Mark 16: The Persistence of Belief

This is how the gospel of Mark ends in the oldest manuscripts:

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 They had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?” 4 When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. 6 But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Someone didn't think that was a very good ending, however, so at some later point, this was added: "And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterward Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation."

The last chapter of Mark was eventually extended to include more spectacular reports, alluding to an exorcism story about Mary Magdalene that doesn't otherwise make an appearance in the Bible, snake handling, faith healing, and the ability of believers to consume poison without being harmed. As frustrating as I find some Christians to be on occasion, I cannot advocate drinking poison or playing with cottonmouths. The absence of any credibly documented cases of faith healing and the continued deaths of pastors who dance with rattlesnakes (the most recent case being February of this year in Kentucky) should be enough to suggest that the "longer ending" of Mark may not be a helpful prescription of religious practice.

Of course, the authors who continued to add to the gospel of Mark were doing what we all tend to do. When the report seemed unsatisfactory, they "improved" it so that it matched what they wanted to believe. When reality doesn't match what we want it to be, we often attempt to explain things -- or even manipulate things -- so that what we want to believe still seems plausible. If I really want to believe that aliens visit me every night and implant cosmic secrets in my kidneys, it doesn't matter if you videotape night after night of me sleeping undisturbed. I'll embellish my belief to grant that the aliens must be invisible, or at least undetectable by video technology. When we really want to believe in something, we are often undeterred by reality.

This can be amusing if we keep to reading horoscopes, tossing salt over our shoulders, and wearing our lucky socks when we play softball. Our beliefs that ignore evidence sometimes lead us to harm ourselves and other people however. Relying on a supernatural to heal illnesses instead of relying on competent medical professionals is one way that beliefs cause harm every day in the United States. Another type of evidence-resistance belief is the prejudice that we hold toward people of different religions, ethnicities, or sexualities. Once we are committed to the belief that Muslims all hate America, no amount of evidence to the contrary (which exists in abundance, by the way) will convince us otherwise. We have to be willing for our beliefs to evolve in order for our view of the world to be brought into greater alignment with what is actually so. We have to be willing for legitimate evidence to weigh more heavily than what we imagine might well be the case. Moreover, we have to be sharp enough to be willing to distinguish legitimate evidence from propaganda.

Throughout this spring, I participated in a course on Christian ethics. What I concluded was that there is no such thing as explicitly "Christian" ethics. We know how people should be treated, and whether we are Atheist, Humanist, Jewish, Wiccan, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Sikh, or otherwise, our basic understanding of what constitutes ethical behavior is more or less consistent. We can and do invent plenty of reasons to justify unethical behavior, but we generally know what we ought to do even when we defiantly choose to do something else. Christians may have a special reason for choosing to be ethical, but other groups of people have equally compelling different reasons. No one has cornered the market on ethical behavior.

There is another important reason I've concluded that there is no such thing as "Christian" ethics, at least as the concept was portrayed in the course I took. Christians are not universally consistently ethical. If Christianity in and of itself was enough to make a person more ethical, the past two thousand years would be filled with evidence that Christian people were more ethical than non-Christian people. It simply isn't so. Christian people are as prone to be ethical (or unethical) as people of any other belief system. Christianity isn't the determining factor; it doesn't really impact one's ability to be ethical. From a Christian perspective, however, it would seem to be very easy to dismiss all evidence that contradicts a special claim to ethical or moral identity. Theologians invent terms like "anonymous Christian" for those people who do not accept the premises of Christianity, yet still behave in a way that is seen to be congruent with the example of Jesus. Yet, it isn't that they are "anonymous Christians;" they are simply human beings choosing to live by an ethical standard that is actually congruent with every major religion (and some minor ones, too).

Nearly every theologian studied in this Christian ethics course expressed some version of the same fallacy: "One cannot be ethical unless one is Christian." "One cannot love others without recognizing Jesus as lord." "One cannot care about the well-being of one's community without believing in the sovereignty of the Christian God." "One cannot be moral without accepting the supernatural premises of Christianity." "One cannot be fully human and also be Atheist." When these are the premises that are hammered into a Christian's brain, it's no wonder so many people are scared for the future of their country and their world if there are more and more non-believers.

The fact of the matter is that believers behave as unethically as non-believers, and that non-believers behave as ethically as believers. When we embellish our beliefs in order to stay rooted in familiar assertions despite ample evidence that we need to shift our beliefs a bit, we live apart from reality. We try to engage the world from a false premise. That's a frustrating endeavor no matter who you are. Reality doesn't change just because you believe it ought to be different. All of this effort to make the stories we want to tell seem more true actually prevents us from doing the things that could create the kind of world we most want to live in. Willfully ignoring or misinterpreting reality is not going to get us any closer to a best possible version of ourselves.

Wanting people to believe what we believe is a plea for safety. We want to be right, because being wrong feels bad. We don't want to feel shame; we don't want to be humiliated. Being right -- insisting that we are right no matter what evidence suggests -- allows us to avoid shame and humiliation. The problem is that we are always going to be wrong about something. There is no shame in that. Being wrong means we get to learn and grow into someone better than the person we were when we woke up this morning. Listening to other people's beliefs and listening to their challenges to our beliefs helps us sharpen our perspectives and be more in line with what actually is. We can't create a better world if we are imagining the world to be a completely different place than what it actually is.

And we all want to contribute to a better world. Deep down inside, beneath whatever fears and lies we have cultivated over the course of our lives, we all want pretty much the same thing. We don't have to do dangerous and stupid things to prove that we are right. We can choose to acknowledge that all the people around us are potential co-creators rather than threats. What we believe about people matters, because it determines how we're going to treat them. What we believe about ourselves matters, because it determines how we're going to engage in life. Whether there was an actual resurrection doesn't matter. Whether seven demons inhabited Mary Magdalene doesn't matter. When we try to debate those sorts of things, no one gains any ground. If we are willing to recognize that our beliefs -- precious though they may be to us -- are just one way of looking at the world, we might be open to seeing the merits of other perspectives. This helps us see more clearly, and it helps us express our own perspectives more clearly, without demanding agreement. When we can do that, we can have genuine partnership with other human beings. Isn't that worth more than insisting on something that we have no way of proving or demonstrating?

I will say one more thing about the Christian ethics course. If everyone who claimed to believe that the example of Jesus was worth following actually lived by the example of Jesus, then there might be something the theologians could point to. It would be really something if every Humanist practiced seeing the humanity in everyone, if every Christian practiced seeing Christ in everyone, if every Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Wiccan, and on down the line practiced seeing the divine in everyone. If that were how we allowed our particular belief systems to define how we engage in human relationships, the world would be a different (better) place. And we'd all actually be seeing the same thing when we look at one another: Sacred human beings. People just like us in the ways that matter most. 

Mark 12: Trick Questions and Clever Answers

So much of what passes for theological debate involves asking insincere trick questions or providing ambiguous clever answers. Such debate rarely increases understanding, but the smugness of participants in such debates seems to thrive on trick questions and clever (albeit unhelpful) answers. It is perhaps passages like the challenges to Jesus in the gospel narratives that have convinced people that the right clever answers can eventually win over a skeptic, although psychological research has demonstrated that debate only increases the persistence of one's belief, whether or not that belief is warranted. In Mark 12, the authors write of three questions that were allegedly intended to trick Jesus into saying something that would get him arrested. Of course, since Jesus is the hero of the story, the authors write his character as more clever than anyone who questions him. The authors of Matthew include these stories as a unit, almost verbatim as they appear in Mark, while the authors of Luke excerpt the third challenge to Jesus, appropriating it as an introduction to the parable of the good Samaritan (which does not appear in the gospel of Mark). We'll get to the good Samaritan story another time.

The first trick question in this passage deals with taxes. Roman taxes were debated quite a bit in Jewish society, mostly because the Jews saw the Romans as foreign occupiers and didn't want to give them anything. There are various teachings about taxes in the Talmud, and Jewish teachers were not of one mind. In the gospel stories, words put in Jesus' mouth are often very similar to the words of prominent Jewish teachers, primarily those who agreed with the views of Hillel the Elder, a well-known Jewish teacher who lived a generation before Jesus' supposed lifetime. From the perspective of these teachers, worrying about taxes was often seen as a distraction from living the kind of life one was supposed to live. The authors of Mark seem to echo this, although the answer given by the character of Jesus is far from clear.

This business about giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and giving to God what belongs to God is so subject to interpretation that it resolves nothing at all. It is the sort of answer that essentially says, "make up your own mind about the matter," but has all the appearance of a wise and clever answer. Many people seem to enjoy drawing the conclusion that everything belongs to God, but then they continue to live their lives as though they have rights of ownership. Some people imagine that they have been granted "stewardship" over a portion of what belongs to God, which entitles them to act as surrogate owners of a piece of God's property while he isn't using it. All of this, of course, is being taken completely out of the context of first century society, in which private ownership wasn't even a consideration. Kings and lords owned land and everything on it; the people were granted rights to live and work on the king's or lord's property. One cannot directly translate the lessons of a feudal society into an economic system that hinges on the concept of private ownership.

If we approach the concept with the idea that gods don't need money or property, not least of all because they are the products of human imagination, the answer to such questions becomes much easier to address. Pretending that there is a supernatural who must be taken into consideration with all human decisions is often just an excuse for people to claim entitlements that otherwise seem completely without foundation. Should one pay taxes? Does one benefit at all from the services those taxes fund? What would be the most equitable, just, and compassionate response to the needs of one's society? Is one prepared to suffer the legally enforceable penalties for non-payment of taxes? These questions may evoke differences of opinion, but they lead toward a more warranted response to taxation than questions based on subjectively interpreted religious constructs.

The second challenge is also an obvious trick question, pertaining to myths about the afterlife. One might think that the challenge was about Levirate marriage, but if the gospel writers were concerned about that issue, they would have had Jesus comment on that instead of on the conditions of the afterlife. Lots of people still make a considerable amount of money publishing books and speaking about an afterlife. It's very convenient, since no one can really contradict what anyone claims about afterlife, since any claims come out of the human imagination. Jesus' answer plays into the mythology of the day because the gospel authors bought into the mythology of the day.

In the twenty-first century, we wouldn't ask, "How can Pegasus fly, being the size of a normal horse?" If someone were to ask such a question, though, we would have a choice. We could say, "Pegasus has lighter bones than a regular horse, so he doesn't weigh as much as a normal horse." Or we could say, "There's no such thing as a flying horse. That's a story that came out of human imagination. Don't worry about how the horse flies, just enjoy the story for what it is." When it comes to questions about the afterlife, we seem much more inclined to make up answers that sounds good, even though we have no evidence or justification outside of our own imaginations. It's certainly a marketable option. If we were more honest, we might say, "There's no such thing as an afterlife. When we die, we're done. But if there were an afterlife, I would hope for it to be like _________." Instead, like the gospel writers, we pretend to know something that we don't know.

This doesn't seem like such a bad thing on the surface. Believing in an afterlife gives people comfort and hope, right? Well, sort of. If your heat goes out in the dead of winter and the temperature stays way below freezing for weeks on end, you might be comforted by the idea that the heat will come back on (or even that a supernatural will protect you from the cold). Being comforted and hopeful doesn't bring the heat back on, though. If you believe in a pleasant afterlife, maybe you will be comforted and hopeful enough that you won't mind freezing to death. That seems delusional, but there are an awful lot of people who spend an awful lot of money trying to communicate with people who have died, or who resist opportunities to improve their well-being because they believe that their afterlife will be filled with rewards for the hardships they face in this life. If comfort and hope are based on imaginary claims, then the comfort and hope are insubstantial and potentially harmful.

The gospel writers do indicate something important in this exchange, however. The idea that the Jewish god was not the god of the dead but of the living can have some traction beyond satisfying this trick question about mythology. Our deepest, most noble selves are not adversaries; deep down inside, we are not lifeless. While we are sometimes our own worst enemies because of the false beliefs we develop about ourselves, other people, and the world around us, at our core, we know what makes life satisfying. We hold the truths about our passions and we know what the best possible versions of ourselves would look like. When we turn inward, we are not looking to discover all the things we have done wrong or catalog regrets and failures. Connection with ourselves places us within a context of growth, of becoming, of abundant life. We don't need to be bolstered by mythology to create the lives we most want -- to develop into the best versions of ourselves possible.

When we consider the third challenge in this passage, the gospel writers have thrown an easy pitch. It was a major theme of Hillel the Elder (and the rabbis that followed his school of thought) that the whole of the Torah could be expressed in what we know as the "golden rule." So, this idea that the greatest commandments were to love Yahweh and to love others was a prominent ethic in first century Judaism. If this question had actually been asked of a historical Jesus, perhaps it was merely a way of asking, "Does what you teach agree with what I believe?" Perhaps all of these challenges were originally along those lines. The end result is that we get an impression that our loving actions are much more important than our religious practices.

Recontextualizing this portion of the passage to accommodate the understanding that there are no supernaturals for us to love or worship, and that any characteristics we call "divine" are human characteristics that all people possess, we wind up with something like this:

One man approached, overhearing the subject matter of their conversation, and seeing that the teacher was wise, he asked him, “What's the most important thing?” The teacher answered, “The most important thing is, ‘Pay attention: at your core, you are capable, beautiful, and creative; love yourself enough to connect with your deepest, most noble self and become the best possible version of yourself.’ The second most important thing is this, ‘Love other people with that same depth of connection, and see the capability, beauty, and inspiration in everyone else.’ There is nothing more important than these.” 

The question about the mythical messiah being David's son is a bit anticlimactic, but it seems to belong to this passage, at least as the passage was edited and rewritten over generations before it became the document we read today. It's a nonsense question, based on a poetic expression in a psalm. The psalms are as much poetry as anything else, and their language is poetic language. When we read that Yeats had a fire in his head, or that a trout he caught turned into a girl, or that he was going to pluck the silver apples of the moon and the golden apples of the sun, we don't take all of that literally. We don't believe that Yeats' head actually contained a fire, or that he actually caught a trout that actually turned into a girl. We don't believe that the moon and the sun have silver and gold apples. Such questions would miss the point of the poetic language. The same is true of the psalms. Perhaps that was the point of the gospel authors: all of these challenges are as silly as trying to pick apart the poetic language of a psalm and draw some sort of logical conclusion.

If there is anything to be gleaned from this passage, it is that we can get distracted by theoretical debates that have no foundation in reality, and in so doing, we can miss the more important things: Being the best versions of ourselves possible and empowering the people with whom we share this planet to do the same. The most important thing we can contribute to the world is to know ourselves well enough to recognize what we are really passionate about, to nurture our own ability to bring our own selves forward, and to create the kind of world we most want to live in. Incidentally, this also involves dismantling the fears and the false beliefs about ourselves and other people that keep us from connecting with our deepest, most noble selves. The second most important thing we can contribute to the world is to be present in the lives of the people around us. To see them as human beings of inherent worth, to listen to their dreams and challenges, to bear witness to their creativity and beauty, and to encourage and empower them as they grow and develop into the best versions of themselves possible. This is a lifelong engagement, and it's also what brings meaning to our lives. It's easy to get distracted by clever questions and answers, but how well we love ourselves and how well we love others is the answer to the most important questions.

Isaiah 6: Dull Ears, Blind Eyes, and Calloused Hearts

Well into the book of Isaiah, in chapter 6, we finally see a typical version of a prophetic calling story, which we have noted in books named after other prophets. Here, the author describes supernatural creatures with six wings who shake the temple with their song of praise to Yahweh. Moreover, the author claims to have seen Yahweh himself, before the temple is filled with smoke. Isaiah's purification (so that he can deliver his prophetic message) takes the form of a hot coal, with which a seraphim scorches his lips. This action is said to remove Isaiah's guilt and sin, which is remarkable in an ancient Israelite context in that no blood is spilt. Then, Isaiah receives his first message about the people of Israel.

Obviously, this credentialing of a prophet is either fabrication or is an internal experience of the messenger. At the time, such supernatural legitimization was respected -- indeed, expected -- as evidence that a message was from God. For us, the truth of a message can suffice to determine its worthiness. Isaiah may have been addressing the ancient Israelites specifically, in the time preceding the Babylonian captivity. His words may have value for twenty-first century readers as well.

He accuses his people of being willfully deaf, blind, and calloused. The truth is all around them, but they choose not to acknowledge it. So, Yahweh decides that they should stay that way -- that their blindness, deafness, and lack of understanding should be kept in place, so that they have no chance to turn and find healing for their society. Isaiah asks how long that will go on, and he is given a rather ominous answer: until everything but the barest stump is destroyed.

First of all, this presents Yahweh as a rather small-minded and vindictive deity. People have been disobedient, and so he chooses to eliminate the possibility that they might straighten up and fly right, at least until they have experienced the full measure of consequences. He actively forces the Israelites' heartlessness, spiritual blindness, and ethical deafness. Not very nice. Of course, Isaiah may well have been reporting on the condition of things, portraying God as being in control while still acknowledging the sad state of affairs. If God is all-powerful and people are behaving like heartless jackals, then God must have chosen for them to behave that way, right?

Second, though, the state of affairs in ancient Jewish society was not all that different from what we see at work in the world today. People typically only take in information from sources with which they already agree, so their worldview is rarely challenged. People often select theological positions based on what makes them most comfortable. Our sense of morality and ethics is often clear in the abstract and murky when it comes to specific decisions in our own lives. We sometimes choose to be blind to the injustices going on around us, if our involvement would be risky or inconvenient. We sometimes choose to be deaf to the data of scientific discovery, especially if dealing with certain issues would cost us a bit of money or require a change to our lifestyle. We sometimes harden our hearts against the people around us, and we call it "tough love" when we aren't outright critical or vindictive. We sometimes even say, "I wish I could do something," when we have no real interest in learning what we could actually do to make a difference.

Most likely, the people of Isaiah's day didn't really need any help from a supernatural to keep their willing blindness, deafness, and callousness in place. People seem to be pretty adept at turning a blind eye to the things they don't want to address in their lives and in the world. It's also likely that the Assyrians -- and later the Babylonians -- would have overrun Israel and Judah and taken people into exile, because those actions were based on the irresponsible decisions of a few leaders and not the behavior of an entire nation. So, there probably is no actual cause and effect relationship between the destruction that Judah and Israel experienced and their culture of willful blindness. That doesn't mean that being deaf, blind, and heartless is a good idea. It just means that we can be motivated by something other than wrathful destruction.

If we choose to, we can open our eyes, ears, and hearts to the people around us and to the world we all share. We can give a little bit (or a little bit more) to organizations that make changes in people's lives. We can vote for representatives that stand on the side of social justice rather than on the side of partisan power mongering. We can reach out to the people in our communities who are less fortunate and volunteer a bit of our time to teach them, feed them, clothe them, befriend them. Sometimes having open ears just means being willing to listen to someone tell their story. Sometimes having open eyes just means acknowledging another person with a smile and a kind word. Sometimes having an open heart just means giving up a fancy cup of coffee once a week so that the money we would have spent on caffeine can allow someone on the other side of the world to eat.

And sometimes having open eyes, ears, and hearts means a little more. Sometimes it caring enough not to mind being inconvenienced when your neighbor needs a little help. Sometimes it means listening to the same story you've heard a dozen times because your friend just hasn't gotten through this particular issue yet. Sometimes, it means broadening our concept of who we're willing to befriend -- who we're willing to treat like a human being of innate value.

We are busy and overburdened people, and some of that is not by our choice. There is no deity deciding one way or the other whether we will be blind or have our eyes wide open to the world; we are the only ones who can decide how much we are willing to see, hear, and feel. The world is an incredible place, though, and the people who share it with us are even more incredible. We need one another. None of us is utterly self-sufficient. So, let's open our eyes, our ears, and our hearts a bit. Let's model a way of being in the world that inspires others to have more open eyes, ears, and hearts. Whatever it costs us, we will reap in dividends of human connection and personal satisfaction. There is something deeply satisfying about caring, particularly when we are clear about the principles that guide our lives.

Open your eyes.
Open your ears.
Open your heart.
And let others know when you need them to open their eyes, ears, and heart to you a bit, too.
Sometimes we all need a little reminder.

Mark 9: Faith

After the scene of the mystical transfiguration, Mark 9 continues with another exorcism scene. This same scene is duplicated in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but there are some striking differences. For one things, the authors of Matthew and Luke do not include the father's famous quip, "I believe; help my unbelief." Perhaps an even more obvious omission is the apparent disagreement between authors about why Jesus was able to do something that his disciples were unable to do. The author of Mark has Jesus say that the kind of demon he exorcised from the boy can only be cast out by prayer (even though the story doesn't say anything about Jesus praying in this scene). The scene is truncated a bit in the gospel of Matthew, but when it comes to this question of why the disciples were unable to help the boy, the author takes the opportunity to have Jesus criticize the disciples' lack of faith. It is such an obviously different answer than the original version of the story recorded in the gospel of Mark that some scribe(s) at some point inserted the bit about prayer and fasting into the Matthew version. (In most translations, this inserted verse is omitted and relegated to a footnote). The author of Luke leaves out the question altogether, choosing not to include anything about the disciples' inability to help the epileptic boy, which makes it a bit awkward when the Jesus character bemoans putting up with the "faithless and perverse generation."

Some "perverse" people in the twenty-first century still consider demonic possession to be an actual thing. Considering the vast amount of research and evidence on the subject, as well as our previous critique on the abusive and manipulative practice of exorcism, we can leave that aside. It is reasonable for us to forgive people living so many centuries ago for thinking that some neurological disorders were caused by supernatural forces. Instead, there is a theme that emerges from the versions of this story in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that seems worthy of a bit of attention, namely the father's plea, "I believe; help my unbelief," and the line about a mustard seed of faith being enough to make a mountain move (which is also duplicated in Luke 17:5-6, just not in connection to this exorcism scene).

Faith is a tricky subject. It essentially means believing something that cannot be proven by available data. Faith isn't intelligent, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. It's important to realize that a statement of faith is necessarily a claim without any empirical foundation. This trips some people up. They want to believe that their statement of faith is absolutely true, that they can prove it to other people, that they can make other people agree with them, even though there is no actual evidence for the claim. If there were ample evidence to demonstrate the validity of a claim, it wouldn't need to be taken on faith.

Faith can work for us or against us. Some people flatly reject cold, hard data in order to maintain a faith-based perspective; other people manage to incorporate the available facts into a fluid faith that grows and changes as their knowledge grows and changes. There are people in the Creationist (or Intelligent Design) camp that fall into the first category, blatantly disagreeing with scientific evidence in favor of the text of an ancient religious document. Others revise their version of faith in a creator so that it remains compatible with scientific conclusions.

It isn't so dangerous when people are just engaging in fruitless arguments about the age of the planet (although it is dangerous to teach children that they can ignore actual facts in order to keep believing what they want to believe). Thoughtless faith can put people in serious danger, though. Some people have faith that their supernatural will protect them from the venom of poisonous snakes, even if they antagonize said snakes. Some people have faith that their supernatural will heal their child, provided they don't give in and seek competent medical assistance. A recent outbreak of measles within a religious community in Texas that opposes vaccination in favor of "faith healing" is just one more senseless piece of evidence that it's dangerous to rely on a supernatural to do the work of a doctor. Faith that refuses to incorporate verifiable evidence is, frankly, abusive and evil.

Blaming faith isn't really helpful. Intelligent faith helps us create meaningful lives. Insightful faith helps us connect with people and build incredible communities. Faith isn't the problem. Human egoism is. Why in the world would a spiritual leader advise his flock not to get vaccinations or professional medical attention? My guess would be either hubris or stupidity. What do you say to the parents of a 4-month-old infant who contracts measles because a spiritual community refused to take appropriate health precautions? Was the faith of the parents faulty? Or perhaps the 4-month-old had faith that was too weak? I try not to be critical of other people's beliefs, but I get angry about children suffering needlessly because of adults with nonsensical religious convictions.

Still, it's the people who are responsible for the consequences of their actions, not whatever they had faith in. The father who brought his son to Jesus' disciples in the story was looking for a solution. He wasn't committed to pursuing some tenacious assertion about the supernatural, he was trying to get help for his son wherever it might be found. By the time Jesus questioned the father's faith, the poor man was probably exasperated from trying to find someone who could do some genuine good for his boy. And yet, he couldn't just confess blind faith. Even Jesus' disciples had failed him. He had hope, but he wasn't an idiot. His son was seriously afflicted. He believed in the possibility of his son's healing enough to get him to a healer. Whatever he lacked in faith, he certainly expressed a willingness to be persuaded.

We can approach faith like that. We can stake our claim and say, "based on available evidence right now, I believe this." When further evidence presents itself, we have the freedom to adapt our statements of faith. By "evidence," I mean falsifiable data, information that can be verified by outside sources, not just another person's opinion or a slippery thread of logic. For instance, believe in God if you like, but don't ignore scientific data about vaccinations or geology in order to cling to a primitive version of that belief in God. We can allow our God to be as vast or impressive or intelligent or insightful or loving as s/he needs to be in order to accommodate the actual knowledge we have about our natural world. We cannot restrict verifiable data based on our personal beliefs. If we try to do so, we wind up with things like measles outbreaks that could easily have been prevented.

So, since our beliefs don't have the power to modify actual scientific evidence, it only makes sense to allow actual scientific evidence to modify our beliefs. This doesn't diminish our faith in any way; it makes our faith more credible. This doesn't weaken our faith; it strengthens our connection to reality, and thus increases the value of our faith. Digging in our heels and refusing to reconcile our beliefs with cold, hard facts is just another way of refusing to grow. When we refuse to grow, we stagnate. Life is not stagnant. If we are going to have faith, doesn't it make sense to have faith that is alive and able to grow?

1 Kings 3-11: Wisdom, Slavery, and Human Dignity

Solomon was reputed to be the wisest man in the world; he was certainly legendary among the Israelites for his wisdom. Of course, some of the tales of his wisdom seem remarkably similar to other tales about other people in other cultures, but such is the way of folklore: why tell a good story about some other people when you can tell it about your own people? Solomon's record doesn't hold up well in the long run, however. As the last king over a united Israelite kingdom, he set the stage for a division that would not be resolved before foreign powers conquered the whole of Israel and Judah. Solomon's deeds are recorded in 1 Kings, and also in 2 Chronicles, the latter author often lifting passages directly from the earlier account.

Building the temple in Jerusalem was Solomon's real claim to fame in Israelite culture. The extravagant worship and sacrifice center was intended to be a unifying feature of religion and community, cementing the culture and the people. As it is described in biblical passages, it does indeed seem like an impressive structure, and Solomon, as he is portrayed in the text, says all of the appropriate pious things. We even know that Yahweh approves, because the ark of the covenant makes it to the temple without anyone dying, a spooky cloud inhabits the temple when it's finished, and Yahweh blatantly tells Solomon that he's put his stamp of approval on the place. He also issues an eerily predictive warning about what will happen if the Israelites are unfaithful. 

One of Solomon's problems is how much he likes the ladies. Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines worth of ladies, if the author of Kings is to be believed. (The author of Chronicles leaves this embarrassingly indulgent menagerie out of Solomon's biography.) These women, many of them foreigners with their own cultures and their own gods, influenced Solomon to such an extent that he built other places of worship in his kingdom, where people could go and worship other gods other than the Israelite's Yahweh. This undermined his pious image at the very least, and it also triggered the warning Yahweh had pronounced (partially explaining for the Israelites who were taken into exile why their temple was destroyed from a theological perspective).

The real misstep, however, was Solomon's labor force for building the extravagant temple. First, the account in Kings reveals that Solomon "conscripted laborers from all over Israel" and it explicitly refers to "forced labor" (1 Ki. 5:13-14). Later on (1 Ki. 9:20-23) there is an attempt to clarify that only non-Israelite people were made into slaves; this is the passage that 2 Chronicles chooses to include, incidentally. When Solomon's son Rehoboam gains the throne, the hard labor endured under Solomon's reign is enough of an issue for people that the kingdom undergoes a division that would only be reconciled through destruction and exile. Even if the Israelites were not technically slaves, their labor was unbearable enough to spark a revolution against Rehoboam. Allegedly the wisest of men, Solomon was somehow blind to the fact that people will only tolerate oppressive subjugation for so long, even though the story of his own culture is based on this reality.

According to their cultural origin story, the Israelites themselves were once slaves in Egypt, and even though their conditions were not reported to be extraordinarily harsh, they rose up and fled en masse, looting the Egyptians as they went. Somehow, despite this powerful folk history, Solomon concludes that slavery is appropriate when the Israelites are in charge. According to the reports of his wealth, he had abundant resources to pay for the labor that went into building his temples and palaces; he simply chose not to. Slave labor is certainly better from a purely financial standpoint. But Israel's success as a united nation ended with Solomon; his crowning achievement was reduced to rubble. One can blame Rehoboam for being pigheaded, but the unrest stemmed directly from Solomon's policies. Perhaps Solomon didn't really care what happened to his people once he was dead. He certainly lived an insulated life of luxury, along with his thousand-woman harem.

If there was a real historical Solomon, he may have been a wise leader. The Solomon of the Bible was short-sighted, self-indulgent, and tyrannical. People intrinsically know that slavery is morally and ethically wrong; even people who oppress others know that it's wrong. Otherwise, their actions would be completely out in the open and matter-of-fact. People would not revolt against slavery or try to escape their oppressive circumstances if it was natural and just. But human beings will naturally reject the conditions of oppressions and slavery, sometimes even when that oppression is only a perception. Those who would oppress or enslave have to go to great lengths to keep people from revolting or finding a way to freedom. This is a big clue that there is something out of balance.

The problem is that we can fail to hold ourselves as equal to the people we would control. When we concentrate on how the Other is different, it is a short step in our minds to deciding that the Other is inferior--and that we are superior. It somehow seems justifiable to subject an Inferior Other to what we would violently reject in our own lives. It seems justifiable, but it never actually seems right or moral.

It creates dissonance within us at some level when we fail to honor basic human dignity, and we may go to great lengths to overpower that dissonance with extravagant behavior. Some people become extravagantly angry; some people become extravagant in their drunkenness; some are extravagant in their isolationism; some are extravagant in the size of their harems. We distract ourselves from addressing the behaviors that do not make sense to us at a very deep level. Perhaps a part of us fears what our actions reflect about our true character. What can be said about a person who is willing to abuse and oppress other human beings? And if we peel back our empty justifications and recognize the sameness of all people, what does it say about us? What does it mean that we have the same human dignity as the people we would abuse, oppress, or control?

Truthfully, we cannot rob people of their worth. We cannot even rob ourselves of our own worth. We can ignore and deny all we want, but just being human grants us a measure of value. When we enslave or oppress other people, it is always an indication of our own fears. "I can't afford to pay other people for their work and still be as wealthy as I want. I'm afraid of being poor, so I'll force them to work for free." Or "I'm afraid that no one will ever sincerely love me, so I'll force someone to simulate the kind of relationship I want." Or "We're afraid that our beliefs and mores are fading away, so we'll force other people to behave the way we think they should." Or any number of other manifestations. Our fears make it seem alright for us to hold other people as inferior and treat them in a way that we know to be morally and ethically wrong. In all honesty, we are capable of accomplishing the things we want or creating the relationships we want without resorting to controlling other people. It just may take a bit of effort and dedication on our part. Recognizing the irrationality of our fear, admitting our own capability and abundance, and acknowledging that we are not intrinsically superior to other human beings, dismantles the justification for oppression.

We want to have our way. This is understandable. It's even understandable that we want to have our way with a minimum of sacrifice on our part. When we determine that it's alright to take advantage of another human being in order to have our way, however, we entertain the idea that we are superior to, better than, more valuable than. We might even find reasons to justify that lie, but in our heart of hearts we know that it is a lie. People have inherent worth and dignity. We each have inherent worth and dignity. When we find reasons to oppress or enslave others to our own wants, we deny that inherent worth and dignity--for them and for ourselves. That denial lacks wisdom, integrity, and honesty, and it will most likely prompt a reaction we won't enjoy. Better to begin from the assertion of human value and find a way to what we want from that starting point. It is not only possible, but in the grand scheme of things, it is necessary. 

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.