Community and Honesty

Honesty is a fourth essential ingredient to meaningful, authentic community. Honesty is obviously necessary for self-disclosure, and honesty works in tandem with active, unconditional love. We should take a look at this in more detail, and we should also consider how truth-telling intersects with hospitality and service to one another.

Some Christians say that Jesus commanded them to "speak the truth in love," even though it may seem rare to see anyone putting that into practice. It was actually a passing comment made by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (Eph 4:15), but it's still a useful idea. Sometimes we get caught up in being loving (or appearing to be loving, or doing what we think is going to make others love or accept us) and we fail to tell the truth. We might lie about who we really are, what we really want or think or need, what we see in other people, or the dynamics we see at work in a system. When we don't tell the truth, we aren't being loving. 

Of course, we can tell the truth in an unloving way, too. We can be so blunt and direct -- and maybe even confrontational -- that the truth we express isn't very well received. Some people even get the cause-and-effect of this twisted around, thinking that their truth-telling gets a bad reaction from people rather than realizing that the way they express the truth has a lot to do with how others react. Even a lovingly-expressed truth can create some anxiety, but speaking truth without regard for a relationship is irresponsible. Actually, our reason for speaking the truth unlovingly is the same as our reason for not speaking the truth at all: fear. Dealing with our fear or anxiety about ourselves or other people is an important step toward speaking the truth hearably and lovingly. Speaking the truth is necessary for meaningful, authentic relationships, and the context of those relationships is active, unconditional love. So the way we speak the truth is as important as being willing to speak the truth.

When we aren't honest, it's always because of anxiety or fear. It may not seem that way, because we're so accustomed to a low-level of chronic anxiety that it feels normal. But when we avoid the truth, it's because we fear the consequences of the truth. We lie because we believe that someone else will react in a way that we won't like. We lie because we have something to lose. Some people are convinced that there's nothing wrong with telling a "white lie" to spare someone's feelings or to avoid a lengthy conversation with a stranger or acquaintance when you just don't have the time to spare. In his little book Lying, Sam Harris makes a compelling argument that it's always unethical or immoral to lie. Either way, lying doesn't create meaningful, authentic community. 

There are all sorts of reasons we might value community enough that we're concerned about how people will react to us, though. If we find something meaningful in community, we don't want to do anything to jeopardize those relationships. That anxiety -- that we have something to lose, and we'd better be careful -- can lead us to believe that telling the truth is dangerous. Yet, we can't have the quality of community we really want and need if we keep things at a polite, surface-level veneer of social falsehoods. Community is most valuable to us when we can practice self-disclosure, and hospitality, and active and unconditional love in a safe environment. Letting our anxiety convince us not to be honest in that community means that we are in some way showing up as a false person -- that we're pretending to be someone different from who we really are -- for the sake of being accepted, or loved, or safe. 

Pretending to be someone different from who you really are doesn't mean adopting a deep cover secret identity. It's simple things that erode our ability to be known and accepted for who we are. We pretend to be someone who likes gazpacho, or someone who is alright with a particular kind of humor, or someone who doesn't mind waiting 15 minutes for folks to arrive for a group activity. We may be none of those things, but we value the sense of community so highly that we feel obligated to make some sacrifices -- to give up part of ourselves -- in order to keep or strengthen that bond. Some people just call that being polite, but let's be clear about all of those times when we hide who we really are: When we hide who we really are, we lie. And when we lie about who are are, we can't be known. It isn't self-disclosure when what we disclose isn't really who we are.

We also can't be as meaningfully served by someone if we aren't honest. Yes, someone can prepare us a meal and we can sincerely appreciate it, even if it isn't our favorite food. But we can also lovingly, gratefully say: "Thank you so much for fixing dinner for me. I usually don't eat meat, but everything else here is delicious." Now, you can say that with a bit of an attitude, or you can be sincere in your gratitude that someone has done something hospitable for you. If you keep that bit of information entirely to yourself -- that you don't eat meat -- you may think you're just being polite, but what happens the next time that person prepares food for you? Do you keep lying? How many meals do you eat before you tell the truth? "Going along to get along" may be easier in some contexts, but it doesn't create meaningful, authentic community.

Serving others is also more meaningful when we're able to be honest. Some people practice "hospitality" with an ulterior motive. "I'll do something nice for this person, and then they'll owe me one. I can butter them up and then ask for this big favor, and they refuse, I can make them feel guilty." This is in no way hospitality. When we're honest with others about what we want and need, and we're honest about our interest in being of service, there's less anxiety in the exchange of hospitality and service. 

In the context of meaningful, authentic community, we find loving ways to be honest. We don't engage in manipulation or playing safe. We stir honesty in equal measure alongside self-disclosure, service, and active and unconditional love. Then, when we serve others, they can legitimately trust the sincerity of our actions without worrying about ulterior motives. (To be clear, other people might suspect that we have ulterior motives when we are hospitable, but our willingness to be transparent and honest can alleviate those suspicions.) And when others serve us, they'll get sincere gratitude from us, and they'll learn more about what we appreciate. They'll learn more about what makes our hearts sing. 

And while we're being honest, keep in mind that doing something that contributes to another person's well-being also does something for you. Research has demonstrated that altruism feels good. Plus, our sense of interconnectedness suggests that when the lives of people around us are moving toward greater wholeness, our own lives are enhanced. So, there's no need to get caught up in puzzling through the selfishness of service. Hospitality is always of mutual benefit, if you're willing to receive those benefits.

Even at a purely selfish level, honesty is the best way for us to get what we want and need. When we play manipulation games with people, we're always hoping people will take hints and read between the lines, or maybe that we can ensnare them in a situation where they feel obligated to give us what we want. The problem is that what we actually want requires us to be vulnerable. Having power over other people is a reaction to fear -- maybe fear that we aren't lovable or acceptable, that we don't matter, that someone is going to take advantage of us, or whatever fear might bubble up for you. 

Persuading or compelling someone to do what we want seems to feel good because it alleviates that anxiety and fear for a moment. But it doesn't convince us that we are lovable or acceptable, or that we matter. It's the "consolation prize" of co-existing with others, when "first prize" is actually knowing that we are lovable, valuable, acceptable, worthy human beings. The best possible outcome is for us to get our legitimate needs met by other people who are willing to acknowledge and address those needs in legitimate ways. And we've seen that there's a mutuality built into that equation, because some of the things we need have to do with what we are able to offer to other people. The best way for people to understand and address one another's needs is for them to be honest about those needs to one another. 

It may feel safer to hide parts of ourselves. It may feel vulnerable to admit that we have needs, or to reveal that we have fears about not being lovable or acceptable or worthy. But everyone wrestles with these issues in one way or another. Being human means having needs and being vulnerable. There's no shame in that. It's just reality. Honesty about that reality is one of the key features that distinguishes meaningful, authentic community from so many of the other ways we try to find community. Rather than giving up who we are in order to have connection with other human beings, we show up as we are -- as our authentic selves. We don't carry around shame about who we are, and we don't make demands for acceptance. 

One person can do this, but it may freak out a lot of people, and it might be a challenge to infuse bold honesty into an anxious system where everyone is pretending to be someone they're not. A handful of people with a commitment to be in more authentic relationship with one another have a better chance of transforming an existing system to a more honest, loving, hospitable community. We'll see later on how honesty about current reality is a necessary part of casting vision for the direction of a community as a whole. For now, it's enough to see that honesty is a necessary component to blend with love, hospitality, and self-disclosure. 

There's one more essential ingredient to meaningful, authentic community: affirmation. So, next time we'll explore the importance of being sincerely celebrated, and sincerely celebrating others.

Taking God Out of Justice Conversations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bold Honesty, Part 1

So many of our important questions require the willingness to be boldly honest about what really matters to us. Honesty is essential when we consider how we can be satisfied with the way we influence the world around us, or how to connect our passions with creating greater wholeness, or how to get what we most deeply want and need by creating less suffering and greater well-being.

Often we filter what we care about most deeply through an "acceptability test," deciding whether what we want sounds acceptable to other people. The criteria of what we think might be acceptable varies from person to person, and are often based on belief systems that were imposed on us. Whatever the criteria, though, this kind of filtering keeps us from honestly expressing what we most deeply want, which means that we have very little chance of connecting what we care about to creating wholeness in our lives and the world around us.

One filter I often hear people using is whether something appears in a particular religious text or is endorsed by a religious community. "Feeding the hungry is highly regarded by my faith community, and my 'scripture' considers it laudable, so it seems safe for me to really care about feeding the hungry." This is fine if your actual passion is ensuring that everyone has enough food, but the filter isn't necessary. If you really care about feeding people, you don't need the endorsement of a religious text or community to live into that passion for the hungry. Moreover, some religious communities decide that only certain hungry people are worth feeding, or they decide that feeding the hungry is a means to an end of promoting their particular set of myths. This turns hungry people into targets for proselytization and makes them the victims of the people doing the feeding. It isn't really caring to insist that hungry people listen to your beliefs -- or worse, profess to agree with your beliefs -- before they receive the food they need.

There's another problem with allowing a religious text or community to be a filter through which you judge what you care about. You may care about transgender people, and yet your religious text says nothing about transgender people (although people in your religious community will probably find ways to interpret your religious text so that it seems to). People in many religious communities are opposed to the existence of transgender people. So your personal reasons for caring about a marginalized group of people -- who have an acute need for acceptance and care -- are potentially trumped by outdated and fear-driven religious beliefs. If you just told the truth that you care about something -- or a group of people -- very deeply, it would be much easier to see how that care can lead to creating greater wholeness and well-being.

Religions with exclusive beliefs (i.e., you have to believe what we believe in order to go to heaven, or be a good person, or exist) are by definition anti-equality. If a group of people believes that their group deserves special treatment, in real life or in an imaginary afterlife, they cannot simultaneously believe in equality. This is why religious people often seem threatened by demands for equal treatment by marginalized people: Equality for all means the loss of religious privilege, which in the U. S. means Christian privilege. One cannot truly create wholeness in the world and cling to an exclusivist belief system that withholds compassion and care from people who believe something different. If you are honest about what you care about most deeply, you have a better chance of seeing how it connects with creating wholeness in the world.

Why am I being so anti-religious? Why can't I just write about being honest about how our deepest values connect to creating wholeness? Because it's a real challenge to be honest about what you care about most deeply when so many loud religious voices call equality evil. It's a real challenge to be honest about creating wholeness when so many loud religious voices promote an idea of inherent brokenness. It's a real challenge to be honest about what you value when so many loud religious voices are shouting about what you should value, based on their own strangely-filtered view of the world. Being honest about what you care about isn't always easy, but it is essential to being satisfied with how you influence the world around you.

Some people run into another challenge when they start being honest about what really matters to them, though. Their first honest statements might be fueled by fears they've been carrying around about themselves or other people, and what they think they care about is an expression of that anxiety. Perhaps you think that what you care about most is just that your child gets a good education and a decent job. Or perhaps you think that what you care about most is that the property value of your home stays high, so you think you're against certain kinds of people moving into your neighborhood. Or perhaps you think that what you care about most is proselytizing to everybody you meet so that they have a chance to believe what you believe about imaginary things.

It helps to spend enough time asking yourself why you care about what you think you care about in order to get to the most solid foundation. Sometimes it even helps for someone else to be able to ask you why you care about what you think you care about. When what you care about seems not to be life-affirming, you can ask yourself what you're afraid of, work to dismantle irrational fears, and dig deeper to get to what really matters most to you.

Things like the well-being of your child involve a lot more than selfishly working to make sure they get a better shot at a high-paying career than anybody else's child does. It doesn't create wholeness in anyone's life just to be handed unearned opportunities that they aren't actually prepared to engage responsibly. In fact, fostering authentic well-being in your child's life involves fostering well-being in other people's lives too. Unless you home school your children, groom them to run a family business, and never allow them to meet anyone outside of your isolated community (which may not be a recipe for wholeness), well-being for your children involves well-being in the places where your children learn and play. Caring about your child's well-being ultimately means caring about a neighborhood, or a school, or some environment outside of your family. That doesn't mean that you have to start a non-profit or quit your job to become a full-time volunteer. It just means that you live into your values with a clear sense of connection to the larger world around you.

So, asking why is a powerful tool to help reveal your honest answers as fears or as deep life-affirming values:

I care most deeply about proselytizing to everyone I meet so they can believe in Jesus and go to heaven.
Why? 
Because if they don't believe in Jesus, they'll go to hell.
That sounds like a fear. 
I mean, because I feel loved and accepted by Jesus and I want other people to feel that too.
So, what you want is for people to feel loved and accepted. Is proselytizing the best way to do that? Or is there an even better way to live into your desire for people to feel loved and accepted?

Maybe you have to ask why several times before you get to something juicy. When you come across a fear, you'll know it because it will not lead to greater well-being for the greatest number of people. Fears may have an Us vs Them component, and fears often crop up when we start thinking outside our comfort zone. Life-affirming values inspire us toward greater wholeness in our own lives and in the lives of people around us. They often allow us to see situations as both/and rather than either/or. The things we care about most deeply may call us toward something bigger than what we can accomplish on our own with our current resources. Or they may simply call us to do exactly what we're already doing, with a different attitude.

Whatever our deepest life-affirming values may be, if we want to connect them to how we can create greater well-being in our lives and in the world around us, we have to be boldly honest about what they are. We have to be able to say out loud to other people, "This is what I care about most deeply." And in order for us to do that, we have to figure it out ourselves, and that can take a bit of work. Many of us are so used to coasting along without giving a lot of thought to where we're headed, the prospect of even having a vision for what we want to create in our lives seems utterly foreign. It's alright to try a few things on before you settle into what really matters most to you.

Next time, we'll explore another challenge to being boldly honest about what you really care about. For now, try a little bold honesty yourself and see what happens.

Asking the Right Questions -- The Problem of Evil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John 20: The Influence of the Enlightened

The story of the resurrection event concludes in the gospel of John with Jesus visiting the disciples in an exalted form. As we see in John 20, the post-resurrection Jesus character passes through locked doors unhindered, and a week later the Jesus character returns to convince the skeptic among the disciples that he is real. Remembering that this is a story, we know that it would be missing the point to ask where the resurrected Jesus might have gone for the week in between these visits. Instead, we can follow the rather ancient practice of interpreting the text metaphorically.

If the Jesus character is representative of us, then the resurrected Jesus character is representative of a fully alive, fully self-differentiated, best possible version of ourselves in complete alignment between our deepest values and our actions in the world. We might equate being "exalted" with a state of being unhindered by fears and anxieties, acting with complete integrity, sensitive to others without allowing ourselves to be restricted by other people's opinions and beliefs. Just as the Jesus character passes through locked doors, when we are living into a best possible version of ourselves, there are fewer obstacles that can keep us from being the people we most want to be, full incarnations of our deepest, most noble selves.

The resurrected Jesus character is not only able to be in complete alignment for himself, but he also influences the well-being of the people with whom he interacts. In the same way, we nurture others toward wholeness when we act in accord with our deepest values. Specifically, the exemplar in the story empowers others to live with integrity and purpose, particularly with regard to reactivity and shame. If we interpret sin as the reactive result of anxiety -- what people do when they allow irrational fear to be in the driver's seat -- then we recognize that we have some influence on other people's anxiety and the shame that they might feel after letting their anxiety run away with them.

When we show up as less anxious, more at peace, and in greater alignment with our deepest values, we influence the people around us. Just as anxiety is contagious, intentional calmness can be contagious, too. This means that our ability to act in alignment with our deepest, most noble selves has the potential to influence people away from reactivity. Even when people are reactive and act thoughtlessly on their anxiety, our principled intentional presence can influence people away from useless shame after the fact. We can acknowledge that being anxious is human, and reacting to our anxiety is natural. Yes, there are consequences to our actions and messes to clean up, but we are capable of facing those consequences and seeking reconciliation when things go sideways. Shame doesn't help us with these tasks. When we influence people toward greater wholeness by our own integrity and purposeful behavior, we might allow them to place limits on the influence of their anxiety and shame, and learn to cast vision in their own lives.

Now, the story about Thomas seems to be thrown in just to silence skeptics. Pronouncing blessing on people who believe things without evidence is a way of credentialing nonsense. When readers take the implications of this story at face-value, it affirms everything that is dangerous about religion. Believing something just because someone wrote it down two thousand years ago is naive at best. It lacks integrity to believing what spiritual leaders say just because they say it with conviction or wear special clothing or have authorization from a larger organization. Some things proclaimed on the basis of religious doctrine are quite simply false. Not only is there a lack of evidence to support some of the things people believe on the basis of religion, there is actual evidence to the contrary. Yet some people believe that they will be considered blessed or righteous for believing nonsense, because they read a passage like the story of Thomas and interpret it to mean, "ignore reality; believe what your preacher tells you."

Although it's probably easier just to dismiss this passage as a piece of early Christian propaganda to legitimize faith, we could also interpret this story to suggest that there are always things we do not know. We can guess with some reliability that the things we don't know will be congruent with the things that we can prove about reality, but there are still things that we don't know. In embarking on any journey of personal growth -- one might say personal transformation -- we must take some steps without knowing what lies ahead. To characterize growing into greater integrity and authenticity as vulnerable and risky is a profound understatement. When we build our lives with confident alignment to our deepest values, we may not see all that will be as a result of that intentional act. We move forward with as much clarity as we can have about our deepest values, but there are limits to our clarity. At some point, we have to trust ourselves to step forward into something we can't see clearly in order to become more fully alive -- more closely aligned with our vision of a best possible version of ourselves. If we take anything from the story of Thomas' skepticism, it should be this, rather than an admonition to believe nonsense and call it enlightenment.

The author ends the book of John with a statement of purpose. It's clear that the author has an agenda to convince people to accept his own religious position. The agenda of this commentary has hopefully been equally clear: to position the fictional character of Jesus in this ancient text as a metaphorical exemplar of what we might be if we choose to embrace our potential to radically love ourselves, the people around us, and the world we all share.

The goal of our lives is only determined by us. There is nothing outside of ourselves that compels us to outgrow our anxiety and our irrational fear. In some ways, society prompts us to remain anxious and reactive. However, if we choose to move toward being fully alive incarnations of our deepest, most noble selves, we are capable of embarking on that journey. We have within us the potential to act with integrity and intention. We have within us the ability to influence our lives and the lives of people around us toward greater wholeness. If this is not a compelling message of hope, I don't know what is.

John 20: Our Resurrection and Meaningful Hope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John 17: We Are All Self-Authorizing

The gospel of John was written for a specific community of people, and there are clues that some of the book was more about recording the beliefs of that community than it was about recording a historical biographical tale. John 17 is one instance where a desire to record the beliefs and creeds of the community are prominently on display. In fact, the first several verses refer to Jesus in the third person by name or by pronoun. This is more the language of a community's common creed than it is the language of an individuals speaking about himself.

No one can say with certainty what the author meant by some of the phrases in this "prayer," but believers from various Christian sects interpret it as they see fit. They actually must do so, because otherwise the words have no value aside from a slightly cryptic historical reflection of a first-century community's beliefs and concerns. Moreover, various Christian readers interpret the words differently based on their own individual understanding of Christianity. Thus, we can confidently take the same liberties as other readers, interpreting the words to fit our deeply held convictions.

Before we get to a full interpretation, however, there are a few features of the chapter that bear mentioning. Some of these may seem tedious in isolation, but in the context of interpreting the entire chapter, they may have greater significance. We will also keep in mind that, for our interpretive scheme, the character of Jesus in the gospel of John is representative of us -- of the idealized best possible version of ourselves.

First, most English translations have verse 2 reading that Jesus has been given authority over all people. The actual translation here would be power or authority over all flesh. This does not necessarily mean power of individual people, but could instead mean power to overcome the "fleshly" fears and beliefs that distract us from living with integrity to our most deeply held values.

It may also bear noticing that Jesus is made to say here that he has completed the work that was intended for him (verse 4). In the narrative, this is clearly before the crucifixion. Many Christians seem to focus on the crucifixion of Jesus as being the real significant "work" of Jesus. If this passage is to be interpreted in the context of the narrative, however, the Jesus character claims that his work is done prior to being arrested and killed. Thus, we must conclude that whatever the author of John considered Jesus' work to be had more to do with his life than it did with his death.

We also see a trace of evidence that reflects an idea of destiny, that people do not truly have control over the outcome of their lives, by the way Judas is described in verse 12. This is more a function of later editors and translators than the more ancient "son of destruction" or "one worthy of destruction" that seem to more closely match the original text -- which, I'll just remind you, we do not have. There is no known "original" of the gospel of John, just a variety of copies with some contradictions among them from which translations are created.

Regardless of translation, verses 6-20 are clearly about the community for which the author of John wrote. Their unity is also a topic of the biblical letters attributed to the same author. We might conclude that the community had considerable strife and drama and that the author was attempting to give voice to a need for unity, or we might conclude that the community was proud of this unified quality of their relationships that set them apart from other communities. Either way, this middle portion is clearly intended as a blessing on the author's community, and a somewhat exclusive one based on verse 9.

Some readers would like to suggest that this prayer for unity extends to the whole of Christianity, and not just the author's own community. It may be a nice idea, but Christianities have never embraced unity with one another. There have been differences of opinion since the earliest documentation of the Christian church. Once the church gained more political power, the differing minority opinions were labeled heresies and the church persecuted individuals who held those differing opinions.

Even with a seemingly monolithic Roman Catholic Church for centuries, there were always schisms and conflicts up until the Protestant Reformation, which spawned a number of different Christian sects. Now, the most recent estimates by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity place the number of distinct Christian sects at over 40,000. How's that for unity? Even within the bounds of a single Christian congregation, one will find differences of belief and practice, and those differences lead to conflict, and that conflict often causes schisms within the community. In two thousand years, one thing the Christian church seems to have perfected is disunity.

Criticism is easy, though. What usefulness can we draw from this chapter, should we choose to do so? There is some language about the "name" and the "power of the name." Name here connotes authority; to know something's name in the ancient world was to have power over it, even back to the story about Adam getting to name all the animals in Genesis. If "God" is really our deepest, most noble self, then this is where our authority comes from. We are self-authorizing. Actually, every person is. Some people just pretend that their authority comes from something external to them. Ultimately, though, human beings are self-authorizing entities.

There is also some talk about "evil," and "the world" as the unenlightened practitioners of evil. We have suggested before that "evil" and "sin" are the outcomes of mismanaged fear. If this is the case, the protection from evil would be the ability to dismantle irrational fear. "The world" would reflect those people who behave as victims of fear, and based on casual observation, there are an awful lot of those folks running around. Fear, whether it manifests as shame, hatred, greed, oppression, apathy, or some other nuanced form, is churning within all of us. We self-authorize our reaction to that fear or our dismantling of it.

One way that we dismantle irrational fear is by telling the truth. The truth empowers us (verse 17). The consecration language of this passage reflects the transformative potential of every person. The author of John portrays Jesus essentially passing the torch here, indicating to his disciples (and thus vicariously to the readers) that they have the same ability that he has to live boldly intentional lives of integrity and authenticity. That is a message worth carrying forward.

Thus, a re-envisioned Humanist commissioning of John 17 is still high-minded and idealistic, but it may offer some resources for us that the creed of an ancient community does not:

Then, the Exemplar looked at each of them and said, "Now I am speaking to your deepest, most noble selves. The time has come for you to embrace your own capability. I have honored my deepest, most noble self, and in so doing I have shone a light on my authentic self. I have recognized my power to dismantle my fear and live with integrity, and in so doing, I have made clear a way for others to be fully alive. And this is what it is to be fully alive: that you know your deepest, most noble self -- the root of your deepest life-affirming values and principles -- and that you know your own capability to live with integrity to those values and principles, through connection with your deepest, most noble self. People have always been capable of this, but you have now seen it in action.

"I may have awakened you to connection with your deepest, most noble selves, but you have been the ones to nurture that connection and live into a deeper sense of your authentic selves. You now know that all of your power comes from within you. You understand something that many people do not, and you must live with integrity to your life-affirming guiding principles even as the world around you continues to react to its incessant fear. Your authentic life is the embodiment of your deepest, most noble self. You are the incarnation of yourself. You have the power to dismantle your irrational fear, and you have the power to remain calm in the midst of other people's fear.

"May your lives be full of exuberant joy, even as you continue to live among people who don't understand what you are doing. Other people will resent you for not going along with their anxiety, but don't run away from relationships with others just to feel safe. That would be giving power to your fear. Continue to do the work of connecting with your deepest, most noble self, so that you can dismantle your own fears and be a model for others. Other people's beliefs and decisions and reactions are going to look very different from yours. Continue to seek the truth and base your lives on truth rather than irrational anxiety. In this way, you will serve others and build a better world, just by living with integrity.

"Remember that every person is capable of this kind of connection, to some degree. Every person has inherent worth and dignity. This unites us all as human beings. We are all diverse, and our differences are something to celebrate. Yet, we hold in common our humanity, and thus our intrinsic value. May you find connection with other people, even those who seem different from you. May you recognize the empowerment that flows from meaningful relationship, and may you take responsibility for forming mutually empowering relationships. Then, you will connect with others with the same level of authenticity as you connect with your self. That is the essence and the power of genuine love."

John 15: Vines and Branches

The narrative at the end of John 14 has Jesus suggesting that his disciples were going to get up and go somewhere. John 15 starts with more teaching in the voice of Jesus. Did they go somewhere? Are they packing up and getting ready to go somewhere while Jesus keeps talking? It doesn't matter. This section of John is not about the plot of the narrative, but about the spiritual paradigm the authors want to promote. Remember that this is not direct quotation. No one was transcribing what an actual historical Jesus said. This is a theological idea created by someone decades after a historical Jesus might have lived, and the likely purpose of putting these words in Jesus' mouth was to clarify the identity of a particular religious community.

With that in mind, is there anything we can glean from John 15 without accepting the premises of the ancient community for which it was written? We'll tackle the first half of the chapter this week, and we'll look at the second half of John 15 next. We can't just translate the idea of the Father deity in this passage as a deepest, most noble self, because it's obvious that the authors conceptualize a supernatural who intervenes in the lives of people, taking action to "prune" some people and to gather others up and throw them into the fire. There is little of value in such a fear-based motivation to cling to a certain teaching or belief.

However, there may be some truth underlying the mythology. Perhaps one could observe that people who respond to their circumstances with integrity learn how to maintain integrity such that it becomes easier and easier to live intentionally by a clear set of guiding principles. This would be the pruning that enables one to bear more fruit. The pruning is simply the result of experience and practice rather than the active will of a supernatural.

What of those who are gathered and burned? For some readers, this is a clear threat of Hell, which they imagine is an eternity of torment. The authors actually don't suggest anything of the sort. The authors suggest destruction, and they don't even clarify whether they mean physical or spiritual destruction. Readers bring their own mythologies to the words of the text and assume that they know the mind of the authors. One of my professors used to say, "Let the text be specific where it is specific and vague where it is vague," and then he would proceed to fill in any vagueness with his own theological convictions. Human beings use their own creativity to fill gaps in knowledge. Perhaps the responsible thing to do is to be aware of the line between one's creativity and actual information.

So, if experience is what results in "pruning" such that a person becomes more and more comfortable and confident with responding to life with integrity, the opposite might also be true. When we become convinced of our own false beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the way the world works, we can head down a spiral of destruction. Letting our fears run us can destroy our relationships, our opportunities for meaningful work, and even our sense of connection with ourselves. If we consistently doubt the viability of our deepest values, there is no way for us to live into them. We could become predictably reactionary to every circumstance, leaving a trail of anxiety-fueled chaos behind us until we self-destruct.

The authors seem to have Jesus say that he is the vine and his disciples are branches of that vine. Then, they have him claim that they are not servants, but are friends. Friends are more or less equal, which the authors demonstrate by asserting that Jesus disclosed everything to his friends. They had equivalent knowledge. The authors still had Jesus issuing commandments to his "friends," though, and appointing them to "go and bear fruit." Maybe the word friend means different things to different people.

If we interpret this business about Jesus being the vine a little differently, it might be more useful to us. If Jesus is intended as the Exemplar of the narrative, then Jesus as an individual isn't the vine so much as the example he sets is the vine. The way of being that connects with one's deep values and acts with integrity to those values -- that is the vine. People who adopt that way of being are branches off of that vine. That practical ideology is built on something deeper than irrational fear, so people who branch off of that way of being must commit to dismantling their fears. Actually, you can't act with integrity to your guiding principles and simultaneously be controlled by your anxiety. Living intentionally cannot coexist with living reactively. 

People who can't or won't let go of their irrational fear, then, can't be connected to that way of being that prioritizes deep values and lives in alignment with those values. Those people are cut off from the vine, not by a supernatural, but by their own choices. Maybe they are cut off because they don't yet have the ability to live with integrity. They have to become more skillful if they want to be a branch of that practical ideology. Which means that they can be "grafted on" whenever they choose to (or learn to) live more intentionally, based on their clear guiding principles. If they never learn or choose to connect with their deepest values and live according to those values, then we see people who only know how to react out of their anxiety -- a habit that eventually consumes them like a fire.

Or maybe the business about the vine is slightly different. If the vine is the practical ideology of living with intention based on a clear set of guiding principles, maybe the branches could also be seen as the various choices that a person might make. Those choices that do not align with that way of being are cut off, or avoided, because integrity prompts a different decision. Those choices made in integrity lead to more satisfying options, yielding a life that is even more fulfilling. Even if we choose to interpret the vine and branches in this way, the bottom line is that integrity yields more satisfying lives than anxiety does.

It may also occur to you that one cannot be consumed with anxiety and also love other people well. The guiding principle the authors of John commend, to love one another, necessitates learning to manage one's anxiety -- learning to dismantle irrational fears. Love is not a haphazard, coincidental occurrence. Love is an intentional act, or an intentional way of being in relationship with another person. Love and fear don't play well together. If love is our priority, then we have to deal with our fear healthily.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

"The way of being that I've demonstrated to you is like a vine, and your deepest, most noble self nourishes that vine. If there is something my anxiety prompts me to do that doesn't line up with my guiding principles, my connection with my deepest, most noble self helps me clarify how to make decisions that have integrity. I cut off the options that don't align with my deepest values, and the principled decisions I make lead to more opportunities to live into my guiding principles. 

"You have already learned how to dismantle your irrational fears and clarify your guiding principles, because I've taught you how. You aren't a slave to your anxiety. Keep living with integrity, as the way of being I've modeled continues to take root in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you create the life you most want unless you live with intention. The way of being I've demonstrated to you is like a vine, and your lives are like branches off that vine. Those who live intentionally, aligned with their deepest values, have transformational lives. Whoever does not live intentionally, aligned with their deepest values, lives a life consumed with anxiety until they burn out. 

"If you live intentionally, and if you are clear about what actually matters most to you, you can accomplish things that other people only dream about. Your guiding principles run deeper than your fear. Your deepest, most noble self isn't represented in your irrational fears. Your deepest, most noble self understands that fulfillment in life is sourced by genuine love. As I understand the principle of love -- demonstrative concern for another's well-being -- so I have loved you; live with that model of love in mind. If you do what I've modeled for you, you will live with that kind of love as a guiding principle. I have said these things to you so that you will experience the same exuberance in life that I have experienced.

"If you still don't know your guiding principles, begin with this: love one another as I have loved you. When you feel obligated to give up something of yourself for another person, that is your anxiety and fear speaking. When you freely choose to let go of your own wants in order to meet the needs of someone else, that is love. Love is not an obligation, but a free choice -- saying 'Yes' when it would be equally safe to say 'No.' In the same way, don't try to live with integrity because you think you are obligated to me. The point is not for you to prove something to me. The point is for you to have the most satisfying life possible. I've told you and modeled for you everything that I have -- vulnerably and authentically -- because I believe in your ability to live intentionally into a best possible version of yourselves. If you connect with yourselves and align with your own deep values, you can create a life that is truly fulfilling. And part of that fulfilling life is in choosing to love one another, and to hold demonstrative concern for one another's well-being as a priority." 

John 10:1-21 Being a Good Shepherd

Translation becomes a little more challenging with passages like John 10:1-21, in which the authors of John identify Jesus as the "good shepherd" and every other teacher as a coward, thief, and liar. Many readers tend to treat Jesus as a unique figure and take the passage at face value without much thought. Considering our definition of "divinity" as something inherent to every human being and our rational conclusion that there is no external supernatural intelligence guiding human life and decisions, finding value in this passage requires sticking with the understanding that the Jesus character in the gospel of John is intended as an exemplar.

As with many of these passages, we have a few characters (or groups of characters) to examine. First, there are the sheep; then there are the hired hands, thieves, and bandits; then there is the good shepherd archetype. Let's consider the sheep first. Calling people sheep is not flattering. Sheep were easy for people to domesticate because of their flock behavior. If one sheep heads toward a new grazing area, the flock has a tendency to follow right along. For a sheep, leading a flock of sheep is as simple as moving before anyone else does. Sheep also have a tendency to run away if anything not-sheep gets too close. So, controlling sheep is easy for people who know how to exploit the flocking and fleeing tendencies of the animals. Sheep also seem to quickly adapt to getting food from people, which leads them to treat people as safe.

However intelligent sheep may be, they don't seem to be particularly thoughtful. It's understandable that people -- especially large groups of people -- would be likened to sheep. Human beings have a fairly strong drive toward togetherness, too. And human beings aren't particularly thoughtful when they shift into mob mentality. Like sheep following whoever happened to move first, people sometimes seem to gratefully follow the first person with an idea. It's almost like we appreciate not having to think through an issue for ourselves. Someone else's impulsiveness saves us the hard mental work of evaluating an issue.

The description of sheep in John suggests that sheep-people know the difference between people who intend harm and people who intend to contribute to their well-being. This is a bit confusing, though, because people have listened to a wide variety of teachers, and it has historically seemed difficult for people to distinguish between good ideas and harmful ideas when they are part of a flock. Individuals can be brilliant, but those same individuals in the midst of a reactive group might behave just as impulsively as everyone else, grateful for the opportunity not to have to think. The quote that comes to mind is from the first Men in Black, in which Tommy Lee Jones observes, "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals."

This would seem to be something of a choice. Yes, we have a tendency to follow the flock thoughtlessly, but we're capable of thinking through a situation and connecting our values to our behavior. If we're capable of doing that as individuals, we're capable of doing that in a group of people, even if everyone around us is mindlessly following the flock. Should the sheep analogy hold true, we may end up being inadvertent leaders, just because we choose to move in a direction before anybody else.

Sheep don't choose to lead, though. There's no voting. There's no volunteering. Among sheep, leadership is an accident. This might be the case among people sometimes, too, but it doesn't have to be. We can be more intentional in our decisions and in our influence. If we understand that people in groups are going to be mentally lazier than individuals, we have the potential to influence people through our intentional action. Some individuals step into leadership with the idea that they can get their way by being persuasive in front of a group of people. Through manipulation and coercion, some people wind up leading a flock into dangerous territory. These kinds of leaders are reacting to their own un-confronted fears, and the fears that lead us to seek wealth, power, and safety are never satisfied. Even the wealthiest people often think they need more money to be happy, and even the most powerful people are concerned about their vulnerabilities. Leading because of fear does not create a better world, and it does not create a more satisfying life.

The thieves and scoundrels of the story in John 10 are these sorts of leaders, wrapped up in their own fear to the extent that they bring harm to the people who listen to them. We see and hear this sort of fear-laden persuasion and coercion all the time. They don't really have the best interests of anyone else in mind. If something tragic happens to one of the people they've persuaded, the fear-driven leader might quickly disown that unfortunate soul. Like the hired hand who runs when one of the sheep is snatched up by a wolf, fear-driven people are quick to distance themselves from people who might jeopardize their influence.

A good shepherd isn't consumed by fear. Good leaders know their values and guiding principles, and they also work at dismantling the fears that are likely to be a distraction. They accept that people are often going to stop thinking when they get into a group and start reacting to something, Instead of using this information to take advantage of others for personal gain, a good leader chooses to respond out of a space of those values and guiding principles, influencing a flock toward greater well-being, even when the flock is too busy not thinking to realize what's going on.

You may be skimming past these statements about leaders because you think that you aren't one. The point of the passage, though, is that you are. If you are even thinking about living by a set of meaningful guiding principles, you are in a position to make clearer decisions than the average mob or committee. You can choose to be a sheep, of course. You can shut your brain down when someone else in a group has an idea. You can stop thinking when someone else moves in a direction. That is your prerogative. If you choose to act with integrity to your guiding principles, though, you will influence people. The reality of humanity is that most people will not be willing or able to think through purposeful, intentional responses to the things that spark their anxiety, and being in a group of people diminishes that capacity even further. Should you be willing to act with integrity in the midst of an anxious flock, you might influence people toward well-being that they cannot even imagine in that moment.

Now, the authors of the gospel suggest that a good shepherd lays down life itself, and so many believers look at this as a rather unique role for Jesus. The authors also say that the good shepherd takes life back up again, which becomes interpreted as a resurrection -- another unique role for Jesus. The passage is filled with metaphor, however. What if laying down one's life actually means setting aside one's fears and accepting the vulnerability of living with intention and integrity? What if laying down one's life actually means sacrificing a sense of personal security in order to contribute to the greatest well-being of greatest number of people? Understanding the nature of systems, we cannot actually have well-being in every dimension of our own lives if the people around us aren't experiencing well-being. In this way, perhaps we take our lives back up again. Or perhaps taking life back up again is what happens when we channel our energy toward living with integrity where we once devoted it toward alleviating our irrational fears. It's possible that we can set aside one way of being (fear-driven or sheep-like) for another way of being (intentional and principled). We are potential good shepherds. This is not a unique role.

The authors of the gospel also suggest the value of unity -- one flock for one shepherd. This is perhaps based on a fear of diverse opinions or some other fears. Maybe even rational fears of other people's reactivity. Even in the twenty-first century, people are killing each other over differences of opinion. Unity under one banner would seem to be a superb vision, and yet I can't imagine how such a unity would be accomplished without coercion or manipulation of someone. It may be enough to recognize the palpable tension in society at the time this gospel was written and to accept that the only unity worth achieving would be a unity of free-willed individuals with shared values, living intentionally with one another. Hold it as a vision if you like, but don't let it become another reason to mistreat people who disagree with you.

At the heart of this passage, then, we have choices to make. We can choose to thoughtlessly follow the groups in which we find ourselves, or we can act with our own sense of individuality. Should we choose to act, we can act out of our fears or we can act with intentionality and integrity to our guiding principles. However we choose to act, we will influence others. We can lead others toward doing what we think will alleviate our own anxiety, or we can lead others toward greater well-being. In the words of the passage, we can be thieves and bandits or we can be good shepherds. Or we can be sheep.


A Little Experiment: Move First. Sheep don't lead intentionally, but people can. If you aren't accustomed to making decisions, see what happens if you offer the first suggestions to a group about where to go and what to do. Maybe others will offer their suggestions as well. Leading doesn't mean digging in our heels unless we get our way.

Another Little Experiment: Wait a Minute. Sheep don't lead intentionally, but the first one to move in a direction often influences the entire flock. If you're the usually the first one to offer a suggestion in a group, try hanging back and see if anyone else moves first. You might be surprised what you learn.

A Bigger Experiment: Shepherd Well. When you are in a group, be particularly aware of how your guiding principles inform your behavior. If the group seems to veer in a direction that doesn't align with your guiding principles, state your principles and your concern clearly, and propose the course of action you will take. The group may still head off in a direction that doesn't work for you. You get to decide whether to head off with them or to stick with your principled decision.

John 5:16-47 Values and Personal Authority

After the man from last week's passage was healed, the story goes on in John 5 to describe how the Jewish leaders persecuted Jesus. In a classic case of miscommunication, the Pharisees in the story hear and interpret Jesus' words in the most controversial way possible. The Jesus of this story tries to explain himself more clearly, but the concepts he is describing are difficult to understand and his audience doesn't really want to understand. 

Even though some of the ideas the authors insert into this passage are intended as literal, we no longer find them credible. Today, some may still contend that the dead are going to rise from their graves and be judged by a mighty supernatural. While this might encourage a morality of fear in some, it is obvious that many people are not persuaded to behave differently because of this threat. Even some people who claim to believe in this sort of judgment leading to eternal punishment or reward seem quite willing to do things that most folks would consider to be evil. There is no evidence to suggest its veracity, yet people have believed it for centuries. In all that time, belief in an afterlife has not perfected humanity. So, whether or not we want to believe in the mythology presented here, it doesn't seem fruitful to consider its merits. We are very sneaky in our beliefs, and we will find a way to believe what we want, no matter what is actually written on a page or spoken by a religious authority. There is a bit of the Pharisees' mode of listening in all of us.

What can we gain, then, from this exposition? Jesus seems to be defining his connection to and relationship with God, and he seems to be doing so in a very specific context of an ancient Jewish culture. Since we are not ancient Jews, we have to reframe a few things in order to make it meaningful in our own context. Let's first take a look at exactly what is being said.

First, Jewish leaders were angry because it seemed to them that Jesus was doing something unlawful. Jesus' provocative response was that God was still at work, so there was no reason for people not to work if they chose to do so. The story suggests that the Jewish leaders took umbrage at the implication that Jesus was making himself equal to God. This is a little bit odd, since Jews referred to God as Father long before Jesus -- the Old Testament often compares God to a loving parent, nearly always in the masculine sense. So, this may say something about the authors of John.

Next, Jesus tries to explain himself more clearly, saying that people can only do what is modeled for them, and he considers God to be a worthwhile model. He promises great and astonishing works, and forecasts a future grave-emptying judgment of all people, based on their merits. That is, Jesus promises that people will be judged by their deeds. He doesn't seem to have any other criteria in mind by which people might attain life abundant.

Finally, Jesus says not to take him at his word, but to verify what he says with other reliable witnesses and by the evidence in his life and actions. He points out that people have a limited perspective, and that sometimes they maintain a limited perspective by choice, especially when they can see themselves as superior. Yet, they do not realize how their own perspective ultimately condemns them to a life that is less than what it could be. Specifically, the Jews were relying on their scriptures and their legalistic sense of morality and ethics, yet in so doing, they missed the point of their identity as human beings. 

It's easy to look down on the Jewish leaders here, especially since the authors of John paint such a hostile picture of them. We can all see in ourselves a bit of the behavior we despise in others, though. We all choose not to listen to what someone is actually saying sometimes, especially when we hear something we can pounce on or be offended by. Sometimes, we all choose to judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. We make sure the laws and rules we live by work in our favor, and we let some of our own behavior slide, even though it is "wrong" by our own standards. And we expect other people to behave the way we want them to behave, even when they haven't agreed to our set of rules. We want to be judged based on our best days, and we want our worst days to be forgiven and ignored. Yet we sometimes hold grudges against other people, and we are loathe to let others live down mistakes. 

It doesn't have to be like that. We don't have to be like that. The problem in all of that messy behavior is that we let our fear count for more than our hope. We are afraid of all sorts of things, and we may not even realize it. Some people are afraid of being overlooked, or of being wrong, or of being caught making a mistake. Being unacceptable. Being judged. Being unimportant. Being taken advantage of. Being alone. Being mistreated. Being ridiculed. Failing. Succeeding. We're afraid of all sorts of things. If we don't manage our fears, we can't live fully. If we don't manage our fears, we can't begin to approach a best possible version of ourselves.

As much as we can see ourselves in the Pharisees' behavior, we can also see ourselves in a different light. We are first and foremost accountable to ourselves. As much as we fear about how other people see us, we can't control other people. We can be responsible for ourselves. One key way for us to manage our fears is for us to have a clear sense of who we are -- to be self-defined. When we allow other people to define us, we fail to take responsibility for ourselves. And often, we take our definition from what we think other people think of us, without ever even verifying if our suspicions are correct. Even when we know what other people think of us, though, our identity is up to us.

One way that we define ourselves is by being very clear about our values -- about the things that matter most to us. This requires a bit of thought, and many people simply don't take the time. When we know what we value most, we can set clearer boundaries for our own behavior and in our relationships with others. We will likely have to go back over our values a few times, especially if we are used to making decisions based on fear. Our first run at defining our values might be based on our fears without us realizing it, and we have to ask some challenging questions and dig a little deeper if we want to get at the principles that we most want to guide our lives. 

You may think that you have a value of keeping someone in your life happy. This is misguided. You do not control another person's happiness. What are you afraid of if this person is unhappy? What belief about yourself is underneath that fear?

You may think that you have a value of making enough money to live comfortably. What is comfortable? Is your definition likely to change as you earn more? Is there a fear of scarcity underneath that value? Or a fear that you won't be acceptable to others if you don't have a certain lifestyle? Money is necessary, but money is just a way for us to do the things we value. Money accomplishes nothing on its own. What is the actual value that will direct what you do with the money you have?

This work is not quick, and it may take a lot of introspection before you arrive at a clear expression of the things that matter most to you. We might not be accustomed to doing this sort of work. It takes a bit of adjustment from our normal way of thinking. And once we've clarified some values, it takes some practice to live by them. Reminders every morning, thinking more intentionally about our decisions, and even talking through possibilities can help us adjust to living with integrity to the values we define.

Our values are part of what I think of as a deepest, most noble self -- a piece of us that is not based on fear, but on a sense of our capability, creativity, and beauty as human beings. Our deepest, most noble selves are always present, even though we often lose connection with what it means to be fully human. We second-guess our own sense of values -- our own identities -- because our fears get in the way. Our own sense of authentic personal authority comes from our deepest, most noble self, even though we sometimes look to other things to feel a sense of authority.

We have the potential for everything that we do to be sourced by our deepest, most noble selves -- for all of our actions and decisions to be based on our real values and guiding principles. If we work toward this level of integrity and intentionality, the results in our lives and in our relationships can be astonishing. We can experience life in a new way, with less of a sense that we are victims at the mercy of our circumstances or other people's whims -- a more vibrant life in which we have a clear sense of purpose and empowerment.

None of this happens by accident in our lives. We cannot continue on auto-pilot and expect anything to change in our lives. As we listen more deeply to ourselves and consider what a best possible version of ourselves might look like, we can live more intentionally into that vision of us. We are inclined to make up stories about ourselves, like "I'm working on that issue," or "One of these days, I'll figure out how to..." We often like affirming, positive words about ourselves. We'll know that what we claim about ourselves is true by what others see in our lives and by the actual evidence in how we behave. Other people won't necessarily approve of changes in our behavior, but when we change how we do things, the people around us will probably notice. If nothing looks different about how we live, chances are, nothing has really changed about how we are living.

The idea is not to have a different set of rules to live by. We have a habit of taking rules and twisting them so that we still think it's fine for us to do whatever it is we want to do. The idea is for us to claim responsibility for our own identities, for our own actions and decisions, so that our experience of life is more fulfilling. And if we are really paying attention to our values -- to our deepest, most noble selves -- our lives are more fulfilling when we are doing things that contribute to the well-being of others. We cannot define ourselves in isolation from everyone else. We are defined in part by the way we relate to others. So, our values and our guiding principles connect to how we are in relationship with other people. 

If the Jewish leaders in the story of John 5 had their way, they wouldn't pay any attention to someone needing help on the Sabbath. Their rules were strict, and they were afraid of what would happen if the rules were not obeyed. When we set aside fear, we can more easily see people as human beings of inherent worth and dignity, and our values can direct our actions more clearly than a set of abstract rules for behavior. This is the point of understanding our values. If we have a clear sense of personal identity and a clear sense of what matters most to us in life, we can more easily make decisions about how we will connect to other people and to the world around us. It is a different way of living than simply going with our automatic reactions, and I would offer that it is a more satisfying and fulfilling way of engaging in life. 

A Little Experiment: Know thyself. This is a repeat of a little experiment from a few weeks back, when I suggested that you write down your values -- the things that matter most to you in life. These are not the ways that you think you need to protect yourself from a hostile world. These are the things that you believe would make the world better for everyone. How do you most want to show up? What do you want to contribute to a better world? Write down your values, even if you aren't living by them very intentionally right now. Read over them a few times this week.

Another Little Experiment: Find the fear. Take one of your values and examine it carefully. Is there some fear about yourself or other people underneath that value? What would that value look like if you let go of that fear? Would it still be something you hold as important? Or is there something more important to you once the fear is out of the way?

One More Little Experiment: Intentional decisions. When you are faced with a decision this week, take a moment and consider your first impulse. Is it reflective of a best possible version of yourself? If so, celebrate that! If not, what option would be a better representation of who you most want to be? What is keeping you from making a decision that lines up clearly with your values?