2 Kings 8-10: Locating Moral Authority (and Considering the Concept that Everything Happens for a Reason)

It is a difficult day to write about moral authority when a part of me wants to write about mourning in the wake of the bombing at the Boston Marathon. In sticking with the next portion of the Book of Kings, however, I am hopeful that there is some pertinent value that can outlast grief, or at least stand alongside it. Here is the story from 2 Kings, in a nutshell: First, the prophet Elisha provokes Hazael to murder the king of Aram and take the throne. Then, after a short series of successions, Elisha sends an unnamed prophet to anoint Jehu, a commander in the Israelite army, as king of Israel. So, this is essentially the story of a military coup. Jehu murdered Ahaziah (the king of Judah), Joram (the king of Israel), Jezebel, 70 descendants of Ahab in Samaria, 42 relatives of Ahaziah, and an untold number of priests of Baal, whom he lured into a temple through deception. The Chronicler tells an abridged version of the story, focusing as one would expect on events in Judah.

There are a number of ways to approach this kind of story. Some would like to assume that earlier prophecies about Ahab and Jezebel were fated to come true, but it is much more likely that the entire story, prophecies included, was written long after the events transpired. We cannot even be sure if the actual historical events are accurately represented by the biblical narrative. Even if we assume that divine prophecy foretold these events, what does that suggest about the biblical God? How can it be that one of the Ten Commandments forbids killing, and yet so much killing receives God's stamp of approval? If divine commandments are that malleable, then they are essentially worthless. If murder has its exceptions, we can assume that there are times when God may actually want us to disobey other commandments as well. Since there seems not to be any clear agreement among believers as to what God wants, the whole premise of using the Bible as a moral authority falls apart. Of course, if all of the capital punishment clauses in the Hebrew Scriptures were taken literally, there wouldn't be any believers left, since just about everyone has done something that merits execution by the literal standards of the ancient Israelites.

We could approach the tale with the assumption that the actions were not approved by God (although the biblical narrative suggests otherwise), but that an omniscient deity knew what would happen, and that his prophets would potentially be privy to some of this foreknowledge. This assumption that God knows about everything that will happen, but chooses not to intervene creates a rather impotent version of the divine that is a far cry from the personal deity that most modern-day believers espouse. What use would it be to petition a deity in prayer if that deity already knows all there is to know and allows things to carry on without his influence? Moreover, what would be the use of sending a prophet to anoint a king, if a murder or military coup is predestined? It is obvious at the very least that the ancient Israelite storyteller believed that it was in God's nature to intervene and influence human behavior.

Perhaps we would like to believe instead that God understands more than people understand, and that there is a larger purpose at work than we can perceive. Believing that everything happens for a reason is at least more comforting than just thinking that God knows what will happen and chooses to sit back and watch. Thus, we could see it as acceptable that Jehu led a military coup that resulted in the murder of a large number of people, because God had a larger purpose in mind. Once again, we have the same problem that murder and deception become acceptable moral options in the right circumstances. Other biblical texts do not support this idea, but there are some for whom this is not an issue. It is only a problem if one wishes to assert that the Bible is a moral authority. If God always has a larger purpose in mind, then no actions can truly be judged by human beings. Perhaps this is a good thing at some level, since we spend far too much time and energy judging other people. It ultimately means that we cannot have a valid sense of morality for ourselves, however. Nothing can truly be deemed wrong or sinful if God condones it (or just allows it to happen) because of a larger purpose that we simply cannot grasp.

Here is another possibility for the biblical story: People behaved as people behaved for their own reasons, and someone came along after the fact and tried to make sense of it all within the context of a culture's religion. There is no need to assume that a deity was responsible for any of the events that took place in ancient Israel any more than there is a need to assume that a deity is orchestrating events today. Human beings naturally look at the events transpiring around them and try to make some sense of those events. In so doing, we often draw some conclusions that have no basis in data. Where we lack data, we do our best to fill in the gaps, and we use our beliefs about people and reality to do so. This is not a moral issue; this is just how we interact with the world around us. Morality comes from within us, not from a temperamental or inscrutable deity.

It is a comfort for some people to believe that there is a reason for everything. However, it turns out that the reason for an awful lot of things is human beings acting on fear. When we lack personal responsibility and have poorly developed means of dismantling false beliefs, we are prone to react. And when we react, we are often not reacting to reality; we react to our beliefs about reality. Our limitless creativity can work against us in this regard, inventing all sorts of possibilities that have no foundation in fact. Our morality depends on our ability and willingness to be personal responsible for honestly assessing reality, and this means being personally responsible for managing our own fear.

Everything doesn't happen for a reason. I suppose one could say that hurricanes happen because of weather systems. Fine, that does constitute a "reason" by definition. Perhaps it is better to say that there is not a larger purpose behind everything that happens. Often, the only meaning to be found in a set of circumstances is the meaning that we create. We have the capacity to respond to our experiences in a way that propels us forward and nurtures us toward greater maturity. We also have the capacity to respond to our experiences in a way that feeds into our fears and false beliefs. Either way, we are the ones that create meaning.

When an individual initiates a military coup and incites other people to murder, that individual is acting on his own fears and playing upon the fears of other people. Fear takes many forms: Greed is often based on fear that we do not (or will not) have enough. Hatred is often based on fear that other people will somehow harm us. We act on fears that we will not be understood, accepted, or respected. We act on fears that life will not go the way we want it to. All of this is understandable but unnecessary. Fear by its very nature is immoral. We cannot make wise, responsible decisions that take anyone else's well-being into consideration when we are reacting to irrational fears. We are capable of doing things differently, as individuals and as a collective.

When things do happen for a reason, people are the reason. Acts of violence happen because of people. Acts of peace happen because of people, too. Fear is easy. Fear is natural. Dismantling fear and facing difficult truths can be hard work. But if we are willing, we can be the reason that something incredibly hopeful happens. We can be the reason that something powerfully graceful happens. We can't control other people, and we don't control the weather. We can be responsible for ourselves, though. What if we were to determine that everything we do will happen for a reason? What will your reason be?

2 Kings 1-4: Being Vessels of Judgment or Vessels of Grace

The stories of Elijah and Elisha are delightful bits of folklore. These two characters have much in common with magicians or sorcerers from the legends of other cultures. Even though Israelite religion forbade witchcraft and the like, simple recontextualization places the actual power in the hands of Yahweh while the men themselves are mere subservient vessels. In 2 Kings 1-4, Elijah predicts the death of an Israelite king, kills 102 soldiers, and passes on his mantle of authentic power to Elisha before catching a ride up to Heaven in a flaming chariot. Elisha sets to work purifying water, summoning bears to eat unruly children, and performing miracles large and small. He increases apparent amounts of olive oil and bread, makes stew safe to eat, and brings a boy back from the dead -- a fairly impressive resume. One significant event is the battle between the king of Moab and the united forces of Israel, Judah, and Edom, in which Elisha proclaims that Yahweh will fill in the gaps in the planning of these three kings in order to give them victory over Moab.

These stories fall into two larger categories: stories of judgment and stories of grace. The judgment stories are obvious, but the origin of the judgment isn't always clear. Ahaziah is obviously being punished by Yahweh, but in the folktale, he doesn't die until Elijah is standing there in front of him. In the meantime, Elijah is justified in calling down fire to consume dozens of soldiers, presumably because they were in the service of a wicked king. Elisha's judgment of the jeering boys is even more clearly the prophet's own decision. The boys say something he doesn't like, so the prophet curses them (in the name of Yahweh), and bears come out of the woods and eat the boys!

Life does not work like this. Even though there are people who commit what we might consider wicked acts, we cannot expect that they will be judged and removed from the world as a result. People die. Sometimes death is a result of personal decisions, but sometimes people die for reasons completely unrelated to how they lived their lives. No matter what a person does in life, death is an eventuality, not divine punishment. Even when we choose to kill someone as a society through capital punishment or military action, these are human decisions carried out by people. While we might like to curse certain people from time to time, our curses do not actually have any power over reality, even if we curse people in the name of our favorite deity.

And let's consider that for just a moment. Elisha curses these boys in the name of his god, and as a result, bears come out of the woods and eat the boys. This is slightly different from the folktale about Elijah taming the wolf, but it still suggests that these folk heroes had influence over nature. More accurately, it suggests that the prophets had influence over Yahweh, who had power over nature. What kind of deity is this, though? When I say, "Those boys are making fun of me, God! Send some bears to eat them!" I would not expect a wise and loving deity to respond, "You got it. Two hungry bears, coming up." I would expect a wise and loving deity to respond with something more like, "They're kids. It's what they do. They'll grow into responsible members of society if you teach them to be wise instead of enforcing a brutal 'one-strike' policy. And you are getting a bit thin on top, baldy."

Obviously the ancient Israelites thought about things differently, but just because they wrote their beliefs down over two millenia ago doesn't mean that their version of divinity was in any way accurate or useful. God does not punish the wicked. The wicked punish themselves. God does not respond to curses, even if the curses are pronounced "in his name," as ridiculous as that seems. This is once again witchcraft by a different name. Even if you believe in a supreme being who watches over human beings and actively responds to prayers, there has to be some limit to your god's willingness to harm people in order for you to have meaningful participation in the world. If there existed a god who was responsive and willing to go along with our momentary emotional reactivity, humanity would no longer exist; we would have cursed one another into early graves a long time ago.

No, even if there is an external divine being trying to guide human activity, the message of our reality is that we must learn the hard lesson of seeing one another more clearly as human beings worthy of respect. Our acts of greed, violence, and oppression (and fear in all its forms) only lead to more problems. We enact our own curses on one another and ourselves by failing to manage our own fearfulness and irrational beliefs. We can lift those curses, too. It just takes commitment to doing things better. Calling down a curse is a quick solution that doesn't require any real investment of our own time and energy. Dismantling our false beliefs about ourselves and other people takes a bit more work, but the end result could be far more impressive than getting a couple of hungry bears to show up and eat our problems.

Every story in these chapters wasn't about divine retribution, though. Some of them were about divine grace. A town has bad water, and the prophet makes it potable (through magic). A widow is in danger of losing her home, and the prophet works a bit of magic and makes her olive oil jar incredibly prodigious for a short time. The prophet makes a woman conceive (we won't ask how), and when the boy dies prematurely, the prophet brings him back to life. The prophet makes poisoned food safe to eat and feeds a hundred people with a little bit of bread. He also brings prediction of God's impressive provenance for a trio of armies that rode out to battle so ill prepared that they ran out of water on the way. This was a little more tricky, and it was obviously done on God's initiative in the story, even though most of the predictions were carried out by people.

We like the idea of grace. If one cannot pay one's bills, unexpected money seems like a miracle from on high. When we think we have a scarcity and reality shows us our abundance, grace makes a lot of sense. In fact, whenever we are expecting bad things to happen and our expectations are shown to be overly pessimistic, it can seem that something outside of ourselves has intervened on our behalf. Grace is the opposite of a curse. But things we don't like still happen. Tragic and devastating things even. We are sometimes woefully unprepared for the challenges we face. Sometimes it's our own irresponsibility that does us it, and sometimes events are so unexpected that we are simply caught off guard. Children (and other people we love) die, often before we are really ready to let them go. This is sad, and it is reality. Medical professionals can sometimes pull off what seems like a miracle (although it's actually human skill), but sooner or later we have to face the death of  someone we care about. It's comforting perhaps to think that there is a god who has the power to intervene and restore a dead person to life, like the Shunammite woman's son or Lazarus coming out of the grave. Yet, can we accept those stories without wondering why no one in our lives has ever been the recipient of such grace?

Despite the rabbit trails of "miraculous" stories that people may tell, the facts are clear on the matter, and my purpose here is not to refute miracles. In fact, judgment and grace are very real. They just aren't in the hands of a supreme being outside of ourselves. Judgment and grace are human endeavors, and we carry them out every day. We know how to punish people, sometimes subtly and sometimes very directly. It may not be fire from the sky or hungry bears, but we all have our ways of letting people know that they've done something wrong and we aren't going to let them get away with it. Curses. Divine retribution. Our international conflicts are no different; they are just symptoms of the same kind of thinking on a larger scale. We can be vessels for our own violent gods of vengeance, and we often are.

We also know about grace. We know how to forgive. We know the benefits of letting go of grudges. We know how to forget about a debt owed to us. We know how to show empathy and compassion, even when we aren't getting what we want from somebody. We know how to show grace. The question is: Do we? We cannot bring back anyone from the dead, but we can have compassion for people who grieve. We cannot stop conflict in the world or decide who will "win" any given battle, but we can put a stop to conflict in our own lives. Grace. Divine blessing. We can do these things just as easily as we curse. Spewing curses just may be more our habit. We can be vessels for our own gods of peace and compassion.

The thing is, whatever you happen to believe, our true beliefs show up in our actions. Whatever we may claim to think about the real nature of humanity and divinity, our behavior tells the truth about our beliefs -- especially when we aren't being particularly intentional. If one were to suggest that every moment is an act of worship, then one would have to admit that people are often idolatrous. We want to claim belief in one thing, but our lives reflect a completely different view of reality. Whether we assert the existence of any sort of god, life makes more sense when our actions line up with what we believe about ourselves, other people, and the world we share. We choose whether we want to be vessels of retribution and punishment or vessels of peace and compassion. I would like to suggest that grace is the preferable option.

1 Kings 14-16: Using God as an Explanation Rarely Leads to Wisdom

John the Baptist was certainly not the first prophetic individual to operate outside the organized Jewish church. The Jewish scriptures reflect an evolution of people (mostly men) who boldly proclaimed truth as they saw it, under the auspices of being chosen by God as special messengers. Often, these men were spiritual advisers to kings, as was the case with Nathan, who served as David's voice of conscience. In the historical interpretations of Kings and Chronicles, other prophets begin to appear, speaking for God. For whatever reason, Yahweh seems only to select certain people as his messengers, and this special honor is rarely bestowed upon people who have positions of power and authority. The historians themselves were acting as self-appointed prophets, speaking for and defending God in a way, since they interpreted the events they recorded through the lens of God's presumed intentions. Eventually, many of the prophets who figured into Jewish history would have books dedicated to them, perhaps even written by these holy spokesmen, and these writings are best understood in light of the historical context within which they were conceived.

Some of the stories recorded as historical accounts are clearly folklore, such as the tale in 1 Kings 14 in which the prophet Ahijah predicts the death of everyone in Jeroboam's family because of God's anger. Obviously, transitions of rulership of Israel were more conflict-ridden than the passing on of the hereditary crown in Judah, but to claim that God decided certain people had to die is to miss the very human motivations for events. In fact, Baasha (whose ascension to Israel's throne is mentioned in 1 Kings 15:25-31) had all of Jeroboam's family murdered when he usurped the throne after killing Jeroboam's son, Nadab. It was an understandable decision, since it eliminated any people who could be perceived as legitimate heirs and it drastically reduced the likelihood of someone seeking vengeance for the death of a family member. Murdering Jeroboam's family was a very human act that didn't require God's involvement at all, but looking back at historical events, the writers of Kings apparently felt the need to elaborate above and beyond actual data and create a prophecy to foreshadow the murders.

This literary technique accomplishes a few things, not all of them desirable. It places accountability for all events on an untouchable deity. People are not ultimately responsible for who lives and who dies if God is the one who decides such things. Even if a man murders his next door neighbor, who can really fault him if God had already decided that his neighbor needed to die? If a general loses a battle, it is because God determined that course of events. If a foreign king invades a land, it is because God prompted him to do so. Except that the Israelites are constantly doing the very things that God does not want them to do, not in the rampant violence and warmongering, but rather in the worship of other spiritual forces. The spiritual lives of his chosen people are apparently outside of God's purview, but a large number of military and political decisions are squarely under his control.

Except when things turn out badly, as they did for Asa, king of Judah. The writer(s) of Kings look a bit more favorably upon Asa, because he was a descendant of David, and there is an obvious favoritism toward Judah in the book of Kings. The writer(s) of Chronicles also favor Judah, since the kingdom of Israel is barely mentioned, but Asa is described much less favorably. After a promising beginning, Asa is chastised for relying on a foreign government for aid rather than relying solely on God (even though God is said to be able to influence the decisions of foreign governments and the actions of their armies). At the end of his life, it is implied that Asa died from a foot condition because he sought the aid of doctors rather than the aid of God. Incidentally, his obituary in Kings is less judgmental.

It is certainly understandable that the ancient Israelites understood very little about the fallacy of false cause. When something happened in their lives, they looked for an explanation, and if an explanation was not readily apparent, the easy answer was God. Their God could be manipulated into doing good things for them if the general populace worshiped him properly, but this was historically a tough row to hoe for the Israelite people. Thus, bad things were always happening because enough people just would not fall in step with the whole monotheistic organized religion policy. In reality, religion most likely had very little to do with the things that happened to the Israelite people. It is far more probable that poor decisions, greed, and fear on the part of the Israelite leaders were largely to blame for the challenges they faced. On top of that, there were some serious empire builders emerging at the time. While the Israelites never seemed interested in widespread military conquest, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and eventually the Greeks and the Romans all took an interest in adding the Israelites and their lands to a larger imperial body. That wasn't any sort of god at work; it was people.

The Israelites wrote their histories from their own limited perspectives, just as we interpret the events of our lives in our own very limited ways. Two things which have been said before bear repeating: First, we are responsible for who we are in the circumstances of our lives. Second, we are prone to inventing supernatural causes when logical, rational causes escape us. While there may be very straightforward causes for the events and circumstances of our lives, nothing is ever as it is because a supernatural entity decided that it should be so. We cannot control everything around us, but we can have some measure of control over our responses to everything around us. When we are willing to dismiss the easy dismissive answers like, "God must want things to be this way," we can look deeper for real, meaningful answers. While those answers are not always easy to discern, we can safely start from the assumption that rational answers exist. Nothing is magic, even the things we don't understand. Our lack of knowledge or understanding does not constitute evidence of the supernatural. Said another way, our not knowing does not make something unknowable.

When we look back at history, we can invent some hidden conspiracy theory tying events together if we like. We can assume a hidden supernatural agenda at work and connect imaginary dots to form a picture we invent. Human beings are by nature creative creatures, and our propensity for creativity can sometimes lead us to some strange and irrational conclusions. When we embrace the notion that there is no supernatural hand guiding decisions and events, but rather very real, natural, logical causes for the effects we observe, we will not be disappointed. There are no events in history that cannot be explained through rational means, and there are no events in our lives that require a supernatural explanation. The challenge is one of proximity. Sometimes we are too close to the events in our lives to engage in detached inquiry. We need a starting premise that can guide us toward realistic meaningful assessment of the decisions and events of our lives without being tempted toward the easy and unprovable supernatural. One possible starting point is our own personal responsibility for who we are in the midst of our circumstances.   

Very few of us will ever be in a position to murder people and take their positions of authority, just like we do not have the occasion or need to personally send a nation's supply of gold and silver to foreign powers for protection. Still, we know the kind of people we most want to be, if we take a little time and really think about it. We know when our actions are out of sync with that vision we have of our potential. Inventing a supernatural justification or excuse will not get us any closer to being the people we most want to be. At a certain level, we have to get real about our personal responsibility in our lives. By claiming our personal responsibility, we gain the power to change the things we most want to change -- in ourselves and in the world around us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Creationism and Morality (and the fact that there is no link between the two)

Yesterday, I heard a reiteration of the creationism vs. evolution argument in which a Christian stated that the existence of morality proved the existence of God.  The assertion was that there has to be a creator because people know right from wrong, and since morality and ethics are not traits that could evolve naturally, our understanding of what is moral and ethical must come from a higher source.  There are a few problems with this argument, as you’ll see.  If anyone wants to believe in either creationism or evolution as a matter of personal faith, there is nothing that anyone can say to sway that belief.  When people propose “proofs” for their point of view, those proofs warrant scrutiny.

The most obvious flaw with this particular argument is the idea that morality and ethics are not “survival traits” for humanity.  There is some confusion between the idea of “survival of the fittest” and the concept of “might makes right.”  The theory of evolution doesn’t place value on what is best for one individual creature in the moment, it places value on what is best for the survival of a species over time.  While there are people who engage in immoral or unethical behavior, humanity cannot thrive on those principals.  Without developing some principles of how to treat one another, human beings could never have created anything in cooperation with one another.  The concept of every man for himself would not have gotten our species very far.  Survival of the species requires sacrifice on the part of the individual.

This concept bears itself out in nature as well.  There are animals who do things that are not so healthy for the individual creature, but are necessary for the survival of future generations.  The insect world is full of examples of seemingly instinctual behavior that is detrimental to a single creature and yet beneficial to a multitude.  If creatures instinctively did only what was best for a single animal, there wouldn’t be any animals left.  Nature does not reward selfishness.

Historically, human civilization has also demonstrated the necessity of moral and ethical behavior.  When oppressed by an immoral or unethical minority, the multitudes have consistently revolted and punished the oppressors.  It may seem that people in the present are getting away with horrific crimes, committing atrocities without consequence, but historically speaking, societies have only tolerated that kind of behavior for so long.  When people openly behave immorally or unethically, their society eventually punishes them.  So, even for the individual, it’s a bit of a gamble to operate outside the accepted bounds of morality and ethics.  

Not only is there nothing in the development of morality and ethics that requires the existence of a supreme being, the belief in a supreme being has historically been used to condone immorality.  It is rather convenient to be able to defer to a presumably perfect authority who just happens to agree with your world view.  Throughout history, doing what a particular god wants has often overridden the accepted rules of behavior.  We all know that killing people is immoral, except perhaps when we are killing in the name of something greater than ourselves.  Belief in God allows for “justified” exceptions to the accepted moral and ethical boundaries of a society.

If morality and ethics were dependent upon belief in God, one would think that there would be a clear dividing line between believers and non-believers.  Yet there are believers  who behave immorally and unethically, and there are non-believers who behave morally and ethically.  Not all the time, mind you, like some two-dimensional B-movie character, but often enough that one could not reliably distinguish a Creationist from an Evolutionist based merely on how their behavior stacked up against the moral and ethical standards of their society.  This shouldn’t be the case if belief in a creator was necessary for morality, although it makes perfect sense if our sense of morality and ethics (and our willingness to try to push those boundaries) was in a broader sense evolutionary.  We are all human beings, after all, even though our beliefs differ.

The bottom line is that belief in a creator has nothing to do with one’s capacity for moral and ethical behavior.  Religion is simply a great tool for enforcing moral and ethical behavior among people who are unwilling to accept personal responsibility for their own actions.  If God says to be moral and ethical, and if God will punish immoral and unethical people, then it makes sense for someone who believes in God to be moral and ethical.  Such behavior is often thoughtless, because no one has the authority to question what God wants.  It can also be selfish, because the threat of punishment often receives greater emphasis than the value of the behavior itself.

Morality and ethics make it more possible for humanity to thrive as a species.  People should respect one another because people are worthy of respect.  People lose a piece of their own humanity when they behave in a way that dehumanizes other people.  Moral and ethical behavior ultimately benefits everyone.  Claiming that a higher power has to be involved creates the illusion that the benefits of moral and ethical behavior aren’t enough in and of themselves.  When we are willing to discard the illusion, perhaps we will be better able to see the intrinsic value of relating to one another in a moral and ethical manner.  Until then, the concept of morality really has no impact on the creationism vs. evolution debate.

Numbers 25, 31: No Matter Who Commands It, No Amount of Violence Can Erase the Value of Human Life

After Balaam blessed the Israelites (several times over), the women of Moab started seducing Israelite men and enticing them to worship the Moabite god with them.  As one might imagine, this led to death and violence.  The Israelites suffered a plague sent by their god, so they first killed the offending Israelite men, which ended the plague.  Then they sent a force into Moab and slaughtered the men, women, and boys.  The young girls they kept for themselves, along with all the livestock and wealth of the Moabite people.  At least this is how the Israelites tell the story in Numbers 25 and 31.  

We'll go back to the intervening chapters, but it makes sense to put these two together because of the connected narrative.  Plus, the violence of the Israelites and their god is honestly starting to get a bit predictable and tiresome.  It is a problem though.  For those who want to promote the Bible as the infallible and inerrant word of an almighty, omniscient, and perfect divine being, it should be especially troubling.  Here's why.

The Bible claims that God is unchanging.  The New Testament actually says that Jesus  is "the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow," but the Old Testament also credits God with the quality of consistency in many passages.  Thus, if God had a specific opinion about a certain behavior thousands of years ago, it is assumed that he feels the same way today.  And that he will always feel that way.  Otherwise, there would be no predicting what God wants or thinks.  There is no actual credible conversation happening with the God of the Bible in the 21st century, so the words written in the Bible must be viewed as dependable by those who want to know about the Christian God.  Since the words are static, it must also be assumed that God's opinions and feelings are fairly static.  Or perhaps "consistent" is a less loaded word.

So, God became angry and told the Israelites that, in order to end the plague he had sent, they had to kill all of the Israelite men who had indulged in sexual immorality and worshiped foreign gods with the Moabite women.  This makes sense, because the death penalty has already been established as punishment for just about anything an Israelite could do wrong.  On top of that, they had to kill all the Moabite women these Israelite men brought back to the Israelite camp with them.  Then the plague ended.  Then, God instructs the Israelites to take revenge on the Moabites by going in and killing everybody (except the young girls who hadn't yet had sex with anyone) and claiming the spoils of the slaughter as Israelite property (including the aforementioned young girls).

If we are to believe that the Bible is a legitimate depiction of God's character, we must assume that God still thinks like this.  This is a problem.  On the surface, it entitles believers to execute anyone in their midst who disobeys the rules of the faith community.  It comes close to permitting believers to murder any outsiders who potentially lead their brethren astray, to the point of ethnic cleansing.  To top it off, it suggests that it's alright to kidnap young girls and plunder the wealth of the people you've slaughtered.  If followed explicitly, it would seem that only Jews are entitled to this kind of violence and plunder, since they are the racial and cultural heroes of the story -- the Chosen People, as it were.  But many Christians today believe that they have been "adopted" into this prestigious covenant, since the New Testament teaches that people are equal under God.  (Paul wasn't actually suggesting that people should live by Old Testament cultural standards when he wrote that, though.)

Obviously, no one thinks like this.  Except that people do.  We frequently hear about fundamentalists in various faith traditions committing deplorable acts of violence against family members or neighbors, and although we may wince and decry Islam or some other religion alien to our own, the problem is in the dehumanizing factor of fundamentalism itself.  Even when American Christians don't outwardly condone murder, some people still dehumanize "outsiders" to their belief system -- primarily the subcultures who disagree with the values of the social ultra-conservative.  When read through a particular lens, the Bible seems to support their behavior.  As it happens, the narrative of the Bible often reveals more about human failure than it reveals about the divine.

The Bible still contains some incredibly insightful messages, however.  All of the meaning placed on a father's blessing back in Genesis still has its reflection in our society.  A father's blessing doesn't have magical power because some supernatural being somehow infuses it, but our relationships with our fathers do have tremendous psychological impact on our lives -- how we see ourselves, other people, and the world.  There is value in understanding the importance of that relationship, without the trappings of divine mystery and moral absolutes.  What a father says isn't necessarily true or right just because a father says it, but it's often going to be meaningful just because a father says it.

At a certain point in our maturity, we start looking for our own answers rather than accepting without critique the words of our elders.  That process of maturing is hampered by claims that a book of scripture is infallible and unquestionable.  This belief keeps people emotionally, psychologically, and morally stunted.  It is a way of controlling people who are willing to remain thoughtless and immature, but it is no way to build a society of people who can create a better world.  How can people create anything of value in the face of a god who commands destruction of everything and everyone who threatens the status quo?

We cannot think of God like this and thrive as a society.  We cannot look at the cultural records of a group of people who habitually engage in barbaric behavior and assume that their understanding of the divine is a legitimate depiction of a perfect deity.  It even runs contrary to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament of that very same Bible.  The god who commands death to all outsiders, whether they are outsiders by choice or by genetics, doesn't have a valuable place in our world.

Not only does it limit what kind of world we can create, it hurts us as a society.  Sending people off to "fight for our freedom" has become a euphemism for the precise kind of barbarism the Israelites engaged in: kill the people who are hindering you from getting what you want, then lay claim to what they leave behind.  And yet, we don't even see the benefits of that violence as a society.  At least the Israelites divided the spoils equally and got a generation of men who were more likely to be upstanding citizens instead of running off with some foreign trollop.  In fact, over the past few years, more American soldiers have committed suicide than have died in the line of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.  It's a stark fact that points to the more subtle psychological cost of viewing the world through a dehumanizing lens.

We cannot ultimately reconcile the idea of slaughtering people with the deep knowledge that human life has value.  We do not need any scripture to tell us this, and we don't need anyone to interpret the character of any god to gain this knowledge.  It is true.  Human beings have value.  Whether they agree with you or not.  Whether they do what you want them to or not.  You cannot carelessly (or carefully) rob people of their humanity without it taking a toll on your own psyche.  A part of us cannot ignore that there is something worthy behind the eyes of every person with whom we share existence.  Perhaps when we begin to doubt that truth, it becomes easier to doubt that there is anything worthy within us, but doubt doesn't make it any less true.  Human beings have value.  You have value.  Everyone who agrees with you has value.  Everyone who disagrees with you has value.  Nothing can steal that, although some people may try.  It is an innate human quality.  We can wrestle with it.  We can deny it.  Or we can accept it and live in that truth.

Numbers 21: Cause and Effect Relationships and the Human Imagination

It's tempting to brush past some portions of the biblical narrative because they seem somewhat redundant to what has gone before.  Knowing that the archaeological record paints a different picture than the actual scriptures can also feed a dismissive attitude.  It helps to recall that the point here is to draw some spiritual truth from what is written, even if that truth is contrary to the point of the narrative.  In Numbers 21, there are some stories about how the Israelites were victorious in combat because God wanted them to be, and there is the story of the magical bronze snake.

There's a reason that we say that history is written by the victors.  Whether we're talking about one nation conquering another or someone getting fired from a job, the people who remain in control in a certain context get to decide how to frame events.  Sometimes we misremember events, and sometimes our perspective is different enough from someone else's that we interpret events completely differently.  Mixed in with that faulty memory and difference of perspective are the occasions in which we blatantly lie, usually because we believe that we need to protect ourselves somehow.  That protection may be as simple as not wanting to look foolish, but when we proclaim an altered history, we miss an opportunity to learn from the actual events.

Many times, we just become so convinced of something that we can't really see things through a different lens.  Once we completely believe that a friend has betrayed us, it's hard to shake the idea and trust that person, whether there's actually been any betrayal or not.  When we believe something, it affects the way we act and the way we see other people.  If you believe that you're ugly, you'll assume that everyone else thinks so, too.  You might be suspicious if someone asked you out on a date.  If you think you're doing a lousy job at work, you'll either assume that everyone else knows it, or you'll try to hide it.  When every comment that a co-worker makes gets filtered through that lens, it's tough to have honest and productive relationships.  If you believe that a supreme being is completely in charge of all that happens, you'll look at events differently than someone who assumes that there is a scientific explanation for everything.

A big problem with unexamined beliefs is that there is no challenge that can threaten them.  We assume that we are right, and we manage to justify everything that happens through a belief that may or may not reflect reality.  The Israelites had a belief in a god that was so powerful and vindictive that he sent plagues against anyone who did things he didn't like, but this god was also a mighty ally to those who were willing to obey.  Therefore, every good thing that happened in the life of the Israelite community was considered to be something that God caused to happen, and everything bad that happened in the life of the Israelite community was viewed as evidence of their failure to be obedient.  Later on in the Old Testament, this becomes a real concern when the Israelites are conquered and the temple is destroyed. 

For now, the Israelites trust God and their enemies fall before them, "enemies" being the word used for people who had occupied the land for generations, but whom God didn't like.  It's easy to write that history.  "God leads his people to victory against all who oppose them" makes a great headline.  Except that there are still complaints being made to Moses about the quality of the food and the lack of water.  So, there is a plague of venomous snakes that starts killing off the Israelites.  It's easy to write that headline, too.  "Complain and die."  But God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that anyone who gets bitten can look at this snake idol and be spared.  Bizarre.  The writer of Hebrews uses this scene as a clever allegorical connection to the cross, but the whole scene is a bit strange.  Golden calves are bad, but bronze healing serpents are fine.

Cause and effect are not always what we imagine them to be.  Do we believe that poison can be alleviated by looking at a particular object?  Some would say, "Well, if God wanted it to work, then it would work."  It's primitive witchcraft, but it is justified because the belief in the community is strong enough to overlook the disconnect.  Flipping the calendar forward to the 21st century, we aren't just looking back at a relatively unsophisticated people and their primitive beliefs.  We are in a world of colliding beliefs that are unexamined and basically unchallengeable. There is an incredible number of people of varying faiths who believe that their god sanctions violence against other people.  We are essentially living in a technologically advanced era with a primitive worldview when we accept violence against the people our god doesn't like.  And let's face it, we assume that our god doesn't like the people we don't like.

If we assume that a supreme being is in control of all that happens, we remove personal responsibility from the picture.  Except that we still want to convince other people to behave the way we think God wants them to behave.  If God is in control of everything, isn't he completely in control of everything we might want to complain about?  And if we're complaining about how God is handling things, aren't we at all afraid that he will send venomous serpents after us?  If God is in complete control, then God is in control of abortion, homosexuality, suicide bombers, who gets killed in the wars that God has obviously sanctioned, unemployment, the distribution or concentration of wealth, ... everything.  There is nothing to complain about.

When we start to look for other causes for the effects that we see around us, however, the simplistic answer of "God said so" becomes replaced by a complex set of circumstances that aren't always easy to address.  Rather than tell people God disapproves of their behavior and expect that to change the course of their lives, when we set aside the simplistic belief that God is the cause for every effect, we may find that there are actual human beings with needs and beliefs of their own, and that we have some opportunity to have a significant impact.  It's not easy to make a real difference in someone's life while you're looking down your nose and pointing a judgmental finger at them.  There really are people who set aside simple answers that eradicate personal responsibility, and in seeking the actual causes for the things that disappoint them about the world, create something truly meaningful. 

The good news is that we all have the power to examine our beliefs and decide if they make sense or not.  We can keep convincing ourselves that there's a supernatural reason why looking at a bronze serpent can cure snakebites, or we can reevaluate what we believe based on the evidence around us.  Even evidence is subject to our beliefs, though.  As a friend of mine often says, "Statistics don't lie... but you can lie with statistics."  What we actually know may be completely different from what we choose to assume.  We all have beliefs, and many of those beliefs are nothing more than assumptions we've chosen.  Recognizing that we have a choice in what assumptions we're alright with is where wisdom comes into the picture.

What do you believe?  Not just in the big picture, "what's the meaning of it all?" kind of beliefs.  What do you believe about yourself?  About the people around you?  Are some of your beliefs in conflict with other beliefs?  Are you happy with the assumptions you're making?  You have choices.

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.