John 20: The Influence of the Enlightened

The story of the resurrection event concludes in the gospel of John with Jesus visiting the disciples in an exalted form. As we see in John 20, the post-resurrection Jesus character passes through locked doors unhindered, and a week later the Jesus character returns to convince the skeptic among the disciples that he is real. Remembering that this is a story, we know that it would be missing the point to ask where the resurrected Jesus might have gone for the week in between these visits. Instead, we can follow the rather ancient practice of interpreting the text metaphorically.

If the Jesus character is representative of us, then the resurrected Jesus character is representative of a fully alive, fully self-differentiated, best possible version of ourselves in complete alignment between our deepest values and our actions in the world. We might equate being "exalted" with a state of being unhindered by fears and anxieties, acting with complete integrity, sensitive to others without allowing ourselves to be restricted by other people's opinions and beliefs. Just as the Jesus character passes through locked doors, when we are living into a best possible version of ourselves, there are fewer obstacles that can keep us from being the people we most want to be, full incarnations of our deepest, most noble selves.

The resurrected Jesus character is not only able to be in complete alignment for himself, but he also influences the well-being of the people with whom he interacts. In the same way, we nurture others toward wholeness when we act in accord with our deepest values. Specifically, the exemplar in the story empowers others to live with integrity and purpose, particularly with regard to reactivity and shame. If we interpret sin as the reactive result of anxiety -- what people do when they allow irrational fear to be in the driver's seat -- then we recognize that we have some influence on other people's anxiety and the shame that they might feel after letting their anxiety run away with them.

When we show up as less anxious, more at peace, and in greater alignment with our deepest values, we influence the people around us. Just as anxiety is contagious, intentional calmness can be contagious, too. This means that our ability to act in alignment with our deepest, most noble selves has the potential to influence people away from reactivity. Even when people are reactive and act thoughtlessly on their anxiety, our principled intentional presence can influence people away from useless shame after the fact. We can acknowledge that being anxious is human, and reacting to our anxiety is natural. Yes, there are consequences to our actions and messes to clean up, but we are capable of facing those consequences and seeking reconciliation when things go sideways. Shame doesn't help us with these tasks. When we influence people toward greater wholeness by our own integrity and purposeful behavior, we might allow them to place limits on the influence of their anxiety and shame, and learn to cast vision in their own lives.

Now, the story about Thomas seems to be thrown in just to silence skeptics. Pronouncing blessing on people who believe things without evidence is a way of credentialing nonsense. When readers take the implications of this story at face-value, it affirms everything that is dangerous about religion. Believing something just because someone wrote it down two thousand years ago is naive at best. It lacks integrity to believing what spiritual leaders say just because they say it with conviction or wear special clothing or have authorization from a larger organization. Some things proclaimed on the basis of religious doctrine are quite simply false. Not only is there a lack of evidence to support some of the things people believe on the basis of religion, there is actual evidence to the contrary. Yet some people believe that they will be considered blessed or righteous for believing nonsense, because they read a passage like the story of Thomas and interpret it to mean, "ignore reality; believe what your preacher tells you."

Although it's probably easier just to dismiss this passage as a piece of early Christian propaganda to legitimize faith, we could also interpret this story to suggest that there are always things we do not know. We can guess with some reliability that the things we don't know will be congruent with the things that we can prove about reality, but there are still things that we don't know. In embarking on any journey of personal growth -- one might say personal transformation -- we must take some steps without knowing what lies ahead. To characterize growing into greater integrity and authenticity as vulnerable and risky is a profound understatement. When we build our lives with confident alignment to our deepest values, we may not see all that will be as a result of that intentional act. We move forward with as much clarity as we can have about our deepest values, but there are limits to our clarity. At some point, we have to trust ourselves to step forward into something we can't see clearly in order to become more fully alive -- more closely aligned with our vision of a best possible version of ourselves. If we take anything from the story of Thomas' skepticism, it should be this, rather than an admonition to believe nonsense and call it enlightenment.

The author ends the book of John with a statement of purpose. It's clear that the author has an agenda to convince people to accept his own religious position. The agenda of this commentary has hopefully been equally clear: to position the fictional character of Jesus in this ancient text as a metaphorical exemplar of what we might be if we choose to embrace our potential to radically love ourselves, the people around us, and the world we all share.

The goal of our lives is only determined by us. There is nothing outside of ourselves that compels us to outgrow our anxiety and our irrational fear. In some ways, society prompts us to remain anxious and reactive. However, if we choose to move toward being fully alive incarnations of our deepest, most noble selves, we are capable of embarking on that journey. We have within us the potential to act with integrity and intention. We have within us the ability to influence our lives and the lives of people around us toward greater wholeness. If this is not a compelling message of hope, I don't know what is.

John 20: Our Resurrection and Meaningful Hope

We blew right past a lot of the mythological details in the passion narrative. Some believers focus much more on the details of John 19, and there are legendary tales regarding the mystical powers of the spear that pierced Jesus' side. Since this is rather like spending time dwelling on the actual powers of a harp played by the Norse god Bragi, we've quickly arrived at John 20, which is a somewhat altered resurrection story than what we find in the synoptic gospels. Again, we need not worry about comparing the details of who arrived where first and who said what; these are authorial creations intended to tell a story a certain way. We can turn our attention in other directions.

Most importantly, there is a resurrection. We observed previously that the suffering of the crucifixion was a result of remaining self-differentiated and maintaining integrity in the midst of anxious people who allowed fear to drive them. Here we see that suffering was not the end of the story. The outcome of suffering for the Jesus character is that he rises and assumes an exalted status. Perhaps we too might expect that on the other side of our suffering is a sense of renewed life, not on the other side of the grave, but while we are still alive and walking around.

The persecution we might face for creating a life that aligns with our deepest, most noble selves is painful, but we also gain something greater than that suffering -- namely, the more fully alive life that we create. We gain alignment with our deepest, most noble selves, which is a way of being that allows us to be more fully alive -- as the Jesus character seems to be in the resurrection story of the gospel of John. He is barely recognizable to people who knew him well, just as our way of aligning with our deepest, most noble selves may be barely recognizable to people who knew us when we were less fully alive.

There are a few other details in the story from which we might also draw some meaning. For instance, Mary arrives at the tomb, sees something she doesn't expect, makes some assumptions (based primarily on fear), and runs off in reaction to those assumptions. She finds two other people, who hear her anxious conclusions and run off in reaction to her story. These two people make their own assumptions and -- without fully understanding what is happening -- go home, satisfied with the reliability their conclusions. At this point in the story, none of these characters know what is happening, but they all are convinced that they have a full grasp of the situation. They aren't happy about it. In some cases, they are overwhelmed with anxiety. But they believe that they understand the situation fully.

We don't ever understand a situation fully. We might understand things accurately in part, but we can't know all that there is to know about a situation. There are historical events that contribute to a situation and yet their connection might remain unnoticed. Each person in a situation brings their own perspective and baggage into it, and we can never know fully what goes on in another person's head. Before our anxiety carries us off into Autopilot Reaction Land, it's worth remembering that we don't know all that there is to know. If we can remain curious and ask questions, we might just short circuit our anxiety, even if we still fail to grasp a situation completely.

The second portion of this passage from the first half of John 20 has a lot of mystical implications, which were probably very important to the community for which the gospel was originally written. The dialogue between Mary and Jesus indicates that the community thought some very specific things about a post-resurrection Jesus. These ideas are not based on factual data, but rather on the assumptions of a community -- what made sense to those people at that time. We follow the same process too, often arriving at strange conclusions.

For the community in which this gospel was written, it made sense for Jesus to be unrecognizable and to say, "Don't touch me because I haven't yet ascended." They essentially made things up about what a resurrected person might say, based on their assumptions about the world. Some people today think it makes sense to conclude that wild conspiracy theories have merit, or that alien visitation is a viable explanation for some experience. These conclusions make sense to the people making them, even if they don't hold water under objective scrutiny. People today believe a literal interpretation of biblical stories, even though such an interpretation is incompatible with what is demonstrably true about the world.

Anxiety can make us forget things we actually do know. When we are anxious, our brains find it easier to latch onto any explanation -- even explanations that don't make a lot of sense -- because we want our anxiety to go away. When we think we understand something, we feel like we can have some control. We can put tin foil on our heads to protect our thoughts. We can amass a stockpile of resources in a fallout shelter to prepare for a societal breakdown. We can do something based on what we think we know, forgetting that there are pieces of contradictory evidence we aren't considering.

Sometimes, we hold two mutually exclusive competing ideas in our head without even realizing it. We think that our bosses hate us no matter what we do, yet we keep trying to find ways to please them. We think that our spouses love us, yet we behave as if they are our enemies. We believe that we are part of a religion founded on unconditional love, yet we pronounce hateful judgment on people who seem different from us. Somehow, these contradictions make sense in our anxious mind.

Our anxiety makes us forget what we know about people or about ourselves or about reality, and we go off on some fear-driven tangent without even realizing that we aren't acting in accord with what we believe most deeply. If we are willing to stop and think through our behavior, based on a deeper connection with our clear guiding principles, our actions might more often align with our vision of a best possible version of ourselves.

Now, there's no way to know what the characters in this story believed most deeply. One thing that is clear, however, is that there is some emotional volatility at play. Their anxiety is powerful. Yet, at the end of this particular passage, Mary's behavior is very different from the ending of the gospel of Mark, in which the women run away scared and tell no one what they've seen. Mary finds a sense of hope and runs to share that hope with others.

Obviously, hope is more uplifting than fear. Our hope can still be based on unrealistic or dishonest beliefs, though. In the story, of course, Mary accurately identifies a resurrected Jesus. This is just a story, not a historical account. In our own lives, we might be tempted to invest a lot of hope in things that we know aren't likely to happen. Hope in the impossible is not useful hope. In fact, hope in the impossible is most likely an anxious reaction in disguise. We feel powerless, so we place hope in something beyond our control.

An overwhelming majority of parents think that their high school athletes will have a career in professional sports, when it's obvious that only a minuscule percentage of high school athletes will go pro. Often, we expect that people in our lives are going to change into the people we want them to be. While we will surely influence people, we can't control how they will change as a result of our influence. We might hope for a mystical experience with something supernatural outside of ourselves, but every piece of evidence we have points to the conclusion that what we consider to be mystical experiences happen inside our own brains. We mistake internal chemical reactions that we don't understand for external supernatural experiences -- which we somehow believe we do understand.

It's important for us to share our hope with others, and it's important for us to maintain a sense of reality in the midst of our hopefulness. Realistic hope can prompt us toward actions that align with that dream of what could be. And it's important for us to share our anxiety with others too, if we're conscientious enough to share our anxiety with people who will help us shift out of autopilot and back toward a more intentional approach to how we manage our anxiety. Mary is a great example of connection in this passage. Everything that happens, she runs to tell someone. She isn't a great example of personal responsibility, though. We can forgive a fictional character in the throes of grief for not being grounded and centered. In our own lives, we can strive for a sense of connection with ourselves even as we foster connection with other people.

We can draw a lot of lessons from these short paragraphs, then. First -- even though our integrity may be seen as sedition and anxious people may persecute us for our intentional alignment with our deepest, most noble selves -- when we engage in fully alive lives, our experience might be beyond what we ever dreamed life could be.

Second, our anxiety can convince us that we know things we don't know. It's important for us to remember that we can't know everything. Our sense of curiosity can help us manage our reactivity.

Third, our anxiety can make us forget things we do know. We can become sharper about examining our beliefs and identifying when we are holding two mutually exclusive ideas in our heads. We can choose to follow the belief that aligns with our deepest values and let the other one go as a product of our anxiety.

Finally, hope is important, and it's most powerful when it's balanced with reality. When we hope for things that are impossible, we can't move toward them in any meaningful way. When we hope for things that are possible, we can act in accord with that hope and create more meaningful lives for ourselves and for the people around us.

John 4:43-54 Who We Know and What We Know

Much of the "travelogue" passages in the Bible are easy to gloss over, since Westerners living in the twenty-first century have little awareness of or attachment to the cities of ancient Israel. John 4:43-54 has a bit of that travelogue feel to it, but it may help to note that many people have compared the area in which Jesus was traveling to the size of New Jersey. That's not a value statement one way or the other. The two areas are just very similar in size. You don't have to know the locations of the geography and how they relate to one another to get the gist of the story. People are not traveling in particularly awkward or unusual paths here.

This passage follows immediately after the story of Jesus' encounter with the woman in Samaria. On the surface, it probably seems that the main point of this passage is about Jesus' power to heal. This may have been a part of the intention of the author, but healing stories like this are abundant and are told about a wide variety of people in the ancient world. Rather than picking apart the healing story itself, it may be beneficial to dig down to different level and notice another focus of the passage: belief.

First we see that people in a prophet's hometown are not likely to believe what he has to say. Then, we see that people who have witnessed something first hand have a persistent belief. The Jesus character levels an accusation that unless some demonstration of power is offered, then people will refuse to believe. Yet, the royal official believes Jesus' words, seemingly because they are spoken with authority. He then receives information that seems to confirm that his belief was well-founded. Let's look briefly at each of these problems of belief.

"A prophet has no honor in the prophet's own country." Once people think they know you, it's challenging to get them to see beyond what they think they know. Likewise, once you think you know a person, it's tough to notice when that person develops in new ways. There is some truth to the observation that people don't change, which makes it all the more challenging to recognize when a person does change. The reality is that many people continue along a predictable path in their lives, journeying toward a "default future." People who become more intentional in their lives, however, have the capacity to journey in new directions.

Sometimes, we form snapshots of people -- we get an impression of them based on a particular moment in time, and we draw conclusions about their entire being from that impression. In our minds, those people always look like their snapshot. Often, we might wind up being pretty much on target when we do this, because many people keep following the same unconscious patterns throughout their life. A prophet is someone who has something important to say, though. And prophets learn their wisdom somewhere. They are changed people once they learn something they didn't know before, and they have the potential to express what they've learned in a meaningful way. People who are only willing to hold an old snapshot in front of them aren't able to hear something meaningful, though. They are stuck on an old impression of the person.

We may have some prophets in our lives. It's important for us to listen. There may be people who have learned something and are living their lives differently as a result. If we mentally trap them in an older version of themselves, they don't suffer from that -- we do. They have learned what they have learned, and they're going to use that knowledge in their lives. By dismissing them, we miss out on sharing in their wisdom. It pays to be awake to the people around us -- to pay attention to people and notice when they seem to be outgrowing our old impressions of them.

We may be prophets for others. We may have learned some things in our lives that we want to share with the people close to us. Some of them aren't going to listen. They have an impression of us that was formed a long time ago, and they aren't able to see past that. We could spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get through to people who can't see us clearly, or we can spend our "prophetic" energies on people who are more willing to listen intentionally. The choice the authors of John commend is to speak to those who will listen.

"Until you see signs and wonders you will not believe." This statement has a double edge to it. On the one hand, it seems to suggest that if you don't see something with your own eyes, you will doubt that it happened. On the other hand, it seems to accuse people of wanting to be entertained and amazed -- "If I don't entertain and amaze you, you won't place any value on the spiritual truths I have to offer." Both of these concerns are problematic in their own ways.

Taking the latter issue first, it still seems to be a problem that we are more willing to accept "truth" from someone who can entertain and inspire us than we are willing to accept a potentially less appealing "truth" from someone who doesn't take the time to amaze and captivate us. From mega-churches to TED talks, we are more prone to believe things said by people who in some way entertain us and keep our attention. Entertaining delivery does not make something more true, however. We connect a person's ability to be entertaining with their ability to have meaningful insights, and there is simply no connection there.

If we want to know truth, we have to assess truth statements based on our experience of those statements and our thoughtful evaluation of those statements, not based on how entertained we were when we first heard them. We are swayed by shock jocks and talking heads because we are in some way being impressed and entertained. They could say anything that generally fits with our worldview, and we believe it because we are being entertained. This is irresponsible on our part. If we never seek objective sources to verify what we are told by an entertaining person, we are most likely believing a number of things that are not true. It is better to evaluate our beliefs carefully, so that we can have a more accurate assessment of reality.

Seeing is believing? The other issue of not believing something if we don't see it with our own eyes is problematic for different reasons. To begin with, what we see with our eyes is not always what we interpret with our minds. The royal official in the healing story experienced a series of events that had no clear correlation -- there was no  direct link between Jesus saying something and the little boy's turn toward better health. The official's mind, however, interpreted a cause-and-effect relationship for which there is no evidence. This is, apparently, the interpretation of events that the authors of John intend.

It is popular among some circles of believers to discount empiricism -- the idea that knowledge comes from sensory experience. Some people create a straw man definition of empiricism in order to demonstrate a perceived flaw. "We can't see oxygen in a room, and yet we know that there is oxygen in the room. See, empiricism is bogus." Just in case it needs stating, empiricism includes sensory experience that is provided by all senses, and it includes information that we can collect through machinery. If we can measure the oxygen levels in a room in any way (including by using a piece of scientific equipment or by breathing comfortably enough to assert that the air is breathable), we can have empirical knowledge that there is oxygen in the room, If we can't measure it in any way, we can't actually say that we "know" it.

The problem, of course, is that we rely most heavily on our natural senses, and we draw conclusions based on incomplete information. We see something or hear something and our brains fill in the gaps between what we experience and what reality must be. We see lights in the sky and sometimes our brain leaps to UFO, for instance. Just because we have seen lights in the sky doesn't mean we have seen a UFO, but we often don't make that distinction. We think we know things that we do not know because we are not clear about what we have actually experienced. Some people believe that David Copperfield actually made the Statue of Liberty disappear in 1983. They aren't clear about what they actually experienced, and so they have a belief that isn't based on reality.

With some things, we have to trust authorities. For example, scientists conduct experiments to arrive at some knowledge, hopefully under controlled conditions that eliminate their personal biases as much as possible. We can't repeat a lot of those experiments, so we are left to trust the scientists within limits. Even scientists have biases, and new knowledge emerges all the time. One facet of empiricism is that we are never done making observations about reality, which means that we are never done understanding new things and revising our beliefs about the world.

Clearly, it's a good thing that we develop a healthy skepticism about things that we don't experience and can't measure, and it's also a good thing that we develop thoughtfulness about the conclusions we draw from what we experience. The authors of John do not necessarily agree with this statement, and that's fine. Even though some of our information must necessarily come from other people's observations, our lives can be more effectively lived if we do our own thinking rather than allowing other people to think for us.

So, we recognize that our beliefs are fraught with challenges. We dismiss people and the things we might learn from them because we think we know them well enough based on where they came from. Some people will do the same to us. We sometimes mistake being entertained for being enlightened, and the two experiences are not synonymous. We have to trust authorities on some matters. Yet actual knowledge only comes to us through experience, and even our experience can be misinterpreted by our minds. We have to be thoughtful, then, and examine our beliefs to make sure that we aren't living by a set of ideas that don't line up with reality.

A Little Experiment: Listen. Take some time and listen to someone you've known for awhile. Reevaluate your "snapshot" of that person and see if it might need some revision. Is there any growth or change in that individual that you haven't noticed until now? What can you learn and apply in your own life?

Another Little Experiment: Cause and Effect. Pay attention the next time you interpret a cause and effect relationship. Is it possible that you are seeing a connection where none exists? Or is it possible that there are other causes for the results that you notice? Sometimes our assessment of cause-and-effect is spot on, and sometimes we unintentionally let our brains fill in gaps in our knowledge with assumptions.

A Big Experiment: Knowing. Sharpen your sense of what you know. Examine your beliefs and ask yourself "How do I know this?" Maybe some of your beliefs have been handed to you by sources you trust. Is there a better word than "knowledge" you could use for these beliefs? Maybe some of your beliefs are based on personal experiences that you have interpreted a specific way. Are there other ways your experience could be interpreted? Are there other things that could be true about your experience? If you become sharper about asking and honestly answering "How do I know?" it could change your life.

Isaiah 34-35: Creating Our Own "Holy Way"

The next two chapters of Isaiah are contrasting predictions about the fates of "Yahweh's people" and the fates of everybody else. Some of the symbolic themes from previous portions of Isaiah return here. The blindness and deafness that Yahweh commanded the prophet to enforce (Is 6:9-12) will now be removed. Water, symbolic in much of the prophetic literature, is used here as an assurance of life, but of course only Yahweh's people will have access to the streams and pools of water in the wilderness. After acknowledging the literary context of these prophecies, we might gain something from recognizing one last time the flaws in the suggested dependence upon a supernatural and the Us vs Them perspective of this prophetic writing before considering a more intentional perspective that might better align with our guiding principles.

These are the final poetic chapters of "Proto-Isaiah"; after a short narrative, the book of Isaiah continues with words written at a much later time, as indicated by specific historical references in the text. Recall that no autograph of the book of Isaiah has been discovered, and that the earliest copy we have is from the early first century BCE. On top of that, there are thousands of differences between existing copies of the book. One prevailing conclusion by scholars is that the book was assembled by an editor from disparate writings (perhaps by the same author or school of authors). Thus, the sequence in which the writings appear may have been determined by someone at a much later time than when they were written. The only thing we can honestly assess is the end product, because we don't have anything earlier to examine. At the same time, honest assessment must include the fact that we cannot know the intentions of the author, and that the sequence in which texts are read has an influence on their interpretation.

In fact, "interpretation" may not even be the right word for what we do with such texts. We often read through the lens of our own wisdom and values, and we judge what we read based on what we already believe. The Unitarian Universalist tradition, for instance, currently recognizes six broad sources: direct experience, the words and deeds of prophetic people, ethical and spiritual wisdom from the world's religions, the call to love our neighbors in Jewish and Christian teachings, Humanist teachings, and the spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions. The intrinsic values of Unitarian Universalism were not drawn from these sources, however; the accepted values informed the choices of sources. The whole of Jewish and Christian scripture is not compatible with Unitarian Universalism, just as the whole of Islamic or Humanist teachings is not compatible with Unitarian Universalism. Our values are the scales on which the merits of a particular text are weighed.

This is true of everyone. American Christians reading the Bible do not honestly accept everything within its pages as legitimate timeless ethical and moral truth. They all recognize, to varying degrees, that there are cultural differences between twenty-first century Western society and the ancient Middle-Eastern societies in which the biblical texts originated. They determine the validity of a particular portion of scripture not based on the fact that it is in the Bible, but based on a set of values that they already accept as guiding principles in their lives. To be sure, those values are also supported by some portions of scripture. The call to reconciliation and love in human relationships is a major theme in the Bible, for instance. Yet, this theme is in conflict with passages like Isaiah 34-35, in which it is clear that the enemies of Judah are considered to be the enemies of Yahweh, and proclaiming their destruction is justified in the name of religious superiority. This is incompatible with the values of reconciliation and love.

Even if one interprets Isaiah as saying that human beings are free to seek reconciliation and love because God will take care of those other people, this does not resolve the conflict. The Bible also suggests that human beings are supposed to be emulators of God, and a perception of God as vengeful and destructive creates some problems. Readers of the Bible have to be selective and discerning, and that selectivity and discernment derives from the values through which the pages are read. We are always going to be biased readers. We can only strive to have biases that reflect our deepest values rather than our fears.

This brings us to a couple of flaws in the writing that we have noted before, but which bear repeating. Isaiah 33 and 34 both express a reliance on a supernatural to either punish or provide. There is surely some comfort in the idea that God is going to punish the people you don't like, although laying waste to the environment may be a bit extreme. There is surely some comfort in the promise that everything will be alright for you because God will provide what you need. There are problems with the implied converse of these assumptions, though. What happens when you do not have the things that you need? Has God abandoned you? Are you wicked? Are you being punished, or are you supposed to take comfort in the eventual good things that God is going to do, even if they happen long after you are dead? What about other people who suffer? If God has promised to provide for what his people need, doesn't it follow that people who are hungry or thirsty or oppressed are not God's people, and are thus wicked? The implications of God's partiality and the impossibility of interpreting "divine will" make such promises very problematic, even though they provide some shallow comfort.

Seeing the world as Us vs Them is a natural perspective for people to adopt. We are fearful by nature, and if we let our fear be in control, then we might imagine anything and anyone as a threat. We want to be right, and thus in our anxiety about possibly being wrong, we construct a worldview in which everyone else is wrong and blind to it. Thus, we get to be right at the expense of connection with other human beings, or at the expense of ever growing beyond what we are currently able to do in the world. Our fears are not values.

The people of ancient Judah were put in a position -- as the result of warfare -- in which they were in a constant state of acute fear. Foreign soldiers were laying siege to their cities and taking them into exile. They were not in a position to live by their values. They were living desperate lives. This happened multiple times in the history of Israel, and it is happening in some places today. People cannot live by a set of deep values when their lives are constantly threatened by legitimate, real dangers. It's important to know who is safe and who is dangerous when your life is literally on the line, and it's natural to invent some stories about the people who seem dangerous. In those stories, the people you perceive as dangerous are obviously going to be the bad guys, and when you feel desperate and powerless, the most hopeful story you can tell might seem to be that a powerful superhuman force will punish the bad guys and rescue the helpless victims.

Our tendency, though, is that we sometimes see ourselves as victims when we aren't. We sometimes feel threatened when we aren't. We sometimes believe we are powerless when we aren't. And we still make up stories about the people we perceive as dangerous, even when they aren't an actual threat to our safety and well-being. We have to learn to recognize the difference between actual threats to our well-being and anxiety that originates and thrives inside our own heads. There may be a lot of different people on the planet with a lot of different beliefs and a lot of anxiety prompting them to tell stories about how the wicked will be punished and the righteous will be saved, but in actuality, our well-being depends upon the well-being of everyone else. There is no Them. There is only one big Us. This idea may be as much of a hard sell to the oppressors as it is to the oppressed, but those of us who can recognize this simple truth and start living it out in our lives can influence things toward greater hope for everyone.

This is the real power that Isaiah 34 and 35 miss: Human beings are responsible for human relationships. The problems we create will not be resolved by supernatural intervention. We are responsible for living according to our values. We are responsible for finding solutions to the challenges in our lives. We are responsible to the people around us -- the people with whom we share our lives, our communities, and our world. There is no more empowering and hopeful truth than this. It just isn't necessarily what we want to hear when we look around and see evidence that other people are not behaving very responsibly. Since we can't really control anybody but ourselves, it's tempting to want a more powerful entity to take care of all the irresponsible people in the world and reward us for being so awesome. That isn't going to happen. We need a more reliable approach to navigating our own awareness of human responsibility and the apparent lack of awareness around us.

First, we can be more aware of our values. We are constantly interpreting the things we read and hear through the lens of our values, but we don't often take the time to articulate just what those values are. When we are aware of the ideals that matter most to us, it's much easier to determine how we want to be in particular situations, and it's much clearer when we are reacting out of anxiety or fears that are not aligned with our values.

Second, we can stand to see a larger perspective. When we are willing to bear witness to the actual suffering that takes place in the lives of people in more poverty-stricken countries, for instance, or even in the lives of people in our own neighborhoods, our own sense of suffering might be more realistic. We might be less inclined to play the role of victim inappropriately, and we might be less inclined to demonize other people for petty reasons. Our lives have value, and we need not be so self-sacrificial that we deny ourselves what we need. Still, being honest about our own positions on the spectrum of human suffering can help us live more intentionally.

Third, we can recognize our role in the world. Once we know what we care about most deeply, we can start living more intentionally according to those values. When we are willing to see the realities of people's lives, we can start to see opportunities to influence things toward greater well-being. This might mean funding education for a girl on the other side of the world, or it might mean spending time with people in our own neighborhoods. Our values and our own personal passions will guide us toward ways that we can influence the world, even if it is in some seemingly small way. I personally don't like building or fixing up people's homes, but I know a lot of people who love swinging a hammer. I really love teaching and tutoring people, whether its educating people about human trafficking or tutoring folks in a GED program. Some folks would be terrified to stand up and speak to a group of people. We all have values and passions that can direct us toward meaningful action.

This is how we contribute to a better world. We cannot wait for a supernatural to sweep in and destroy all the people we choose to see as villains and create a lush and thriving landscape just for us. This is not a realistic hope. Such stories might symbolically represent something to us, but our real hope is in our values and our willingness to live intentionally by them. Our ability to recognize our values and live intentionally is not impeded by other people's lack of awareness. This doesn't have to create an Us and Them dichotomy, but it's alright to acknowledge that some of us are becoming more practiced at managing our anxiety. We may be frustrated sometimes by other people, but if we look around, we will probably also spot some people who are living more intentionally. Two or three people with shared values and a willingness to live intentionally might be able to create more together than one person can create alone. Having community with people who have shared values can be a source of hope when we start to feel angry or frustrated.

So, what are your values? What ideals matter most deeply to you?
Where are you on the spectrum of human suffering? Do you need to focus on your own well-being before you consider how you can positively influence other people's lives?
What actions do your values and passions call you toward?
Who are your potential collaborators? With whom will you build partnership and mutual support?

The answers to these questions strengthen weak hands and make feeble knees firm. The answers to these questions inspire courage and help to dismantle irrational fear. The answers to these questions help us see and hear and act and speak with greater clarity. The answers to these questions are our streams in the desert, our refreshment and empowerment in life. The answers to these questions are our Holy Way, and all are welcome to travel on it. (cf. Is 35:3-8)

Isaiah 31-32: A Vision of Justice and Righteousness

Isaiah 31 is more of the same, and while we could cover the same ground again, it's most likely sufficient to say that no supernatural has ever protected, delivered, spared, or rescued anyone, just as no supernatural has ever caused anyone to perish. If any people have ever fallen by the sword, it was most certainly the sword of a mortal. If any people have ever been oppressed or put to forced labor, it was most certainly other human beings who were the oppressors. If any people have ever found peace, it was most certainly because of human conscience and will that they did so.

Thus we arrive at Isaiah 32, in which we find some words of substance. It seems that human beings in every time have promoted the idea that violence could be justified if one's heart was pure or one's motivations were righteous. It seems that there have always been human beings who propagated the belief that some people are more deserving of well-being than others. Even now, there are those who countenance bringing harm to some people so that the status quo of others can be preserved, and it is typically those who have wealth and power who find it easy to advocate for things to stay just as they are. Such people exist in religious and non-religious circles alike, and as we have seen, those who consider the Bible to be authoritative have plenty of evidence in their corner to defend the idea that those who have wealth and power were granted their status by an almighty supernatural.

What shall we do with Isaiah 32, then? Obviously, the authors are predicting a future time in which a competent and righteous ruler appointed by Yahweh will govern impeccably. That isn't likely to happen. Rather than dismiss the words entirely, however, we can attend to what the outcome will supposedly be of this ruler's righteousness. What fruit will righteousness bear? What will the practical result be?

Justice is a tricky word now. We have accepted too many varied definitions of that word for it to be of much use. We call it "justice" when a person is sent to prison as the result of a guilty verdict. We call it "poetic justice" when someone who has brought harm to another experiences similar harm. We call it "social justice" when we politically defend the legal rights of people who have been marginalized. Sometimes, we call something "justice" if it works out in our favor, or at least if someone we don't like suffers. We have to read further into the passage if we want to put valid meaning to the word.

Aside from the symbolic rhetoric the authors use to demonstrate what righteousness and justice look like, there are a few specific things that stand out. By contrasting noble ideals with foolish ideals, the authors suggest that the results of righteousness and justice are that people have plenty of food and water (Is 32:6), and the poor are uplifted (Is 32:7). In other words, the practical results of righteousness and justice are that people have sustenance -- that everyone has enough of what is needed for their physical and economic well-being.  

The authors interrupt with a warning to complacent women, which we could extrapolate as a general warning against complacency, understanding that whatever consequences result from complacency are natural consequences and not supernatural punishments. After that, though, there is a little more clarity about the practical results of what the authors are calling righteousness and justice. People will experience peace, trust, and safety as the consequences of righteous and just decisions. So, in short, the vision cast here is a world in which everyone has enough and no one has reason to fear.

We know a few things from our personal experience and the testimony of history. Violence begets violence. It is not possible to bring harm to some people for the well-being of other people without provoking greater violence, preventing trust, and/or thwarting a sense of safety. Violence cannot lead to well-being, and violence cannot be a tool of righteousness and justice, at least not in the sense that the authors of Isaiah 32 are using those terms. This isn't to say that the authors of Isaiah realized that. They promote violence left and right. Perhaps this is one reason they never saw the realization of the vision they cast. If we have learned nothing else from history, we have at least learned this.

We also know that "righteousness" and "justice" for only some people is not really righteous or just. The specific people mentioned as the beneficiaries of righteousness and justice in Isaiah 32 are the poor, the hungry, and the thirsty. If there are any who are made poor, hungry, or thirsty as a result of our decisions, or who remain poor, hungry, or thirsty as a result of our decisions, we cannot consider our decisions to be righteous or just, not by the standards put forth in Isaiah 32 at least. If we envision a world characterized by justice, we must build that on a foundation that meets the needs of the most needy people -- that provides a way for every person to have enough.

This is, admittedly, a tall order. It's no wonder the authors of Isaiah (and many people in the twenty-first century) see this as a super-human task -- something they expect God to be able to accomplish, but that they see as way beyond human capability. We may be tempted to think this because we recognize that the vision is too great for one person, or even a small group of people, to achieve. We also may be tempted to reject a vision of the world in which everyone has enough and no one has reason to fear because we think that this will mean that we personally will have less. We might be so accustomed to a way of life with conveniences and luxuries that come at other people's expense that we find it hard to imagine what our lives might be like if we were to take such a vision of the world seriously. I admit that when I think about the oppression I support by some of the purchases I make, I feel overwhelmed sometimes because I don't know what I can possibly do differently without upending my life and withdrawing from society. Even that wouldn't really do anything to end oppression, it would just alleviate my sense of culpability.

There is still hope for a world in which everyone has access to the food and water they need, and in which there are no disenfranchised or marginalized people. Such a world is not a short-term vision. It will take a long time and the commitment of a lot of people, but we can participate in creating such a vision. Some of what we can do might include our choices about what kinds of products we purchase, or it might include contributing to an organization that meets the real needs of people in nations where a few dollars goes a long way. I believe that some piece of what we can do involves contributing some of our resources to meeting the needs of the people right on our doorsteps, our own neighborhoods and communities. Whenever we contribute to greater well-being in the life of someone who might fall into those categories of marginalized, hungry, thirsty, or poor, we contribute a little bit toward creating a better world.

Honestly, I don't think that such a vision can be made manifest without some radical changes in global economics and the participation of the people who control the lion's share of resources. Whatever our own political and social influence might be, we have to be willing to use that influence to create the kind of world we envision. I suspect that using our influence responsibly feels most natural when we are living the kinds of lives that exemplify the kind of world we envision. As we assert definitions of what is "just" and "right" founded on the well-being of those people who are most often overlooked, we set the stage for a shift in awareness. As we commit ourselves to responsible consumption, and as we commit a portion of our resources toward a vision of well-being for all, we also contribute to the propagation of a new mental model for sustainable living. As we live intentionally in a spirit of abundance, we help to dismantle the fear of scarcity that fuels so much of the violence and oppression perpetuated by people in the world today. As we choose to live differently, we give other people permission to live differently too. And as we live our lives more intentionally, we more easily become aware of opportunities to live out the principles we value most.

There are enough visions of the world built on fear (entitlement, greed, scarcity, or whatever other names fear goes by), and they have not created anything approaching justice, peace, or sustainable well-being. One person cannot do everything, but one person living intentionally with a compelling vision for the world can inspire other people to do the same. This is how the world changes. Be inspiring.

Isaiah 29: Creating the Future

Human creativity (and our fear of being wrong about anything) make prophetic passages like Isaiah 29 potentially dangerous. Not all prophecy is prediction about the future, but this chapter clearly is intended as such. Whether the authors are predicting a literal future or are figuratively depicting a hopeful future is up for debate, but it is clear that the chapter is intended to predict a future that is different from current reality. 

We have some funny tendencies when we hear or read prophecies. Whether the predictions are coming from a financial "expert," a passage of ancient text, or the horoscope, we have a tendency to want to apply those words as directly as we can to our own lives, so that we can draw conclusions and make decisions that are in line with what is "supposed" to happen -- or even "destined" to happen. Even many people who would never put stock in a fortune teller or Tarot card reader look into the Bible and believe that they read "promises from God" about their personal lives. Entire religious communities take verses out of their original context and misapply them as personal promises relevant today. Jeremiah 29:11 is a prime example. It reads,  "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope." This is not a personal promise to all believers, as a casual reading of Jeremiah reveals, and yet many people seem greatly comforted by this "personal promise from God," misappropriated though it may be.

Our creativity may become doubly engaged when we place confidence in prophecies. We begin to interpret exactly what is meant by the words, and we may begin seeking out ways to cause the prophecy to be true. If a horoscope tells us, "You will receive a gift today," we might be sure to check the mail and keep all of our appointments. If we don't actually receive a physical gift, we might start thinking through the day to discover what the intangible gift was. Perhaps it was the moment when someone sat and deeply listened to us, or perhaps it was the kind person with a full cart of groceries who let us go ahead of them with our three items. Most likely, we can figure out something that we would consider a kindness if we have been engaging with people all day expecting to receive something. 

Some predictions are more vague, however, and place things a bit more in our control. What if, instead of passively receiving a gift, I told you that you would find a treasure? Now, the responsibility is even more on your shoulders to make the prediction true. Even if you find a quarter on the ground, you can prove the prediction correct. The question is whether you are more likely than usual to find a quarter on the ground if you are expecting to find a treasure. It may be that once you hear such a prediction, your subconscious is more attuned to finding something even if you aren't consciously seeking it out. Prophecies are sometimes even more vague than that, though. Instead of telling you that you will a treasure, I might say, "A portion of your wealth will spring up from the ground." You could interpret that in such a way that finding a quarter makes it true, but your mind might also do a great many things with that statement. Maybe you will invest more in fossil fuels. Maybe you will plant a garden, so that you spend less on groceries. Maybe you will be entrepreneurial and leave your job to start a palm tree farm. 

Of course, you may be thinking, "I wouldn't do anything at all. I don't believe in your ability to make such predictions." Fair enough. The trustworthiness of the source certainly would seem to be an issue. This is why biblical prophecy is so problematic. The empirical trustworthiness of the Bible is fairly low when it comes to prophecies. The problem is that people have proclaimed that the source is infallible, and therefore every bit of biblical prophecy that seems not to be true is interpreted as symbolic or yet to come. Each of these has its own pitfalls.

Interpreting biblical prophecy as symbolic is a convenient way of not having to address inaccuracies and false predictions. Perhaps it is convenient that there is no way to verify the symbolic meaning. If a hundred people point to a hundred different events as the "fulfillment" of a particular passage of prophecy, there is no way to determine which of them, if any, is "correct." We have to rely on how much we trust the person making the claim, and we have to decide whether the claim makes sense to us. We are relying on our own emotions and intellect to draw these conclusions, not the source of the prediction. There is no way to take the event back to a biblical author and say, "Is this what you meant?" In reality, biblical authors making predictions were probably either (a) commenting on events relevant to their own people in their own time, or (b) forecasting vague hopes for the future in order to quiet the minds of powerless oppressed people with wavering faith. 

When we interpret biblical prophecy as "yet to come," we run into even more problems, however. Just like the person who would decide to start a palm tree farm if told, "A portion of your wealth will spring up from the ground," people can start looking for ways to make prophecies true. Or, at least, they can behave as if their interpretations of the prophecies are true -- as if all of their actions have foregone conclusions. Isaiah's prophecy that all peoples would stream to the "holy mountain" Jerusalem for wisdom and guidance from Yahweh was intended to offer comfort and hope to people, not to inform geopolitical decisions thousands of years into the future. Yet, there are some who continue to believe in the inevitability of this prophecy. If the interpretation is that this prophecy has not yet come to pass, this interpretation directly influences the way one views and deals with modern Israel and other nations in the Middle East. There is thus a dangerous potential for a misappropriated ancient text to inform military and political decisions, perhaps even overriding a clear sense of what would bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people. 

Thus it is that Isaiah 29 is a dangerous piece of writing, not because the authors were malicious, but because they were wrapped up in their own ethnocentricity, and twenty-first century readers misapplying the words to themselves find justification for closed-mindedness and self-aggrandizement. Consider, 

And the multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel,
    all that fight against her and her stronghold, and who distress her,
    shall be like a dream, a vision of the night.
Just as when a hungry person dreams of eating
    and wakes up still hungry,
or a thirsty person dreams of drinking
    and wakes up faint, still thirsty,
so shall the multitude of all the nations be
    that fight against Mount Zion. (Is 29:7-8)

In verse 2, Isaiah identifies Ariel as Jerusalem, and for twenty-first century people, this might be interpreted as the city of Jerusalem (although probably only the Jewish and Christian portions of the city!), the nation of Israel, or the whole of Christianity. Enemy nations might be interpreted literally or figuratively, but the gist of the prophecy is that what seem to be powerful foes will disappear like a dream. This will happen because of something Yahweh does -- because of a supernatural will -- and thus can be beyond the explanation or understanding of human beings. What would you decide to do in your life if you believed that everyone who could possibly oppose you would eventually just disappear? This could be a very empowering idea. However, some opposing forces can help us maintain our integrity. We could become quite bull-headed, failing to see the long-term consequences of our actions, failing to see how what we decide affects other people, if we took this mandate to extreme.

The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord,
    and the neediest people shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.
For the tyrant shall be no more,
    and the scoffer shall cease to be;
    and those alert to do evil shall be cut off --
those who cause a person to lose a lawsuit,
    who set a trap for the arbiter in the gate,
    and without grounds deny justice to the one in the right. (Is 29:19-21)

Again, this seems quite nice. The neediest people shall have reason to celebrate, and there will be justice. The problem is that very few of us cast ourselves in the role of villain in our own story. We believe that we are the one in the right. We believe that we deserve to win our lawsuits. We are the meek and humble sufferers who will eventually be lifted up. And if that is how we cast ourselves, that means that the people who find fault with our way of thinking are the scoffers. Those who keep us from doing what we want (and from forcing others to do what we want) are the tyrants. If we have a promise that those scoffers and tyrants will be taken care of, then we have no reason to listen to their perspective now. If we have confidence that justice will eventually be done, then we can obviously (egotistically) trust that we will be exonerated.

Please bear in mind, I am not attempting to interpret the words of the authors of Isaiah as they intended them to be interpreted. I am not even attempting to provide an interpretation that is viable in light of the entirety of biblical scripture. I am simply demonstrating the way that prophecy can be twisted and manipulated into self-legitimizing "promises," based on what I have personally read and heard from believers. It is important to understand that there is no viable way to talk someone out of a belief or "debate someone into reasonableness" when they have confidence that their personal scoffers, enemies, and tyrants will one day vanish into nothing because of God.

One more short verse, the final one of the chapter: "And those who err in spirit will come to understanding, and those who grumble will accept instruction," (Is 29:24). This is, for some believers, a blatant promise that one day everyone else will understand things as they do. It is confirmation that they are right, and that everyone who has a different interpretation of reality is erring in spirit or grumbling, but only temporarily. Perseverance without questioning one's perception is thus made into a virtue.

I've alluded to a couple of problems with thinking that we know the future, but let me clearly state the three biggest ones that seem to emerge from trusting biblical prophecy as yet to come. Then, I want to propose a better option. The first big problem is that we can be thoughtless about our own actions and beliefs if we believe that we know the future. This even counts for thinking that we know about an afterlife. If we believe we know what's going to happen, we have less reason to be thoughtful about what we do and believe right now. When we are willing to examine our own beliefs and actions, we have the opportunity to grow. When we grow, we get better at being the kind of people we actually want to be. If we don't grow, we stagnate.

Second, we stop listening when we think we know what is going to happen. If we believe that we know the way to eternal life, we stop caring what anyone else thinks about it. If we believe we know the way to happiness, we stop listening to anyone else's ideas. Once we think we know what is going to happen, it seems like the only reason we have to listen to other people is to tell them that they are wrong if they disagree with us. We need other people. It isn't that case that other people are just useful tools for us to gain knowledge and can be discarded once we know all we need to know. First off, we never know all we could possibly learn from other people, but beside that, we need relationship one another as human beings. We need connection with one another. When we stop really listening, we stop connecting.

Finally, we might stop making a difference when we think we know what is going to happen. Belief in an afterlife is one of the greatest detractors to justice and equity in the world. If you believe that good people (whatever your definition of that is) will go to heaven for eternity, you have less reason to make sure that their life here on earth is worth living. "Those people may suffer now, but they'll be able to celebrate for eternity if they just believe as I believe." What drivel! Even the belief that God is going to take care of things here in this reality is a bit demotivating. If God's will will be done no matter what, then we have no reason to act. If we believe that God will take care of all our enemies and scoffers and tyrants, then we are probably under the impression that he will do that when he's good and ready, and we need not worry our little heads about it. Meanwhile, we can also just wait for God to take care of all the other problems we see around us. Hunger, violence, slavery, disease -- they seem like insurmountable challenges, and it's understandable why we would just want to believe that one day, they will supernaturally disappear. Human problems won't just go away. We have to act, to whatever degree we are capable, if we want to see a better world.

Since prophecies are so problematic (particularly since so few risky prophecies ever turn out to be true), and since we cannot know what's going to happen, we have to base our beliefs and our actions on something different. Believers and non-believers alike can do this. If there is an afterlife, you don't know anything about it. You might think or hope or believe some things about it, but you honestly only know about this reality. You don't know the future. You might be able to make some reasonable predictions, and you might hope for some less reasonable things, but you honestly do not know the future. Recognizing that is the first step.

One thing we can know is what we value. As I have repeated many times, we all have a deepest, most noble self that reflects our innate truth, beauty, and creativity. We also heap on a pile of lies and fears about ourselves, other people, and the world we share. We have to dismantle those fears and lies and recognize what we really value -- the principles that we most want to guide us. We can't know the future, because we haven't created it yet. And we can't create the future we most want unless we know what we value most.

This is the point at which our defensive mechanisms kick in and we get sarcastic. "What I value most is for all the idiots to just leave me alone." "What I really value is a warm day with a cool margarita when I can just kick back and relax." "I want to create a future where I keep my paycheck instead of paying more taxes than all those other people." When your mind starts in with those defensive routines, recognize them for what they are. You're trying to protect yourself from realizing what really matters most to you. If you recognize what really matters most to you, you might have to do something about it. You're trying to protect yourself from dreaming big. If you dream big, you might get disappointed or hurt.

Even though they had no control over how twenty-first century narcissistic believers would twist their words, the biblical prophets knew how to dream big, and they knew what they valued. They were products of their time -- more than 2500 years ago in the case of Isaiah's authors -- so their values may look a little different from ours. We can be just as bold, however, in casting vision for what could be. Casting vision isn't the same as claiming to know the future. Casting vision is saying, "This is what I wish the world were like, and this is what I'm willing to do to move it a little bit closer to that vision." Powerful vision isn't based on our fears or lies about ourselves and other people, and it isn't based on our defensive routines. Powerful vision is based on our deep guiding principles -- the things that we most want to guide our behavior and decisions, even though we often let other things get in the way.

Guiding principles aren't complicated. For me, the idea that all people have inherent worth is a guiding principle. I don't always carry that idea forward into my life as well as I would like, but my values are all tied back to that principle. As I cast vision for the future, that principle is at the heart of what I envision. Your guiding principles don't have to match mine, but whatever they are, your guiding principles and your values are what empower your vision for the kind of world you want to create. We cast vision and create a better world by starting in our own lives. If you envision a world with greater compassion, what needs to happen in your life to start making that a reality? If you envision a world where clean water is available to all, what do you need to do to move things in that direction?

What principles do you most want to guide your life?
What do you value most deeply?
What would a world built on those principles and values look like?
What can you do to allow your life to embody that vision?

We do not know the future. We create the future. We can choose to create a future based on our deeply held values, or we can continue forward on auto-pilot. I know which one seems most compelling to me.

Isaiah 27-28: Authentic Hope

We're going to push through to Isaiah 39, which recounts the illness and naivete of Hezekiah that we saw in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles (about a year ago now). It seemed like a good idea to intersperse the books of prophets with the "historical" books that most clearly connect to them, but given the time it takes to get through a book like Isaiah, this may have been an ill-conceived plan. Still, we'll cover everything eventually, so we may as well continue through the break in Isaiah.

That being said, there's an awful lot that has already been said about the content of Isaiah, with the people of Judah seeing themselves and their religion as superior to all others, without much evidence on which to base that opinion. Isaiah 27 clearly expresses one of the main purposes of this book: to offer hope to people in a pretty hopeless situation. Isaiah 28 balances this with the assertion that hope has to be genuine and sincere in order to be meaningful. Clearly, the author(s) of these chapters believed their own words to be sincere and honest.

It's worth mentioning yet again that there is obvious figurative language going on here, particularly with regard to the sea dragon that Yahweh will kill with his "cruel" sword. Most folks will not look at this and assume an actual sword or an actual sea serpent. A great percentage of the Bible is written in this sort of figurative language, and yet for some reason, many people want to take as much of it as possible literally. Don't be over-simplistic when you read mythology or other ancient writing. Look for the meaning underneath the words and you'll learn a great deal more about the people who wrote the words.

In Isaiah 5, the imagery of a vineyard is used to suggest that the Israelites have fallen short of their calling to create a just and righteous society. This imagery is used again in Isaiah 27 to suggest that all is not lost. There is still hope. The authors forecast a time when Yahweh will guard Jerusalem and there will be no competitors to the city. Fortified cities will be ruins useful only for grazing cattle. If anyone opposes Yahweh in that time (produce something different than what he wants from his vineyard), he will destroy those people. Otherwise, everyone will have a splendid time.

What Yahweh apparently wants from people is a society built on justice, but the authors are also clear that Yahweh wants exclusive adoration as the people's supernatural. Everyone who goes against this monotheistic mandate will be destroyed. So, this idea of creating a just society is not because it will be better for everyone, but because direct assault from the deity will be the response to anything less. This hopeful vision has dark implications. This is not a vision of a time when everyone will get along peacefully because there is greater understanding, this is a vision of a time when people will have peace by force, when the supernatural will take direct action against those who act differently. This is fascism, pure and simple, with a supernatural in the role of supreme commander.

No wonder that the authors desired a different sort of flawless leadership. Isaiah 28 suggests that the religious and political leaders were of little use to the people. They spent their time in drunkenness and lies, and when they had any words of hope to offer, those words were hollow. The chapter indicates that suffering at the hands of enemies is punishment from Yahweh that has a fruitful purpose. However harsh the punishment, it would not last forever, and eventually the people of Judah would be of some use. They would be beaten into usefulness. Of course, this is not a message to individuals, but to the people as a collective. An individual life might not see any purpose behind the suffering, but hope lies in the story of one's people, not in one's personal story.

It is unfortunate that passages like this have been twisted and interpreted into a perverse exaltation of suffering. There are those who believe that suffering makes a person more holy or more honorable, that the experience of suffering is somehow useful in and of itself. Even worse, there are those who believe in a supernatural who desires that people suffer, because they are being purified for some greater work. This is complete rubbish. While it is true that some people come out of experiences of suffering strengthened and determined to do great things, there are many more people who simply suffer, reaping no benefit from the experience. Suffering happens, and some people are able to make sense of it and turn that experience into an asset. This should not be held up as an ideal, however. Needless suffering is not a blessing or a gift.

Moreover, suffering is never something that we should inflict on others, with the expectation that it will make them stronger. There is no supernatural glorification in human suffering, and there is no supernatural who desires human suffering. We experience suffering, and there are potentially some words of hope that can help us through that experience, even help us draw strength from the experience, but those words are not, "God wants you to suffer." Especially those words are not, "God wants you to suffer because he has something great in store for you." Not only is such a claim trite, it is dishonest. There is no god in control of our suffering or in control of what happens in the wake of our suffering.

Often natural processes cause suffering. Nature is unintelligent and has no emotional impulse toward people, so there is no greater meaning to natural suffering. Sometimes people get sick. Sometimes people are caught in an area of natural disaster. It is possible that people can make meaning from the suffering they experience, but the experience itself has only the meaning that we give it.

Other suffering is caused by human action. Some people inflict suffering on others. This is the sort of suffering that we might set our sights on ending. Most of the time, fear is the emotion behind suffering inflicted by human beings, not the tough love of a supernatural. Human beings do horrible things to one another, and it isn't part of a divine plan. People commit atrocities when they give their fear control. Again, we might learn to draw some personal strength from our experiences of suffering, but there is no greater meaning or message than what we give it.

Of course, some will claim that suffering through the pain of surgery is necessary for healing in some circumstances. Suffering the experience of childbirth is necessary for life to continue. Suffering through difficult classes is necessary for the process of learning to take place. Yes. Fine. Draw the definition of suffering as widely as you like. The authors of Isaiah were writing to people who were besieged by foreign armies to the point that many people starved to death or at least considered eating their own children. They had no place to put the bodies of those who died from lack of food or water, and there was no efficacious way to treat the diseases that erupted in a city when it swelled with all of the people who sought refuge in its walls. When the siege was finally broken, many survivors were enslaved by the conquering army, taken to a foreign land with a foreign language and a foreign culture to live out the rest of their days. Their entire lives were shattered. Isaiah says that this was because Yahweh had a plan. He caused this to happen because he was crushing them like grain for bread. This is not a palatable message of hope.

We do not have a supernatural who is going to take control one way or the other. No one will be exacting punishment or crushing us for greater usefulness, and no supernatural will be standing guard over us as we grow into just and compassionate people. There is no real hope in that myth. The real hope is with us. We are the hope of the human story, as individuals and as a collective. Our potential to act in a way that brings justice, equity, and compassion is hope for others. In our own lives hope lies in the understanding that things do not have to be as they are. Hope also springs from the recognition that no one deserves suffering. Our worth and identity are not based on the suffering we endure. Every person has inherent worth and dignity just by virtue of being human; the rest is a matter of experience.

Things do not have to be as they are. This is true in our personal lives as well as in larger systems of power. Whatever suffering that exists in the world because of human action, there is a way to address this suffering. When the government of Uganda recently passed a law against their LGBT citizens, the Quakers established a New Underground Railroad to get people out of immediate danger. This is one small example, but think about your own community. How many organizations exist to help alleviate systemic suffering? From solving the problem of homelessness to ending human trafficking, there are people collaborating right now to build a better world than what we see today.

This is perhaps the most important message of hope: We are stronger together. People are relational, and while we value our individuality, we can accomplish great things when we work together. No one deserves suffering, and yet we can only touch a small number of lives as individuals. When we join our voices and our strengths with others, however, we can become much more powerful forces for justice, equity, and compassion. Our ability to cooperate and collaborate offers profound hope.

Thus, in our own lives, we can be confident that we do not deserve suffering, that there is nothing about our worth or identity that makes it necessary for us to suffer. Our individual suffering does not have supernatural origins or purpose, but we can choose to give our experience meaning. In the lives of others, we can also be confident that suffering is not deserved. When we are able to have an influence in alleviating the suffering of another, we can be vessels of hope. When we stand and act together with others, we can embody hope on an even larger scale.

Isaiah 13-14: Beyond Provincial Depictions of Divinity

The next segment of Isaiah contains many proclamations against the enemies of Judah, as well as some brief comments about what the kingdom of Judah can expect. Some of the "predictions" are so vague that one cannot really assess whether they were made before or after some historical event, and some of what the author of Isaiah predicts clearly never actually transpired. Based on this, then, it may be that these proclamations amount to wishful thinking expressed during a time of turmoil, rather than (as much of biblical prophecy is) "predictions" written down after the facts are known. For now, we will concentrate on a lengthy proclamation against Babylon and its king, with a hopeful prediction about Judah inserted in the middle, and two short proclamations against Assyria and Philistia.

These proclamations are supposedly sourced by Yahweh, the Judeo-Christian version of God, who is unchanging (based at least on Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17). So, what of God's character is revealed in these proclamations? To begin with, Yahweh is going to send a multitude of warriors from distant nations to execute his anger and destroy the world. A day of judgment is announced, at which time every person will experience physical and emotional anguish. The entire earth will be destroyed and every person who has ever missed the mark will be destroyed along with it. The stars, including the sun, will stop shining (and the moon will stop "shedding its light" too, but we won't go into the science of that). In order to punish people whose lives are characterized by wickedness, tyranny, and arrogance, Yahweh is going to destroy everything through a divinely commissioned army. This army of God will slaughter infants (who have had no opportunity to be wicked, tyrannical, or arrogant) in front of their parents, plunder the houses of the conquered, and rape the women they encounter. Suddenly, it seems that God was overly enthusiastic when he said he would destroy everything, because it turns out he was just talking about Babylon. But when God's army is through killing men, slaughtering babies, raping women, and plundering the houses of Babylon, the place won't be fit for human life ever again: "It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations" (Is 13:20). We're talking about the modern-day country of Iraq, just to be clear. Surely, it's not considered a popular place by a lot of people, but it's still teeming with human life.

Despite destroying everything (or just Babylon) with his immoral army, Yahweh will spare Judah. The people of Israel will settle comfortably back in their own land, and people from other nations (who somehow escaped the total destruction) will flock to Israel to be slaves. Indeed, Israel will own the other nations as slaves. Instead of behaving any differently from the people who oppressed them, the people of Judah will take their oppressors captive and rule over them. That is, whatever is left of them once the army of God sweeps through slaughtering babies, raping women, and destroying every man alive. This never happened, of course. Yet, does this sound like any sort of god invoked in the twenty-first century? Unfortunately, in some peoples' minds, this isn't far from the totalitarian deities many people still envision choosing sides in war, promoting violent solutions to international problems, and justifying collateral damage in the name of power or prosperity.

If there is any doubt about the sort of deity depicted in these proclamations, Isaiah continues with Babylon's king. The king of Babylon is taunted, primarily because he will eventually die and is thus as weak as any other human being. It's odd how a person can say, "You are no better than us," in a way that sounds so similar to, "We are better than you!" Predicting that an imperialist nation will be overthrown is not a risky prediction. Such has ever been the case, and it will likely happen again, even though people now build empires a little bit differently than they did thousands of years ago. Notice that the king of Babylon goes unnamed in this proclamation. This is either because there was no way to know which king of Babylon would eventually be overthrown, or because the author of Isaiah was attempting to rob the ruler of immortality by refusing to record his name. The name of the Babylonian king overthrown by Cyrus was Nabonidus, incidentally. I mention this because, if the authors of Isaiah had recorded the ruler's name, and if this portion of Isaiah could be reliably dated to a time prior to Nabonidus' rule, then this would perhaps be a more convincing prophecy. As it is, the author(s) of Isaiah simply indicate that all of the disgraced ruler's sons should be executed--not because of their own wickedness, tyranny, or arrogance, but because of who their father was.

This, then, is the kind of god Isaiah promotes: a god who commands the slaughter of infants (provided they are not Israelite infants), a god who demands the execution of people based on the actions of their parents, a god who condones rape and humiliation of women (provided they are not Israelite women), and a god who approves of slavery (provided the slaves come from nations other than Israel). Obviously, the people of Judah had reason to hate the Babylonians who conquered them and took them into captivity, as they had historical reasons to hate the Philistines. It would have been natural for a human representative of Judah to curse Judah's enemies and make hopeful predictions about Judah's future. If one wishes to be biblically sound in one's depiction of Yahweh, though, then this Yahweh is a localized, nationalist shill for Judah, not a monolithic deity for all people in all places and times. Yahweh clearly wishes brutal harm upon nations who are behaving as Judah is given permission to behave, the only difference being that Yahweh likes Judah. This is not congruent with the idea of a supernatural being who supposedly created the universe and cares about everything in it. Moreover, the proclamations are false on a number of accounts, which either means that the Israelite god lied or was mistaken, or that the Bible is not a reliable source of information. Most likely, there was no supernatural entity involved in the proclamations at all, and the human being(s) who wrote these passages was a bit off base (historically and morally), as emotionally-based human predictions often tend to be.

Biblical proclamations like these in Isaiah are obviously based on subjective personal preferences rather than objective data. Surely, some people have a feeling that continuing along the same trajectory is eventually going to be harmful or beneficial, and they just can't articulate why they think things will have a particular result. That does not amount to divine insight from some external supernatural source. The more we learn about human psychology and physiology, the more we can accurately predict what people will do in various situations; that doesn't mean that an action was foreordained or destined. It means that people are prone toward some patterns of behavior that can be scientifically analyzed. The authors of Isaiah weren't performing any sort of scientific, objective analysis, though. They were simply writing down what made sense to them and what they hoped would happen. Their recognition that empires get overthrown was strongly colored by their emotional reaction that they would enthusiastically gloat when this particular empire was overthrown. Of course, they couldn't have known that the conquerors would be any more pleasant than their current oppressors, which may suggest that the whole thing was written after Cyrus the Great swept through Babylon.

It has been said before, and it bears repeating: the problem with claiming to know what God is going to do is that such a claim is completely unfalsifiable. Of course, any "prediction" made after the fact is immediately dismissible. "I knew God would send an army to overthrow this empire," is a rather shallow statement once the army has done its slaughtering, raping, and pillaging. Even then, one would be hard pressed to demonstrate that the army showed up because of a summons from God rather than out of very human motivations. The armies that overthrew Nabonidus certainly weren't worshipers of Yahweh, and there's no evidence that they ever converted. Cyrus the Great was a respecter of various religions, and he mentioned gratitude toward the Babylonian gods specifically. Yet, nowhere do we have evidence that Cyrus acknowledged Yahweh. Announcing ahead of time that God is going to send an army to overthrow an empire is perhaps a more risky prediction, but once again, a person has no way of demonstrating that the impending army has any connection to the desires of a supernatural being. Unfalsifiable assertions are dangerous because they give people the impression that they have knowledge when what they actually have is hope. Hope is not knowledge.

We might hope that we are more important than other people. We might hope that we benefit and other people suffer. The authors of Isaiah seemed to have these kinds of hopes. We might even have the ability to make an educated guess about how to manage things so that we actually do benefit while other people suffer. What we do not have--what no person has ever had--is compelling objective evidence that a supernatural caused things to work out a particular way, or even wanted things to work out a particular way. When we assume that we have supernatural justification for our actions, we get into some dangerous territory. We might ignore the actual objective data available to us in favor of our subjective hopes and wishes.

The objective data that we have about systems of human interaction and the influence that people have on other human beings suggests that no person is actually more important than anyone else. No person deserves to benefit from the suffering of others. Morality--discerning what is right and what is wrong--is not based on identity or caste or income or title. If slaughtering an infant is immoral, it's immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the infant. If rape is immoral, it's immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the victim. If oppression and slavery are immoral, they are immoral for everyone, no matter the circumstances or the cultural identity of the oppressors and subjugators. Our own personal hatred does not justify immoral behavior against people who seem like Other--it doesn't even justify condoning or ignoring someone else's immoral behavior against people who seem like Other to us. The slanted ethnocentricity of biblical morality as depicted in Isaiah is simply unjustifiable.

I have proposed elsewhere that we locate divinity within rather than without--that many of the characteristics we ascribe to divinity are actually human characteristics. The problem is that sometimes the characteristics that are ascribed to a supernatural represent the very worst of human behavior. Surely, whenever a person believes that some communication with a supernatural has occurred, that person has only connected inwardly in an unfamiliar or unexpected way. Unfortunately, sometimes that inward connection is shallow. We get that we hate our circumstances and the people we blame for creating those circumstances, but we don't get that our hatred harms us more than it harms anyone else. The Babylonians weren't overthrown because the Israelites hated them or because a provincial god hated them. The Babylonians were overthrown because of human desire for power (which is largely rooted in fear), but that desire had nothing to do with the Israelite exiles. If we want to understand ourselves well, grow in emotional maturity, and be the best versions of ourselves possible, we have to reach a little beyond shallow comfort or imagined collusion with beings who don't exist.

What can we do then? If there is no external divine being and no supernaturals, we have only what we can know on which to confidently base our beliefs. We can hope for anything we like, but we are only justified in believing that which has objective evidence to back it up. Some people say that there is no objective truth, which is a polite way of never having to say that another person is wrong and a convenient way of never having to change what one believes in the face of evidence. Claiming that all truth is subjective is cowardly and dishonest. We are capable of better than that. We can know some things about the universe, about our world, about human beings, and about ourselves. More than ever before, we have access to an abundance of empirical evidence about reality. We may not always like what the evidence suggests, but if we try to base our lives on refusals of what actually is, where are the boundaries to that subjectivity? There are certainly some things about which the most honest answer must be, "I don't know." Problems arise when people decide to fill in those gaps by pretending to know something that they don't. Again, this is simply dishonest.

We can reach deeper within ourselves. We can be courageous in the face of new data that could warrant a change in our beliefs. We can examine what we believe and what we fear, and we can weigh our beliefs and fears against what we can know of objective truth. We can refuse to accept laziness and irresponsibility as excuses for not engaging in self-examination. We can be more emotionally mature in dismantling irrational fears and recognizing what we actually want. We are capable of growing into the best versions of ourselves possible, and we can transform the lives of countless others as a result. This is not a supernatural aim and it requires no divine endorsement. It is simply what is possible for willing, reasoning human beings. The question is: are you willing to be the best version of yourself possible?

Mark 12: Vineyards and Cornerstones

In the next chapter of the gospel of Mark, after the business with the fig tree and Jesus' refusal to credential himself, the author includes several teachings that supposedly originated with Jesus during his time in Jerusalem. The author portrays some of the religious leaders of the day as scandalized by most of these teachings, presumably because they interpreted some criticism in Jesus' words. The first of these teachings is in the form of a story, or parable, and it is copied from the gospel of Mark with some slight variation in both the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke. Many Bibles call this the parable of the wicked tenants, although such titles are much later conventions than the oldest extant copies of the text.

In this story, a man hires some people to run his business (a vineyard) while he is away. They decide that they can keep all the profits for themselves, so they abuse (or kill) every person the landowner sends to collect, including the landowner's son, thinking that they will be able to keep the place for themselves. According to this teaching, there will be dire consequences when the landowner shows up himself. The author of Mark follows the story with a quote from Psalm 118, but the connection is never explained directly. There is only the general sense that the chief priests, scribes, and elders ("they" here referring all the way back to the end of Mark 11) suspected that Jesus had said something derogatory about them.

The interpretation of this parable in the gospel of Matthew is more explicit. In this variation of events, Jesus tells the chief priests and Pharisees that they are like the wicked tenants in the parable. The author also suggests what the connection with Psalm 118 is, although many ancient copies of the text don't have the verse that clarifies this connection. It was quite possibly copied from the version of the parable in the gospel of Luke, in an editorial attempt to make the different variations match up more closely.

In Luke, the basic parable is the same, but the Psalm 118 quote is shorter. There is no explicit unpacking of the teaching itself, but the author makes a direct connection of the story to the line about "the stone that the builders rejected." Some translators use the word cornerstone and others use keystone to describe how that rejected stone actually functions. In one sense, that stone is a foundational support, and in the other, it is the center stone of an archway that holds everything together. Either symbol is useful, with more or less equivalent interpretation into life application. Still, although it's obviously a reference to the consequences of the wicked tenant's actions, the identity of the symbolic stone is still vague. Even in the original psalm, the bit about the cornerstone is not specific. It is a general poetic statement that what some experts believed to be an unsuitable foundation for action has been demonstrated to be an ideal foundation for action. The credit for that revelation is attributed to God, of course, since that was part and parcel to the culture.

The main point of the parable seems to be that "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom" (Mt 21:43). In other words, the very thing that the tenants were aiming for will become unattainable, and other people will claim it instead. The very thing that the religious leaders were aiming for will likewise become unattainable, and other people will claim it instead. This is not a prediction of future events, but a warning to people who are trying to reach a destination with a faulty set of directions.

You can't build something truly impressive with rotten materials. You can't build loving relationships with fear. You can't build a lasting, admirable reputation on lies. You can't build the kingdom of God on political power and social coercion. There is more that we can say about this, but there are some terms here that may need to be clarified a bit. What is the "kingdom of God," that it could be taken away from people who claim to be believers? What are the "fruits of the kingdom" for that matter? And what is the foundational stone that has been rejected by the people who claim to be expert builders?

Many of these questions likely had specific answers for the original author of the quoted psalm, and for the original authors of the gospels. Such terms have been subject to interpretation for centuries, and there is little agreement among biblical scholars, although many assume that the stone referred to here is Jesus, because some epistles interpret it this way. For early biblical authors, the kingdom of God was not a synonym for Heaven, as is clear even from some of the words put into Jesus' mouth by the gospel writers. "Kingdom of God" is a tough term for us today, when we don't think very highly of monarchies and when scientific discovery has increasingly eliminated the need for belief in supernaturals. Instead of such a loaded term, we can think of this as the kind of world that everyone really wants to live in, if all of our irrational fears were dismantled and we were honest about what we actually value. The kingdom of God is simply a better world than what we experience right now--a world that is characterized by equity, justice, and compassion. These qualities are the "fruit" (outcome or result) of living like that better world is a possibility.

What would prevent the tenants in the parable and the religious leaders of the first century from practicing equity, justice, and compassion? One might say greed. Certainly that seems to be the motivating drive of the tenants. Greed is just another word for fear, though. Greed is fear of scarcity. The religious leaders may have reacted out of fear of scarcity, too. Possibly, they feared insignificance or powerlessness. Their fear overrode their capacity to find peaceful solutions to problems. Fear prevented them from dreaming big with regard to what their people and their world could become. They were more interested in control--conserving what power and wealth they could among a small number of people. This fear-driven conservatism has never resulted in long-term sustainability for any people. Not only were they not creating as much equity, justice, and compassion as they could have in the world around them, they were also preventing the very thing they claimed to want. The tenants in the story had lost the vineyard, and the religious leaders had lost the kingdom of God.

All of this is still a warning cry to the representatives of the church in the twenty-first century. While a great hue and cry often goes up against the non-believers or "unsaved" or "infidels," many of the most visible representatives of religion still build on a foundation of fear rather than equity, justice, and compassion. According to this parable, the people who will actually experience a better world ("the kingdom of God") are not just the people who claim to believe certain things or even people who claim to have a personal relationship with the spirit of a centuries-dead Palestinian. The people who will experience a better world are the ones who create that better world through displaying its evidence--people who actually practice equity, justice, and compassion. Many believers and religious leaders seem not to know that their gospel narratives make this assertion.

What is the proper foundation, then? What is the identity of a cornerstone that promotes equity, justice, and compassion. One interpretation of that stone that some have offered is hope, specifically hope in supernatural guidance and aid, and hope in a desirable afterlife. The problem with the brand of hope offered by many religious traditions, however, is that it's based on mythology and folklore. One doesn't claim sincere hope for leprechauns to make personal debt disappear, or hope for Aphrodite to actually intervene in one's romantic affairs. Genuine hope needs something a bit more solid.

Before you defend the legitimacy of religious hope too vigorously, consider the number of believers currently in prison because of fear-based actions, the number of believers who have been caught in sexual scandals, the number of believers who prefer to divorce rather than work on their relationships, and the number of believers who abuse their children and spouses. People who have legitimate hope in a supernatural who loves them and works all things for their good should presumably also have lives defined by less fear, violence, and harmful behavior than people who lack that kind of hope. The actual data suggests that believers have as difficult a time as everybody else--if not greater difficulty--behaving in a way that reflects equity, justice, and compassion, despite alleged supernatural guidance. So, I suggest that hope needs something a bit more solid underneath it.

If the stone is not a mythological savior, and the stone is not empty hope, what could possibly be an ideal that has been rejected as a worthwhile foundation by many people who strive to build a better world? Several candidates come to mind, actually. Reason is one fine foundation, for those who are capable and willing to employ it. Unfortunately, many people seem to lack the skill to reason well, and many people strangely prefer not to reason well. Self-awareness is another fine foundation. The more we understand ourselves, the more we can act intentionally in the world. This, too, may bump up against some limitations of personal ability, however. So, I'll propose a third identity for the foundation stone that has been rejected by nearly everyone: radical, unconditional love.

You may have just rejected that in your mind when you read it. You may have even rejected it out loud. We've grown accustomed to believing that love doesn't solve anything, possibly because of how we decide to define love. I'm thinking here of affectionate concern for the well-being of others. Not merely strong positive emotions toward someone, because emotions are not completely within our control. Not concern for the well-being of people such that we decide we have to manage their lives and decisions for them because they aren't capable of doing it for themselves. That's control, not love. Radical love is a conscious decision that incorporates all of humanity in that sphere of affectionate concern. Unconditional love means that we don't exclude anybody from our pursuit of equity, justice, and compassion. One advantage to calling radical, unconditional love a cornerstone is that it's exactly what the Jesus of the gospel narratives tells people, so it ought to be something with which any believer would agree.

Everyone's cornerstones don't necessarily need to be the same thing. It's important to recognize, though, that violence, oppression, shame, and dishonesty do not create the kind of lives we most want or the kind of world we most want to live in. There is no external supernatural. We are responsible for building a better world. To do that, we absolutely must learn to dismantle our irrational fears and we must strive toward emotional maturity. Beyond that, we can determine what guiding principles to build on. I believe that all people have inherent worth and dignity, and that keystone holds the entire archway of my life together pretty well. Right now, I'm happy with identifying my cornerstones as science, reason, self-differentiation, and radical unconditional love.

What are your cornerstones? Having four corners makes sense to me. Maybe you have more cornerstones or fewer cornerstones. Maybe you just have one keystone that holds everything together. Whatever the case, your foundation is strongest when it actually makes sense to you. Base your life on things you can actually trust and verify. Don't claim things out of shame or obligation when your deepest, most noble self rejects them. Build on truth, not on fear. When you feel driven toward violence, or toward trying to control other people's lives, or toward pretending to be something that you aren't, you're not building on solid ground. You are the only person who can build the life you most want. All of us together can build a better world.