This post has taken me longer than most to write, perhaps because it delves into the personal a bit more than the instructive. It seems important to evaluate our perspective of people as we consider how to live in such a way that we are satisfied with our influence in the world, and how we can get what we most deeply want by creating less suffering and greater wholeness. How we see people matters, because how we treat other human beings flows from how we are willing to see them.
I've asserted a guiding principle here that every person has inherent worth and dignity. That means it's part of being human to have worth and dignity. It's this assertion that I want to dig into for a few moments. When I first started this commentary several years ago, I asserted something else -- something complementary to this claim of inherent worth and dignity. I suggested that whatever we call "divine" is really a set of human characteristics -- that the ultimate source of divinity is within human beings. This means that divine character -- the capacity for truth, beauty, and creativity in every person -- is actually human character at its very best. So, an inner sense of divinity is in some ways synonymous with inherent worth and dignity.
And those two ideas are synonymous with having a deepest, most noble self: a part of one's being that authentically expresses one's inherent worth and dignity -- one's divine character -- without fear or anxiety. Who we are when we are at our best. This source of strength, creativity, peace, beauty, wisdom, and love is within every person. It's within you. It's within me. It's part of being human. It isn't supernatural. It isn't an outside entity dwelling within us; it's us. It's who we are at our core. It's our deepest selves once all the fear and anxiety and defense mechanisms are brushed aside. It's the closest thing to a god that will ever exist -- our authentic, loving, laughing, creating selves.
When I was younger, immersed in a Christian perspective, I was taught to express adoration and devotion to something that doesn't exist. I prayed without doubt, and I expressed genuine emotions toward an imaginary being. My emotions and my devotion were real. These were sincere expressions of my deeply held beliefs. The object of those emotions and that devotion, however, was only imagined. It was in my head, but also in my culture -- a shared web of beliefs superimposed on reality. As I gradually dismantled those false beliefs and became more reasoned, there became less of a reason for that devotion and adoration. If there is no god to worship or adore, then there is no purpose for that adoration.
Some people replace a supernatural with natural wonder. There are those who revere nature with the same intensity that others revere an imaginary god. Nature is real and wondrous and awesome and full of surprises. And we can learn so much from observing natural processes. Nature is also relatively unresponsive. Mountains don't respond to praise or adoration any more than an imaginary deity does. Wild animals are just that -- wild. However majestic or awe-inspiring we may find them, animals most often react to human presence through instinct, which is to say they either run away or they defend themselves from a perceived threat. People who forget nature's wildness often suffer brutal consequences.
I count myself among those who are awed by nature, and I love learning things through observing how nature works. Nature doesn't evoke the same sense of adoration and devotion that I once felt toward an imagined god, though. To be fair, I collaborated with others to co-create the god I worshiped, and although we had many similar ideas about this god's character, it's clear that every person who believes in a god believes in a slightly different god than every other believer. There is no objective reality against which a person can test beliefs about a god. The "authoritative" texts that hold ancient ideas about gods don't even have internal agreement, and human beings interpret those texts through a variety of human ideas about gods. So, everyone's god is personal -- a personal creation that agrees in some respects with other people's gods, but a personal creation nonetheless.
Which is to say that what I was feeling deep emotion for and expressing deep devotion to was a product of my own imagination, based on other people's ideas and a collection of ancient writings. My own imagination is part of my own creative nature -- part of my own deepest, most noble self. The problem was that I convinced myself of the reality of something that was not real, and I focused emotional energy on that unreal entity. My creativity convinced me that I could expect something back from that unreal entity, too. Guidance, forgiveness, love, acceptance, peace. If there was any real source of those blessings, it was within myself. I was the one imagining a god, after all. So anything that god provided was coming from within me somehow. Even "nature" cannot legitimately be said to intelligently guide, love, forgive, or accept beings who are a part of natural systems.
Now, this is not to say that human beings are not sources of guidance, forgiveness, love, acceptance, peace, and a whole array of other gifts we extend to one another. People are real and actual sources of blessing to one another. My point is that whatever we perceive as coming to us from a divine source -- particularly from an external supernatual -- must be coming from within ourselves. If the supernatural doesn't exist, and we still gain a sense of forgiveness, for example, that forgiveness has to originate from within us -- the same creative source as the imagined supernatural. Just as my emotions and devotion were real, even though the supernatural object was not real, the forgiveness and love and guidance I experienced were also real. I had the source wrong, but the experience was genuine. I genuinely felt loved, forgiven, acceptable. My own self is the only possible source for those genuine experiences that don't come from other human beings.
This presents a problem, because we also heap judgment, shame, and anxiety on ourselves from within. We believe lies about how worthless, unlovable, or unacceptable we are, and yet we would also seem to be the source of "divine" love and acceptance. No wonder it's so much easier to separate that loving, wise, creative part of ourselves out into an imagined external source. We can receive that guidance and acceptance so much more easily if it seems to come from outside of ourselves. But that's just an illusion. A helpful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.
Some of the most meaningful time I spend in any given week is working with people in workshops or small groups on connecting with their deepest, most noble selves -- the part of them that can be called "divine" if anything can bear that label. Living with integrity to our deepest values and guiding principles requires of us that we confront old lies about who we are and embrace a sense of love and acceptance for ourselves. This is hard work. Seeing ourselves as having inherent worth and dignity is often harder than seeing that inherent worth and dignity in others.
And this is where my own recent spiritual work has led me to connect the inherent worth and dignity of every person with the idea of a deepest, most noble self -- and the concept of inner divinity (not in any supernatural sense, but just in the sense that human beings are the creators of the idea of divinity and the embodiment of all those qualities that we consider to be divine characteristics). If that sense of overwhelming love and acceptance felt by the religious is actually something that comes from within us, then I have to admit that human beings are capable of divine love, forgiveness, guidance, and all the rest. Whatever "divine" means in this context, human beings are the source. My own self was the source each time I felt loved by God, each time I felt a sense of direction from God, each time I felt a sense of awe and wonder at the unknown, each time I knew a deep forgiveness when I had acted out of alignment with my deepest values. I was the source -- something within me and part of who I am as a human being.
So, if an unreal supernatural was worthy of my adoration and devotion, why would a real human being be any less worthy? Why would the real source of "divine" love, forgiveness, and guidance be less worthy of worship than an imagined source of those same gifts? And if these are human qualities that rise from the deepest, most noble self -- the seat of inherent worth and dignity in every person -- why would that essence within people be less worthy of adoration and devotion than an imagined supernatural external to human beings? If human creativity, beauty, and truth is the source of love, forgiveness, and acceptance, why would I not stand in awe and adoration of such wonder?
This is not to say that human beings are entirely divine, of course. We foster anxiety and fear, we protect ourselves with layers of false selves in order to be safe from perceived threats. We rarely show up as our authentic selves, fully embodying our deepest, most noble selves. Most of what we see of each other most of the time is quite different from that inner divinity, and we taint that inner divinity with our fears and anxieties, too. So we wind up inventing gods that hate and oppress, and we give ourselves permission to hate and oppress as emissaries of those hateful and oppressive gods. This is not a true reflection of our inherent worth and dignity. It's a betrayal of ourselves.
We hold within us this capacity to express what passes for divine love and acceptance, to adore and cherish ourselves and others. Yet we betray that human capacity by paying more attention to fear, and that fear shows itself in myriad behaviors and attitudes. This betrayal doesn't change the fact that the only explanation for feelings of divine love and acceptance and guidance is that they come from within -- that human beings naturally have this potential. That seems worthy of adoration. That potential, that seed, that inner divinity, that deepest most noble self -- that is what inherent worth and dignity references. And for me, at least for now, that seems worthy of awe and adoration.
I see the betrayals of self, of course. I see them more clearly now that I have at other times in my life, both in my own behavior and in the words and actions of others. Yet, I want to reclaim that sense of adoration and love I once focused on the unreal. I want to refocus that same sense of wonder and delight in the only place that it can legitimately be directed -- the inner self of human beings. Not on something beyond nature, but on the very best of what is naturally human. If the actual source of everything I once called divine is within myself and every other person, why would I not worship that human source as fervently as I once worshiped some imagined external source?
Perhaps this is not meaningful to you, especially if you haven't had experience with a religious context. For those who are in recovery from religion, however, perhaps it is of some benefit to acknowledge that it was not all a lie. Maybe we just weren't giving ourselves enough credit.
Showing posts with label divine character. Show all posts
Showing posts with label divine character. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2016
Monday, February 17, 2014
The "G" Word
I've wrestled with using the word "God" for some time now. I know that there are some people who invent their own definitions in order to keep using the word without necessarily meaning what other people mean by the word.
"God is the space between people."
"God is a person's ultimate concern."
"God is the life force that flows through all things."
This is all well and good, except that I know when I use the word "God" without going into detail to define it, other people are going to conjure up whatever their own image of God is, and most likely they're going to have an image of God that is somehow connected to the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God. Even if they have a different image of God, it's not likely to be identical to my image of God. I keep using capital-G "God" at this point because that term has come to be synonymous with a singular higher power, most often portrayed as intelligent, willful, and benevolent, with a vengeful streak toward people who hold different opinions or lifestyles than the person doing the portraying. Given that I can't control what a listener does with the word, I generally choose not to use the word "God" (unless I'm asking a question about someone's specific claims about their image of a deity).
That doesn't mean I don't have any ideas about God. Aside from acknowledging that no actual gods exist in objective reality -- that indeed there is no credible evidence to support claims of supernaturalism -- I still have some ideas about God. Those ideas extend to any god, goddess, ancestral spirit, fairies, and so on. If I were to use the word "God," I know what I would mean by it. Maybe it's better to get over what other people will do with the word in their interpretation.
God is a word people use to describe a deep part of ourselves. Sometimes, it's easier to imagine that inner part of our being as something outside of us. It's easier to imagine talking to something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being comforted by something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being loved by something external to ourselves. Some people get so accustomed to imagining this deep part of themselves as something external to themselves that they forget that God is the inner part of their being. They start to believe that what they imagine about God being external to them should be what everyone imagines about God. It's difficult for them to see that, since God is just a word people use to describe a deep part of themselves, everyone is going to have a different image of God.
People have concocted a lot of gods, as it turns out. None of those gods are real, but they are the ideas that were evoked from the inner lives of lots of different people. People feel angry sometimes, so they might imagine a god that is angry about the same things. People are awed by nature, so they might imagine that nature has gods too, that nature has a self. People imagine gods that act and feel the way those people act and feel, and sometimes people imagine gods that act and feel in ways that those people wish they could act and feel. From within different people, many different ideas of gods have emerged. None of those external ideas of gods actually do or feel anything, but they reflect what people do and feel within the innermost parts of their being.
Sometimes imagining that God is something external can be used as a buffer. When people say that God blessed them with certain abilities, they can speak boldly about themselves without seeming egotistical. When someone says that God punished a group of people with a hurricane, that person is actually expressing personal hatred or fear about a group of people and using an external idea of God as a deflector. When people pray that a person will recover from an injury or illness, they are actually expressing their own desire for the person's recovery... which is kind of odd, when you think about it. Why not just say what one wants or feels?
I believe people don't say what they honestly want or feel because they either fear how other people will respond or they fear that they are somehow not enough in their own lives. Using the idea that God is something outside of them allows people to talk about things they would be otherwise afraid to talk about. This doesn't make God real as something outside of them. It just offers people the illusion that they are not actually talking about themselves. It provides a persona on which people can project what they want and what they feel, and this feels safer than vulnerable authenticity.
The ideas people create about gods have inspired lots of stories, and many of these stories hold incredible bits of wisdom. Unfortunately, sometimes people forget to look for the wisdom within the stories and believe that the stories are intended to represent surface-level reality. Stories become "histories" rather than legends, and histories are about recounting factual data. Stories about gods aren't about factual data; they're about the inner development of people -- about growth within a person and between people. When we recognize that God or god (or goddess) is a word we use for something deep within ourselves, then it becomes easier to look at stories about God or gods (or goddesses) as lessons about who we are rather than vessels of factual data. Stories about gods are stories about us; when we make them more than that, they become less useful.
We don't insist that other people have the same innermost being as us. We shouldn't insist that people have the same God as us. Neither is possible. Whatever God you believe in is something you have imagined. If you don't believe me, ask 10 of your adult friends to describe God (or better, to draw a picture of God) using their own words and not quoting any sacred text. How many of your friends describe God exactly as you do? This isn't a matter of blind men describing an elephant. People have different descriptions of God because people have different selves. This is a problem for some, because they expect their God to do something that isn't possible -- something that they are not capable of doing.
Our innermost beings are not capable of producing miracles in the world around us. Our innermost beings are not capable of changing other people. When we forget that God is a word we use for something deep within us -- an intrinsic part of ourselves -- we develop untenable expectations. God is a way for us to forgive ourselves for doing something that goes against our guiding principles. God is a way for us to guide ourselves toward better decisions, greater integrity, or more authentic love for others. God is a way for us to comfort ourselves in the face of loss. Having a word for that deep part of ourselves is useful. Until we make that word mean something more.
When I hear anyone talk about deity or fairies or ancestral spirits or anything of the like, I understand that they are telling me something about themselves. Sometimes translation is difficult when people become more academic in their communication, but I know that these are just ways that say things about themselves that they would otherwise find difficult to communicate. No one can ever tell me anything about God that I don't already know. No one can ever tell you anything about God that you don't already know. I can't worship anyone else's God, and neither can you. I can't know anyone else's God, and neither can you. God is a word we use for something deep inside of us, an intrinsic part of us. We can never know someone deeply enough to truly know their God, but we can appreciate that when people speak of God, they are speaking of themselves. They are speaking of a very deep part of themselves.
I may still avoid the use of the word. It's a messy word because so many people believe that it means something different than what it actually means. I may still strive to speak about what I want and what I feel in a way that is vulnerably authentic and leave God out of the conversation altogether. Should I start using the word "God," though, you'll at least have some idea what I mean. More importantly, I'll have a clear idea what I mean. It helps me listen to people sometimes, except when they insist that their imagination defines objective reality for other people. Maybe this will help you in some way, too. There are probably volumes that could flow from what I've articulated here, but the basic idea that all those volumes would flow from is still fairly simple: God is a word we use to talk about our innermost being.
"God is the space between people."
"God is a person's ultimate concern."
"God is the life force that flows through all things."
This is all well and good, except that I know when I use the word "God" without going into detail to define it, other people are going to conjure up whatever their own image of God is, and most likely they're going to have an image of God that is somehow connected to the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God. Even if they have a different image of God, it's not likely to be identical to my image of God. I keep using capital-G "God" at this point because that term has come to be synonymous with a singular higher power, most often portrayed as intelligent, willful, and benevolent, with a vengeful streak toward people who hold different opinions or lifestyles than the person doing the portraying. Given that I can't control what a listener does with the word, I generally choose not to use the word "God" (unless I'm asking a question about someone's specific claims about their image of a deity).
That doesn't mean I don't have any ideas about God. Aside from acknowledging that no actual gods exist in objective reality -- that indeed there is no credible evidence to support claims of supernaturalism -- I still have some ideas about God. Those ideas extend to any god, goddess, ancestral spirit, fairies, and so on. If I were to use the word "God," I know what I would mean by it. Maybe it's better to get over what other people will do with the word in their interpretation.
God is a word people use to describe a deep part of ourselves. Sometimes, it's easier to imagine that inner part of our being as something outside of us. It's easier to imagine talking to something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being comforted by something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being loved by something external to ourselves. Some people get so accustomed to imagining this deep part of themselves as something external to themselves that they forget that God is the inner part of their being. They start to believe that what they imagine about God being external to them should be what everyone imagines about God. It's difficult for them to see that, since God is just a word people use to describe a deep part of themselves, everyone is going to have a different image of God.
People have concocted a lot of gods, as it turns out. None of those gods are real, but they are the ideas that were evoked from the inner lives of lots of different people. People feel angry sometimes, so they might imagine a god that is angry about the same things. People are awed by nature, so they might imagine that nature has gods too, that nature has a self. People imagine gods that act and feel the way those people act and feel, and sometimes people imagine gods that act and feel in ways that those people wish they could act and feel. From within different people, many different ideas of gods have emerged. None of those external ideas of gods actually do or feel anything, but they reflect what people do and feel within the innermost parts of their being.
Sometimes imagining that God is something external can be used as a buffer. When people say that God blessed them with certain abilities, they can speak boldly about themselves without seeming egotistical. When someone says that God punished a group of people with a hurricane, that person is actually expressing personal hatred or fear about a group of people and using an external idea of God as a deflector. When people pray that a person will recover from an injury or illness, they are actually expressing their own desire for the person's recovery... which is kind of odd, when you think about it. Why not just say what one wants or feels?
I believe people don't say what they honestly want or feel because they either fear how other people will respond or they fear that they are somehow not enough in their own lives. Using the idea that God is something outside of them allows people to talk about things they would be otherwise afraid to talk about. This doesn't make God real as something outside of them. It just offers people the illusion that they are not actually talking about themselves. It provides a persona on which people can project what they want and what they feel, and this feels safer than vulnerable authenticity.
The ideas people create about gods have inspired lots of stories, and many of these stories hold incredible bits of wisdom. Unfortunately, sometimes people forget to look for the wisdom within the stories and believe that the stories are intended to represent surface-level reality. Stories become "histories" rather than legends, and histories are about recounting factual data. Stories about gods aren't about factual data; they're about the inner development of people -- about growth within a person and between people. When we recognize that God or god (or goddess) is a word we use for something deep within ourselves, then it becomes easier to look at stories about God or gods (or goddesses) as lessons about who we are rather than vessels of factual data. Stories about gods are stories about us; when we make them more than that, they become less useful.
We don't insist that other people have the same innermost being as us. We shouldn't insist that people have the same God as us. Neither is possible. Whatever God you believe in is something you have imagined. If you don't believe me, ask 10 of your adult friends to describe God (or better, to draw a picture of God) using their own words and not quoting any sacred text. How many of your friends describe God exactly as you do? This isn't a matter of blind men describing an elephant. People have different descriptions of God because people have different selves. This is a problem for some, because they expect their God to do something that isn't possible -- something that they are not capable of doing.
Our innermost beings are not capable of producing miracles in the world around us. Our innermost beings are not capable of changing other people. When we forget that God is a word we use for something deep within us -- an intrinsic part of ourselves -- we develop untenable expectations. God is a way for us to forgive ourselves for doing something that goes against our guiding principles. God is a way for us to guide ourselves toward better decisions, greater integrity, or more authentic love for others. God is a way for us to comfort ourselves in the face of loss. Having a word for that deep part of ourselves is useful. Until we make that word mean something more.
When I hear anyone talk about deity or fairies or ancestral spirits or anything of the like, I understand that they are telling me something about themselves. Sometimes translation is difficult when people become more academic in their communication, but I know that these are just ways that say things about themselves that they would otherwise find difficult to communicate. No one can ever tell me anything about God that I don't already know. No one can ever tell you anything about God that you don't already know. I can't worship anyone else's God, and neither can you. I can't know anyone else's God, and neither can you. God is a word we use for something deep inside of us, an intrinsic part of us. We can never know someone deeply enough to truly know their God, but we can appreciate that when people speak of God, they are speaking of themselves. They are speaking of a very deep part of themselves.
I may still avoid the use of the word. It's a messy word because so many people believe that it means something different than what it actually means. I may still strive to speak about what I want and what I feel in a way that is vulnerably authentic and leave God out of the conversation altogether. Should I start using the word "God," though, you'll at least have some idea what I mean. More importantly, I'll have a clear idea what I mean. It helps me listen to people sometimes, except when they insist that their imagination defines objective reality for other people. Maybe this will help you in some way, too. There are probably volumes that could flow from what I've articulated here, but the basic idea that all those volumes would flow from is still fairly simple: God is a word we use to talk about our innermost being.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Isaiah 13-14: Beyond Provincial Depictions of Divinity
The next segment of Isaiah contains many proclamations against the enemies of Judah, as well as some brief comments about what the kingdom of Judah can expect. Some of the "predictions" are so vague that one cannot really assess whether they were made before or after some historical event, and some of what the author of Isaiah predicts clearly never actually transpired. Based on this, then, it may be that these proclamations amount to wishful thinking expressed during a time of turmoil, rather than (as much of biblical prophecy is) "predictions" written down after the facts are known. For now, we will concentrate on a lengthy proclamation against Babylon and its king, with a hopeful prediction about Judah inserted in the middle, and two short proclamations against Assyria and Philistia.
These proclamations are supposedly sourced by Yahweh, the Judeo-Christian version of God, who is unchanging (based at least on Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17). So, what of God's character is revealed in these proclamations? To begin with, Yahweh is going to send a multitude of warriors from distant nations to execute his anger and destroy the world. A day of judgment is announced, at which time every person will experience physical and emotional anguish. The entire earth will be destroyed and every person who has ever missed the mark will be destroyed along with it. The stars, including the sun, will stop shining (and the moon will stop "shedding its light" too, but we won't go into the science of that). In order to punish people whose lives are characterized by wickedness, tyranny, and arrogance, Yahweh is going to destroy everything through a divinely commissioned army. This army of God will slaughter infants (who have had no opportunity to be wicked, tyrannical, or arrogant) in front of their parents, plunder the houses of the conquered, and rape the women they encounter. Suddenly, it seems that God was overly enthusiastic when he said he would destroy everything, because it turns out he was just talking about Babylon. But when God's army is through killing men, slaughtering babies, raping women, and plundering the houses of Babylon, the place won't be fit for human life ever again: "It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations" (Is 13:20). We're talking about the modern-day country of Iraq, just to be clear. Surely, it's not considered a popular place by a lot of people, but it's still teeming with human life.
Despite destroying everything (or just Babylon) with his immoral army, Yahweh will spare Judah. The people of Israel will settle comfortably back in their own land, and people from other nations (who somehow escaped the total destruction) will flock to Israel to be slaves. Indeed, Israel will own the other nations as slaves. Instead of behaving any differently from the people who oppressed them, the people of Judah will take their oppressors captive and rule over them. That is, whatever is left of them once the army of God sweeps through slaughtering babies, raping women, and destroying every man alive. This never happened, of course. Yet, does this sound like any sort of god invoked in the twenty-first century? Unfortunately, in some peoples' minds, this isn't far from the totalitarian deities many people still envision choosing sides in war, promoting violent solutions to international problems, and justifying collateral damage in the name of power or prosperity.
If there is any doubt about the sort of deity depicted in these proclamations, Isaiah continues with Babylon's king. The king of Babylon is taunted, primarily because he will eventually die and is thus as weak as any other human being. It's odd how a person can say, "You are no better than us," in a way that sounds so similar to, "We are better than you!" Predicting that an imperialist nation will be overthrown is not a risky prediction. Such has ever been the case, and it will likely happen again, even though people now build empires a little bit differently than they did thousands of years ago. Notice that the king of Babylon goes unnamed in this proclamation. This is either because there was no way to know which king of Babylon would eventually be overthrown, or because the author of Isaiah was attempting to rob the ruler of immortality by refusing to record his name. The name of the Babylonian king overthrown by Cyrus was Nabonidus, incidentally. I mention this because, if the authors of Isaiah had recorded the ruler's name, and if this portion of Isaiah could be reliably dated to a time prior to Nabonidus' rule, then this would perhaps be a more convincing prophecy. As it is, the author(s) of Isaiah simply indicate that all of the disgraced ruler's sons should be executed--not because of their own wickedness, tyranny, or arrogance, but because of who their father was.
This, then, is the kind of god Isaiah promotes: a god who commands the slaughter of infants (provided they are not Israelite infants), a god who demands the execution of people based on the actions of their parents, a god who condones rape and humiliation of women (provided they are not Israelite women), and a god who approves of slavery (provided the slaves come from nations other than Israel). Obviously, the people of Judah had reason to hate the Babylonians who conquered them and took them into captivity, as they had historical reasons to hate the Philistines. It would have been natural for a human representative of Judah to curse Judah's enemies and make hopeful predictions about Judah's future. If one wishes to be biblically sound in one's depiction of Yahweh, though, then this Yahweh is a localized, nationalist shill for Judah, not a monolithic deity for all people in all places and times. Yahweh clearly wishes brutal harm upon nations who are behaving as Judah is given permission to behave, the only difference being that Yahweh likes Judah. This is not congruent with the idea of a supernatural being who supposedly created the universe and cares about everything in it. Moreover, the proclamations are false on a number of accounts, which either means that the Israelite god lied or was mistaken, or that the Bible is not a reliable source of information. Most likely, there was no supernatural entity involved in the proclamations at all, and the human being(s) who wrote these passages was a bit off base (historically and morally), as emotionally-based human predictions often tend to be.
Biblical proclamations like these in Isaiah are obviously based on subjective personal preferences rather than objective data. Surely, some people have a feeling that continuing along the same trajectory is eventually going to be harmful or beneficial, and they just can't articulate why they think things will have a particular result. That does not amount to divine insight from some external supernatural source. The more we learn about human psychology and physiology, the more we can accurately predict what people will do in various situations; that doesn't mean that an action was foreordained or destined. It means that people are prone toward some patterns of behavior that can be scientifically analyzed. The authors of Isaiah weren't performing any sort of scientific, objective analysis, though. They were simply writing down what made sense to them and what they hoped would happen. Their recognition that empires get overthrown was strongly colored by their emotional reaction that they would enthusiastically gloat when this particular empire was overthrown. Of course, they couldn't have known that the conquerors would be any more pleasant than their current oppressors, which may suggest that the whole thing was written after Cyrus the Great swept through Babylon.
It has been said before, and it bears repeating: the problem with claiming to know what God is going to do is that such a claim is completely unfalsifiable. Of course, any "prediction" made after the fact is immediately dismissible. "I knew God would send an army to overthrow this empire," is a rather shallow statement once the army has done its slaughtering, raping, and pillaging. Even then, one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that the army showed up because of a summons from God rather than out of very human motivations. The armies that overthrew Nabonidus certainly weren't worshipers of Yahweh, and there's no evidence that they ever converted. Cyrus the Great was a respecter of various religions, and he mentioned gratitude toward the Babylonian gods specifically. Yet, nowhere do we have evidence that Cyrus acknowledged Yahweh. Announcing ahead of time that God is going to send an army to overthrow an empire is perhaps a more risky prediction, but once again, a person has no way of demonstrating that the impending army has any connection to the desires of a supernatural being. Unfalsifiable assertions are dangerous because they give people the impression that they have knowledge when what they actually have is hope. Hope is not knowledge.
We might hope that we are more important than other people. We might hope that we benefit and other people suffer. The authors of Isaiah seemed to have these kinds of hopes. We might even have the ability to make an educated guess about how to manage things so that we actually do benefit while other people suffer. What we do not have--what no person has ever had--is compelling objective evidence that a supernatural caused things to work out a particular way, or even wanted things to work out a particular way. When we assume that we have supernatural justification for our actions, we get into some dangerous territory. We might ignore the actual objective data available to us in favor of our subjective hopes and wishes.
The objective data that we have about systems of human interaction and the influence that people have on other human beings suggests that no person is actually more important than anyone else. No person deserves to benefit from the suffering of others. Morality--discerning what is right and what is wrong--is not based on identity or caste or income or title. If slaughtering an infant is immoral, it's immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the infant. If rape is immoral, it's immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the victim. If oppression and slavery are immoral, they are immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the oppressors and subjugators. Our own personal hatred does not justify immoral behavior against people who seem like Other--it doesn't even justify condoning or ignoring someone else's immoral behavior against people who seem like Other to us. The slanted ethnocentricity of biblical morality as depicted in Isaiah is simply unjustifiable.
I have proposed elsewhere that we locate divinity within rather than without--that many of the characteristics we ascribe to divinity are actually human characteristics. The problem is that sometimes the characteristics that are ascribed to a supernatural represent the very worst of human behavior. Surely, whenever a person believes that some communication with a supernatural has occurred, that person has only connected inwardly in an unfamiliar or unexpected way. Unfortunately, sometimes that inward connection is shallow. We get that we hate our circumstances and the people we blame for creating those circumstances, but we don't get that our hatred harms us more than it harms anyone else. The Babylonians weren't overthrown because the Israelites hated them or because a provincial god hated them. The Babylonians were overthrown because of human desire for power (which is largely rooted in fear), but that desire had nothing to do with the Israelite exiles. If we want to understand ourselves well, grow in emotional maturity, and be the best versions of ourselves possible, we have to reach a little beyond shallow comfort or imagined collusion with beings who don't exist.
What can we do then? If there is no external divine being and no supernaturals, we have only what we can know on which to confidently base our beliefs. We can hope for anything we like, but we are only justified in believing that which has objective evidence to back it up. Some people say that there is no objective truth, which is a polite way of never having to say that another person is wrong and a convenient way of never having to change what one believes in the face of evidence. Claiming that all truth is subjective is cowardly and dishonest. We are capable of better than that. We can know some things about the universe, about our world, about human beings, and about ourselves. More than ever before, we have access to an abundance of empirical evidence about reality. We may not always like what the evidence suggests, but if we try to base our lives on refusals of what actually is, where are the boundaries to that subjectivity? There are certainly some things about which the most honest answer must be, "I don't know." Problems arise when people decide to fill in those gaps by pretending to know something that they don't. Again, this is simply dishonest.
We can reach deeper within ourselves. We can be courageous in the face of new data that could warrant a change in our beliefs. We can examine what we believe and what we fear, and we can weigh our beliefs and fears against what we can know of objective truth. We can refuse to accept laziness and irresponsibility as excuses for not engaging in self-examination. We can be more emotionally mature in dismantling irrational fears and recognizing what we actually want. We are capable of growing into the best versions of ourselves possible, and we can transform the lives of countless others as a result. This is not a supernatural aim and it requires no divine endorsement. It is simply what is possible for willing, reasoning human beings. The question is: are you willing to be the best version of yourself possible?
These proclamations are supposedly sourced by Yahweh, the Judeo-Christian version of God, who is unchanging (based at least on Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17). So, what of God's character is revealed in these proclamations? To begin with, Yahweh is going to send a multitude of warriors from distant nations to execute his anger and destroy the world. A day of judgment is announced, at which time every person will experience physical and emotional anguish. The entire earth will be destroyed and every person who has ever missed the mark will be destroyed along with it. The stars, including the sun, will stop shining (and the moon will stop "shedding its light" too, but we won't go into the science of that). In order to punish people whose lives are characterized by wickedness, tyranny, and arrogance, Yahweh is going to destroy everything through a divinely commissioned army. This army of God will slaughter infants (who have had no opportunity to be wicked, tyrannical, or arrogant) in front of their parents, plunder the houses of the conquered, and rape the women they encounter. Suddenly, it seems that God was overly enthusiastic when he said he would destroy everything, because it turns out he was just talking about Babylon. But when God's army is through killing men, slaughtering babies, raping women, and plundering the houses of Babylon, the place won't be fit for human life ever again: "It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations" (Is 13:20). We're talking about the modern-day country of Iraq, just to be clear. Surely, it's not considered a popular place by a lot of people, but it's still teeming with human life.
Despite destroying everything (or just Babylon) with his immoral army, Yahweh will spare Judah. The people of Israel will settle comfortably back in their own land, and people from other nations (who somehow escaped the total destruction) will flock to Israel to be slaves. Indeed, Israel will own the other nations as slaves. Instead of behaving any differently from the people who oppressed them, the people of Judah will take their oppressors captive and rule over them. That is, whatever is left of them once the army of God sweeps through slaughtering babies, raping women, and destroying every man alive. This never happened, of course. Yet, does this sound like any sort of god invoked in the twenty-first century? Unfortunately, in some peoples' minds, this isn't far from the totalitarian deities many people still envision choosing sides in war, promoting violent solutions to international problems, and justifying collateral damage in the name of power or prosperity.
If there is any doubt about the sort of deity depicted in these proclamations, Isaiah continues with Babylon's king. The king of Babylon is taunted, primarily because he will eventually die and is thus as weak as any other human being. It's odd how a person can say, "You are no better than us," in a way that sounds so similar to, "We are better than you!" Predicting that an imperialist nation will be overthrown is not a risky prediction. Such has ever been the case, and it will likely happen again, even though people now build empires a little bit differently than they did thousands of years ago. Notice that the king of Babylon goes unnamed in this proclamation. This is either because there was no way to know which king of Babylon would eventually be overthrown, or because the author of Isaiah was attempting to rob the ruler of immortality by refusing to record his name. The name of the Babylonian king overthrown by Cyrus was Nabonidus, incidentally. I mention this because, if the authors of Isaiah had recorded the ruler's name, and if this portion of Isaiah could be reliably dated to a time prior to Nabonidus' rule, then this would perhaps be a more convincing prophecy. As it is, the author(s) of Isaiah simply indicate that all of the disgraced ruler's sons should be executed--not because of their own wickedness, tyranny, or arrogance, but because of who their father was.
This, then, is the kind of god Isaiah promotes: a god who commands the slaughter of infants (provided they are not Israelite infants), a god who demands the execution of people based on the actions of their parents, a god who condones rape and humiliation of women (provided they are not Israelite women), and a god who approves of slavery (provided the slaves come from nations other than Israel). Obviously, the people of Judah had reason to hate the Babylonians who conquered them and took them into captivity, as they had historical reasons to hate the Philistines. It would have been natural for a human representative of Judah to curse Judah's enemies and make hopeful predictions about Judah's future. If one wishes to be biblically sound in one's depiction of Yahweh, though, then this Yahweh is a localized, nationalist shill for Judah, not a monolithic deity for all people in all places and times. Yahweh clearly wishes brutal harm upon nations who are behaving as Judah is given permission to behave, the only difference being that Yahweh likes Judah. This is not congruent with the idea of a supernatural being who supposedly created the universe and cares about everything in it. Moreover, the proclamations are false on a number of accounts, which either means that the Israelite god lied or was mistaken, or that the Bible is not a reliable source of information. Most likely, there was no supernatural entity involved in the proclamations at all, and the human being(s) who wrote these passages was a bit off base (historically and morally), as emotionally-based human predictions often tend to be.
Biblical proclamations like these in Isaiah are obviously based on subjective personal preferences rather than objective data. Surely, some people have a feeling that continuing along the same trajectory is eventually going to be harmful or beneficial, and they just can't articulate why they think things will have a particular result. That does not amount to divine insight from some external supernatural source. The more we learn about human psychology and physiology, the more we can accurately predict what people will do in various situations; that doesn't mean that an action was foreordained or destined. It means that people are prone toward some patterns of behavior that can be scientifically analyzed. The authors of Isaiah weren't performing any sort of scientific, objective analysis, though. They were simply writing down what made sense to them and what they hoped would happen. Their recognition that empires get overthrown was strongly colored by their emotional reaction that they would enthusiastically gloat when this particular empire was overthrown. Of course, they couldn't have known that the conquerors would be any more pleasant than their current oppressors, which may suggest that the whole thing was written after Cyrus the Great swept through Babylon.
It has been said before, and it bears repeating: the problem with claiming to know what God is going to do is that such a claim is completely unfalsifiable. Of course, any "prediction" made after the fact is immediately dismissible. "I knew God would send an army to overthrow this empire," is a rather shallow statement once the army has done its slaughtering, raping, and pillaging. Even then, one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that the army showed up because of a summons from God rather than out of very human motivations. The armies that overthrew Nabonidus certainly weren't worshipers of Yahweh, and there's no evidence that they ever converted. Cyrus the Great was a respecter of various religions, and he mentioned gratitude toward the Babylonian gods specifically. Yet, nowhere do we have evidence that Cyrus acknowledged Yahweh. Announcing ahead of time that God is going to send an army to overthrow an empire is perhaps a more risky prediction, but once again, a person has no way of demonstrating that the impending army has any connection to the desires of a supernatural being. Unfalsifiable assertions are dangerous because they give people the impression that they have knowledge when what they actually have is hope. Hope is not knowledge.
We might hope that we are more important than other people. We might hope that we benefit and other people suffer. The authors of Isaiah seemed to have these kinds of hopes. We might even have the ability to make an educated guess about how to manage things so that we actually do benefit while other people suffer. What we do not have--what no person has ever had--is compelling objective evidence that a supernatural caused things to work out a particular way, or even wanted things to work out a particular way. When we assume that we have supernatural justification for our actions, we get into some dangerous territory. We might ignore the actual objective data available to us in favor of our subjective hopes and wishes.
The objective data that we have about systems of human interaction and the influence that people have on other human beings suggests that no person is actually more important than anyone else. No person deserves to benefit from the suffering of others. Morality--discerning what is right and what is wrong--is not based on identity or caste or income or title. If slaughtering an infant is immoral, it's immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the infant. If rape is immoral, it's immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the victim. If oppression and slavery are immoral, they are immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the oppressors and subjugators. Our own personal hatred does not justify immoral behavior against people who seem like Other--it doesn't even justify condoning or ignoring someone else's immoral behavior against people who seem like Other to us. The slanted ethnocentricity of biblical morality as depicted in Isaiah is simply unjustifiable.
I have proposed elsewhere that we locate divinity within rather than without--that many of the characteristics we ascribe to divinity are actually human characteristics. The problem is that sometimes the characteristics that are ascribed to a supernatural represent the very worst of human behavior. Surely, whenever a person believes that some communication with a supernatural has occurred, that person has only connected inwardly in an unfamiliar or unexpected way. Unfortunately, sometimes that inward connection is shallow. We get that we hate our circumstances and the people we blame for creating those circumstances, but we don't get that our hatred harms us more than it harms anyone else. The Babylonians weren't overthrown because the Israelites hated them or because a provincial god hated them. The Babylonians were overthrown because of human desire for power (which is largely rooted in fear), but that desire had nothing to do with the Israelite exiles. If we want to understand ourselves well, grow in emotional maturity, and be the best versions of ourselves possible, we have to reach a little beyond shallow comfort or imagined collusion with beings who don't exist.
What can we do then? If there is no external divine being and no supernaturals, we have only what we can know on which to confidently base our beliefs. We can hope for anything we like, but we are only justified in believing that which has objective evidence to back it up. Some people say that there is no objective truth, which is a polite way of never having to say that another person is wrong and a convenient way of never having to change what one believes in the face of evidence. Claiming that all truth is subjective is cowardly and dishonest. We are capable of better than that. We can know some things about the universe, about our world, about human beings, and about ourselves. More than ever before, we have access to an abundance of empirical evidence about reality. We may not always like what the evidence suggests, but if we try to base our lives on refusals of what actually is, where are the boundaries to that subjectivity? There are certainly some things about which the most honest answer must be, "I don't know." Problems arise when people decide to fill in those gaps by pretending to know something that they don't. Again, this is simply dishonest.
We can reach deeper within ourselves. We can be courageous in the face of new data that could warrant a change in our beliefs. We can examine what we believe and what we fear, and we can weigh our beliefs and fears against what we can know of objective truth. We can refuse to accept laziness and irresponsibility as excuses for not engaging in self-examination. We can be more emotionally mature in dismantling irrational fears and recognizing what we actually want. We are capable of growing into the best versions of ourselves possible, and we can transform the lives of countless others as a result. This is not a supernatural aim and it requires no divine endorsement. It is simply what is possible for willing, reasoning human beings. The question is: are you willing to be the best version of yourself possible?
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Mark 9: Being Transfigured
The transfiguration narrative found in Mark 9:1-13 is quoted or adapted by the authors of Matthew and Luke, and it is referred to by the author of 2 Peter. While this seems to be impressive evidence for the event, we have already seen that the authors of Matthew and Luke used the Gospel of Mark as a source when composing their own Jesus narratives. Also, many biblical scholars believe that the Second Epistle of Peter was written several decades after Peter's death, making it a piece of pseudepigrapha (meaning that the actual author of the work attributed it to a famous person of the past for purposes of symbolism or, less ethically, legitimacy). Since the author of 2 Peter also refers to other New Testament texts as scripture, it is quite likely that the author had access to the Gospel of Mark and/or other gospels. So, what we have is essentially a story recorded by the author of Mark and repeated by other authors.
This idea of a person shining with divine light or being otherwise transfigured is also not unique to Christianity. In the Hebrew scriptures, Moses shone with divine radiance after his meetings with Yahweh (which would certainly be a conscious connection within the context of a first century Jewish sect), and there are clear parallels in Hinduism and Buddhism, not to mention numerous tales in Greek mythology of gods turning mortals into other things and, on occasion, elevating them to divine status. There is something about the connection between our mortal reality and the divine ideal that has found its way into the stories of many cultures, so perhaps we too can find something useful in this imagery.
Some believers are content to look at this account, conclude that Jesus was divine, and smirk or shake their head with a bit of superiority at Peter's misguided suggestion to build shelters on the mountain for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. We miss something, though, if we interpret from the story that "normal" people are somehow unworthy or incapable of tapping into what we call the divine. We all want someone to say of us, "This is my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased." Some people have such a hard time hearing that from anyone in their lives that they can only hope to hear it after they die and arrive into an eternal, sacred, supernatural existence. Sometimes, we spend our time around people who don't support and encourage us. Sometimes, we fail to listen to the voices of acceptance and encouragement that actually speak into our lives. Sometimes, we make it challenging for people to acknowledge us because we fear the vulnerability of self-disclosure. Sometimes, we decide that the acknowledgment we receive doesn't count because it doesn't come from the "right" people.
Approval from people we respect and trust is important. If we base our identity on approval from other people, though, we abdicate power that is actually our own responsibility to wield. When we are children, we are understandably emotionally immature; we rely on the adults around us to understand that we are acceptable or to understand what we need to do to become acceptable. When we grow into adults, though, some of those lessons need to change if we are to become more emotionally mature. As more emotionally mature people, our understanding of ourselves as acceptable or worthy is not based on what other people think of us; it is based on what we think of ourselves. We must be able to say to ourselves, "You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased," if we are to hear it effectively from other people in our lives.
This means a couple of things. If we don't see ourselves as acceptable, it's important for us to figure out why. Is there something we want to do differently in our lives? Something for which we need to take personal responsibility? Or have we bought into a lie -- a false belief about who we are that isn't actually based in reality? What do we think it means to be worthy or acceptable? What would it take for us to be well-pleased with ourselves? If we can address these questions honestly, then we can take some steps toward being who we want to be in the world. Other people can serve as valuable sources of feedback as we identify the many ways in which we are acceptable, as mirrors to point out positive things that we might miss about ourselves.
On the other hand, people can also be mirrors to show us how we miss some opportunities for growth, too. Once we reach a point of determining that we are acceptable, we sometimes get the impression that we have to stalwartly defend that position. We don't. We are acceptable not because we are flawless, but because all people are, at their core, acceptable. Our behavior may not always be acceptable, but that's different. Behavior is not identity. Once we understand that we are -- by virtue of our humanity -- acceptable and worthy, we can address the criticisms of other people with honesty and care. So, our willingness to pronounce ourselves as beloved paves the way for us to hear both acknowledgment and criticism in a meaningful way, because we are not allowing ourselves to be defined by what other people see, but we are allowing what other people see to speak into our own sense of identity.
The other thing that the voice from the cloud said was, "Listen." We must learn to listen to ourselves, not the self-critical thoughts or the predictions of doom and failure that often go on inside our heads, but our deepest, most noble selves -- the self that lives in a deeper part of us than our accumulated lies and fears about ourselves. The transfiguration story is about the communion of the earthly with the divine. For many Christians, Jesus represents that intersection. Even throughout the history of the Christian church, however, there have been theologians who have suggested that the divinity within Jesus (as he is represented in the gospels) is no different from the divinity within every person. The difference, as proposed by some of these thinkers, is that Jesus knew it and accepted it.
Whatever we believe about an authentic historical Jesus, the Jesus presented to us in this transfiguration story is a model of self-acceptance, a person who understood who he was at his core and embraced that identity. He was not surprised to hear a voice from the cloud call him beloved, because he knew this about himself already. We might imagine that it was still encouraging and moving for him to hear, but the impression we are given is that Jesus knew himself and didn't spend much time on lies or fears about himself, other people, and the world.
If we accept that we likewise have some inner quality of fearless truth, undeniable beauty, and inspiring creativity, we too can embrace that identity and bring our most noble selves forward in the world. We can pay a little less attention to the false beliefs and fears we have developed over time and pay a little more attention to our deep guiding principles, our values, our visions of what the world can be and who we can be in it. We can become different people from the versions of ourselves that are wrapped up in whether other people approve of us or not. We can engage in different behaviors than the versions of ourselves that place artificial limitations on who we can be and what we can accomplish. Although we may not glow or sparkle, we can be, in a word, transfigured.
This idea of a person shining with divine light or being otherwise transfigured is also not unique to Christianity. In the Hebrew scriptures, Moses shone with divine radiance after his meetings with Yahweh (which would certainly be a conscious connection within the context of a first century Jewish sect), and there are clear parallels in Hinduism and Buddhism, not to mention numerous tales in Greek mythology of gods turning mortals into other things and, on occasion, elevating them to divine status. There is something about the connection between our mortal reality and the divine ideal that has found its way into the stories of many cultures, so perhaps we too can find something useful in this imagery.
Some believers are content to look at this account, conclude that Jesus was divine, and smirk or shake their head with a bit of superiority at Peter's misguided suggestion to build shelters on the mountain for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. We miss something, though, if we interpret from the story that "normal" people are somehow unworthy or incapable of tapping into what we call the divine. We all want someone to say of us, "This is my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased." Some people have such a hard time hearing that from anyone in their lives that they can only hope to hear it after they die and arrive into an eternal, sacred, supernatural existence. Sometimes, we spend our time around people who don't support and encourage us. Sometimes, we fail to listen to the voices of acceptance and encouragement that actually speak into our lives. Sometimes, we make it challenging for people to acknowledge us because we fear the vulnerability of self-disclosure. Sometimes, we decide that the acknowledgment we receive doesn't count because it doesn't come from the "right" people.
Approval from people we respect and trust is important. If we base our identity on approval from other people, though, we abdicate power that is actually our own responsibility to wield. When we are children, we are understandably emotionally immature; we rely on the adults around us to understand that we are acceptable or to understand what we need to do to become acceptable. When we grow into adults, though, some of those lessons need to change if we are to become more emotionally mature. As more emotionally mature people, our understanding of ourselves as acceptable or worthy is not based on what other people think of us; it is based on what we think of ourselves. We must be able to say to ourselves, "You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased," if we are to hear it effectively from other people in our lives.
This means a couple of things. If we don't see ourselves as acceptable, it's important for us to figure out why. Is there something we want to do differently in our lives? Something for which we need to take personal responsibility? Or have we bought into a lie -- a false belief about who we are that isn't actually based in reality? What do we think it means to be worthy or acceptable? What would it take for us to be well-pleased with ourselves? If we can address these questions honestly, then we can take some steps toward being who we want to be in the world. Other people can serve as valuable sources of feedback as we identify the many ways in which we are acceptable, as mirrors to point out positive things that we might miss about ourselves.
On the other hand, people can also be mirrors to show us how we miss some opportunities for growth, too. Once we reach a point of determining that we are acceptable, we sometimes get the impression that we have to stalwartly defend that position. We don't. We are acceptable not because we are flawless, but because all people are, at their core, acceptable. Our behavior may not always be acceptable, but that's different. Behavior is not identity. Once we understand that we are -- by virtue of our humanity -- acceptable and worthy, we can address the criticisms of other people with honesty and care. So, our willingness to pronounce ourselves as beloved paves the way for us to hear both acknowledgment and criticism in a meaningful way, because we are not allowing ourselves to be defined by what other people see, but we are allowing what other people see to speak into our own sense of identity.
The other thing that the voice from the cloud said was, "Listen." We must learn to listen to ourselves, not the self-critical thoughts or the predictions of doom and failure that often go on inside our heads, but our deepest, most noble selves -- the self that lives in a deeper part of us than our accumulated lies and fears about ourselves. The transfiguration story is about the communion of the earthly with the divine. For many Christians, Jesus represents that intersection. Even throughout the history of the Christian church, however, there have been theologians who have suggested that the divinity within Jesus (as he is represented in the gospels) is no different from the divinity within every person. The difference, as proposed by some of these thinkers, is that Jesus knew it and accepted it.
Whatever we believe about an authentic historical Jesus, the Jesus presented to us in this transfiguration story is a model of self-acceptance, a person who understood who he was at his core and embraced that identity. He was not surprised to hear a voice from the cloud call him beloved, because he knew this about himself already. We might imagine that it was still encouraging and moving for him to hear, but the impression we are given is that Jesus knew himself and didn't spend much time on lies or fears about himself, other people, and the world.
If we accept that we likewise have some inner quality of fearless truth, undeniable beauty, and inspiring creativity, we too can embrace that identity and bring our most noble selves forward in the world. We can pay a little less attention to the false beliefs and fears we have developed over time and pay a little more attention to our deep guiding principles, our values, our visions of what the world can be and who we can be in it. We can become different people from the versions of ourselves that are wrapped up in whether other people approve of us or not. We can engage in different behaviors than the versions of ourselves that place artificial limitations on who we can be and what we can accomplish. Although we may not glow or sparkle, we can be, in a word, transfigured.
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