when we place an imaginary intermediary between our actions and their results.  Once Saul was convinced that an imaginary all-powerful being was unhappy with him, there was no possibility of dealing with his fears rationally.  We are not characters in a story, and we are not limited to the worldview of the ancient Near East.  What we do matters, and the consequences are ours to own.

When we realize that we are ruled by fear, we can take some actions to start doing things differently.  We don't have to conclude that we are doomed or cursed.  When we realize that things are not working out for us the way we want, we can examine our own behavior and make adjustments.  We don't have to look for someone or something more powerful than ourselves to blame.  We don't have to throw up our hands and assume that God must have a different plan for our lives.  And when we know that we want to do things differently and don't quite know how, it's alright for us to find other people that can provide meaningful insights.  The trick is that we have to be discerning.  People that just tell us what we want to hear are not valuable.  And people that tell us that there is something inherently wrong with us are not going to empower us to take personal responsibility in our lives.  We are responsible for the lives we create, and we are responsible for the impact we have on others.

One last note about Samuel and his relationship to Saul.  We sometimes fail to recognize when there are people around us who could benefit from our graceful and loving support.  We get caught up in our own lives, our own fears, our own insecurities, and we forget that we are in relationship with one another.  Samuel is a warning for us.  Saul could potentially have been a much better leader if Samuel had been a better mentor.  We do not always see clearly the boundaries of their personal responsibility and capability.  We need one another.  Our own clarity is refined through meaningful connection with each other. 

Eighteen chapters is a large chunk of the biblical narrative to take in at once.  We could dig into Saul's decisions in greater detail, but ultimately I believe we will find the same dynamics at work time and again.  Fear can cripple us.  We are personally responsible for handling our fear healthily and finding a way to assess our circumstances more honestly.  We are responsible for our actions and their consequences.  Our integrity matters.  And we need one another to stay sharp in all of this, because it isn't always easy.  If we all just did a little more to take appropriate responsibility in our lives, just imagine what kind of impact that could have in our families, our communities, our world.

Judges 10-12: When Breaking an Agreement Might Be a Good Idea

A couple of leaders get a mention after the wicked Abimilek meets his end, but the next judge of the Israelites that gets any real attention is Jephthah.  His story is a reminder that sometimes people are going to base their actions on personal prejudices rather than a person's capability.  Even though there is some debate about how literally to interpret a vow that Jephthah makes, there is something to be taken from the story regarding the agreements we make.

The story of Jephthah is another tale of an unlikely savior.  He isn't a southpaw or a woman, but he is a bastard.  When his legitimate half-brothers thought he posed a threat to their inheritance, they sent Jephthah away.  Then, when there was a threat from the Ammonites, they wanted him to be commander-in-chief of the tribe of Manasseh.  He was understandably suspicious, but with the agreement that he would be put in a position of power if he was victorious, he set his sights on turning back the Ammonites.

His initial diplomatic message to the Ammonite king suggests that either Jephthah had a sketchy idea of Israelite history or he was trying to pull the wool over the Ammonite's eyes.  Or perhaps the writers of Judges and the writers of the book of Joshua were working from different historical perspectives for different purposes.  Whatever the case, Jephthah's version of history isn't the main point to his message.  His primary thrust is, "Our god gave us this land.  Be happy with what your god gave you and stop trying to take our land."  Since the history is a bit fuzzy, there isn't a great deal to be gained from considering how boldly ironic this statement is.

The Ammonite king, of course, disregards the message, battle ensues, and Jephthah is blessed by the Spirit of the Lord.  He vows to sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house if he returns victorious, and he wins the battle.  Unfortunately, the first thing out of his door is his daughter, but being a man of his word, he sacrifices her.  It isn't entirely clear what this means, since translators disagree about some of the nuance.  Obviously, sacrificing anyone as a burnt offering has never been an approved act of worship in the Israelite tradition.  The only thing that came close was Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, but in that story, God intervenes and stops the sacrificial act, distinguishing his values from the supposed values of the other gods of the area.  As the story reads, God seems to be fine with Jephthah's vow -- he doesn't intercede in any way.  But it may be that Jephthah's daughter was simply dedicated to God in some less brutal way.

Still, killing one's daughter because of a vow doesn't seem that far out of context for the behavior of the ancient Israelites.  They committed some fairly barbaric acts when it comes down to it.  When the men of a fellow tribe challenge Jephthah for not letting them in on the opportunity to claim some Ammonite spoils, these two tribes of Israel become adversarial, with the Gileadites killing an astonishing forty-two thousand Ephraimites before all is said and done.  It's perhaps a small comfort that when someone makes fun of the way you pronounce a word these days, you usually have only a bit of pride at stake.

In any case, the Israelites' view of God is different here.  Yes, bad things are punishments from God, and good things are rewards from God.  Human endeavor is given very little weight in the grand scheme of things.  It is a pervasive cultural dismissal of personal responsibility.  "If we killed all those people, then obviously God wanted us to kill all those people.  Otherwise he would have done something about it."  "If God let insects eat your crops, then obviously he was angry at you."  I suppose one could say that the Israelites were in the position of power because they could stop their worship of other gods at any time and be the kind of people Yahweh wanted them to be, but they were obviously getting something out of their decisions.  That something may have been freedom from responsibility.

When we are criticized or looked down upon because of who our parents are, or because of our accents, or because of what our leaders have said, it's important to remember that the people doing the criticizing aren't seeing us.  They are seeing a characteristic that represents a personal fear for them somehow.  When we can behave in a superior way toward something that represents fear, we think we are being courageous.  Many times we are just being bullies to people.  Other people don't deserve to be punching bags for us to work out our innermost fears in an outwardly violent way.  Whether they take the shape of judgments, prejudices, or outright hatred, our fears are ours to own.  When we recognize the symptoms of fear gone out of control, it's our responsibility to manage that fear in a way that doesn't bring harm to other people.  That becomes easier to do when we recognize our personal responsibility for our actions and beliefs.

We make all sorts of agreements with ourselves.  Some of those agreements are based on fear, but some of them are based on legitimate striving for a more satisfying, fulfilling existence.  We want to protect ourselves, or we want to give ourselves incentive or encouragement, and so we start making deals.  "If I get this job, I will allow myself to celebrate."  Or "If I lose this job, I'm going to give myself permission to get revenge."  We don't necessarily do this consciously, but we are making deals like Jephthah all the time.  If you want to think of it as making deals with God, that's fine.  At the end of the day, though, God isn't going to hold you accountable to reckless vows.  You will.  Or you will let yourself be human and realize that you can break the vows with yourself that are harmful to you and other people.

It's easy for us to dig in our heels when we think that there is some divine power looking down on us and rigidly judging what we do and think.  We think we are obligated to follow through with something because we've made a commitment, even after we realize that what we've committed to may not be the wisest course of action.  Whether you believe that the divine is within you or outside of you, the character of the divine is not unreasonable, unyielding, or unforgiving.  We often misplace those characteristics on the divine because we are unwilling to be reasonable or forgiving with ourselves.  We think that it means something horrible about who we are if we go back on our word.  Breaking the reckless, harmful agreements with ourselves actually means that we are able to learn, that we are able to be wise, that we are able to forgive.

There will be more opportunity to look at the character of the divine, and more opportunity to look at the agreements we make with ourselves.  For now, the story of Jephthah seems to be saying these three things: Verify that your information is accurate before you go to war in your life.  Deal with your fear (judgment, prejudice, hatred, ...) in a healthy way, not in a way that brings harm to you or any other person.  Examine the agreements you've made with yourself about who and how you must be, and develop a willingness to break those agreements that do not reflect the deep truth, undeniable beauty, and inspiring creativity you possess.  You are capable of creating more in your life than strict adherence to reckless vows.

Joshua 9-21: The Truth about Your Superiority Complex and the Fear that Fuels It

As we've mentioned, the book of Joshua was probably written by a collection of different authors at a much later time in Israel's history than the events described in the book.  As a part of the "Deuteronomistic history," this book (and the books that follow in the biblical structure) were most likely created to justify a shift toward monotheism and more prominent leadership role of the priesthood under King Josiah late in the 7th century BCE, with the book possibly being completed as much as a century later.  It's evident that the story being told in Joshua is that the Israelites, empowered by their faith, conquered a large swath of the area around the Jordan River, taking livestock, property, and riches from the cities and killing every man, woman, and child of nearly every kingdom they conquered.  In the parlance of our time, we call this genocide, but in the minds of the Israelites, this was simply claiming what God had promised them.  God was in fact instigator and accomplice in their violence, according to the book of Joshua.

Many of the stories that pepper the chapters on the distribution of land, as well as the tales of conquest, end with statements like, "And there they remain to this day."  This suggests that many of the stories were intended to explain a situation, like why a particular group of Israelites were granted access to a particular well, or why a certain group of foreigners/infidels/heathens became slave labor for the Israelites instead of being slaughtered outright.  The stories are not intended to question the status quo, but rather to justify it in a way that put any questions or objections to rest, much like a parental, "because I said so."  Since we are looking back from a different vantage point, we have the opportunity to see some things about the Israelites' self-identity that they may have been unable to see, on account of their immersion in the culture.  Perhaps we can even use such observations to gain a little perspective about our own worldviews.

There's no question that the Israelites thought of themselves as better than everyone else.  On the surface at least.  Their god was better than anyone else's god.  Their entitlement to property and buildings and livestock was more legitimate than anyone else's.  Even their lives were worth more than other people's lives.  Perhaps there was some kind of collective narcissism at work, much like what happens in today's world when extreme nationalism shoves aside any thought of treating other people humanely.  If we accept the narrative of the Bible as how the Israelites saw themselves, perhaps the vehement superiority was actually a defense mechanism for what they feared about themselves, that they were, at their core, slaves.

When we fear something about ourselves, we can go to great lengths to disprove that fear.  If we fear that we are worthless, we might do everything in our power to demonstrate to everyone how valuable we are.  If we fear that we are unlovable, we might do all manner of self-destructive things just to devour illusions of love from other people.  And if we believe that we are no better than slaves, powerless, worth less than "real" people?  We might go to great length just to show everyone just how powerful we can be.  And how worthless they are.  "It doesn't matter if we were slaves in Egypt.  We're so powerful we can take your cities and all of your stuff and kill every last one of you!  We're not weak and powerless.  You're the weak and powerless ones!"

Either way, the lie wins.  If we roll over and accept the lie, we live like we are worthless or unlovable or powerless or selfish or whatever our own personal lies may be, and we never work up the courage to look at the truth about who we are.  And if we defend ourselves against the lie, we go one step further and create a different lie about who we are.  We live like we are more than everyone else.  We miss the truth about who we are and the truth about the other people around us.  All because of fear.  People don't lay waste to a city and slaughter everyone inside unless they are afraid of something.  And in our lives, we don't dehumanize other people or ignore our own value and capability unless we have given in to fear.

Maybe it doesn't manifest as a superiority complex in your life, but for the Israelites, fear told them that they had to prove how powerful and right they were, and they overlooked the atrocities they committed because they marched under the banner of a righteous and perfect god who approved of their actions.  There was no group of people that the Israelites could accept as equals -- at least not in the book of Joshua.  Those they didn't slaughter, they made into slaves.  That's right.  The people whose cultural identity revolved around escaping slavery in Egypt accepted other people only under terms of forced labor.  The irony seems to have been lost on the writers of Joshua, but hopefully our ability to recognize it will alert us to similar ironies in our own lives.

So, the Israelites failed to see their own authentic value as human beings, failed to see other people's authentic value as human beings, committed genocide, stole property, and engaged in slavery, and they thought of all of this as being righteous because of a myopic religion, all the while failing to recognize that their behavior was fueled by fear.  They bolstered their cultural identity with some admirable traits as well.  When they made a promise, even if that promise was made because of a deception, they kept their word.  The Israelites placed great value on the vows they made.  (Just hang on to this little tidbit, since it will become much more important in the book of Judges.)  The writers of Joshua go to great lengths to detail how fairly the land was distributed.  And whether it was because of a fear that God (or someone representing God) would punish them or whether it was out of respect for one another, the Israelites seemed to treat each other like people of equal value, even if they were from different tribes.  We cannot stomach being "all bad" even when we justify a great amount of ugly behavior.  Somewhere inside of us there is a glimmer of our true selves that insists on being expressed.

The fear tells us that if we examine ourselves and really look deep into the core of who we are, that we will see something less than human.  That the lie will turn out to be true.  That we will really turn out to be vacuous, weak, unlovable, selfish, ugly.  But the lie only has power as long as we are afraid of it.  Confront the lie for what it is, and the fear can no longer govern our behavior.  The Israelites didn't have to be conquerors, murderers, looters, destroyers, or slavers, just as they didn't have to be weak, worthless, or enslaved.  But they believed that their only choices were very clear extremes.  That's what fear will do.


What fear are you ignoring?  What lies are you avoiding about your true nature?  Are you afraid that you are weak?  Stupid?  Worthless?  Unlovable?  What are you doing with those lies?  Giving in and living like you're something less than human?  Or fighting against it to prove the lie wrong?  Are you hurting other people just to show how powerful you are?  Are you hurting yourself just to show how lovable you are?  What is it that keeps you from embracing your identity as a beautiful, creative, capable, valuable, worthy human being?  Whatever it is, it's a lie. 

Here's a little secret: When you want to, you can look at any other person, no matter how much or how little you know about them, regardless of how they're behaving, and you can see the divine within them -- you can see a deep and undeniable value, beauty, and creativity that no amount of lies can destroy.  You can also just see the lies about who they think they are.  Or who you think they are.  What you see is your choice.  The same goes for yourself.  If you look for the truth within you, you will find a deep and undeniable worthiness, beauty, and creativity.  Or you can stop short and just see the lies.  What you see is your choice.  And what you do with what you see is your choice too.   

Joshua 2-6: When Divine Inspiration Gets Sidetracked by Fear

About half of the book of Joshua is folklore about how incredibly successful this man was as a military leader when the Israelites were slaughtering innocent people and taking their land, wealth, and communities.  It's difficult for rational people to look upon some of the content as factually viable, since the stories include things like the sun standing still for a day and such.  That being said, there is powerful allegorical value in these stories, particularly the first and most highly developed story about the fall of Jericho.  These Old Testament stories were written from the standpoint that the Israelites were better than everyone else because God said so, and all the other people who were living in the area around the Jordan River at the time were expendable because they weren't chosen by God.  It isn't a stretch from that perspective to draw "spiritual" lessons from the story about trusting God and overcoming enemies through faith.  But what if one approaches from a different set of assumptions?

If we start from the belief that all human life is valuable, that people are worthy of respect regardless of their beliefs, Joshua's acts seem deplorable.  The Israelites' actions dehumanize their enemies.  If we start from a belief in abundance rather than scarcity, it seems at the very least misguided to drive off or kill people just to claim their resources.  Yet we still haven't outgrown that behavior in some respects.  And if we start from a belief that houses the character of the divine within every human being, Joshua's actions are inspired, representative of the kind of creativity available to any of us if we are willing to tap into our internal resources and trust ourselves.  The problem is not with Joshua's outlandish tactics, it's with the fear he entertains regarding the people of Jericho.

One challenge in reading or hearing any sort of story as adults is that we typically have a set of beliefs in place before we determine what the story has to offer.  Our opinions of any new information are based on what we already believe about the world, other people, and ourselves.  It is nearly impossible for us to approach new information with a truly open mind, free from any beliefs about reality.  For many people who grew up in a Christian context, biblical stories were even used to help frame our beliefs about the world, other people, and ourselves, but we weren't really able to understand the nuances of the stories beyond what adults were telling us to believe.  As adults, we have the opportunity to reassess our beliefs and to re-contextualize the stories we know or encounter anew.

If it is true that all human beings hold within themselves the deep truth, beauty, and creativity that we associate with the character of the divine, then we are capable of doing incredible things when we push past the layers of fear that have accumulated over time and embrace that truth, beauty, and creativity within us.  With calm patience, we can collapse seemingly insurmountable obstacles that would hold firm in the face of the greatest display of force.  Our strength is not in our ability to be violent, but in our ability to be intentional.  What happens after the walls come down and we are granted access to new territory, though?

Once again, if it is true that all human beings hold within themselves the deep truth, beauty, and creativity that we associate with the character of the divine, then this truth should inform all of our dealings with other people.  When we seek to do harm to others, we are harming a system of which we ourselves are a part.  We cannot bring violence to other people without doing some harm to our own identities and well-being.  Honestly, our only reason for intending harm toward others is fear, and that fear is almost always irrational.  In Joshua's case, there were likely manifold fears that prevented him from seeing the divinity in the people he conquered.  He was afraid that his culture could be corrupted, that his people were too weak to hold to their beliefs in the face of alternative practices.  He was afraid of death at the hands of the defenders of the cities the Israelites were assaulting.  He was afraid of how his people would see him, whether they would hail him as a hero or reject his authority.  Understandable fears, but unnecessary fears.

Joshua is a character of fiction, a bit of folklore to build cultural identity for an ancient people.  But we experience fears that may seem insignificant by comparison to a leader of an entire society, and those fears still manage to derail our creativity and inspiration.  We fear what people will think of us, and we fear what people will do to us.  We fear things about ourselves as well, that we will be found out, revealed as imposters or weaklings.  We fear that we have to fight for survival, that we have to defend ourselves at every turn.  We learned to fear from a variety of sources, and we have practiced that fear until it frames our reality.  We have to look beyond that fear to see the truth and beauty and inspiration in the world around us, and we have to look beyond that fear to see the truth and beauty and creativity within ourselves.  The more ingrained the fear, the more dismantling we need to do to see what is true.

Dismantling fear is easier said than done.  Even the prospect of it brings up a whole new onslaught of fears.  Our entire society is addicted to fear, and the thought of disregarding fear is counter-cultural to say the least.  It will not happen all at once, but as we are willing to see our own beauty and creativity, and as we are willing to see the beauty and inspiration in others, we will build confidence in that truth.  We can bring the walls down with confidence and discover ways to make the world a better place rather than a more violent one.  We can create a life that serves our most noble intentions rather than our most fearful ones.

The message of Joshua is a cautionary tale.  We have within us immense power.  When we tap into that divine essence, we can find inspiration to do incredible things in our lives and in the lives of other people.  But when we unleash that power out of fear, we can destroy instead of create.  We court the power of judgment and death instead of bringing hope and life.  We are capable of either path.  The difference is that when we identify ourselves as destroyers, we act in defiance of our true nature.  The fear that convinces us that destruction is the only option will never bring us satisfaction, peace, happiness.  That fear will always be restless.  But we are not destroyers.  That is not our identity as human beings, no matter what we have been led to believe or what we have accepted as reality.  We are creators.  At our core we are capable, strong, life-affirming creators.  To deny that is to deny our humanity.

Joshua 1: Courage Is a Vital Ingredient to Living with Integrity

About half of the book of Joshua is folklore about this Israelite leader's success in conquering the Promised Land.  The other half is about how the land was divided up among the Israelites, which reads about as interesting as any tax roll.  Joshua's life as depicted in the Bible would make a very exciting movie, and let's face it, telling stories with the community gathered together was the ancient civilization equivalent of a movie theater.  We can draw spiritual truth from these stories as easily as we can draw spiritual truth from the stories of any culture, but the book of Joshua begins with one of the most blatant and timeless admonishments found anywhere in scripture.  Be strong and courageous.

Moses was dead, and Joshua had been selected to fill his shoes.  The Israelite people hadn't been entirely respectful of Moses' leadership.  They were quite an unruly lot from time to time.  Now a new leader has to manage a rather belligerent young society, while they most likely did what any classroom of students do with a new teacher: test boundaries and see what they can get away with.  Now, the Bible doesn't include much about the Israelites' bad behavior in the relatively short book of Joshua, but if the previous books are anything to go by, Joshua had his hands full.  Fortunately, most of his reported leadership was a series of successful military battles, so his popularity was probably much higher than his cantankerous predecessor who was always telling people what they couldn't do and meting out punishments for their constant complaining.

The biggest problem when someone new takes charge, or when we enter some new phase of life -- a new job, a new city, parenthood, retirement -- is that we have gotten accustomed to things being a certain way, and now we have to deal with change.  Some people aren't wired to enjoy change.  They like the appearance of a predictable, secure existence, even if that includes a predictable level of stress.  Unpredictable pleasure is almost more threatening than predictable pain to some people.  While I respect the preferences of those people and understand the comfort to be found in predictable patterns, I would submit that very little in life is truly predictable and consistent.  We are faced with a certain amount of upheaval over the course of our lives, no matter how well we may have planned everything out.  Since there is no way to truly avoid change, what matters most is how we handle it.

Our beliefs determine a lot of our decisions.  What we believe about ourselves and other people (and life in general) informs how we respond to changes, however slight they may be.  Whether the change is someone moving our coffee cup or someone firing us from a job, whether it's a little rain on our picnic or a natural disaster destroying our home, our beliefs are the source of our responses.  And those beliefs are constantly being challenged.  If we believe that people are inherently good, there will be evidence to the contrary whenever we get around enough people who all want to get to the same place at the same time.  If we believe that people are inherently selfish, there will be generous acts that challenge that belief.  Whether you believe that you are attractive or unattractive, there will be people who disagree with you, some more vocally than others.  Our beliefs cannot remain intact by mere observation of things around us.  Strong beliefs originate from someplace deeper.

Not all of our beliefs are beneficial to us.  If we want our beliefs to be useful, we have to sort through them and stake our claim on the beliefs that truly make sense to us.  Our beliefs also change over time.  We may start off thinking one way about a particular group of people and wind up changing that belief when we gain new information.  When we are aware of how our beliefs are affecting our decisions, we can take a bit more conscious responsibility.  There aren't a lot of people who are going to confront us on what we believe, so we are best off taking some initiative to confront ourselves. 

Plenty of folks claim to believe one thing and then act completely contrary to that claim.  These people are being dishonest somewhere along the line.  Either they know what they believe and are unwilling to admit it because they fear what people will think of them, or they don't know what they believe and make a claim based on what they think they're supposed to believe in.  Some of these people even have strong convictions that are essentially empty of meaning because there is no real thought behind the convictions.  It is spiritual laziness to express unexamined beliefs with vehemence and passion.

When we are willing to engage in some self-examination, both of what we believe and how we behave, we can see clearly enough where the disconnections are, and we can address those disconnections.  We might revise what we believe so that our beliefs clearly line up with the decisions we want to make, or we might change our behavior so that it best reflects what we believe.  We might discover that we have some beliefs that are in conflict with one another, and we can make a clear decision about which we will strengthen and which we will jettison.  Without this level of integrity, we will always be struggling with conflict that comes from within our very being, and everything we do and experience will be to some extent impacted by this conflict.  Living a satisfying life depends upon knowing what we believe and having the integrity to make decisions based on those beliefs.

Being spiritually strong involves knowing who we are and committing to a life that reflects that identity clearly.  It doesn't mean bullying people who believe differently, and it doesn't mean being louder than anyone else.  Spiritual strength is about how well our behavior reflects what is at our core.  I am convinced that the beliefs that arise from that core will ultimately reflect the truth that human beings have value, that we are all imbued with creativity, and that we live in abundance.  A lot of the beliefs that seem contrary to those truths are actually fears that we have clung to for so long that they seem true.  Beliefs about needing to be wealthy, or needing to make people behave the way we want them to, or needing to eradicate a certain type of person in order to make our own lives better.  Fear is not great at disguises, but it's often enough for us to convince ourselves.  When we begin to examine our beliefs, though, we can start to recognize fear for what it is.  We can work to let go of irrational beliefs about ourselves and other people and the way life must be, and we can strengthen the beliefs that better allow us to create the kind of life we most want with integrity.

And this requires courage.  There will be challenges to what we believe.  Some of the challenges will arise from within us, as those irrational fears continue to crop up.  Some of the challenges will arise from outside of us, in the way that other people behave, or the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  It takes courage to stand in the face of violence and claim that all human beings have value and are worthy of respect.  It takes courage to look at a difficult situation and trust that you have the creativity and resources to find a way through to the other side with your integrity intact.  It takes courage to keep living by a certain set of principles when other people seem to be doing just fine -- even better than you perhaps -- by taking advantage of people or lying.  Fear is enticing, and it takes courage to live from the core of who we are rather than be distracted by whatever fears may seduce us away from that. 

Be strong and courageous.  Do not give fear a foothold.  Do not fall prey to discouragement.  You have within you the capability to live a satisfying and fulfilling life.  You will have an impact on the world around you, and you have the power to choose what kind of impact that will be.  Build integrity between your beliefs and your actions.  Verify that your beliefs serve you and the world around you, and be fearless in the knowledge that you embody an undeniable beauty and creativity.  Be strong and very courageous.  Fear has done enough damage in the world and in our lives.  Fear destroys our integrity.  And even though fear will always be present in our lives, we don't have to give it control of our behavior.  Be strong and courageous, and live like you mean it. 

Numbers 12-14: Trusting in Divine Inspiration

These chapters of the book of Numbers once more reflect a supreme being with menacing and punitive tendencies.  It's a view of God that still exists in many ways today, perhaps because it's easier for us to notice our struggles and mistakes than it is for us to take delight in our accomplishments.  Chapter 12 begins with an accusation against Moses, brought by his brother and sister.  Speaking for the Israelite god, Moses had commanded that the people remain pure by not intermarrying with the "unclean" people of the land around them.  And yet, Moses himself had married a Cushite.  This wife may have been Zipporah, whom Moses married before he became the leader of the Israelites, or this may refer to a second wife.  The important part of the story is the response to the accusation.

According to the tale, Miriam's lack of respect for Moses got her cursed with leprosy, and she was confined outside of the Israelite camp for a week.  She wasn't punished for noticing that Moses' own marriage broke orders everyone else was supposed to live by.  The punishment came because of her lack of respect for Moses.  The ability to curse people with leprosy seems a bit of an unfair advantage, though.  Coming from a perspective that rejects the existence of a supreme being, particularly one who would feel the need to get angry and punish someone for insulting Moses, the simplest explanation is that Moses himself had a few tricks up his sleeve. 

Leadership is tough to begin with.  When you're trying to tell people to behave one way while you are behaving differently, it becomes even tougher.  Aaron and Miriam weren't really making an astounding observation, but the way they went about their accusation was to grumble and gossip behind Moses' back.  Had they gone to him and pointed out the discrepancy with a modicum of concern for his own well-being, the story might have gone differently.  Sooner or later, the issue of living differently than what you're demanding of other people has to be addressed.  You can't just afflict everyone with leprosy after all, and Moses quickly had his hands full with more complaining from people.  Quite simply, people are better leaders when they are open to criticism without stooping to petty retaliations, and their followers are more likely to get what they want when they approach the person in charge with love and respect.

Once again, in Numbers 14, the Israelites cry out that they should have stayed in Egypt instead of following Moses out into the wilderness to die.  A special team of spies had gone to investigate the land of Canaan, the "promised land" where the Israelites were headed.  They came back with a report that the place was indeed bountiful, but it was also inhabited by peoples who were stronger and more numerous than the Israelite forces, willing and able to defend their lands against invasion.  So, the people were understandably demoralized.  The response from some of the spies was, "If we trust God, there is nothing to fear."

The Israelite god spends a lot of time being angry in this book.  He threatens to unleash his wrath on the Israelites, and Moses appeals to his sense of pride, suggesting that if the Egyptians were to hear about all the Israelites dying in the wilderness, they would think that the Israelite god was unreliable and weak.  As if The One True God would actually care what the Egyptians think.  So God relented and decided that he wouldn't kill the Israelites outright, he'd just deny them access to the land of milk and honey and force them to wander for forty years until they died of natural causes in the wilderness.  Because that would look good to the Egyptians.  God does strike down the spies who brought back doom-and-gloom reports about the Canaanites, and when the Israelites attempt a foray into Canaan the next day despite the proclamation of divine punishment, they are chased off by the local denizens.

There's a big problem with the whole "God is on our side" philosophy that still infects international politics today.  Every military and paramilitary force in existence seems to claim in one way or another that they are in the right, that God is on their side.  Can God really be on everyone's side in a war?  I suppose betting on all the horses in a race would guarantee that you pick a winner, but it seems ludicrous to assume that a perfect divine being is hedging his bets.  Do people actually believe they're going to win in combat because of divine intervention?  Or is the whole thing just intended as morale-boosting rhetoric?  If taken seriously, false belief can lead people to take some otherwise ill-advised actions, purely on faith that their god will work out the details in their favor.  I would like to believe that if there was an intelligent higher power that took an interest in humanity, our ability to reason and work out diplomatic solutions peacefully would be more impressive than our ability to effectively slaughter one another.  From the right perspective, a god that promises military victory in this day and age seems like a brutal, bloodthirsty primitive compared to a god that promises the ability to reach a satisfying compromise with minimal bloodshed.  Honestly, which seems like more of a miracle?

But the issue for the Israelites boiled down to trust.  When the odds seemed against them, were they willing to trust divine guidance, or were they going to doubt every step of the way?  Trust eventually led some of them to their destination.  Doubt prevented others from realizing the divine promise.  The underlying spiritual truth of the story really has nothing to do with plagues and punishments, it has to do with trust.

Within each of us, there is a spark of inspiration that grants us a vision of what we could accomplish.  For some people, it's just a momentary glimpse, seemingly little more than wishful thinking.  For other people, it becomes a detailed goal, a lifelong aspiration.  Sometimes, people create goals that are motivated by greed, that take advantage of other people, that capitalize on loopholes in an unfair system.  These kinds of goals reflect a lack of faith in oneself to actually do good in the world.  When you believe that it's unrealistic to actually achieve your dreams, it's easy to settle for the next best thing.  There are a lot of unhappy, dissatisfied wealthy people in the world who lost sight of their vision of what really mattered to them.  Some people manage to accomplish impressive feats without ever realizing the goal that truly inspires them. 

It all has to do with how we respond to that "divine" inspiration within us.  When we glimpse that inspiration that matches with our most noble intentions for ourselves and other people, we can either trust it or doubt it.  When we doubt it, we wind up punishing ourselves, in a way.  Denying ourselves the thing that we most deeply desire for ourselves and the world.  Settling for less.  Sometimes we convince ourselves that we are just being realistic.  But when we trust that spark of inspiration and feed it, we can start to see ways to move closer to it.  The initial idea may seem out of reach, but when we trust ourselves to create a path toward that inspired target, the very process nourishes the vision.

The feedback we get along the way may not always be what we would like it to be.  We may have to adjust our path to fit with reality, but that doesn't necessarily mean setting our sights lower in the long run.  It may mean changing the benchmarks along the way, not the ultimate goal.  New information may lead us to conclude that what we initially envisioned actually isn't a beneficial target for ourselves and others, in which case we have an opportunity to fine tune our target based on that new information.  But we have to first trust our inspiration in order to get to the point of clarifying or fine tuning targets and benchmarks.  The journey is rarely a straight line, but the first step is always to trust the inspiration. 

Religious Faith Is Often Just a Synonym for Fear

One sometimes hears the argument that morality cannot exist without a god.  There is an often aggressive and even belligerent claim among believers that religion is necessary for society to keep on existing.  They claim that religion does more good than harm.  Many people have enumerated the horrific acts of violence that were fueled by religious fervor throughout humanity's history, and such acts continue today.  While the homosexual lifestyle is mostly verbally attacked in the United States, there are places in the world where suspected homosexuals are being killed, largely because of faith-based prejudice.  Women may be killed or mutilated without consequence in some parts of the twenty-first-century world because of the religious beliefs of the society into which they are born.  Moral behavior does not follow from religious belief.

Despite massive evidence against it, the mythical link between religion and morality remains so strong that many Americans would have a problem voting for an atheist president.  Presumably, they would prefer a leader who believes that he answers to a higher power, who embraces a responsibility to lead righteously.  And yet, faith has justified wars, excused oppressive laws, and masked hatred and bigotry.  Rather than ask whether there can be morality without religion, one must question why the two were ever rationally linked to begin with.  Religious belief may allow for unquestioned forgiveness, but it doesn't prevent abominable behavior.  Some people would also claim that religion provides a number of services as well, that faith motivates people to do good, and that good outweighs the evil that is done in the name of religion.

Fear is in some way the motivator for most claims of faith, however.  People believe in salvation because they fear damnation.  People believe in faith healing because they fear dying.  People believe in prayer because they fear all sorts of things: personal responsibility, medical procedures, collection agencies.  Groups who become targeted by religious leaders are actually the groups those leaders fear.  Homosexuals are denied the right to marry out of fear.  Women are denied the right to make decisions about their own bodies because of fear.  National healthcare is opposed because of fear.  Dire predictions are made about "what will happen if...", and a segment of the population trembles.

Some of the fear gets expressed as righteous indignation or moral outrage.  Fervent believers fear that their faith will be marginalized in society, so they have to fight.  Religious leaders fear that they will have control over a smaller sector of the population, so they have to pronounce judgment loudly and foster more fear in those who still cling to their words.  In turn, believers are infused with a fear that the Others (homosexuals, atheists, Muslims, etc.) will somehow harm them just by existing.  They become afraid of letting their children be taught science by an atheist.  They become afraid of allowing a homosexual couple to move in on their street.  They become afraid of doing yoga because it is somehow connected with worshiping Hindu gods.  They become afraid of anyone with different clothing or accent or skin color, because different is somehow threatening.

But fear doesn't really convince anyone to change.  Yanking your child out of the atheist teacher's biology class won't ultimately keep your child from learning science, and it won't change the teacher's beliefs.  Denying a young single mother the opportunity to decide for herself whether she can realistically take care of an unwanted child doesn't guarantee that either person's life will be improved.  Prohibiting the homosexual couple from attending neighborhood social events won't convince them to change their lifestyle, although perhaps the belief is that your spot in heaven will be secure because you have refrained from socializing with heathens.  Look around!  Churches are full of people doing deplorable things.  Sinful things.  Immoral things.  Why don't they warrant a little fear?

Ah, but if we had to admit that immorality co-exists with faith, we'd have less of a reason to judge those scary Others who believe and behave differently from us.  Fear can make people just a little bit crazy.  Fearful people can fire a weapon without thinking.  Fearful people can start a hate campaign against someone without letting the truth get in the way of juicy accusations.  Fearful people can act without worrying about the consequences in someone else's life.  Fear is a very selfish emotion.  It doesn't allow room for much else, even though a person may believe that they are being compassionate or loving in some twisted way while doing something entirely motivated by fear. 

Fear is not exclusive to people of faith, however.  The wealthy are afraid of being impoverished.  The employed are afraid of being jobless.  Everyone has to deal with fears.  When the fears are justified by belief in a perfect higher power, however, there is little one can do to combat those fears.  If one realizes that the fears are all a product of one's own mind, they can be much more easily dispelled.  In many ways, religion relies on people being afraid.  The more conservative a sect is, the more fear is fostered in its faithful.  It's particularly strange for believers in an all-powerful deity to be so fearful.  Their fear suggests that perhaps their god is not powerful enough to handle the existence of atheists and homosexuals, that they somehow have to take matters into their own hands.  Or perhaps their fear is that their god will turn on them in wrath and judgment if they don't take action.  Either way, people who live with such fear paint a very strange and primitive picture of their god.

What about compassionate and loving acts done by people of faith, though?  Isn't there some counterbalance to the fear?  Of course there is, because people who are not overwhelmed by fear can relax and be nurturing to others.  Some people can be very compassionate in feeding the homeless people that they don't fear at a shelter and then turn around and be profoundly dispassionate toward one of those homeless people when they walk into a religious service.  In one instance, the person isn't at all threatening, and in the other, the person is threatening to upset comfortable norms.  But when fear is put aside, we can see the humanity in other people much more clearly.  We don't actually need a god to tell us to clothe people and feed them and treat people like human beings.  The absence of fear leaves room for compassionate behavior.

We have the ability and the responsibility to question our fear.  When you find yourself in judgment over someone else, what is it you're honestly fearing?  When you feel violently toward a person, or a group of people, what are you afraid they will do to upset the norms of your life?  When you become indignant or outraged about something, what are you really afraid of?  And is that fear in any way reasonable?  It is rational in that instance to be afraid?  Is it possible to set aside irrational fear -- no matter where that fear comes from -- to see another person's humanity?

Unfounded fear won't lead you to do anything good.  Believe instead in your ability to see that the people you're tempted to fear are just like you in so many ways, and believe in your ability to treat them with love and compassion.  You don't have to agree with everything about another person in order to treat him with love and compassion.  There's really nothing threatening about someone being different from you in some small ways.  Without fear, there is no cause for violence or oppression -- although it's important to realize that the whole world will not become rational and fearless all at once.  In the end, though, violence and hatred work against faith, even when they seem to be fueled by it.  You could be a vanguard for rational fearlessness, even if you believe in a higher power.  After all, wouldn't a reasonable god want you to be fearless in your faith?