Reclaiming and Refocusing a Sense of Adoration

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.

Isaiah 30: The Hazardous Influence of Anxiety

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 Kings 19: The Still, Small Voice of Your Self

Obvious folklore qualities aside, 1 Kings 19 expresses a captivating spiritual idea: that truth and guidance appear in stillness more easily than in bombastic activity. The surrounding material also has a few other worthwhile points to consider.

Elijah is on the run (after he committed, or at least oversaw, the mass murder of 850 people), and long-term survival seems unlikely to him. He wants to give up. He wants to just die, but he's not really out of options. Even when things seem desperate in the moment, Elijah has choices. We will rarely be on the run after killing hundreds of people for believing something different from us, and yet there are times when we want to give up. We aren't likely to have angels come to us and provide food and encouragement, though. If we are fortunate, we may have friends stand in for Elijah's angel, but the decision to keep going is always ours to make. Elijah accomplishes quite a bit after this episode of despair. In this sense, our lives are no different. On the other side of despair, more satisfying options always await us. Even amid our desperation, our presence can still do some good in the world, even if we aren't in a position to see it.

The portion of this chapter just after Elijah senses the gentle whisper obviously "foretells" historical events in a way that affirms for the Jewish audience Yahweh's control over all things, including leadership of other peoples. Elijah's detached attitude during the calling of his successor Elisha is also notable; his confidence that he doesn't need to exert control over Elisha reflects an admirable quality of leadership. Before expounding on the still, small voice, it also bears pointing out the similarities between the angel coming to feed Elijah and the temptation stories of Jesus. Likewise, Elisha's call is reflected in a brief gospel story of would-be disciples who want to return home before joining Jesus. Unlike Elijah's calm detachment, Jesus proclaims, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." Perhaps Elijah was able to tell that Elisha just needed to take care of a couple of things so he wouldn't be tempted to "look back." Or maybe it's just a story.

Regarding this business about stillness, though, there have been volumes written from an abundance of different perspectives. It is a very necessary and important topic that stands in stark contrast to the way many of us go about our lives. There are those who want to see God at work in every mudslide, hurricane, and tsunami, punishing humanity for one thing or another. There are also those who, even in the twenty-first century, expect divine guidance to come in some blatant, over-the-top, undeniable package like a lightning bolt or an earthquake. Some people alive today, misinterpreting Carl Jung, encourage looking for synchronicity at work around us -- "coincidences" that are linked meaningfully to reveal some deeper truth to us if we are willing to see it. This could presumably be somewhat quieter than an earthquake or a fire, but it still amounts to looking for signs outside of ourselves for guidance. 

While we might receive guidance from other people, and while some situations might offer opportunities for us to do something meaningful, there is nothing outside of ourselves guiding us into anything -- not God, not the Universe, not "Life," not our ancestors, not fairies, not aliens. The meaning that we find in circumstances comes from within ourselves. We read the meanings into the "synchronicities" of our lives. That isn't a bad thing at all; it helps us take notice of what's important to us in lives that are increasingly busy with surface-level activity. But it comes from within ourselves, not someone trying to send us secret messages. If it seems like our ideas are coming from outside of our own brains, it is  possibly because we spend so little time actually listening to ourselves -- considering what makes sense to us, what we really value, who we most want to be, what we yearn for in life. This is why stillness is so important.

There are many earthquake-sized voices in our society. Everywhere we turn, we can find someone screaming about what we must do in order to protect ourselves against all sorts of things. Everywhere we turn, it seems that someone is trying to convince us of something. It's a wonder we can ever think for ourselves with all the racket we have grown to tolerate. As loud and passionate as those voices may be, however, there is often very little meaning or value in all of the noise. It is very difficult to find truth in the throes of anxiety, and our culture does not inherently promote thoughtful response that comes from an inner stillness. Instead, we are told to act quickly, to fear being left out or left behind, to be impulsive, to defend our rights (which are always somehow under direct attack by something). If we are to be thoughtful individuals who know themselves and live with integrity, we must be responsible for our own stillness.

In stillness, we can find which threads to pull to unravel our anxieties -- the lies and assumptions that hold together our irrational fears about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. In stillness, we can dig beneath our surface level activities and recognize what matters most to us. In stillness, we can acknowledge what we are doing that we absolutely hate, just because we have convinced ourselves that we must. When we realize that there has been some perceived synchronicity or message from Life or God, we can look into ourselves and discern what our subconscious is trying to bring into focus. The meaning we place on coincidences has value -- profound value, since that meaning is coming from within our own psyches. If we are perceiving something as divine guidance, some part of ourselves is trying to make that "message" important. In stillness, we can ask ourselves why.

Without stillness, we ignore the things that matter most to us in order to do the things that seem most urgent. Without stillness, we act in ways that are incongruous with the people we claim to be, and we may not even notice it. Without stillness, we react impulsively to people and situations that challenge us, with no regard for the long-term consequences. In thoughtful stillness, we can tap into ourselves and discover who we are and what we believe apart from the anxiety around us. Through making time for a bit of stillness in our lives, we can be our own best representatives in the world. We can come closer to living like our authentic selves. Stillness brings us closer to integrity, if we allow it.

So, this snippet of Jewish folklore is revealing. If we want to search for something to call divine, we won't find it in the flashy, loud, anxiety-producing racket of the world; we will find it in stillness. It's not always easy to see in other people (or in ourselves) the beauty and creativity and value and dignity that defines us as human beings. It's not always easy to see that there are things in our lives more valuable than money, more important than convincing people to think like us, more compelling and awe-inspiring than our fears. Stillness helps us see ourselves more clearly, so that we can see other people and the world around us more clearly.

2 Samuel 6-10: Beliefs Are Worth Examining

The story of Yahweh's promise that David's throne would be established forever was nearly as important to the ancient Israelites as the legendary agreement made between Moses and Yahweh. After the kingdom of Israel split, the promise to David was understandably more important to Judah, the Israelite kingdom that kept the temple and the throne. Although David wanted to build a great temple to the Yahweh, it is his son Solomon who gets credit for that achievement in the book of Samuel. By the time the book of Chronicles was written, however, David was seen as having a much greater role in the temple planning. David's legendary status for the culture led the author(s) to leave out his human mistakes and failings that were recorded in Samuel. Incidentally, 1 Chronicles records the promise of Davidic rule in chapter 17 more or less identically to the version in 2 Samuel.

The challenge for the Israelites was the same as it is for many people today: Once you take a stand on a particular belief, you look at the world through that lens. If the belief and the world seem to be in conflict, we try to figure out why. Typically, we don't want to give up our belief (because then we would have to admit that we were wrong about something), and we can't change the world. So, we invent some reason that the conflict might exist. The ancient Israelites eventually had to invent reasons why their kingdom was overthrown and they were taken into exile. Some people decided that the promise to David was not unconditional, and that the nation's unfaithfulness toward their cultural religion had landed them in hot water. Others decided that the promise to David meant that restoration was imminent. Later, some people in the Christian sect would trace the lineage of Jesus back to David, thus establishing Jesus as the fulfillment of that promise of eternal rule.

History is a strange and liquid creature. We do not report every detail when we recount history; we concentrate on those events that seem to form a pattern. We look at events that seem significant, either because of their impact on the world or because of their place in a sequence of events. We learn about the inventors of significant machines or processes, but we do not learn about the inventor of the spring or specialized wing nut that allowed the larger machine to function. We remember the names of assassins or generals, the dates of battles and victories, and when we delve into the systems and subcultures to gain a clear understanding of what led up to significant events, we know what we're looking for. We seek to understand the cause-and-effect relationships that make sense of history. Some people recording the history of the ancient Israelites saw certain cause-and-effect chains, while other people had a different perspective. In the biblical narrative, both are preserved to a certain extent, but they are every bit a product of their culture.

Israelite historians -- at least the ones that wrote anything that wound up in the Bible -- always traced their cause-and-effect chains back to God. When God was pleased, he allowed their country to prosper. When God was angry, he allowed foreign powers to destroy their cities. We have the same kind of thinkers in our world today. "I'm wealthy, and therefore God must want me to be prosperous while others struggle." "I'm sick or injured, so God must want me to suffer for some reason." Hurricanes become messages from God rather than natural events. Elections are interpreted as punishment or blessing rather than democratic process. Our personal lives become mysterious chains of cause-and-effect that are beyond our control if God is seen as the one moving the pieces on the board, while we are left to figure out why. When we look back at history, whether it is our own personal history or the history of a larger community, are we honestly seeing rational chains of events? Or are we crediting supernatural forces with some intelligent purpose in the course of history that we can only observe?

In the biblical narrative, when David hears the promise from Yahweh for the first time, it is delivered by the prophet Nathan. There haven't been a lot of prophets in the narrative before this point, but they become more important in the generations that follow David. Prophets in the Bible speak for God. They call people to accountability, and they make predictions based on the signs of the times. Sometimes their prognostications are intended to tell people to shape up, and sometimes they offer messages of hope. Ancient peoples relied upon prophets because they didn't believe that just anyone could have direct access to the divine. Of course, people didn't always listen to the prophets' messages. It all depended on how much the prophet was challenging something the people believed.

Many people today have very adamant beliefs. Some of these are religious beliefs, but most people wind up with a whole catalog of beliefs about themselves, other people, life in general, the government, the economy, and on and on. Most people are not well practiced at examining those beliefs when something in reality doesn't line up with their beliefs, however. It's easier on some level to concoct another auxiliary belief to explain any discrepancies between our beliefs and reality. We might wind up with an enormous pile of beliefs all designed to support one thing about which we've decided to dig in our heels, never examining how reasonable or beneficial those beliefs are. Our entire view of reality -- including our view of ourselves -- may be clouded by a mass of beliefs we've never really examined.

The divine is somewhere underneath that pile of beliefs. If there is any guidance to be had from the divine, we have to clear away some of the irrationalities to which we've grown accustomed and make sure that our beliefs make sense. No prophet can come along and tell you what the divine wants from you. No one knows what the divine is doing in someone else's life. When anyone claims to know what God wants for somebody else's life, that person is lying, whether they realize it or not. The prophets in our lives might point us toward the divine within us. Our prophets can hold us accountable to the agreements we have made. But people can not know what the divine intends for anyone but themselves. Whenever someone claims to speak for God, all they are expressing is their own personal values and desires. They are speaking from within their own big pile of unexamined and unquestioned beliefs, describing their own clouded view of reality as if their perspective is the only possible way to see the world. It is an understandable perspective. After all, their view is honestly the only possible way for them to see the world in that moment.

Here is a view of reality for you to test against your own beliefs:

People matter.
What we do has an impact on other people, and since people matter, what we do matters.
And if what we do matters, then it's worth being conscious of what we are doing.
It's worth being conscious of what we are doing because the people we touch matter.

And if people matter, then we matter.
If we matter, then we are worth our own care and attention.
What we do is informed by what we believe,
so our beliefs are worth some care and attention as well.
If we take the time to examine what we believe and consider the impact of what we do,
we stand a better chance of living the kinds of lives we want to live,
because if people matter -- if we matter -- then it only makes sense to live like people matter.

If we insist on believing and doing things that devalue ourselves or other people,
why?
What purpose does it serve in our lives to believe that people don't matter?
What purpose does it serve in our lives to believe that we don't matter?
Are we alright with that?

I believe that there is no intelligent supernatural being orchestrating events in history or making promises for the future. I believe that our stories as individuals and as a people are accounts of human success and failure, of intentional and unintentional human actions that have consequences. Our histories and our futures are stories about us, not merely stories that we witness from the sidelines. And since all of our stories are human stories about people, I must conclude that people matter. I cannot do otherwise. For me, this is truth. Against this truth, all of my beliefs can be weighed, all of my actions evaluated.

What is your truth? Really? Do your beliefs and actions reflect that truth? Are you happy with that? Does it lead you to the life you most want to live? To the world you most want to create?

1 Samuel 1-3: Our Divine Calling

The two-volume book of Samuel presents a history of the three legendary kings who ruled over a united Israelite monarchy: Saul, David, and Solomon.  In the story, Samuel is a prophet, both in the sense of proclaiming God's message and in the sense of being a seer.  He is directly involved in placing both Saul and David on the throne.  Before we get to the kings themselves, however, the mythical story of Samuel is recounted.  Born as a result of fervent prayer, Samuel is raised by a priest, Eli, whose sons are an embarrassment to their holy stations.  Even Eli seems to be so far removed from sincere and authentic ministry that he has a difficult time telling the difference between drunkenness and prayer.  At least he eventually recognizes that Samuel is hearing a calling from the Lord and not just dreaming, otherwise the story may have been much shorter.

In Samuel's origin story, his dedication is contrasted to the behavior of Eli's sons, who are self-serving and indulgent to the extreme.  For some, this out-of-control self-indulgence is the image conjured when they consider looking within themselves to find Truth.  If everyone did that, they believe, the world would collapse into selfish violence and disregard for others, because everyone would believe whatever they liked.  This is an understandable fear, especially when some prominent belief systems teach that people are rotten and broken and need some outside supernatural assistance just to hold society together.  And yet, a quick glance at the world suggests that people already twist prominent belief systems to suit their own self-interest.  Against the teachings of their own holy books, they justify violence, bigotry, and oppression as it suits them.  What keeps people from self-indulgence at the expense of other people is not an imposed set of rules, because those rules are easily twisted and broken.

Although it's easy to look at the caricatures of Eli's sons and see them as vaudeville-style villains, it's important to remember that all self-indulgence, violence, bigotry, and oppression is based ultimately on fear.  Eli's sons are no different from a lot of people today, afraid that they will suffer if they don't take what they want by force.  They abuse their position as a way of addressing their fears about their lives and their identities.  The pattern of bullying in which they engage is a symptom of profound, unaddressed fear that has taken over their beliefs and runs the majority of their lives.  We don't know what that fear may have been, but based on our own internal dialogue, we could probably guess a great portion of it.

That fear is not what people find when they look within themselves deep enough to find Truth, Beauty, and Creativity.  Although fear does come from within, it is based on untruths or half-truths.  Fear always seems perfectly reasonable, but when we examine many of our fears, we find that they are based on assumptions.  Fears are almost always given power by unverifiable beliefs that we have developed over a long period of time.  Looking within and basing our lives on the Truth we find there involves dismantling those fears and getting beneath them to something deeper, something that is not threatening, something that connects us to other people rather than fueling animosity. 

Developing this level of spiritual maturity is not necessarily an easy thing, even for people who live their lives doing holy work, like Eli's sons.  It seems easier to react to our fears and build beliefs that look like protective concrete walls with barbed wire and booby traps.  We feel protected for the moment because our fears have been addressed, but fear never shuts up.  We can never be insulated or guarded enough to be completely safe and secure from irrational fears.  All of our efforts just strengthen the power of our fear and create patterns of behavior that cement those irrational beliefs firmly in place.  Reacting to our fears expends a phenomenal amount of time and energy.

Getting to the heart of who we are, at the deepest core of our being, may also take considerable time and energy.  But the results are very different.  Instead of ultimately ineffectual protection against irrational fears, by recognizing and living in accordance with the deep Truth within us, we create connection with other people.  We have the opportunity to turn our creativity toward more meaningful pursuits, building the lives we most want rather than the walls that we think will make us feel safe in the moment.  Through reaching beneath the fears and false beliefs, we have the resources to build ourselves into the people we most want to be rather than the people we think we must be in the face of all that seems to threaten us.  The process still requires some effort and dedication, but in reality, we are exerting that effort every day; the choice is merely a matter of what we are building.

Eli's sons built for themselves lives that seemed secure and happy.  Samuel built a life of dedication to something deeper, something more meaningful, from a very early age.  In the story, he is called by a voice he doesn't recognize.  At first, Eli doesn't recognize what Samuel is experiencing, either.  The divine reaches out to Samuel, and for the biblical writers, this was most easily depicted as an externalized calling from a deity who was enthroned upon the ark of the covenant.  When we think of the divine calling us today, we have a much richer symbolic palette from which we can draw.  Although we may envision it in myriad different ways, it is the character of the divine -- that deep Truth, Beauty, and Creativity -- that calls us from beyond all of the irrational fears and false beliefs we have built up in its way.

Make no mistake, the divine does not call to a select few who have drawn some spiritual lottery, even though it may seem like only a select few respond earnestly to the call.  Within all of us, there calls the voice of our divine self, not in any audible sense, but as an internalized spiritual awareness that tugs at us.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, this calling from within is continuous and relentless.  Our divine self does not give up.  It calls us to see other people through compassionate eyes, so that we might recognize the value inherent in everyone we meet.  It calls us to see our impact on the world, to be purposeful about creating something meaningful.  It calls us to see ourselves as beautiful and capable.  It calls us to fearless connection.  It calls us to unashamed love.

Judges 17-21: A Glimpse at a People without Respect

The final chapters of Judges relate tales of the days when "Israel had no king and everyone did as they saw fit."  It isn't a pretty picture.  There is no hero in these tales, just Israelites behaving badly.  People make idols out of silver, they ask God questions by basically rolling dice, they mistreat strangers who visit their town, they send provocative messages by carving up people, they solve moral conflicts through war, and they kidnap women so that the immoral might have wives.  The Israelites in this series of tales have somehow lost a sense of their humanity. 

Some readers may take this as evidence of the need for God, seeing this deplorable behavior as a sign that the Israelites had fallen away.  Some of the Israelites seek guidance from God, though, even though their faith practices are shallow.  The message may be that people need a strong spiritual leader to keep them from falling back into barbarism.  This is like blaming all of a country's problems on the president.  One person cannot bear the burden of moral responsibility that rightfully belongs with each individual.  A possible lesson from this bizarre series of folktales is that a healthy society is built upon personal responsibility and the practice of accountability.

We have already discussed many times that people are worthy of respect, that every individual holds within the divine characteristics of truth, beauty, and creativity.  There is no one requiring us to treat ourselves or other people according to this perspective, though.  It is up to us to maintain this way of seeing ourselves and the world around us.  We choose in every moment whether we will see the divinity in another person or not.  We decide whether we will hold ourselves as more or less valuable than the people around us instead of seeing people eye to eye.  No leader or deity can force us to treat ourselves or other people with respect.  That's on us as individuals.

But what happens when we fall short of that ideal?  Are we to assume that we will always be completely honest with ourselves and that we will be fully willing to address the fears that lead us to occasionally miss the mark?  Sometimes we might be blind to our own behavior, not to mention the hidden reasons we might decide to act in a way that runs contrary to what we believe.  For the Israelite community in these final chapters of Judges, the real problem is that unhealthy behaviors have gone on for so long that no one can really say, "There's something wrong with this picture."  In our own lives, we don't need to wait until a proverbial body part shows up on our doorstep to be open to the message that something is amiss.

None of us lives as an island, perfectly aware of all that we do and all of the reasons for it, our beliefs and our actions impeccably synchronized.  From time to time, we all think and do things that are off the mark from what we strive for as individuals.  In addition to a practice of self-reflection, we also need the mirror of other people's perceptions to direct us toward aspects of ourselves we might overlook -- the blind spots we have about ourselves.  Of course, we can't always take everything other people say about us at face value.  Other people are dealing with their own dramas and fears, and the judgments that come out of someone's mouth may actually be more about them than about us.  It's easier to hear feedback from people we trust, people who can speak the truth in love, people who understand what we are aiming for in our lives.

So, the personal responsibility is once more on us to gather around us people who will hold us accountable to the things we claim about ourselves.  With self-examination and the feedback of trusted mirrors, we stand a much better chance of treating ourselves and other people like worthwhile human beings.  The answer is not in making sacrifices to something we make from melted down silver, and we aren't going to get meaningful answers from casting lots or dice or a Magic 8-Ball.  These things are just excuses we use to blame something external for the decisions we've already made in our minds.  Perhaps if the Israelites had created a culture in which personal responsibility and accountability were expected, they wouldn't have gone so far off the rails into the realms of indulgence, permissiveness, and impulsiveness.

Ultimately, we already know what we need to know.  It's just a matter of putting it into practice more and more often.  We know whether or not we are treating ourselves with respect.  We know whether we are willing to see the divine when we look at another human being.  When we are honest with ourselves, we know how we really want to live.  Listening to meaningful feedback from people we trust is one tool that can help us create that life.

Numbers 16-17: The Endless Pursuit of Preserving Power and the Art of Interpreting Divinations

Moses didn't grow up in a democracy.  He also didn't grow up in expansive, politically unaffiliated pastureland.  Moses grew up in Egypt, where powerful families passed localized absolute political power down from one generation to the next.  His example of governing or leading people was rather one-sided, unless one counts the example of his father-in-law, about which we know almost nothing.  The nice thing about absolute rulership is that one never needs to learn conflict management or communication skills.  Everyone else is simply expected to fall in line behind your orders.  If they don't, bad things will happen to them.  We see the frustration that brings about time and time again in the story of Moses' leadership, not least in Numbers 16, which records two back-to-back challenges to Moses' authority over the Israelites with a combined death toll close to 15,000 people.

One could draw a few different messages from this.  Assuming that we accept the suggestion that God killed all those people because they challenged his chosen leader, we can interpolate a great many things about how believers should engage in the political spectrum.  It would appear that God is in favor of granting absolute political power to a single individual, and it would appear that challenging the person God places in charge is sinful to the point of being deadly.  We can assume that people who happen to be in the position of dictator were placed there because God wanted them to be, so revolution is an ungodly endeavor, even if the person in charge is doing a less than admirable job.

This actually fits with the biblical depiction of the "Pharaoh" character as well.  God never suggests that the Israelites should overthrow him, or effect regime change through an assassination attempt.  Pharaoh’s role as ruler of his little patch of Egypt was never contested or portrayed as unjust.  And it is with that example in mind that the governance of the Israelites emerges as an unassailable dictatorship.  As every gangster film ever made has taught us, it's difficult to hang on to that kind of power.  When the Bible tells us that 14,700 people died from a plague because they complained that Moses had just killed 250 people for complaining, God is the one who is clearly responsible for the deaths.  According to the story, Moses didn't really kill anyone.  But placing that sort of behavior on God has some other dangerous implications.

Why are some people so convinced that God is in favor of democracy?  He supposedly had the chance to tell Moses exactly how to do things, and he apparently didn't mention democracy once.  Even so, how can some Christians in the United States rail against the president and cry for impeachment when they know that God kills people for that sort of thing?  If a divine power appoints leaders that are not to be criticized, why are some believers so convinced that God wants them to be involved in politics at all?  And if God punishes people with death for complaining against the behavior of their leader, why do some Christians get so up in arms when a dictator abuses his power somewhere in the world?

There is something within us that recognizes that we are all connected as human beings.  We call it human rights, and we refer to human dignity and such, but whatever terminology we use, there is something within us that is offended by a politically powerful person hurting less politically powerful people.  We know that there is something wrong with genocide.  We know that there is something wrong with testing weapons on innocents.  We have started to become a bit jaded by this point, but a part of us knows that there is something wrong with using violence to solve our problems.  Even people who vehemently defend preemptive aggression know in some part of themselves that there's something wrong with that course of action.

We don't just intuitively know that there's something wrong with using violence to preserve or challenge power.  We also have piles of historical evidence to support that belief.  From the aforementioned gangster movies to gang violence in urban America to drug cartels south of the border to Middle Eastern warlords that have been at each other’s throats for millennia, violence begets violence.  This is not a new idea.  This is nothing original.  And yet, we are often quick to promote the easy and reactive solution to the world's problems.

It's interesting to note that the people who were challenging Moses' authority in Numbers 16 weren't out for blood.  They wanted to be given equal consideration, and they wanted leadership that would benefit the Israelites beyond just scraping up unidentifiable "dew flakes" from the desert generation after generation.  And when the first complainers got killed, the mob that rose up in their defense wasn't trying to knock Moses completely down off his pharonic pedestal.  They were just saying, "We don't approve of you causing those people's deaths."  I guess the example of divine violence in response to those complaints is what gives many believers today the impression that violence is a holy ideal.  It isn't.

People don't always want to do what they know is right, though.  Even when we recognize the endless and futile vendetta cycles that violence provokes, we still want to be violent.  Even when we realize that some complaints about our leadership have merit, we still want to defend ourselves rather than admit that we've made a mistake.  Sometimes we want permission to make decisions that go against the deepest truths that we know.  Sometimes we just want permission to be thoughtless – to make a choice and then not be held responsible for the consequences.  And so we perform little acts of divination.

For Moses and Aaron, it was a matter of whose incense would be lit or whose staff would blossom.  For us today, we may interpret divine approval from getting a particular piece of mail just after a significant phone conversation, turning on the radio just in time to hear something important, or running into someone at a neighborhood supermarket.  I know some Christians who literally believe that God will provide answers to their personal problems if they just let their Bible fall open randomly.  Hitting all green lights on your way across town does not mean that some supernatural overseer approves of your destination.  When the man in your television set looks out into your eyes and points, he's not literally speaking to you personally.  And if he is, it's a clever trick.

Whether someone is dealing out tarot cards, casting bones, reading tea leaves, or treating scripture like a fortune cookie, divinations work because of what we already know.  We already know what we believe is right in a given circumstance, and we already know what we actually want.  We use divinations of various kinds to give us permission not to think too hard about it when a conflict arises between what we believe and what we want in the moment.  When we actually take the time to consider what we believe and what we want, we stand a pretty good chance of learning something about ourselves.  We might reconsider our beliefs, or they might be refined a bit.  We might realize that what we want is superficial or petty compared to beliefs that are very important to us.  Either way, we grow a bit when we actually work out those conflicts instead of relying on some kind of divination to give us an easy answer.

These chapters of the book of Numbers reveal some prevalent tendencies we slip into very easily.  We want to save face.  When someone challenges us, our impulse is to defend ourselves.  And when we experience self-doubt or internal conflict, we often want easy third-party permission instead of in-depth self examination.  We know that these things don't ultimately serve us, but they are starting point behaviors from which we can grow.  Imagine a leader who could handle the criticism of 250 people without resorting to having the earth swallow them up.  Imagine a leader who could admit that he exercised poor judgment in a particular instance instead of letting thousands of people die to keep his position of power intact.  That would be an impressive leader.  And imagine what life would be like if more people took a moment or two to think about their actions instead of letting random meaningless symbols determine things on their behalf.  It wouldn't mean that people always made wise choices, but it would certainly encourage personal responsibility for those choices.

As with all change, it starts with you.
Keep growing.

Numbers 12-14: Trusting in Divine Inspiration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Numbers 6: Dedicating Oneself to a Purpose and Finding Blessing Within

Honestly, I was ready to slip right past commenting on Numbers 6.  Truth be told, I am anxious to get further along toward the New Testament, since it has a lot more to do with healthy human interaction and less to do with preserving Israelite culture.  As I've made fairly clear, the Old Testament scriptures we've seen thus far seem to be about controlling a population and using the concept of an external, infallible, almighty intelligence to enforce that control.  There are also some profound truths that inescapably peer out from behind the very human fears that fill the biblical narrative.

Case in point: the Nazirites.  Nazirites were special people in the Israelite community.  Whereas many people were given tasks and roles by appointment, Nazirites made a personal choice to dedicate themselves.  It had nothing to do with bloodline or having their names appear on some sacred list, the Nazirites were simply those people who willingly committed themselves to a purpose.  Of course, their purpose was to serve their concept of God, but the choice was entirely theirs to make.

After a special preparatory period, the Nazirites were inducted with a special ceremony, marking their dedication with a meaningful and memorable experience.  They also bore outward signs of their purposefulness, with the very obvious shaving of their heads.  Through their behavior, their experience, and their appearance, they were outwardly and inwardly committed to what they considered to be a meaningful purpose.  Why don't we adopt similar practices in our own lives?  What prevents us from committing ourselves as intentionally to something profoundly meaningful?

The very first step in dedicating oneself is verbal declaration.  Intentionally announcing your purpose out loud to other people is incredibly powerful.  It will either solidify the underlying intention or expose it as a passing fancy.  Perhaps we avoid this because we are afraid of what it will look like to other people if we fail or go back on that intention later on.  Perhaps we don't want to risk ridicule if other people think our purposefulness is misguided.  Those fears are empty.  They are flimsy excuses that threaten to keep us from stepping forward into something that could be our life work.  State your purpose, out loud and often.

For the Nazirites, there was a period of preparation before their induction.  While your preparation may not pertain to diet or purification, there is still value in setting oneself up for success.  If your purpose is truly valuable, it is worth taking time to prepare yourself.  One doesn't set out to climb a mountain without a fair bit of physical preparation.  You can't expect to start a new dietary plan without cleaning out your refrigerator and your cabinets first.  It's the same with any purposeful endeavor.  Determine what preparations you need to make and allow yourself the time to be intentional in your approach

The Nazirites also had a ceremony that symbolically took them across the threshold of their commitment.  While this doesn't need to be a public affair, rituals are powerful tools that are underutilized by most of us.  When your purpose has been declared with intention and you have prepared yourself thoughtfully, create for yourself a rite of passage that carries you into the realm of purposefulness.  You could invite close friends to be a part of this, or it may be just for you, but make it a positive and memorable symbol of your commitment and your focus will be more easily maintained.

One can find any number of resources about accomplishing goals and living purposefully.  Some of them are valuable and some leave a lot to be desired.  The greatest advantage any person has in accomplishing any goal is their own personal passion about what they're doing.  If you dedicate your time and energy toward something you are passionate about, the rest of these elements are simply enhancements to that passion.  The Nazirite model is simply one way to pursue that passion with clear and focused dedication.  Declare your intention out loud (to other people), prepare yourself thoughtfully, and acknowledge your purpose with some positive and memorable ceremony.     

The end of Numbers 6 holds a blessing with which many Christians are familiar.  It also works if one recognizes that the seat of divinity lies within.  It can be a challenge at first to trust an internal voice, but the divine self has a character very different from the fearful and abusive self-talk we all carry around.  The divine guidance from within possesses those distinctive qualities of deep truth, beauty, and creativity.  When we allow ourselves to tap into that resource, we are in a way blessing ourselves.

That divine self is the part within us that truly wants us to succeed, that finds ways to keep us on our purposeful path.  It is the part of ourselves that shines from within, that sees someone beautiful when we look intentionally in the mirror.  It is the part of us that is willing to forgive ourselves when we get off track, and the inner sense of peacefulness and reassurance that is always available to us when we are willing to receive it.  We have these things inside of us.  We don't always accept that part of ourselves, but it is crucial for us to acknowledge this reserve of strength and graciousness and peace when we dedicate ourselves to a meaningful purpose.  Our noble passions are worth our dedication.

Being Chosen: The Incompatibility of Predestination and Free Will

The remainder of the book of Exodus (chapters 35 through 40) goes into meticulous detail about the construction of the tabernacle and the lampstand and the container for the stone tablets God rewrote for Moses -- everything that the Israelites considered necessary to create a sacred place where sacrifices could be offered and worship could take place.  Since we've already discussed the importance of consciously choosing what we are going to make "sacred" in our lives, these chapters do not offer much more spiritual meat.  Of course, they would be great resources if you happen to have some gemstones and precious metals lying around and you're looking for a project.  

There is one short paragraph at the end of Exodus 34 in which Moses is described as glowing after he has been in the presence of the divine.  It may be hard to imagine what that looked like, since no one these days seems to get close enough to God to come away from the experience with radiation poisoning, but there are people who visibly exude authority, power, even spiritual depth. Some of this may be good acting, but some people genuinely "shine" when they walk into a room.  They attract attention because of the intensity of their presence.  It's much easier to imagine Moses radiating an intimidating sense of authority and power, even spiritual understanding that surpassed the average Israelite.  After all, Moses was chosen by God.

This may be an opportunity to compare the integrity of radiating from the divine within us with the fleetingness of radiating because we got close to some external source of divine power.  However, I believe that by this point the premise is clear that what we call "divine" is a part of ourselves that we often keep hidden and of which we may even be unaware.  The divine is something we can discover and develop within ourselves rather than an external intelligence who acts to aid or hinder us.  The idea of Moses being "chosen" does provide an opportunity to address one of the logical fallacies about God many people hold to be true, namely the connected concepts of omniscience and predestination.  This topic has been addressed by many others, but that's no reason to avoid it here.

Not all people who claim the label "Christian" believe in predestination, and there are some people who believe in a form of predestination and don't consider themselves to be religious at all.  They call it something else, like Fate, but they mean more or less the same thing, that some force has already chosen a path for our lives.  There is a prevalent belief that if one lives according to this predetermined plan, then one will be happy and successful, and if one goes against this plan, it leads to misery.  In the sense of the Christian concept of God, this idea of predestination springs doctrinally from two sources.  The first is the belief that God is omniscient, or has complete knowledge of everything.  The second source is a handful of scriptures which specifically mention predestination.  We'll take a look at the actual biblical passages first.

Although there are many scriptures which suggest that trusting the guidance of the divine is better than ignoring it, there aren't many scriptures that specifically say that everyone's path has been determined in advance by a divine being.  One oft-quoted passage comes from the first chapter Jeremiah: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. Taken in context, it is clear that this is intended to credential Jeremiah specifically, not as a universal message to everybody.  As a part of his final words to his disciples, Jesus is quoted in the book of John as saying, "You did not choose me, but I have chosen you."  Again, in the context of that phrase, it's clear he's talking specifically to the men gathered around him at the time.  So, it's important to recognize the context of biblical passages, even if one chooses to believe that the Bible is completely infallible.  

The clearest support for the idea of predestination comes from the letters of Paul and Peter, who make mention of the concept that before time began, God already had chosen those who would believe in him and have salvation.  Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Romans (8:29-30):

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son . . . And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.  

In his letter to the Ephesians, he wrote:

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

Other mentions of predestination by Paul and Peter are along the same lines.  God supposedly selected at least some people ahead of time to be called into religious service.

Again, I want to be very clear that this perspective is not one I espouse as an atheist.  It's one of those concepts that I found difficult to accept even when I considered myself to be a "believer," and there are many different interpretations for the concept even among Christians.  While there are some ways to interpret this that make some theological sense, let's start at the other extreme.  There are some who reason that if God knows all things, then God knows the future of every person.  This would mean that God already knew, before you were born, what job you would have, who you would marry, what your kids would be like, what kind of relationship you would have with your parents, who you would vote for in every election, and, of course, whether you would go to Heaven or Hell when you die.  By this reasoning, God already knew that I would be writing these words and that you would be reading them, before time began.  This perspective eliminates any illusion of personal choice or freedom.  Not only does it make the idea of "saving" or "redeeming" anyone ridiculous, it eradicates the entire concept of personal responsibility.

"Wait a minute," you say, "just because God knows what I'm going to choose doesn't mean I don't have a choice!"  You can't have it both ways.  If God is infallible and knows all things perfectly -- past, present, and future -- then no person has any choice about anything.  If God knows what will happen, every decision has already been determined in advance.  This can be comforting on a certain level.  Whether your job is crappy or sublime, it isn't because of anything you did -- it was foreordained by God.  No matter what kind of spouse or parent you are, there's nothing you could possibly do to change -- it was all determined in advance.  This also means that there's no point in getting bent out of shape about other people's behavior or decisions, since God's foreknowledge prevented them from doing anything differently.  When someone bombs an embassy, drives drunk, drowns a child, overdoses on drugs, or flies a plane into a skyscraper, God knew all along that they would do that, and therefore they had no real choice in the matter.  If they had a choice, then God would have been wrong, and a perfectly omniscient God cannot be wrong.

If this is true, then God also knows far in advance who will believe in him and who won't.  He knows who will go to church for a spiritual experience and who will use religious institutions as fiefdoms of personal power.  He knows who will become Buddhist, who will be Wiccan, and who won't be anything at all.  You can't change what God knows.  There is no point in trying to evangelize if God already knows who will go to Heaven and who will go to Hell.  If God is perfectly omniscient, there is no real hope for the hopeless, and there is nothing that the "chosen" can do wrong.  It's great if you consider yourself to be one of the chosen, I suppose.  There is simply no way that this definition of predestination can coexist with the concept of free will.

So maybe God's omniscience is not a past-present-future kind of thing.  Maybe God knows all things that can be known.  So, people still have freedom of choice in every moment, but as soon as the decision is made, God knows.  People always have the opportunity to change course, to reconsider their beliefs and their actions, and thus free will is restored while God's omniscience is preserved.  But what about the idea of predestination?  If God has "chosen" some people, predestined an elect group out of the whole of humanity, then there would still seem to be some limit to human choice in spiritual matters.  You can choose where you're going to work and whom you're going to marry, but God has already decided where you'll spend eternity?  Any level of predestination suggests a certain amount of futility on the part of those not "chosen" while justifying a certain amount of superiority among those who consider themselves to be "chosen."

If you are going to choose to believe in an eternal soul which can be rewarded or punished, and if you are going to choose to believe in a benevolent external intelligence who oversees spiritual matters, there are not many definitions of "predestination" that make sense in the context of a larger belief system.  Incidentally, some Christian theologians conclude that God has predestined everyone for salvation.  Some Christian ministers have been ostracized for preaching a "gospel of inclusion," teaching that all people are destined for Heaven.  It can be comforting to believe that God is working things out according to a plan, that when tragedy strikes, there is still someone in control of everything who loves you.  I would suggest that it's still important to examine how that belief plays out in terms of taking personal responsibility for your decisions and the way that you treat other people.  When concepts like predestination become tools for justifying one's bad behavior or dehumanizing other people, though, they become disconnected from anything divine.  I am confident that our eventual examination of the biblical character of Jesus will bear out that assertion.

Moses was considered to be the divinely-chosen leader for the Israelites.  The leaders of the early church also viewed their positions as divine appointments.  There are plenty of people today who believe that God has "called" them into positions of authority, and who can argue with that?  People in churches do not always view their pastors with the same level of respect, but there is literally no way to refute the claim that a divine power is behind the scenes working to place specific people in positions of authority.  There is also no way to definitively prove that such activity is taking place.  It comes down to a matter of belief without conclusive evidence. 

From my perspective, it makes more sense to conclude that every person embodies divinity, that every person is worthy of my respect, and that I am likewise worthy of respect.  I don't believe in fate or predestination, but I do believe that there is an inner drive that gravitates toward the things that will nurture and fulfill me.  Part of me wrestles with that pull, because the things that I am drawn toward do not always line up neatly with societal expectations or lessons I learned in childhood.  Sometimes I am afraid of where I will end up if I follow that inner drive.  But when I am willing to acknowledge that guidance from within and quiet the obstinate chatter of my fears and the perceived judgment of the world around me, it can look very much like a path is laid out before me.  It is a path of my own design, determined by my own passions and abilities. 

If someone wants to believe that those passions and abilities were bestowed upon me by some outside source, I gain nothing from arguing against that belief.  My own understanding of who I am simply doesn't require any external source.  I am confident that anyone -- regardless of faith tradition or spiritual beliefs -- who fearlessly seeks that guidance from deep within will eventually find it.  I would only qualify that with the assertion that the character of the divine within us embodies an awareness that all people have value and are worthy of respect, ourselves included.  It isn't predestination.  It is always a choice.  And it is, in the deepest sense, true. 

Evaluating the Power of Prayer: Is It Magic, Meaningless, or Personally Transformative?

A couple of times in the story of Isaac and Rebekah, the practice of prayer comes up. It will continue to come up frequently in scripture, obviously, so a basic understanding of prayer seems appropriate at this point. Even among religious people, there are different beliefs about the value of prayer. Some people claim that prayer can heal disease, mend broken relationships, provide guidance or comfort. However, there are also medical studies which suggest that people have more post-surgery complications if they know that strangers are praying for them. Whatever the case, any understanding of prayer has to take into consideration the belief system in which it originates.

Most Christians would agree that the God they believe in is omniscient, omnipotent, and loving and compassionate beyond human capability. In light of this view of an external divine being, prayer can have only a few possible interpretations. Sincere prayer can only be magic, meaningless, or solely valuable to the person doing the praying. Public prayer can also be used by people who want to convey the appearance of righteousness and holiness for political reasons, and prayers can be used by people who want an excuse for certain actions or decisions. These distortions are less than sincere, however, and this is an important distinction to make. It goes without saying that the practice of using prayer to manipulate other people’s opinions or perceptions is despicable and abusive.

But why would sincere, effective prayer be equated with magic? Any time people believe that they can have a supernatural effect on the world around them, this is the practice of magic, witchcraft, or alchemy. If God can be convinced to take action by a person’s persistence or faith, this actually places power in the hands of the believer rather than a deity. It is really no different from deciding that if the right color candles are lit and the right incantation spoken, you can make another person fall in love with you, or recover from an illness. Of course, one may believe that God is a loving and all-powerful being who simply waits for the actions of believers in order to have an impact in the world. There’s nothing to prevent a person from believing that the prayers of the faithful can move God to action. But a person who believes in that particular flavor of witchcraft or magic should at least recognize it for what it is.

If there is an all-knowing, loving deity who cares for people, then it follows that such a being would do what it was willing to do, whether people asked for it or not. If God intended to heal someone, it would seem that the person would get healed whether anyone prayed for it or not. So, if prayers are not magic, and if God is completely powerful and loving, then there’s actually no real value to prayer. God will do what God will do, whether believers request it or not. Otherwise, people are constantly at the mercy of those who choose to pray rather than a divine power.

None of this changes when one considers the idea of prayers for guidance. In witchcraft terms, this would be called divination. People have also used astrological charts, tea leaves, Tarot cards, bones, gut instinct, self-help books, and any number of other resources for guidance. It’s natural to want to know what the right answer is before making a decision. But if one can coax an answer from God by fervent prayer, this is really no different from sorcery. Likewise, if God wishes to put a believer’s feet on a particular path, wouldn’t he do so with or without a specific request for guidance? There is nothing loving or compassionate about playing games with people’s fates based on whether they ask the right questions.

There is another option, however. Whether any sort of divine being exists or acts in the world, prayer can alter the perspective and the attitude of the person doing the praying. When people take the time to quiet their minds and sincerely align their attitudes with their values, there can be a profound personal impact. One may not be able to cure cancer with an attitude adjustment, but a person can certainly find peace and guidance from a still moment of contemplation or prayer. There is also the matter of gratitude to be considered. Recognizing and expressing one’s gratitude can be an extraordinary way to align one’s actions and intentions with deeply held values.

The objection may be voiced that prayer must be directed outward, by definition. How can one seek guidance if there is no higher power to do the guiding? How can one express free-floating gratitude without someone to be grateful to? I honestly don’t see the problem with turning inward for guidance, or in acknowledging gratitude without a deity to address. Just as happiness and anger and sadness are emotions that don’t always have discretely defined objects, gratitude is an emotion. One can be thankful without addressing the thankfulness to anyone in particular. And I believe that many people already know the answers to their important decisions, although we don’t always trust ourselves. We want some sort of reassurance, especially when our ideas seem out of sync with mainstream thought. Realizing one’s capability to guide oneself can empower a person to take action even when there are no blatant signs from above to rely on.

In fact, taking action is perhaps the most effective way to ensure that a prayer will be fulfilled. There is perhaps a temptation to wait for an external deity to do something. This temptation is fueled by a perception of an external divine that is wiser than any person and capable of producing miracles with the same ease that human beings breathe. Without an illusory deity to grant wishes, it falls to the individual to act in accord with a sincere prayer. Hopefully, such action will not only be in accord with an ephemeral wish, but also in alignment with deeply held values. So often, people can be their own answer to prayer, if they are only willing to act in accord with what they want and bring forth the power of creation that dwells within every person.

Relying on Signs from God and the Abdication of Personal Responsibility

Much of the book of Genesis is about cultural history: where places are located and the origins of their names, the lines of successions of various places’ rulers, and the lineage of the forefathers of the Jewish people. Then there are stories about those forefathers, some of which seem like they could have been written by a sensationalist modern-day screen writer. Although some people see only encouraging spiritual lessons in these stories, the tales contain some rather disturbing content as well. Taking things in bite-sized chronological chunks doesn’t necessarily give a complete picture of what’s going on with these people, so the next few segments will dwell on a span of chapters from Genesis 24–36.

After Sarah dies, Abraham takes on another wife, Keturah (presumably a local Canaanite girl), and she is young enough to bear him six more children. The descendants of these children became the Letushites, Leummites, and the Midianites. Although the Letushites and the Leummites are not mentioned again, the Midanites thrive as nomadic, polytheistic shepherds until Moses raises up an army to destroy them. The atrocities of that hostility are not enough to put the Midianites down, though, because they return later on to be a thorn in Israel’s side during Gideon’s time.

Abraham apparently did not have the same kind of close or instructive relationship with the sons of Keturah as he did with his son Isaac. Still, before he died, Abraham gave considerable gifts to the children of his concubines (plural) and sent them away, leaving Isaac with whatever was left. But Abraham didn’t think a Canaanite girl would be good enough for his son, so he sent his right-hand man back to the land of Abraham’s people to get a wife for Isaac. The servant set out for Nahor, the town founded by Abraham’s brother, where he met Rebekah, the grand-daughter of Nahor (which means she’s Abraham’s grand-neice, and Isaac’s first cousin, once removed).

When the servant sees Rebekah, he knows that this is the woman for Isaac. He claims that this is because he prayed to God and defined the precise signs by which he wanted God to guide him. The precise signs were the first girl who offered him water to drink and water for his camels, and to make it easy on God, the servant stood next to a spring. This level of hospitality was not uncommon for the region and the time, so the servant was basically making it easy on himself. When he saw Rebekah, he also rushed to intercept her, doing his part to help things along.

Rebekah’s brother, Laban (who will show his true colors when Isaac’s son Jacob comes a-courting), and her mother, Bethuel, approve of the marriage and send Rebekah off to join Isaac in Canaan. The story suggests that they approve because of the servant’s tale about praying to God and then seeing Rebekah, and her display of hospitality in offering water to him and his camels. While it is impossible to know what goes on in the mind of every modern-day believer, it seems suspect to dictate exactly how a god should reveal the right decision. If I want to go out looking for a wife, I could say, “God, send me a sign by having the woman you want me to marry smile back when I smile at her.” I could then go out and smile at any attractive woman I encounter, and voila! God has spoken.

On the other hand, if I am enjoying bachelor life, I could say, “God, send me a sign by having the woman you want me to marry ride up on a grizzly bear, juggling artichokes and singing Mack the Knife.” I could then sit in my house all day and determine that God doesn’t want me to marry anyone. I might make such demands based on my level of interest in the result, or as a way of acting out a self-destructive drama. Either way, the decisions I make determine the likelihood that I will get what I want out of the situation. Attributing things to God serves the twofold purpose of getting human beings off the hook and making the decision indisputable.

The response to a prayer of Isaac shows a different side of the perceived external divine, however. Rebekah was childless, so Isaac prayed to God that she would have children. His prayer was answered. Rebekah got pregnant, but she had a feeling that something was wrong. God told her that the twins she was carrying would establish nations which would be at odds with each other, and that the older would serve the younger. Some kind of cosmic practical joke? “I will answer your prayer for children by cursing you with children who have problems getting along with each other.”

Well, these kinds of prophecies are easy to make after the fact. There are many women in the world who get pregnant without praying for it, and there are many women in the world who don’t get pregnant despite fervent prayer. Just as prayer doesn’t make the right bride appear, prayer doesn’t make conception occur. If it did, that would be like magic. And while it’s convenient to blame a divine prophecy for the behavior of siblings, the story reveals plenty of reasons why Rebekah’s twins, Jacob and Esau, would have a difficult time getting along with each other, not the least of which was parental favoritism which led to bullying and deception. We surely can’t lay all of that on the shoulders of an external divine being.

It’s convenient to place control of all that is good or bad in the hands of an external, all-powerful being. When we like something that has happened to us, the external divine can serve as an object for our gratitude. When we don’t like what has happened to us, we can blame an external divine instead of our own choices, and if we are fearful enough of that external divine being, we will accept the consequences without too much complaining. After all, “everything is just as God wants it to be.”

The problem, of course (as has been stated before), is that people make decisions and choices that impact their lives and the lives of people around them. Sometimes, it would be easier just to be honest with ourselves about what we want. After a long journey, if you are willing to ask the first attractive girl you see to marry your master’s son, just be honest about it. Gut reactions and personal desires are going to determine those things anyway. Just be honest with yourself. If you want to go out and get a job, make the decision to go out and do everything within your power to get it. If you just think that you should be working, out of a sense of obligation, be honest that your heart isn’t really in the search. Figure out what is standing in your way, and be honest about what you want. The results of being blatantly honest with oneself can be profound and life-altering. Attributing every outcome to something outside of oneself is a form of victimhood, and it can lead to seeing oneself as weak and incapable. Most people are strong enough and capable enough to be honest and take responsibility for their own actions.

Accepting a realistic level of personal responsibility for our circumstances is healthy, as is recognizing what aspects of our lives are simply out of our control. Just because something is out of our spectrum of control, however, doesn’t mean that it is meant to be or willed by an omniscient being. Sometimes, things just are. There’s no divine purpose behind a bad relationship, or a toxic work environment, or problems with the construction of a house, or the death of a family member in a car wreck. One can potentially reap spiritual benefits from any circumstance, but that again comes down to personal choice.