Community and Affirmation

Even in a community where people are engaging in mutual self-disclosure, mutual hospitality, active and unconditional love, and honesty, there are bound to be challenges. Any time more than one human being is in the same place at the same time, the potential for conflict exists. No matter how loving and honest you're trying to be, there will be times that anxiety wins.

I still have old, well-ingrained habits to defend myself when someone challenges what I say, rather than just accept that they're entitled to their own opinions. Intellectually, I'm all about peaceful disagreement, and in practice I can be in that space most of the time. But when my personal vows get triggered, I go into this zone where I believe I have to prove I'm right in order to be worthy -- I have to defend what I say, because if I'm wrong, I'll be unlovable and unacceptable.

You've got your own set of vows that you made at an early age, in times of high anxiety, when you decided subconsciously what you had to do in order to be safe, accepted, and loved. Everyone does. And when all of those vows bump up against each other, it causes some emotional friction. Healthy community develops appropriate ways of handling that friction, and those healthy practices become part of the community culture. We'll explore those practices in coming weeks.

There's one fifth essential ingredient that plays a part in the health of a meaningful, authentic community. In addition to mutual self-disclosure, mutual hospitality, active and unconditional love, and honesty, meaningful authentic community requires mutual affirmation and celebration. I'm not talking about throwing parties for people, although you could do that. Mutual affirmation or celebration is about acknowledging what's awesome about the people with whom you're in community. This has a few functions for community, and it also has a couple of pitfalls to avoid.

Sincere affirmation is rare. People are constantly being told how they need to improve, or what they need to do differently. Even when it isn't explicit, we compare ourselves to more outwardly attractive, successful, wealthy, happy people and easily focus on what's wrong with us. Few people hear often enough that they are powerful, capable, beautiful human beings. Cultivating a culture of sincere affirmation may seem like overkill, but people need others to accurately reflect their positive attributes back to them.

You may have heard the equation that you have to say six positive things to balance out one negative comment. This means that -- just by the way our brains process things -- if you hear six positive comments about yourself and one negative comment, you'll have a kind of break-even average opinion of who you are. And we hear negative things about ourselves all the time. Sometimes it's specifically about us, and sometimes we personalize negative comments about a whole group of people. If we're in a marginalized group -- immigrants, people of color, atheists, transgender folks, and plenty of others -- we hear a lot more negative commentary about ourselves than positive. That's one big reason meaningful, authentic community needs to practice mutual affirmation and celebration of one another. We need to hear an awful lot of affirmation before we even consider believing it might be true.

In order for people to be meaningfully engaged in community, they have to believe something positive about themselves. If people don't believe they have something of value to offer, they wind up not offering anything of themselves. If people don't believe they can make a meaningful contribution, they wind up not contributing anything. When people believe they have value, they can be more fully engaged in creating wholeness with other human beings. And it takes a lot of reassurance for some people to start believe something positive about themselves. We've become convinced somehow that saying too many positive things is coddling, or that people will become egomaniacs. It's a crappy reason not to say something affirming about a person.

Incidentally, this is why some people find it easier to believe in a supernatural source of love and acceptance. People often do a rotten job of praising one another. Many religions cultivate a perspective that human beings are worthless, weak, and unworthy, and that it takes the perfect benevolence of a superior being to actually love human beings. So, people try to believe that a being who never communicates with them directly and doesn't make itself known in any verifiable way, loves them more than any human being could, and accepts them even though they are thoroughly unacceptable.

All this is great PR for whatever god you credit with being able to love the unlovable, but it perpetuates the view that human beings are essentially unlovable, unacceptable, and unworthy. And it perpetuates the view that human beings are incapable of providing sufficient love, acceptance, and affirmation to one another. This is patently false, and it's a cruel lie to perpetuate about yourself and other people. You are both lovable and capable of love. You are both acceptable and capable of being accepting. You are both worthy and capable of affirming the worthiness of others. This view of humanity -- of yourself -- is essential to meaningful, authentic community.

The reason this view is essential is simple. When we believe lies about our own unworthiness or incapability, we are not our authentic selves. Authentic community can't be built from false selves, and false selves can't persist in authentic community. The way to authenticity isn't to shame people for presenting a false self, though. People have been through enough without someone trying to shame them into being authentic. Sometimes, people just need to see the other side of the coin, and they need to see it presented to them consistently and sincerely. We've been told how worthless or unlovable or unacceptable we are so much that many of us think it's true. We need to be told something different about ourselves so it seems safe to be vulnerable enough to be authentic with a community of equally flawed and beautiful, challenged and capable human beings.

Now, none of this is to say that we should overlook problematic behavior or that we should pretend people's weaknesses don't exist. We all have things we can work on, and we all have growth areas or opportunities for improvement. One of the reasons we appreciate meaningful, authentic community is that we can grow into greater wholeness as individuals -- which we wouldn't need to do if we were perfect. So, healthy community offers feedback that helps people address areas of growth. But it does so in a way that doesn't shame or condemn a person for having things to work on -- or just being imperfect. And some areas of imperfection don't require work -- they're just areas of imperfection.

Holding up a mirror to someone and lovingly showing them where their actions may not be in alignment with their guiding principles is tough. It's also a really important feature of meaningful, authentic community. We need people who are willing to hold us accountable to the things we say we are going to be or do. Accountability isn't me holding you accountable to what I want you to do. When I hold you accountable to your own vision of a best possible version of yourself, though, that has real value to you. It's a lot easier to hear that sort of feedback from someone who habitually offers sincere affirmation. We can be more vulnerable with people we trust to see the best in us. 

You may notice I mentioned sincere affirmation. We still have honesty as a core ingredient, and that honesty still needs to be a part of our affirmation of one another. Saying things that aren't true about a person isn't loving or helpful, even if those things sound positive. Telling a person they're a great musician when they sound like a cat caught in a blender is only going to lead to embarrassment and possibly unnecessary shame down the road. Telling people what's true about them -- over and over again until they believe you -- allows them to see who they are more clearly.

We don't actually see ourselves very clearly. For instance, I'm afraid of being seen as confrontational or abrasive, so if I say or write anything that could be construed as hostile or unkind, I'm super self-conscious about it. When people tell me how tactful I am, I have to check to see whether they're being sarcastic sometimes, because I'm hypersensitive to coming across as confrontational. Now that an awful lot of people have told me numerous times that I'm a tactful person, I'm learning to trust that I can say things hearably, even when I'm saying something challenging to someone. I've been at this for years, and it's taken years of people saying affirming things to get through all the other noise inside my own head -- most of which has been rattling around in there since I was a kid.

A community of people committed to offering honest affirmation of one another -- mutually celebrating each other -- can do a lot to create wholeness. People who aren't as worried about being lovable, acceptable, and worthy are better able to cast a vision of a best possible version of themselves. People who feel safe and acknowledged can live by their deepest values and guiding principles more easily. People can live more fully when mutual affirmation is the cultural habit of a community that also practices mutual self-disclosure, mutual hospitality, active and unconditional love, and honesty.

These five ingredients are not often found all together in communities. Keeping them all in balanced proportions takes intentional effort. Even having all five of these practices in place at all takes some intentional effort. If people are willing to allow these ingredients to define their relationships with one another in meaningful, authentic community, I'm confident that greater wholeness will be the outcome.

There will be challenges, though. While these five ingredients describe the consistent day-in and day-out intentional practices of a community, it's also important for the community to have a couple of pieces of infrastructure. One of these is clear boundaries within the community -- not defining who is an insider and who is an outsider, but defining safe and healthy behavior in the context of the community. Another is a clear shared purpose or vision. As you might imagine, these two topics will be next up on the docket.

Interlude: Good People and Bad People

Our perusal of the gospel of John has brought us to a story in which Jesus heals a blind person. Before we get into the specifics of the story, it occurs to me that some people still wrestle with questions like, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Some people might wrestle with the complementary question, "Why do good things happen to bad people?" especially in a time that once again finds wealth and power concentrated among a very small percentage of people.

In the first century, when a person was blind or otherwise impaired, it was often interpreted as a sign that that person or the parents of the impaired individual had done something wrong. Blindness was a punishment. So was leprosy, infertility, headaches, mobility issues, dementia, and just about anything else that seemed undesirable. Some people still think like this. If something is "wrong" in a person's life, that person did something to deserve it. The Bible (and the religious writings of other faith traditions) even suggests that a good person receives rewards in life and a bad person receives punishments.

This causes a quandary, however, when such thinking is challenged by reality. Sometimes bad people seem to be rewarded, and sometimes good people seem to be punished. This was even a problem for people in ancient Israel. The Wisdom books of Hebrew scripture highlight the struggle. Even as it is asserted that wise, good, faithful, honorable people will be rewarded and foolish, wicked, malicious, people will suffer, there are books that point out that this isn't always so. Job and Ecclesiastes, for example, are writings that directly wrestle with the realization that reality doesn't line up with simple expectations. Good people don't always have an easy life; bad people don't always suffer. The conclusion of Job is that Yahweh is in charge and shouldn't be questioned. The conclusion of Ecclesiastes is that we should enjoy life while we have it and trust that all will be balanced out as Yahweh sees fit.

Over time, people started to think that maybe things wouldn't be judged and balanced in this life, but that people would receive their reward or punishment after this life was over. An eternity in heaven or an eternity in hell would be the ultimate consequence of life. Good people will be rewarded, and bad people will suffer.

The New Testament expresses that we can see who the good people and bad people are by their actions. As a typical example, Matthew 7:16-20: "You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits." Another example is 1 John, in which the author proclaims that the distinguishing characteristic of "children of light" is that they live out the commandment to love. By contrast, "children of darkness" can be clearly distinguished by their expressions of hatred.

Lots of people still believe that there are good people and bad people, and they might even agree with the idea that you can tell the difference between good people and bad people by their actions. Some people are convinced that the eternal souls of good people will go to heaven and the eternal souls of bad people will go to hell. (Incidentally, this is not the message of most Christianities, but that's another matter.) We look around us and it makes perfect sense to say, "That murderer/extortionist/ rapist/thief was just a bad apple," or to be equally impressed by what a "good person" someone is when we see them being generous or helpful. This either/or mindset makes a lot of sense to our brains, and we can often make it fit with our experience if we don't look at people too closely. And it's wrong.

There are no good people. There are no bad people. The allegory doesn't hold that "good trees" only bear "good fruit" and "bad trees" only bear "bad fruit." People make choices. People are capable of making choices that contribute to the well-being of themselves and others. People are also capable of making choices that seem to benefit themselves at the expense of others. The specific actions of people might be reasonably labeled as good or bad, but then you have to define what that means. Maybe good actions are those actions that increase well-being and bad actions are those that cause harm. Some actions would seem to be neutral. The point is that every person is capable of choosing from a whole array of potential actions.

Thus, there are no good people, and there are no bad people. There are just people. People make choices. We like some of the choices that people make. We don't like other choices. We feel badly about some choices we make, and we feel happy about other choices we make. We are people. We make choices. We are not good trees or bad trees, and the fruit of our lives is a whole array of flavors.

As we are able, may we have the confidence and courage to make choices that contribute to the genuine well-being of ourselves and the people with whom we share this planet. And when we choose otherwise, may we have the humility and perseverance to try again. You are not a good person. You are not a bad person. You are a person, and you have the capacity to choose what you will do.

John 1:1-18 Introductions (meet the book, and meet your ideal self)

We could press forward with Isaiah at this point. The tone shifts dramatically, and the events around which the next chapters were composed are much later historically than the first third of the book. However, our practice had been to look at the “historical” books first, and then to take a look at the “prophetic” books that responded to those events. We also have not spent much time in the New Testament since our completion of Mark. As we saw, Mark has many similarities with the books of Matthew and Luke. John is a rather different reflection on the Jesus story, and it includes a great deal of wisdom that transcends Christian mythology. So, let’s begin to delve into John, and we’ll intersperse that exploration with a continuation of Old Testament texts.

The gospel of John was written sometime between the years 85 and 110 CE, by a Christian (or a community of Christians, possibly in Asia Minor) who followed a distinct mystic path within the Christian cult. This volume is theologically distinct from the other three (synoptic) gospels because it expresses certain traditions connected to a specific interpretation of Christianity. Most likely, this was to ensure clarity and consistency as the influence of this particular spiritual culture grew. It is apparent that the authors know the Jesus stories of the other gospels, which means that these other documents must have been at least partially written and distributed prior to the composition of the gospel of John.

The final version of the gospel of John as we have it expresses a mature, yet distinct, theological interpretation of the Jesus tradition, with less of an interest in chronology and historical accuracy and a greater interest in spiritual truth. It may even be possible that the seven purposefully chosen miracle stories in this gospel reflect sacraments or creeds of a particular community. So, it’s likely that this theology with mystic overtones matured in a Christian community that developed a nuanced set of Jesus traditions distinct from, yet compatible with, Christianity as it was interpreted through Paul and Peter. This document may also have grown over time as the theology of the community developed and spread. 

Often, this gospel is seen as portraying Jesus, Son of God, as the divine miracle worker, through whom eternal life is available (through the gift of the Holy Spirit) because of his death and resurrection. The authors’ seven miracle stories are connected with statements of the character of Jesus about himself, and these “I am” statements have parallels in Jewish Wisdom literature. (Indeed, the identification of Jesus as the Word in this book is a re-framing of the Jewish characterization of Wisdom herself.) However, we will also see that Jesus is depicted here as the ideal example for human behavior, characterized as one who serves out of desire and not obligation, who seeks love and unity rather than making demands of others, and who maintains integrity in the midst of societal misunderstanding and hostility. It is entirely possible to interpret these human qualities and practices as being the source of abundant life.

The introductory 18 verses of John have been analyzed in various ways, with some scholars assuming that the author is commenting on a preexisting hymn because of textual clues. However, there is no evidence of a preexisting text on which this introduction is based, although it could have gone through several revisions before it reached the version we now read. In any case, these first verses set up an authorial tone that is poetic and mysterious, almost as though one needs to be an “insider” to really comprehend the nuances of language. Our goal isn’t necessarily to get inside the author’s head, though. Our goal is just to draw some wisdom or insight that is useful in our own lives.

John 1:1-18 begins with an echo of Genesis 1:1. In the beginning... suggests that something new has happened. We are beginning religious history anew. Capitalization is not a feature of ancient Greek, so turning the Word into a title is an editorial decision on the part of translators. It is apparent that the Word is symbolic of something, though. In Greek, this would be Logos, or the principle of reason and judgment -- more simply, wisdom. Earlier Jewish writings ascribe a feminine gender to Wisdom, but it’s obvious the author is headed in an intentional direction.

So, Wisdom has always been around, and nothing human beings behold came into existence without following the principle of reason and judgment. This thought is often used to justify creationism, even suggesting that Jesus was around before the beginning of the universe. Maybe that’s what the author is actually saying, but without any evidence to support such a claim, it’s just a creative idea. We can say, however, based on all the evidence available to us, that everything that exists follows predictable, natural patterns. There is a certain reasonableness to nature, and we can recognize this even as we continue to learn more about the predictable natural patterns of the world we share and the universe as a whole. The idea of wisdom (or absolute, ultimate Wisdom) didn’t precede human beings, though. Natural processes have been around since there has been anything we might consider natural. Natural processes don’t have any inherent qualities like wisdom, though. The processes aren’t good or bad; they’re just natural. 

Yet, once we start evaluating things -- particularly human behavior -- we certainly find it easy to assess some things as good and other things as bad. We don’t always agree with each other, but we are usually pretty convinced of our own assessment of things. There is a light -- a way of seeing, an insight -- that is available to everyone, and yet not everyone recognizes the value of that perspective. The gospel of John will personify that perspective, that insight, that light. We may not really know what the author’s original intentions were, but we can certainly appreciate the concept of using a character in a story to demonstrate an ideal. The view that many believers take is that everyone should accept that the Light is a unique individual (Jesus) who should be worshiped and upon whom one must rely for salvation. It is an equally legitimate perspective to read John’s Jesus as an exemplar to be emulated -- the embodiment of an ideal that leads to salvation from a very real sort of destruction. 

What we might expect from a more Humanist introduction to the gospel of John, then, could perhaps be expressed:

There is a wisdom and logic to nature. Everything that exists, exists within a predictable array of patterns. Human beings also follow some predictable patterns, even though we don’t always realize that we are engaging in destructive patterns that can’t get us where we most want to go. There is a way of seeing ourselves and other people -- a way of seeing reality -- that creates well-being rather than destroying, and no amount of destructive human behavior can make that way of seeing -- or way of being -- inaccessible.

This is a story. It’s a story about a man who got it -- who saw things creatively rather than destructively. A man who knew who he was, and who knew what kind of world he most wanted to live in. To some people, such a person is really obvious -- a glaring beacon. One of our biggest mistakes would be to assume that we cannot be that person. This is a story about a man, a symbol, an example. This is also a story about all of us.

Such a person who sees the world differently -- who lives differently -- is going to seem unusual to a lot of people. Such a person might be really difficult for some people to accept. Doing things differently is scary. Even if the way we are accustomed to doing things hurts us and the people around us, change is difficult. But, those people who are willing to see themselves, others, and the world a little differently -- those people who follow the example of the man in this story -- they are going to have the power to create something new. They will understand love in a new way. They will understand themselves in a new way. It will be like an awakening -- like a new birth. You could be one of those people.

Imagine that a deeper kind of wisdom took shape in a person. Imagine that there was an individual who didn’t practice the kinds of destructive patterns we all default to when we get scared or anxious. Can you picture what that person would be like? From that image, that ideal, we can derive a new vision of ourselves. Nobody has ever seen any evidence of a supernatural divine being, but we can imagine what qualities such a being would have. A lot of those qualities are qualities we could have -- qualities we already have, if we choose to express them.

If you can imagine a person like that --
          a person who sees the world through eyes of love rather than eyes of fear,
          a person who is personally responsible and conveys honor and respect for all things,
          a person who tells the truth without blame or judgment,
          a person who acts from a place of authenticity --
if you can imagine a person like that, you can imagine a best possible version of yourself. And if you can imagine a best possible version of yourself, you can live into that ideal day by day. And if you can live into that ideal day by day, you can create something new. You can change the world. That’s what this story is about.

Isaiah 1: Seeking Justice

We have seen that Israel and Judah were vassals of Assyria, and that rebellious actions on the part of Israel's king Hoshea led to destruction and exile at the hands of the Assyrians. King Hezekiah will court disaster at the hands of the Assyrians as well, but Isaiah's career began before then. The book of Isaiah was written by authors in the southern kingdom of Judah, and scholars generally think it was composed during three different periods. The first portion of the book may have been written by an actual prophet named Isaiah, or it may simply have been attributed to a figure that held a prominent place in the public eye as a spokesman for Yahweh. The first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah address events during the 8th century BCE, and even within this span of the book there is evidence of editorial activity. We'll make mention of that as we go.

Isaiah 1 starts off with a bang, as the author pours invective upon Judah. He describes a situation in which the wealthy and powerful practice corruption and ignore the poor and destitute. He predicts a future time of destruction, in which the land is laid to waste because of the attitudes and actions of the people. Of course, as an Israelite, the author attributes any success or failure to Yahweh, but he is especially concerned that people are ignoring the cultural expectations regarding the treatment of other human beings. These expectations are thought to have come from Yahweh, and yet certain expectations about religious activity -- sacrifices, ceremonies, and holy days -- were also thought to come from Yahweh. The religious activities seemed to be easy for the people to pay attention to, but the care for fellow human beings was a tougher thing to accomplish. The author of Isaiah thus denounces the piety of the people who think they are doing what their god wants just because they participate in required ceremonies; in the eyes of the author, Yahweh expects more of them.

Reference is made to Sodom and Gomorrah, cities that were supposedly destroyed by Yahweh because of their unwillingness to exercise hospitality and care for the strangers in their midst. Judah is no better, according to the writer, because they are trampling the orphan and widow, the poor and oppressed, for the sake of personal gain. There is still hope, however, because the people can change their behavior. If they start practicing justice -- treating people equally and humanely -- they can turn things around. The author places the illusion of power in Yahweh's hands, but it is clearly the actions of the people that will determine the outcome of their land.

Some people in the twenty-first century still believe that God is in control of all sorts of events, and they believe that the Bible indicates a certain supremacy of a supernatural divine. This is certainly the case, but it isn't the only thing the Bible says. The ultimate authority of a biblical depiction of God is balanced with ultimate responsibility of people for their own actions. If the words of this chapter of Isaiah are valid, all is not carved in stone for the people addressed. Their default future, if they maintain their current course, is destruction. By seeking justice, they can change their future. The important thing is not that they go to church more, or pray more or better, or sacrifice more or better; the important thing is that they care for people. The important thing is justice.

History is a tricky when it comes to these sorts of writings. Assyria didn't wind up conquering Judah, but a century and a half after the fall of Israel, Judah fell to the Babylonians, with prophets of the time saying a lot of the same things about the need for justice. One thing is clear from the historical record. Every time there has been a civil war or a rebellion throughout human history, it is because one group of people perceived that intolerable injustice was being perpetrated by another group of people. The people who rebel are not always victorious, but the motivation for rebellion is nearly always the perception of injustice.

Whether one believes in God or not, the need for justice is written into the fabric of our beings. Human beings throughout time have tended toward freedom in some form or another, and inequality has consistently caused strife in human communities. The admonitions of Isaiah 1 ring as true today as they did in the 8th century BCE; our religious practices don't mean a hill of beans if we aren't tending to our society. Prayer and piety is actually offensive and blasphemous if our actions don't reflect certain values. For the ancient Israelites and for many believers today, human beings are thought to have been created in the image of God. What does it mean to mistreat someone created in the image of the divine? What must one think of the divine in order to mistreat another human being?

From a perspective that doesn't recognize supernaturalism, one can perhaps even more clearly see the value of people. There aren't a lot of religious trappings to get in the way; remove the sacrifices, prayers, and ceremonies, and you are still left with a world full of people. By now, you know that my personal perspective is that whatever we call the divine is an inherent human quality, or collection of qualities. All people have a deep self that understands truth, embodies beauty, and expresses creativity, even though they often act out of irrational fear. The humanist position is not to approve of every action a person takes under the guise of acceptance; the goal is to recognize that even people who act unjustly or discompassionately or even violently are still human beings with inherent value. Their actions have consequences, but they don't have less value as people. This isn't an easy position, but in wrestling with difficult principles, we get better at living with integrity.

It's tempting to live by a set of principles in my own personal life and let other people do as they will. I can feel good about seeking justice, treating people equally, and responding with compassion to the people I encounter, even if I don't stretch beyond the borders of my own life. I can even say that I try to model behavior for others, which suggests that I am inviting a broader impact than just the confines of my own life. Yet, people will rarely know what I am modeling if I don't tell them. I shouldn't assume that any random onlooker will know why I make the choices I make or why they might get something out of emulating the behavior I'm modeling. At some point, seeking justice draws me out from the confines of my own life.

This often seems counter-cultural for a society in which people are supposed to mind their own business and avoid offending anyone. We can complain about injustice or inequality to like-minded individuals, but it's often frowned upon to make any sort of public statement regarding unjust systems or practices. When we do take a stand, it's often couched in the form of blasting one political party or the other in an angry rant that actually does nothing to help any oppressed people, even though it may make us feel righteous. Our deepest selves call us to more than that. Whether we believe that it is God's will or we just recognize our innate connection to other human beings, there is truth to Martin Luther King Jr's statement that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Isaiah was not written as a call to the poor and destitute to rise up and claim justice for themselves. It was written as an admonition for the wealthy and privileged to exercise greater awareness and love for the human beings they tended to overlook or discount. Isaiah was not talking about being kind and just only to respectable people. This chapter is about treating the oppressed and overlooked with dignity and compassion.

For us, this means ensuring that women are not treated as second class citizens, that women are respected as equal participants in the world, that girls are not sold into slavery and treated as animals or playthings. While we tolerate sex trafficking and forced underage prostitution anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).

For us, this means listening to the interests of the homosexual, bisexual, and transgender communities, not discounting their interest in marriage and families as an affront to society, and welcoming human beings with different ways of loving and being without feeling threatened in our own ways of loving and being. While we tolerate the criminalization or persecution of homosexual, bisexual, or transgender human beings anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).

For us, this means acknowledging the persistence of racism and legitimately working to see beyond skin color, language, religion, and cultural idiosyncrasies to the actual people who share our world. It means recognizing the desire for people to make a livable wage and live in safety. It means finding ways for cooperation and partnership, so that people are empowered to be personally responsible, and it means being honest about the inequities of wealth and consumption that damage the entire world for a few to maintain an illusion of entitlement and superiority. While we tolerate hostility toward the Other anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).

This doesn't mean picketing or sending thousands of dollars overseas or marching on Washington (although it could, and there's nothing wrong with it if that's what you do). Sometimes justice is honestly a matter of how we treat people and how we speak up for people. Justice might mean letting our friends know that we won't participate in ethnic slurs or activities that demean women. Justice might mean educating ourselves about service organizations that could benefit from a few hours of our time every month or every week. Justice might mean doing everything in our power not to freak out when a friend or loved one or child comes out -- and it might mean finding a way to celebrate that person even when his or her identity becomes scarily unfamiliar to us -- to embrace people even when we don't quite understand them.

None of this is easy, but it seems to be the most honest interpretation of Isaiah 1 in the realities of global economics and communication. I believe in these words, and yet I still find myself judging other people or preferring not to get involved or speak out. I am learning and growing even as I continue to engage my beliefs thoughtfully and purposefully. None of this admonition is intended as a guilt trip; it's simply a point blank statement of the work that we have yet to do if it is important to us to create a just, equitable, and compassionate reality. We do not need the threat of destruction from on high to convince us that this is a good and noble thing, but in case that sort of threat is motivating, we see that in Isaiah as well. Rather than act nobly out of fear, though, we can act nobly because we are noble. We can act justly because we are just people. We show compassion because we are compassionate. When we act with integrity to our deepest principles, we state clearly that we are people of integrity. Our authentic identities are the only reason we need to seek justice, to treat all people with respect, and to see whatever we call divine in the face of every person.

2 Chronicles 26: Entitlement, Fear of Irrelevance, and Spiritual Leprosy

I am fairly talented at a few things. Yet, when I see a real expert doing something impressive -- something that person has most likely practiced doing for thousands and thousands of hours -- there are times when I think, "I wish I could do that." Maybe that's indicative of typical human dissatisfaction, or maybe it's based on some imagined system in which some areas of expertise are more valuable than others. Perhaps we sometimes devalue those things that come easily to us, or those things that are expected of us, and convince ourselves that we need to diversify, expand our areas of competence, continually become more. The implication is that we are not enough -- that, whatever we are able to do today, we are on the brink of being irrelevant.

Consider 2 Kings 15, in which the historian runs through a series of rulers of Judah and Israel spanning about 50 years in one rapid fire chapter. The first of these is Azariah, or Uzziah, who gets a much lengthier treatment by the Chronicler in 2 Chronicles 25. The Hebrew scriptures claim that Uzziah was king of Judah for 52 years, but it may have been closer to 40 years. Historians often have a difficult time making biblical chronology line up with what is known about actual history. All told, he was a pretty good ruler -- until (according to the story) being king wasn't enough.

Uzziah saw that people were cared for in Judah, maintaining the country with a sense of justice and integrity. He brought a few neighboring nations under Judah's control through military force, which brought in more resources in the form of taxes from those conquered peoples, and Uzziah used Judah's resources to build protective towers for his people and to provide cisterns for vinedressers and farmers. Then, one day, at the height of his strength, he decided that he would do the job of the priests, and (again, according to the story) was struck with leprosy that lasted the rest of his life. Due to the stigma against leprosy at the time, he was ostracized from his people.

Maybe Uzziah was acting out of a sense of entitlement. Maybe he thought, "I'm the king; I can do whatever I want." Or maybe he believed at some level that he was irrelevant. It seems far-fetched, given everything that he accomplished for his nation, but some of the most powerful people develop unexpected self-esteem issues. Whatever his motivation, Uzziah's actions robbed himself of the satisfaction of ruling Judah, and it robbed the people he served of his competent leadership. In fact, looking ahead to the brief account of Jotham (Uzziah's son) in 2 Chronicles 27, Jotham was an upstanding fellow, but he didn't have much moral or ethical influence over the people he ruled. When Uzziah made a misstep, it affected a lot of people.

Some would say that this is true of all leaders -- that whatever a leader does has an impact on a lot of other people. I would say that this is true of everyone. We just notice it more in the lives of more visible people. None of us is irrelevant, and as long as we are connected to other people, we cannot become irrelevant. A society does not thrive because it is comprised of individuals who can do everything equally well. A society thrives because many people who have individual skills and talents are meaningfully connected to one another. Forging deeper connections with people is more beneficial than entertaining fears of irrelevance.

At the same time, we are also in danger of believing that we are entitled to special treatment. We don't like thinking that we may be slighted or cheated out of some opportunity or privilege. Uzziah may have thought that he could do things that other people shouldn't be allowed to do, just because he was king. Some people today think that they deserve special treatment for all sorts of reasons. Others think that their children deserve special treatment, which is a sort of entitlement by proxy, I suppose. Some people are powerful or persuasive enough to benefit from their sense of entitlement. This might even trigger a sense of entitlement in other people -- people who think that they are suffering an injustice because they missed out on some opportunity or privilege. For some reason, we can all fall prey to a belief that we deserve more than we have.

A society cannot support such attitudes indefinitely, though. At some point, we must recognize our own abundance and strive for equity on a larger scale rather than feed our individual sense of entitlement. When we cry, "It's not fair!" about a social injustice, it carries a little more weight than when we are commenting on the circumstances of our own lives. One of the essential ingredients to a commendable society in the Hebrew scriptures is justice, which means that all people are treated equally. Ideally, this even meant that debts should be forgiven after a certain amount of time and that the people of Judah should not keep fellow Jews as slaves. Judah didn't live up to this ideal in practical reality, but throughout the prophets there is a cry for justice and equity. This did not mean that everyone looked out for themselves and defended their own personal entitlement to equal treatment; it meant that people were supposed to look out for one another. The intention was that every individual would be intentional about treating people with equity and compassion.

We are not likely to be stricken with leprosy, but we can suffer a kind of spiritual leprosy -- a weakening of our sense of self and our relationships with other people that can even be contagious. There are some real negative consequences to constantly fighting irrelevancy or defending what we think we deserve. We will always see people who are highly capable in ways that we are not. We will always be able to find some way in which somebody "got away with" something or received some opportunity or privilege that we envy. Being driven by fear or a sense of entitlement will only yield more frustration and anger for us, though. Looking around in our lives for ways in which we can bring equity and compassion forward for others not only engages us in creatively using our unique capabilities in highly relevant ways, but it has the potential to transform the lives of other people. This, in turn, can ultimately lead to a more equitable society, which benefits everyone.  

At the core of every person is a deep awareness of truth, an undeniable beauty, and a phenomenal reserve of creativity. No person can truly become irrelevant. At the same time, no person truly deserves more than any other person. When we recognize the inherent value of ourselves and of every person around us, we can engage our creativity in profoundly satisfying and meaningful ways. We can create something that can never be built from fears about ourselves or a preoccupation with what we think we deserve.

What are you building?

Amos: Challenging a Sense of Entitlement and Advocating a Just Society

Of all of the books in the Bible, Amos is perhaps one of the best examples of a teaching that remains relevant to current Western culture, even though it was written in a completely different social, political, and intellectual context. Many times, assertions about the Bible's relevance are used to justify one's own behavior and to pronounce judgment on the behavior of other people, and those who make assertions about the Bible's timeless relevance must necessarily choose some parts to leave out of that assessment. Amos should not be one of those ignored books, even though the message of this prophet may be difficult for some people to accept.

Amos lived at a time when the Israelites existed in a divided society. There were some people who were doing very well -- financially well off, politically influential, religiously pious -- and there was the vast majority of people, who were impoverished and largely ignored. The wealthy lived under the belief that their possessions and influence were rewards for living pious lives, and they were characterized by patriotism and personal pride. They believed that they were entitled to their wealth and circumstances, and they constructed a worldview that justified ignoring, oppressing, or at least looking down upon the vast majority of people. Amos saw this system as unjust, and he saw the state religion as excusing and promoting those inherent injustices. His message to the people of his day was that religious practices mean nothing if they do not inspire people to lead lives of justice and respect toward others. To be clear, "justice" in this sense does not mean that people who have done something wrong will pay for their crimes; "justice" means that people have equal treatment under the law -- that some people in a society are not made to suffer so that others can be comfortable.

The short book of Amos can be summed up with just a few essential points. First, he chastises people not to long for the Day of the Lord, what some people today still talk about in terms of a "rapture" or a "second coming." Amos suggests that those who long for the End of Days do so out of ignorance and an inflated sense of self-importance. Instead, the prophet urges people to care for one another, to stop fearfully hoarding wealth and power at the expense of others, and to actually build a society of equity and fairness. It was perhaps easy for ancient people, as it is for some people today, to place all hope in a supernatural event -- some final accounting that would bring impartial justice and peace beyond human control. Amos says that this is foolish. For Amos, a just and equitable society established and sustained by human beings is not only possible, it is expected. Although he didn't phrase it this way, Amos envisioned a society that reflected the guiding principle that all people have innate value -- or at least that all Jews have innate value. Finally, Amos points to the hardships and challenges that the people have faced as disciplinary lessons that have gone unacknowledged. The entire society has suffered because of the system of injustice and unrighteousness, and yet those who had the power to change things kept heading in the same direction, oblivious. Eventually, Amos threatens, the society will be destroyed because of its inherent injustice and greed.

In American society today, there are some who have confused patriotic fervor with religious piety, and there are some who believe that God rewards religious displays with wealth and power. Some people think that they are entitled to the possessions and the influence they have because of their spiritual practices, and based on that claim, there are obviously others who do not deserve similar wealth or influence. Is there injustice in American society as there was in the time of Amos? Are there any who suffer so that others may succeed? Are there people who brag about their own faithfulness while ignoring or insulting people who have less? Are there people who believe that it is more important to protect what they have than it is to share with those less fortunate?

It's easy for all of us to slip into a sense of entitlement from time to time. We may even want justice, but we often don't want it to cost us anything personally. The kind of society Amos envisioned requires something more. Some of us may even hear the noble voice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reciting the words of Amos 5:24, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Like Amos, Dr. King envisioned a society based on justice -- a culture that supports doing that which acknowledges the human dignity of all people, not because it is profitable or required by law, but simply because it is the right way to treat people. Like Amos, Dr. King knew that building such a society required some hard work.

As a society and as a global community, we have choices about how we view and treat one another. We have choices about the level of social stratification we will support. We have choices about what sort of a difference we will make. If we act out of a sense of entitlement and step on other people in order to reach higher for ourselves, if we look down upon those who have less and assume that those who have less obviously deserve less, we can feed an unjust system as it spirals into self-destruction. If we place a higher priority on justice, equity, and compassion, we might establish a more sustainable society built on the fact that no one truly deserves to be oppressed and no one truly deserves to be an oppressor. It may be difficult to set aside personal comfort or the belief that we have certain entitlements over and above other people. The question is: Is it worth it? Is a better society -- a better world -- worth us giving up a bit of our fear-driven delineations between who is worthy and who is unworthy?

Although Amos does tend to use shame as a tool, there is no reason to spend time feeling guilty or ashamed about our circumstances. Even though we are not entitled to live the lives we have, and even though we don't necessarily deserve any particular quality of life, there is also not a lot of be gained by being ashamed of what we have. It's more a matter of what we do with what we have. For myself, I want to strive first and foremost to see the inherent value in every person. I want to contribute to a society that thrives because people realize that we live in abundance, that personal comfort and convenience are luxuries and not entitlements, and that we all need one another. I want to contribute to a society in which people do not give credence to self-centered, reward-based, prideful religious practices, but instead use spiritual practices as tools to grow as individuals and communities who love, respect, and honor one another. As I read Amos, it seems that this is the kind of society he hoped for. Perhaps the time has come to build it in earnest.  

Mark 4: Sowing Seeds of Authenticity

The parable of the sower in Mark 4 (and most of the material that follows) is also copied in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. With a rare bit of transparency, the meaning of the parable is even explained so as to leave little room for interpretation. If people didn't invent so many different versions of the "word" that was to be sown, this story would leave little to the imagination. Even with a lack of agreement about what exactly the "word" is, this can be an encouraging passage for anyone.

The message of the story is really this: You will not be understood and accepted by everyone. You must live by your own guiding principles, and it's a good idea to freely share what motivates you. Some people will be hostile to you if you aren't doing what they think you should do in your life, but you cannot live a fully authentic and satisfying life just doing what other people think you should do. Some people will think your guiding principles are fantastic; they may even be inspired by how you live your life. When push comes to shove, though, they will keep living by their old habits. Some people will be inspired by your guiding principles, and they will strive to live more authentically by their own ideals. Their own irrational fears and beliefs (about themselves, other people, and life in general) will win out, though, at least in the short term. Some people who bear witness to your authentic life based on deep, meaningful guiding principles will be so inspired that they start doing things differently in their own lives. They will dismantle their irrational fears and deepen their own guiding principles, and they will live in such a way that inspires other people --  people you don't even know and may never meet.

You don't have any control over what other people do. You only control your own actions and beliefs. If you are living authentically by a meaningful set of inspiring guiding principles, your life will be like a lamp on a stand -- people won't be able to miss it. You will not see the full impact of your life and actions -- the ripples will spread out further than you can perceive. You don't get to control how other people grow as a result of your own life and actions, but even the smallest moment of authentic action can have tremendous impact on someone else's life. What we do matters, even though we cannot control what other people do with our example.

Uncharacteristically short for me, I know, but this is the core of this parable: Live big. Live authentically. Live fearlessly. Know what your guiding principles are and let them inform what you do. Continually weed out irrational fear and detrimental beliefs about yourself, other people, and life. In other words, be personally responsible in your life, and learn to accept that other people will do whatever they do. Your responsibility is just to live like it matters.  

Dismantling Fear of Same-Sex Marriage

Today and tomorrow, the Supreme Court is hearing testimony on a couple of cases which will influence the rights of homosexual couples, and thus some conservative Christian alarmists are casting aside the example set by the biblical character of Jesus to voice their profoundly irrational fears on the subject. If these individuals are to be believed, the fate of the country hangs in the balance between the issues of marriage for homosexual couples and reproductive rights for women. Among other tactics, some of these representatives of Christianity are publicly praying for God's will to be done, sowing the seeds of fear through absurd slippery slope arguments, encouraging civil disobedience, and appealing to an antiquated perspective of sinfulness as a basis for modern-day legal decisions. Since I began this writing experiment a year and a half ago after an essay on marriage rights for same-sex couples, it seems appropriate to revisit it during a significant time in the life of our country.

I must confess that I am puzzled when a person prays for God's will to be done and then asserts what God's will must be in a given situation. If God is believed to be omnipotent, or at least exerting some amount of control over reality, what does one hope to accomplish by encouraging God to do what he will presumably do anyway? If God is in control, isn't everything that happens his will? Yet, if the Supreme Court decides in favor of same-sex marriage in a few months, there will no doubt be some Christians who will claim that God's will was not done. The people I admire are those who recognize the need to occasionally reorder their impression of God's love for humanity. People who claim to have a corner on the market of understanding God's will are revealing a profound egotism and immaturity, demanding that reality should shift to fit their perspective rather than the other way around.

Hoping to gain collusion for their prejudice and spread panic and self-righteous indignation, some of these individuals have equated homosexual people with child molesters and animal abusers, claiming that it will only be a short step from legalizing marriage for homosexual couples to legalizing bestiality, child abuse, incest, and polygamy. Obviously, condoning a relationship between two consenting adults has nothing to do with putting children or animals at risk. On the one hand, the fear-mongering tactics are blatant, but on the other hand, the envisioned dangers of this slippery slope attack the very foundation of the argument. Some famous biblical heroes committed incest and polygamy, and God didn't seem to mind at all. If the Bible is to be used as a credible source for condemning homosexuality, why is it not a credible source to approve marrying one's half-sister or taking multiple wives?

The whole slippery slope concern is fallacious from the start, however. As things currently stand, relationships between homosexual couples exist. Although the GLBT community is still in the process of obtaining equal treatment in our society, they are able to openly present themselves to society as homosexuals with ever-increasing acceptance. Homosexual couples can adopt children, and potentially raise them in a more loving environment than some heterosexual couples manage to create. The propriety of homosexuality is not the issue in question. The question is whether married adult homosexual couples will be granted the same benefits as married adult heterosexual couples. Even if the Supreme Court decides in favor of restrictive and intolerant laws, there will still be people in homosexual relationships in America.

Presumably, the concern is that such "sinful" acts should be condemned by the law, even if people choose to engage in them. This, too, seems like an indefensible position. Homosexuality is not even significant enough to be addressed in the Ten Commandments, and in the United States, national laws permit the breaking of several of the Big Ten. Not only are people allowed to work on the sabbath, our culture and economy have come to expect it to a large extent. There are no national laws against idolatry. There are no longer any national laws against blasphemy. Although we expect people to give honest testimony before judges, there are entire career fields based on deception. And although adultery is illegal on the books in some states, there is no national law prohibiting it. In fact, according to a recent study, 23% of Christian pastors in America admitted to committing adultery. Apparently it is easier to condemn other people than it is to live blamelessly in one's own life. The Bible claims that Jesus even said something about this.

Even though homosexuality isn't mentioned in the Ten Commandments, it is clearly included in a larger set of "sinful" behaviors articulated in the Bible. While the laws of the United States may not outright condone many "sinful" behaviors, there doesn't seem to be a community of people who are being persecuted for wearing mixed fabrics, gossiping, or eating the wrong foods (all of which are sinful according to the Bible). This has become a legal issue specifically because an intolerant segment of the Christian subculture has claimed unjustified and imbalanced influence on the American legal system. For whatever reason, some Christians believe that they must impose their worldview on other people, and they are willing to use an array of intimidation tactics to get their way, even though this represents a very different way of treating people than what was taught by their namesake.

While it seems logical to suggest that no one is going to be forced into a homosexual relationship, some people insist that their religious rights are being trampled if anyone is allowed to engage in a homosexual relationship with the blessing of the national government. This reflects a grievous misunderstanding of how religious freedom works. Religious freedom means that I have the right to believe what I want to believe and engage in whatever religious activities seem appropriate to me, provided I do not bring harm to any person or animal or break any other laws. Religious freedom does not mean that I can dictate what other people do. If someone decides to be Christian, and I am offended by that, I cannot call foul and demand that the government do something about it. Likewise, if my religious beliefs do not allow for the use of an automobile, I cannot demand that everyone else stop driving around. If a person's religion prohibits consuming alcohol, that person should refrain from consuming alcohol; if a person's religion prohibits homosexual behavior, then that person should refrain from homosexual behavior. That is the extent of religious freedom. Somehow, when money is perceived as being in the mix, however, people start getting twisted.

Since the whole reproductive rights issue has been in the public eye because of its inclusion in the national health care plan, some Christian organizations have been threatening civil disobedience. The rhetoric goes something like, "We will not be forced to pay for abortions," followed by whatever absurd and idle threats seem to pack the most punch at the time. As they see the issue, if any money a Christian organization pays into a health care system is used to pay for abortion, then the organization is essentially supporting abortion, even if no one in the actual organization ever has an abortion. It makes sense on the surface. Now, the battle cry is easily converted to, "We will not be forced to support marriage rights for homosexuals." While I'm not sure what that means, exactly, since I cannot imagine that any members of the clergy will suddenly be forced to perform marriages, the assumption seems to be that an organization should be able to decide to be a conscientious objector to a national policy. This reflects either a stunning naïveté or a very ballsy bluff.

Here's a secret that these folks may actually not realize: We are already paying for things we don't want to pay for. Imagine that I disagree with cigarette smoking and I decide that I don't want to pay for a smoker's cancer treatment. If their behavior brought about the disease, then they should bear the brunt of paying for treatment. Harsh perhaps, but reasonable. If I have health insurance, however, the cost of my insurance is not just based on my personal medical expenses. An insurance company spreads its expenditures out across all its policy holders. So, if I look at things the right way, I am paying for a small piece of a lot of other people's medical procedures, whether I want to or not. I appreciate the benefits of having health insurance, though, so I have to come to terms with the fact that some little portion of my premiums payments will pay some miniscule portion of many smokers' cancer treatments.

Similarly, let us consider taxes for a moment. As American citizens, we have a great amount of freedom, but as individuals we do not get to determine how our country spends the taxes we pay. Some of us may disagree with wars because of the innocent lives that are inevitably lost. We do not get to allocate our tax dollars toward education instead. I can issue statements of protest and disapproval. I can contribute personal money toward organizations that seek to broker peace. I can volunteer my time and energy toward anti-war efforts. But my tax dollars will, in some small way, support the decisions of elected officials, whether I agree with them or not. That is how our democracy works.

As for how Christianity works, there are now many differing views. Some would say that Jesus proclaimed a new way of living in harmony with one another, through a profound love that surpassed our tendency to compete and condemn. Some would say that there is no fear in such a love as Jesus taught, that such a love dismantles fear. Others apparently believe that they must fight with every breath to force others to behave a certain way. This winds up looking a lot more like fear than it does love. I would suggest that Christians are capable of reading their scriptures with more open eyes and hearts. Even as Paul condemns sexual immorality in the letter to the Galatians, for instance, he reminds Christians that they are not slaves to a set of behavioral rules. He asserts that the Christian community is free from such concerns, so that it might love more fully.

I am grateful to be in a country where there can be a national debate about loving, honoring, and respecting all people equally. I envision a time when there might be no reason to debate policies of equity and justice. For now, I stand on the side of love. And if an atheist humanist can do that, surely believers in a God of love can find a way to put aside fear and see people more fully, if they choose.

The Rules by Which We Live, and What Matters More

Wending our way through the Gospel of Mark, the next several passages are short accounts of healing and conflict with the Jewish religious authorities of the day. (These accounts also appear in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, arranged to suit those authors' purposes.) Jesus heals a paralyzed man and forgives his sins, and the scribes call him a blasphemer. Jesus heals a man's hand on the Sabbath (a day set apart for rest in honor of Yahweh), and the leaders of a Jewish sect start plotting to kill him. In between these healing stories, Jesus is questioned about why he and his companions refuse to follow Jewish customs of avoiding contact with unclean people, honoring days of fasting, and respecting the Sabbath. The author of Mark has Jesus respond with some typical rabbinic sayings: "It isn't the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." "No one pours new wine into old wineskins." "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." These responses -- which were handed down through oral tradition among the Jewish teachers (rabbis) -- reflect something about what the author of Mark was trying to communicate in his portrayal of Jesus.

Pharisees were members of a Jewish sect who devoted their time to nuanced interpretations of Jewish law. Some of the situations in Mark are obviously contrived just so the author can make a point. It was not forbidden for beggars to pick grain and eat it on the Sabbath, for instance, but it provides an opportunity to have Jesus say something the author of Mark deemed important. There were Jewish thinkers who disagreed with Pharisaic interpretations, and there were other sects of Judaism in the first century with their own distinct views. By the time the author of Mark was writing, however, the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed by Roman military response to a Jewish uprising, and the Pharisees had become a dominant voice among Jews that had been "dispersed" from Jerusalem. Their way of thinking offered the most robust way of living out the Jewish faith in the absence of a temple where legitimate sacrifices could be offered. Thus, when the author of Mark writes of conflict between Jesus and Jewish leaders, he is in effect portraying conflict between the Christian and Pharisaic sects of Judaism in the aftermath of the temple's destruction.

The Christian perspective portrayed in the gospel stories had their roots in rabbinic commentary -- interpretations of the Jewish scriptures by rabbis. There was a distinct spin put on these teachings to be sure, but the words attributed to Jesus by the author of Mark often were not novel. When one looks at the thrust of this collection of stories, the conflict between the Pharisees and Jesus is clearly about where one's focus should be in life. The Pharisees had an idea of how one should live -- a set of complex rules that defined as clearly as possible every nuance of righteous living. The Jesus of Mark was interested in something else -- a different, simpler rule of life that focused on other people rather than individual righteousness.

People like rules for more than one reason. Some people like to have a concrete measure of how wonderful they are, and a checklist of rules works well for this. Most people, however, use their own rules as a means of assessing other people. If I make it a rule that I will always obey the speed limit, I not only get to feel great about myself when I follow that rule, I also get to judge all the people around me who do not obey the speed limit. They are wicked, evil, miscreants because they are doing something of which I do not approve. Speed limits are actual laws, but we create our own rules about lots of things: how people should dress, how people should speak, how people should raise their children, what people should do with their money. We have an idea about the right way to handle every aspect of life, even when we don't live up to our own standards. The Pharisees ought to make perfect sense to us, when we think about it. We are constantly judging other people's behavior against our own standards.

The Jesus of the gospels throws a monkey wrench into this habit. Why would we let people wallow in unnecessary shame, when we have the power to forgive them and lift them up? Why would we only spend time with people who agree with us, when we have the opportunity to teach and learn so much more by spending time with people who are different? Why would we only spend time with people who have it all together in their own minds, when we can make the most difference in the lives of people who are desperately searching for their own sense of worth and hope? Why should we adhere to old ways of doing things at the expense of our own well-being and the well-being of other people around us? Of what value are all of our rules if we only use them as weapons?

In these stories, the author of Mark was saying something profound about what he thought Judaism -- and the Christian sect -- should stand for. People matter more than our rules. We rarely see this truth being lived out by churches of any faith in the twenty-first century, and we are most likely personally challenged by the statement. People matter more than our rules. Connecting with other people is more important than judging them and setting ourselves apart. Honoring other people as they are is more valuable than finding reasons not to care about them. Our lives are enriched when we let go of our own contrived mandates about how life ought to be lived and accept ourselves and other people as worthy, capable human beings. People matter more than our rules.


Consider your own rules. How do you judge yourself and other people? What would it be like to set those rules aside and see people as human beings with innate value? What artificial rule could you let go of right now and never miss? For me, rules about how people should drive would be high on the list, and rules about how aware people should be in crowded stores would rank up there, too. The importance we ascribe to insignificant things is just silly. Of course people matter more than our contrived rules. People matter. What an incredibly simple and challenging truth. 

Mark 1:9-14: Trials and Temptations, and Recognizing the Challenges that Matter Most

All mythological heroes, from Sumerian tales through modern movies, face what Joseph Campbell has termed the "Road of Trials." In the prototypical ordering of hero myths, this time of testing begins after the hero has crossed the threshold of normal life and experienced a "rebirth" into a heroic identity. In the Jesus story, baptism by John the Baptist serves as this crossing of the threshold. Jesus' heroic identity is announced, and he immediately goes into the wilderness to be tested.

The Gospel of Mark is the earliest written Jesus myth that made it into the canon of the Bible. In just a couple of verses, we learn that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, where he was tested by an adversary, and that angels tended him during this time when he lived with wild animals. Mark indicates that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, which in terms of Jewish storytelling was a shorthand for "a very long time." It is also thought that the number 40 referred to a period of testing or punishment, which makes it perfect in the context of the Jesus story.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the story becomes fleshed out a bit, with three specific temptations indicated, and the author of the Gospel of Luke borrowed heavily from the Gospel of Matthew for his version. (Incidentally, the writers of the Gospel of John had little use for the temptation story.) Many people have extracted lessons from this story about Jesus' character and how to follow his example. For instance, some people observe that Jesus used scriptural references to resist the temptations, and thus assume that knowing the Bible inside and out will lead to a more "holy," temptation-free life. In the Gospel of Matthew, however, there is a constant effort to prove the identity of Jesus by referring back to Jewish scripture, often taking the original scripture completely out of context in order to legitimize Jesus as the Jewish "messiah" of legend. Perhaps more significant is the implication that Jesus understood the temptations of wealth (bread is frequently symbolic of money in Jewish literature), fame, and power, and realized that these things frequently distract people from true wisdom and happiness. More on these things in a moment.

Some people are fond of the idea of being tested. After all, overcoming challenges makes us stronger and more capable people. When we prove ourselves to other people, we might get a promotion or a closer relationship or some other desirable privilege. Some of these challenges are very clear, with distinct rewards for success, and we choose to take them on because we want the reward. Of course, some individuals focus on how to get the rewards with a minimum of effort, overlooking that the designated trials are often intended to reflect inward character. We can go through our lives as if our only goal is to pass the next test in a long series of trials, neglecting our responsibility to infuse our lives with meaning. It might be said that part of the test is knowing how unimportant some tests are.

Of course, if we interpret tests as being spiritually significant, we can perceive a great deal of importance -- even eternal importance. There are those who believe that if they pass the trials of this life, they will be rewarded with greater joy and pleasure in an afterlife. Obviously, failing the trials of this life will yield a different result, but most folks believe that Hell is reserved for other people. Reward or punishment in an eternal afterlife certainly seems to be more motivating than anything that could happen in our temporally restricted physical life on Earth. Here's the thing though: there is a lot of good that can be done in this life, and there is a lot of joy and gratitude and satisfaction to be felt in this life. We don't really need to use belief in an afterlife as motivation. If we are doing the things that align with our deepest selves and honor our connection to the people around us, we will be creating what the gospel writers called the "kingdom of God." Since this term was often put in Jesus' mouth, we'll have more time to explore it in later entries. For now, the appropriate point is that there is no great trial-giver in the sky sending tests into our lives and scoring us on our successes to determine any sort of eternal destination.
 
We can absolutely test ourselves, setting goals and action plans that challenge us. There may be a great deal of personal satisfaction in overcoming challenges, even when the tangible rewards are slight. Sometimes building our sense of our own capability is an effective reward. When we start looking at our lives as a series of tests from something beyond ourselves, however, we risk losing that sense of our own capability. Not everything in life is a test. Illness is not a test, for instance. We cannot overcome most actual illnesses simply by our own efforts -- we rely on doctors to prescribe medicines and treatments so our bodies can heal. Illnesses may occur for any number of reasons, but there is no intentionality behind an illness -- no one decided to give us an illness to test us.

Likewise, things that happen because of someone's irresponsibility are not necessarily tests either. Being injured in a traffic collision because someone ran a red light is a result of human carelessness, and while we may face challenges as a result, our circumstances are not designed by anyone just to test us. We may find it challenging to pay our bills on time, and we may justifiably consider it an accomplishment when we pay off our last credit card and become debt free. However, there is no one orchestrating those financial challenges as some sort of Herculean trial. There are many things in life that are simply facets of living. We exist in a complex society with a lot of other people, and there are very real challenges that emerge in that system. That in no way implies an intelligence on the other end of these challenges waiting to reward or punish us. We ultimately decide which challenges in life we will tackle, and what our success will mean to us.

Which is why the story of Jesus' trials in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke are potentially more spiritually valuable for us than the earlier version in the Gospel of Mark. The spiritual truth in the tale has nothing to do with an intelligent spiritual adversary who is out to trick us -- we do well enough at tying our own spiritual shoelaces together in knots. The spiritual truth in the tale has nothing to do with how well we must memorize the scriptures of a particular religion. There are plenty of spiritual leaders who know their scriptures very well and still wind up in scandalous or violent headlines. Being able to recite words does not necessarily guarantee that we understand their meaning. The interesting spiritual piece in the temptation story is about the temptations themselves.

We are still living in a society that glorifies wealth, fame, and power over other people. It has apparently been a reality of human community for a very long time if these three things were considered the primary distractions from spirituality two thousand years ago. As many people have said, none of these three can provide happiness or satisfaction in life. Money is only as valuable as what one does with it, and the same goes for fame and power. The more time we spend worrying about our popularity or our bank accounts or our titles, the less time we have for the things that are truly meaningful. Money and popularity and power are not bad things, though, despite what one may infer from the gospel writers. These three temptations simply have incredible distraction potential. When we give them too much importance in our lives, we run the risk of missing the things that have true value: our integrity, our relationships, our connection to the world around us.

In the hero-myth of the gospels, Jesus knew what was important to him. He had a level of self-awareness that comes from intentional, honest introspection. While wealth, fame, and power hold some allure, there are more important things in life. At a very deep level, we know that, but we often forget it. We might try to fool ourselves with the justification that we can do more good in the world if we have more resources, but the truth is that we already have enough. The challenge of knowing what has value in life is not a test from on high, nor is it trial we can bluff our way past. It is a challenge issued from deep within ourselves, and if we answer that challenge with a life that focuses on what matters most, our rewards will be immeasurable, not in some distant afterlife, but here and now.

John the Baptist: Developing Eyes Willing to See Human Worth and Voices Willing to Speak Truth

The Gospel of Mark is the earliest collection of Jesus stories that made it into the Bible. In fact, other gospel writers quote directly from Mark. The Gospel of Mark doesn't begin the stories about Jesus with a census and a manger and a band of shepherds shirking their duties at the behest of a supernatural choir. Mary and Joseph are not even mentioned. Instead, this short collection of Jesus tales begins with the character of John the Baptist, herald of the messiah figure. Instead of legitimizing Jesus as divine by a special birth story, the Gospel of Mark illustrates the divine nature of Jesus by a holy proclamation when Jesus is baptized, an event which initiates the public ministry of Jesus in all of the gospels. This was quite possibly an earlier origin story about the Christ figure than the familiar Christmas tale, which may have developed as the Jesus mythology matured in the first century.

John the Baptist sets an interesting stage for Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark, he serves as a prophetic herald, baptizing people for "repentance" and the "forgiveness of sins." In other words, when people felt shame about some way that they had not lived up to their expectations of themselves, and they wished to refocus and strive to come closer to their ideal of themselves, John ceremonially gave them permission to set aside their feelings of shame and boldly move forward in their lives. He foretells the coming of a messiah figure, and when Jesus is baptized, God identifies Jesus as that messiah figure. Later gospel writers expanded on the character of John the Baptist.

The Gospel of Matthew includes a rebuke of the prominent religious authorities of the day, and John recognizes the special nature of Jesus when he approaches for baptism. Jesus tells John that his baptism is a matter of propriety, since presumably he had never missed the mark in his first three decades, being the son of God and all.

The Gospel of Luke begins with a legendary birth story for John the Baptist, and when the time comes for Jesus and John to meet as adults, John has already been preaching the same kinds of messages that Jesus will carry on after John's death: lessons like people who have more should share with people who have less, and extortion and lying are bad. Luke also includes a little more information about John's arrest by Herod, since John spoke up about some of the dictator's illegal and unsavory behavior.

The Gospel of John (named pseudonymously for a different John) is a bit more blatantly metaphysical than the "synoptic" gospels, but John the Baptist still figures prominently early in the story. In this telling of the story, John recognizes Jesus because of divine revelation, and Jesus is once again legitimized as a uniquely qualified spiritual leader.

None of these stories is particularly useful as mere historical data; there is nothing more verifiable in these tales than there is about any other mythological origin story. What is important, however, is the message behind John the Baptist's character. The Christ figure did not choose to begin his teaching within the organized Jewish religion, but rather began his public ministry outside the organized political and religious systems of the day. John the Baptist was apparently ministering primarily to people disenfranchised from established power structures. When the religious authority figures came to investigate, he chastised them for their pride and their "viperous" natures. The character of Jesus was not spiritually astute because of intense religious study or the ability to follow or understand Jewish dogma and rules; his credentials came from a deeper authority.

When the gospel writers use the character of John the Baptist to say something about Jesus, they have an obvious message to convey. Jesus serves as an idealized persona, fully in touch with his divine nature while walking around in a human body in a human world. Perhaps what John the Baptist saw was only partially correct however. Perhaps if he had been willing to look for it, John would have seen a deeper spiritual self within every person, ignored or undeveloped maybe, or covered over with lies and beliefs that were initially very well-intentioned. Perhaps if we look around intentionally, we will see something more than John saw in the multitude of people around him.

John the Baptist didn't really need to tell people not to take more money than they ought from people, or to share what they had with people who had less. We already know right from wrong. We know when we are acting out of selfishness (fear of losing what we have) or greed (fear of not having enough). And yet John got thrown in prison for saying out loud things that everyone already knew. This is, in part, because we get rather defensive when we do things out of fear. Sometimes we would rather be defiantly out of alignment with our truest, most noble selves than be told that we are wrong. We would rather lie to ourselves than honestly face our fears, even when we know at our core that we are way off base. This is one of the reasons we need one another.

We need other people to honestly remind us of the things we don't want to hear. We need other people who care when we go off the rails, who are willing to speak up when they see us careening out of control because of our irrational fears or our false beliefs. Even when we are just slightly out of alignment with the people we most want to be, an honest and loving word from someone can remind us of the things that matter most in our lives. Speaking the truth to someone is not always easy, especially when we have such a tendency to get mad when someone tells us something we don't particularly like. The character of John the Baptist gives us a model in this regard.

Without getting caught up in the intent of the gospel writers to legitimize the hero of their story as uniquely divine, there are a few things that we might glean from John the Baptist. First and foremost, we might strive to more gracefully correct our course when we recognize that we are out of alignment with the selves we most want to be. This requires being honest about our deepest selves as well as being honest about where we are potentially falling short. We might also strive to appreciate the people in our lives who are honest and caring enough to remind us who we are, to see our most noble selves in spite of our fearfulness. We can be those honest and caring people as well, willing to speak out in truth and love so that another individual might recognize that they are not entirely living as the person they want to be.

In one sense, we are all John the Baptists, surrounded by John the Baptists: people capable of seeing the intrinsic value of every person, and people capable of speaking the truth without judgment, so that together we might sharpen one another, strengthen one another, and create the kind of world we most want to live in. In our own ways, we can give people opportunities to set aside shame and irrational fear and move forward in their lives with hope and dignity. We don't need to herald a superhuman messiah who will come to save us from ourselves, we can simply proclaim one another as capable, worthy, beautiful.

This is the good news: Truth, beauty, and creativity are within you and always have been. You have value and worth because you are, and you need no further credential than that.

Judges 4-5: Wisdom and Strength Are Gender-Neutral

The surprising plot twist in the story of Ehud was that a southpaw can be heroic.  In the story of Israel's next judge, Deborah, the unexpected lesson is that women can be heroic, too.  At least on the surface.  The story is just as bloody as other tales of Israelite warfare, but this time it's a woman directing the Jewish army and a woman who kills the enemy general when he flees.  The efforts of two women, Deborah and Jael, effectively end the oppression from the Canaanites and grant Israel forty years of peace.  Even in the modern world, this story may seem impressive for all the wrong reasons.

Obviously, the writers of the book of Judges had a bit of an ulterior motive in recording tales about unlikely heroes.  It shouldn't be surprising when a left-handed person accomplishes something great or when a woman displays wisdom or strength.  Human beings are capable.  Even though different people are skilled in different specific areas, this has nothing to do with gender.  When the Israelites told the story of Deborah, they were addressing this truth in a way, but the fact that there are so few women prophets and heroes in the biblical narrative demonstrates how limited a foothold that truth found in Israelite culture.  Even today, thousands of years later, we are still debating whether women have opportunities and rewards equal to men in our society.

Sometimes when a woman CEO or a woman scientist or a woman artist does something noteworthy, the fact that it was a woman accomplishing something impressive is often given more weight than the accomplishment itself.  Thousands of years after Deborah is said to have sat beneath a palm tree settling Israel's disputes, there is some doubt in Western culture as to whether women are as capable as men.  It's understandable on a certain level.  The primary religion of our culture has an image of God as an old white man whose physical incarnation was a male who was surrounded by other males.  Women were there in the story, too, but there were no female disciples of Jesus.  The church structure of the Christian church has historically placed power in the hands of men and treated woman as inferior, and it has used an ancient fable about a woman giving in to a talking snake's temptation as justification for viewing women as weaker than men.  Never mind that the same book which holds that old folktale also demonstrates the strength and wisdom of women.  After centuries upon centuries of social, political, and religious systems built around the concept that men are leaders and women are supporters, it's no wonder that we still have not settled for once and all in the minds of everyone that women and men have equal value.

As with so many things, the reason comes down to fear and habit.  We don't always dig down into our automatic assumptions, especially when our thoughts seem to match the views of a larger population, but any assumption that one group of people is inherently inferior to another group of people is usually based on irrational fear.  That fear becomes habitual over generations, so that we accept things as normal without ever assessing whether those habits are based in truth.  Perhaps our minds also create some early beliefs when we're figuring out the differences between boys and girls, hearing stories and watching movies in which princesses are consistently helpless and in need of rescuing by dashing, capable princes -- the kind of stories that reinforce stereotypes of previous generations so that a new generation doesn't need to be told that women are inferior.  Somehow their brains just put the connections together without any adult having to say out loud the real moral of so many stories.  Because saying out loud that men are more capable than women -- than men deserve more respect, money, permission, or power just because they were born with the right genitalia -- seems a bit far-fetched.

I'm not sure what all of the fears are that are wrapped up in this cultural perception of inequality.  I could say, as others have, that the men in charge of the early church were afraid of the local wise women who handled the problems of a community without the need for recognizing the authority of organized religion.  That fear seems reasonable and powerful.  It doesn't make sense for the large numbers of people today who have bought into the idea that women (or people from other cultures, or people with less money, or people with more money) are somehow inferior human beings.  Only you can look at your beliefs honestly and evaluate them against the truth of human value.  Your beliefs about other people, and your beliefs about yourself, can be based on fear or they can be based in truth.  You may have to dig down a bit to track a belief to its source.  Some of these ideas have been with us for a very long time.

The book of Judges prompts us to evaluate our beliefs -- our assumptions about other people and about human value.  The truth is that different people do have different strengths and skill sets, but these strengths and skill sets are not based on gender, skin color, finances, or culture.  Even though personal strengths and skills may differ, every person has equal value as a human being.  This doesn't mean every person is equally capable of doing any given task.  It means that our value is not a function of what tasks we can perform.  Every person has value.  That is the starting point.  When we embrace the belief that every person we meet holds within them deep and undeniable truth, beauty, and creativity -- and when we are able to look in the mirror and acknowledge those qualities in ourselves -- maybe the differences we notice will matter less and our irrational fears will give way to a practice of seeing more clearly what connects us all.

Judges 1-3: Divine Codependency, Personal Responsibility, and Why You Don't Have to Be Afraid of Yourself

The book of Judges is a colorful collection of Israelite hero stories, proclaiming the champions who rose up and saved the day at various points in time when the Israelites were oppressed.  It's a kind of Hall of Fame in one respect, but for the rank and file Israelites it winds up being a Hall of Shame as well.  These champions are only necessary, according to the narrative of this collection, because the Israelite people fall away from their faith and God punishes them by allowing foreign powers to conquer them.  Over and over again.  Beyond its narrative cohesion, there is something to be learned from this cycle of falling away from the cultural religion, being subjected to the rule of a foreign king, and being rescued by a hero anointed by God into a time of peace before falling away from the cultural religion once again.  Each hero's story also has a spiritual lesson or two for us.

Judges 1 seems like a bit of housekeeping.  "Here is how the Israelites finished up with the work that Joshua started."  The Israelites are still committing some brutal acts, burning down cities and killing everyone there except for their spies.  As before, those peoples the Israelites don't wipe out are made into slaves.  Some of the atrocities are justified because the "victim" is literally getting equal justice for what he has done to others, as is the case with Adoni-Bezek.  On the one hand, it means the the Israelites are really no better than any of the people they're conquering, since they're willing to commit the same acts of torture and maiming.  On the other hand, the Israelites are morally above the cultures around them, since they are the agents of justice.

Chapter 2 really seems to be the beginning of the story, a sort of proper prologue with an angelic proclamation and an outline of what the book is all about.  We'll talk more about the cycle of disobedience, punishment, rescue, and peace in a moment.  Chapter 3 gives us a sense of what these hero stories are going to be like.  The Israelites start worshiping the local gods and forget about their strict cultural religion, God gets angry and "sells them" into the hands of a conquering king, the Israelites cry out for God to rescue them, and God raises up Othniel, who goes to war (presumably with an army behind him), and the land has peace until Othniel dies.  This is the template from which all the stories are based -- a sort of generic hero tale from which the other judges' tales improvise.

Take the story of Ehud, who was left-handed.  Being left-handed was not seen as culturally appropriate, much less as a blessing.  People who couldn't use the proper hand for things were seen as cursed or stupid.  And then along comes Ehud.  The Israelites fall away from God, God gets mad, foreign king conquers them, and the Israelites cry out to God.  So God chooses as their deliverer this left-handed nobody with a little dagger.  But because no one expects a weapon to be drawn with an attacker's left hand, he catches fat King Eglon by surprise and kills him.  Then, there is the humorous and embarrassing bit about the servants not wanting to check on the king because they thought he was just on the toilet for an extraordinarily long time while Ehud made his escape.

Ehud displays some qualities that the Israelites admire.  He uses what seems to be a disability to his advantage, he is sneaky and "underhanded" in order to win a victory for the greater good of his society, and he is clever enough to get away with it.  Ehud may not be a historical figure, or his tale at least may be elaborated considerably for effect, but there is still spiritual value to the story.  We have a tendency to look at our own failings (and to notice the disabilities of others, too).  We notice more what we are challenged by than we give credence to our capability.  This perspective hinders us from seeing possibility.  We get so caught up in thinking about our scarcity that we fail to notice our abundance.  If we choose to see every quality as a potential advantage, we stand a much greater chance of seeing our capability and creating meaningful and satisfying lives.

We also stand a better chance of seeing the capability of other people.  When we focus on other people's disabilities or failings, we create an image of them that is less than a fully able human being.  By adopting an attitude that left-handedness is just a different way of achieving the same goal, and in some circumstances perhaps an even better way of achieving the same goal, our perspective can shift just enough to see the divinity in other people.  When we acknowledge the value of every person and start from that angle, we are better able to see abundance.

That doesn't mean that we should be finding clever ways to kill people we don't like, as Ehud did.  It's a story, like Paul Bunyan or Hercules or Jason and the Argonauts.  It's from a culture that focused on genocidal behavior as an acceptable way of gaining property without having to build it all from scratch.  We have to look beyond the actual behavior of the judges to get the spiritually meaningful bits that apply to our own lives.  This is sometimes difficult.  Poor Shamgar is something of an afterthought.  "Oh, yes.  This other fellow was also quite good."

But what about the whole structure of the book?  Sure, we can look at Ehud and say, "Wow, I shouldn't focus on what I can't do as well as everyone else.  I have my own set of strengths."  We can feel really good about ourselves for the moment, and maybe about other people too.  And then what?  How do we relate to the larger-scale cycle of behavior that forms the basis of all these hero stories?

I'll start by saying that we should not start looking for the equivalent of judges in our own culture or sub-culture.  Competent leaders should be acknowledged, sure.  As Tina Turner sang in that Mad Max movie, though, we don't need another hero.  There is no god watching the earth or any portion of it and deciding whether or not to give people over to foreign powers based on their level of worship.  And there is no reason to think that if we just obey the dictates of a particular church and follow the rules that our lives will be peaceful and happy.  There are two big lessons in this cycle, however, that can make a big difference in how we look at our opportunities to create satisfying lives that have a meaningful impact in the world.  The first lesson is about God's behavior in the story, and the second lesson is about the Israelites themselves.

God doesn't learn very quickly.  He really loves this girl and even though she keeps sleeping around and ignoring him, he keeps coming back like a lost puppy.  Sure, he'll get mad and let her get herself into serious trouble, but he always shows up to rescue her before things get really out of hand.  It is the very picture of codependency and insanity.  He keeps doing the same thing for the Israelites, expecting them to behave differently, and then getting really angry when they don't change.  He doesn't change his expectations or redefine his relationship with them (not yet at least) even though it's apparent that they cannot live up to what he wants in a relationship.  Perhaps the only reason he keeps going back to them is because he knows that his standards are so unreasonable that no one would be able to live up to them, so he settles for being angry at the same folks instead of branching out and being disappointed in different people.

In the Christian version of the story, God eventually learns.  The New Testament is the Christian impression of what a different sort of relationship might look like.  God isn't as interested in being angry about his girl not living up to his unreasonably high standards.  It's still a relationship of co-dependency, but God accepts the limitations of the people he loves a little bit better.  Neither version is an ideal template for human relationships, even though we engage in codependency more often than we would like to admit.  Examine whether this looks like a pattern in your own life and be willing to address it, even if it means seeking some outside assistance in breaking habits that have been ingrained over a long period of time.

Learn from God's frustration.  Saving people over and over again doesn't acknowledge their freedom or capability, and it assumes an unrealistic responsibility for someone else's well-being.  Start from the understanding that every adult is personally responsible for their own actions and beliefs.  Yes, parents have some responsibility for their own children's safety.  We're talking about adults here (although personal responsibility is a phenomenal thing parents could teach their children).  Yes, we sometimes place our safety in the hands of an experienced guide when we hike off into unfamiliar territory.  We aren't talking about choices we make in special circumstances.  If you're looking for excuses not to be personally responsible for your decisions, just stop.  And if you're making allowances for someone else to abdicate personal responsibility, you aren't doing anyone any favors.  Our ability to create, our ability to fully acknowledge the truth and beauty within every person, our ability to be inspired -- these are compromised when we are unwilling to take personal responsibility for our beliefs and our actions.

Which is just another way of saying that our relationship to the divine within us is hampered.  Even when we are ready to admit that there is no higher intelligence watching over our lives from the outside, arranging things that we don't control on our behalf, blessing the good people and punishing the wicked people -- that doesn't guarantee that we are able to fully tap into the wisdom we hold within.  We may look to our truest, most noble selves in times of great catastrophe, whatever that looks like in each person's life, but it's much easier to go on autopilot most of the time.  Until we find ourselves once more in an out-of-control situation and we look for something to save us from our own decisions.  It isn't a healthy or satisfying way to live -- being unconscious until there is something traumatic to worry about.

Our divine selves do not want sacrifice or selflessness from us.  Our divine selves are simply the truest manifestation of who we are as human beings.  There is nothing judgmental at that deep level.  The judgment comes from the lies and fears that hide our deepest selves.  You know what you want your life to look like.  You know what matters most to you.  Beneath the fear and the fear and the older fear and the fear you forgot about, and beneath the lies about yourself and the lies about other people and the lies about how life is supposed to be, you know.  It seems vulnerable to unwrap all of those snug fears and lies and look beneath them, but it is at that core that your true strength lies.  It seems dangerous to look that deeply into yourself, but it is the safest thing in the world.  That clarity is the key to creating and inspiring.

The Israelites may not have really known what their god wanted from them.  They may have gotten the impression that he wanted them to be miserable.  He did have a lot of rules and he did threaten some extreme punishments.  Maybe their god didn't really know how to express what he wanted.  Whatever the case, they were afraid of the authentic divine and they chose something more appealing.  Simpler.  More fun.  Less frightening.  Who knows.  The divine is not something to be feared.  The whole thing about divine reward or divine punishment is a bit of a misstatement.  When we are in tune with our innermost selves, the results are absolutely satisfying and fulfilling.  That's the reward.  When we rely on the lies and the fear to dictate our actions, our lives are frustrating, shallow, and painful.  That's the punishment.  To be completely honest, sometimes life is legitimately frustrating and painful.  It's just that when we are in tune with our innermost selves, we know what to do with that frustration and pain.

So, recognize your strengths, and recognize that what you think of as weaknesses may actually be strengths in the right circumstances.  Be aware of codependency, and make the necessary changes regarding personal responsibility to honor your self and the people around you.  You are responsible for your beliefs and actions.  Other people are responsible for their beliefs and actions.  Stop being afraid of what your divine nature wants for you.  It's you.  You are you.  Let yourself be yourself.  The cycle of fear and distrust and miraculous rescues does not have to be a theme in your life.  Know yourself at the deepest level possible, and you will find strength and peace and beauty and inspiration and truth.  It may take a little work.  It is so worth it.