This post has taken me longer than most to write, perhaps because it delves into the personal a bit more than the instructive. It seems important to evaluate our perspective of people as we consider how to live in such a way that we are satisfied with our influence in the world, and how we can get what we most deeply want by creating less suffering and greater wholeness. How we see people matters, because how we treat other human beings flows from how we are willing to see them.
I've asserted a guiding principle here that every person has inherent worth and dignity. That means it's part of being human to have worth and dignity. It's this assertion that I want to dig into for a few moments. When I first started this commentary several years ago, I asserted something else -- something complementary to this claim of inherent worth and dignity. I suggested that whatever we call "divine" is really a set of human characteristics -- that the ultimate source of divinity is within human beings. This means that divine character -- the capacity for truth, beauty, and creativity in every person -- is actually human character at its very best. So, an inner sense of divinity is in some ways synonymous with inherent worth and dignity.
And those two ideas are synonymous with having a deepest, most noble self: a part of one's being that authentically expresses one's inherent worth and dignity -- one's divine character -- without fear or anxiety. Who we are when we are at our best. This source of strength, creativity, peace, beauty, wisdom, and love is within every person. It's within you. It's within me. It's part of being human. It isn't supernatural. It isn't an outside entity dwelling within us; it's us. It's who we are at our core. It's our deepest selves once all the fear and anxiety and defense mechanisms are brushed aside. It's the closest thing to a god that will ever exist -- our authentic, loving, laughing, creating selves.
When I was younger, immersed in a Christian perspective, I was taught to express adoration and devotion to something that doesn't exist. I prayed without doubt, and I expressed genuine emotions toward an imaginary being. My emotions and my devotion were real. These were sincere expressions of my deeply held beliefs. The object of those emotions and that devotion, however, was only imagined. It was in my head, but also in my culture -- a shared web of beliefs superimposed on reality. As I gradually dismantled those false beliefs and became more reasoned, there became less of a reason for that devotion and adoration. If there is no god to worship or adore, then there is no purpose for that adoration.
Some people replace a supernatural with natural wonder. There are those who revere nature with the same intensity that others revere an imaginary god. Nature is real and wondrous and awesome and full of surprises. And we can learn so much from observing natural processes. Nature is also relatively unresponsive. Mountains don't respond to praise or adoration any more than an imaginary deity does. Wild animals are just that -- wild. However majestic or awe-inspiring we may find them, animals most often react to human presence through instinct, which is to say they either run away or they defend themselves from a perceived threat. People who forget nature's wildness often suffer brutal consequences.
I count myself among those who are awed by nature, and I love learning things through observing how nature works. Nature doesn't evoke the same sense of adoration and devotion that I once felt toward an imagined god, though. To be fair, I collaborated with others to co-create the god I worshiped, and although we had many similar ideas about this god's character, it's clear that every person who believes in a god believes in a slightly different god than every other believer. There is no objective reality against which a person can test beliefs about a god. The "authoritative" texts that hold ancient ideas about gods don't even have internal agreement, and human beings interpret those texts through a variety of human ideas about gods. So, everyone's god is personal -- a personal creation that agrees in some respects with other people's gods, but a personal creation nonetheless.
Which is to say that what I was feeling deep emotion for and expressing deep devotion to was a product of my own imagination, based on other people's ideas and a collection of ancient writings. My own imagination is part of my own creative nature -- part of my own deepest, most noble self. The problem was that I convinced myself of the reality of something that was not real, and I focused emotional energy on that unreal entity. My creativity convinced me that I could expect something back from that unreal entity, too. Guidance, forgiveness, love, acceptance, peace. If there was any real source of those blessings, it was within myself. I was the one imagining a god, after all. So anything that god provided was coming from within me somehow. Even "nature" cannot legitimately be said to intelligently guide, love, forgive, or accept beings who are a part of natural systems.
Now, this is not to say that human beings are not sources of guidance, forgiveness, love, acceptance, peace, and a whole array of other gifts we extend to one another. People are real and actual sources of blessing to one another. My point is that whatever we perceive as coming to us from a divine source -- particularly from an external supernatual -- must be coming from within ourselves. If the supernatural doesn't exist, and we still gain a sense of forgiveness, for example, that forgiveness has to originate from within us -- the same creative source as the imagined supernatural. Just as my emotions and devotion were real, even though the supernatural object was not real, the forgiveness and love and guidance I experienced were also real. I had the source wrong, but the experience was genuine. I genuinely felt loved, forgiven, acceptable. My own self is the only possible source for those genuine experiences that don't come from other human beings.
This presents a problem, because we also heap judgment, shame, and anxiety on ourselves from within. We believe lies about how worthless, unlovable, or unacceptable we are, and yet we would also seem to be the source of "divine" love and acceptance. No wonder it's so much easier to separate that loving, wise, creative part of ourselves out into an imagined external source. We can receive that guidance and acceptance so much more easily if it seems to come from outside of ourselves. But that's just an illusion. A helpful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.
Some of the most meaningful time I spend in any given week is working with people in workshops or small groups on connecting with their deepest, most noble selves -- the part of them that can be called "divine" if anything can bear that label. Living with integrity to our deepest values and guiding principles requires of us that we confront old lies about who we are and embrace a sense of love and acceptance for ourselves. This is hard work. Seeing ourselves as having inherent worth and dignity is often harder than seeing that inherent worth and dignity in others.
And this is where my own recent spiritual work has led me to connect the inherent worth and dignity of every person with the idea of a deepest, most noble self -- and the concept of inner divinity (not in any supernatural sense, but just in the sense that human beings are the creators of the idea of divinity and the embodiment of all those qualities that we consider to be divine characteristics). If that sense of overwhelming love and acceptance felt by the religious is actually something that comes from within us, then I have to admit that human beings are capable of divine love, forgiveness, guidance, and all the rest. Whatever "divine" means in this context, human beings are the source. My own self was the source each time I felt loved by God, each time I felt a sense of direction from God, each time I felt a sense of awe and wonder at the unknown, each time I knew a deep forgiveness when I had acted out of alignment with my deepest values. I was the source -- something within me and part of who I am as a human being.
So, if an unreal supernatural was worthy of my adoration and devotion, why would a real human being be any less worthy? Why would the real source of "divine" love, forgiveness, and guidance be less worthy of worship than an imagined source of those same gifts? And if these are human qualities that rise from the deepest, most noble self -- the seat of inherent worth and dignity in every person -- why would that essence within people be less worthy of adoration and devotion than an imagined supernatural external to human beings? If human creativity, beauty, and truth is the source of love, forgiveness, and acceptance, why would I not stand in awe and adoration of such wonder?
This is not to say that human beings are entirely divine, of course. We foster anxiety and fear, we protect ourselves with layers of false selves in order to be safe from perceived threats. We rarely show up as our authentic selves, fully embodying our deepest, most noble selves. Most of what we see of each other most of the time is quite different from that inner divinity, and we taint that inner divinity with our fears and anxieties, too. So we wind up inventing gods that hate and oppress, and we give ourselves permission to hate and oppress as emissaries of those hateful and oppressive gods. This is not a true reflection of our inherent worth and dignity. It's a betrayal of ourselves.
We hold within us this capacity to express what passes for divine love and acceptance, to adore and cherish ourselves and others. Yet we betray that human capacity by paying more attention to fear, and that fear shows itself in myriad behaviors and attitudes. This betrayal doesn't change the fact that the only explanation for feelings of divine love and acceptance and guidance is that they come from within -- that human beings naturally have this potential. That seems worthy of adoration. That potential, that seed, that inner divinity, that deepest most noble self -- that is what inherent worth and dignity references. And for me, at least for now, that seems worthy of awe and adoration.
I see the betrayals of self, of course. I see them more clearly now that I have at other times in my life, both in my own behavior and in the words and actions of others. Yet, I want to reclaim that sense of adoration and love I once focused on the unreal. I want to refocus that same sense of wonder and delight in the only place that it can legitimately be directed -- the inner self of human beings. Not on something beyond nature, but on the very best of what is naturally human. If the actual source of everything I once called divine is within myself and every other person, why would I not worship that human source as fervently as I once worshiped some imagined external source?
Perhaps this is not meaningful to you, especially if you haven't had experience with a religious context. For those who are in recovery from religion, however, perhaps it is of some benefit to acknowledge that it was not all a lie. Maybe we just weren't giving ourselves enough credit.
Showing posts with label inner divinity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inner divinity. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2016
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
John 2:13-25 Building a Temple in Three Days
In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and scattered the Jews across the Roman Empire to disrupt their persistent pattern of insurrection. The gospel of John was written some time after this event, so when the authors relate a story about the Temple, they are looking back through the lens of history. The Temple has been destroyed and can no longer be a focus of worship for the Jewish people. Jews manage this reality by shifting toward local synagogues rather than a singular geographic focus. The Christian sect believes that it has a more meaningful response.
Thus, the story of Jesus at the Temple in John 2 has a couple of underlying messages about Judaism, at least as it was historically expressed. First, there is a clear message that the system was corrupt. People were profiting from the spiritual practices of others, and this compromised the integrity of Jewish spiritual identity. Second, the system focused on the wrong things. The temple building was not intended to be the most important feature of spiritual identity, but it had become so. The perspective of people -- particularly people in power -- was so skewed that they missed the very point of having a spiritual identity in the first place.
When Jesus raises a ruckus, then, the authors are commenting on how corrupt and misguided the Jewish system had become. They connect this to a resurrection legend and equate Jesus with the "real" temple where sacrificial offerings are made to a supernatural. We might interpret some different meanings from the story if we start out with a different set of assumptions, and we have been approaching the stories in John from the perspective that the Jesus character is in some way an exemplar.
What observations can we make about Jesus in this story? He clearly did not hold making money as the highest priority. He had an understanding of spiritual integrity that did not prioritize physical buildings. He acted publicly on his principles with impressive conviction. He knew himself well enough that he didn't seek approval from others -- he didn't need external validation.
Jesus' perspective isn't made explicit in this story, but he obviously disagrees with the perspective of the Jewish religious leaders. This seems to be a difference of how one ought to relate to the divine. The Jewish people had a system of well-defined sacrificial acts that they believed connected them to their supernatural -- where they believed divinity was situated. If we consider the possibility that what we call "divinity" is really a set of inward human qualities, then relationship with the divine is really about being connected with that deepest, most noble part of ourselves. Sacrifices don't make any sense in that context. Does what Jesus suggested make any sense from that perspective of inner divinity?
Well, he starts off suggesting that there is something wrong with making money off of the sacrificial system. This has to mean that there is something wrong with the system itself, because many people could not offer the appropriate sacrifice from their own possessions. That's why the livestock and money-changers were there in the first place. So, if there is something wrong with the sacrificial system, this means that there is something amiss about the prevailing view of relationship with the divine -- something off about the common understanding of spiritual identity.
When challenged, he states that if the Temple is destroyed, he will raise it up in three days, which the disciples in the story interpret as a reference to the resurrection. What if these words mean something else? What if the most important thing about spiritual identity is meaningful connection within ourselves, followed closely by meaningful connection with other people? Without the building to distract people, they might start to recognize their own deepest, most noble selves -- their own identities. And they might be able to connect in community with other people in a more sincere and meaningful way. Without the sacrificial system to distract them, people might begin to grasp the true heart of spiritual identity rather quickly. The groundwork for meaningful community had already been laid in the culture. Within three days, all of the necessary elements for spiritual identity could be brought together without the need of a physical structure or a complex system of sacrifices.
After all, what does it take for people to develop clarity about their spiritual identity? They would need to be confident in their ability to engage in that process, and -- because human beings are relational -- they would need a community within which to develop that personal clarity. Perhaps a spiritual leader or guide is also an important element in the mix. They don't need a building, to be sure. They don't need to follow a prescribed set of rituals, particularly when those rituals become rote practice instead of personally significant. They certainly don't need to pay people for the means to connect with divinity. Within a relatively short amount of time, all the essentials for meaningful spiritual community and meaningful personal development could be put in place. True understanding takes a lot longer, but it starts from having a useful foundation.
It bears repeating that we never need to pay for spiritual integrity. We may choose to pay for the services of a coach or guide. We may choose to contribute resources to a community in which we have found meaning. There is something off, however, if we are ever compelled to give money that we aren't giving out of our own desire. Our spiritual well-being does not have a price tag. Our spiritual well-being is our responsibility. No matter what promises are made about more money coming back to us if we give beyond our means or beyond our comfort, our financial well-being is our responsibility, too. When money is coerced from us, there is something wrong with the situation. When we offer money out of our own sense of abundance -- out of our own identity as generous people -- then we can most meaningfully connect that to spiritual integrity.
There is little else to this scene apart from pointing out that the current system was flawed. It will take some time for the overall story to reveal a better way. From this little bit, though, we might take away that we need to clarify for ourselves what is most important, and we need to be clear that it isn't money. We might recognize that our personal development and our sense of community are not about the physical trappings of architecture or prescribed ritual. We might commit ourselves to allowing our guiding principles to source our public actions, and we might begin to build our conviction in that area. Most importantly perhaps, we might begin to develop a sense of self that isn't based on external validation from other people. We can learn from other people's perspectives, even their perspectives about who we are or who we should be, but we don't need to base our decisions on what would make other people happy. There is a more authentic way of being that we can embrace.
Little Experiments: What can you do in three days? If you want to build up your spiritual identity a bit more, there are some meaningful actions you can take that do not require a lot of time. These are steps in a journey, not the destination, but they can still be incredibly meaningful and important.
In the next three days, you could:
Start in on that personal development book you've been meaning to read.
Connect with someone with whom you haven't spoken in a while.
Commit to a practice of meditation.
Decide to give out of your abundance to a cause that you care about.
Seek out a community of like-minded people who are challenging and supporting one another.
If you wanted to, within the next three days, you could plan a simple dinner and invite people who have helped you clarify your own identity, people you have inspired and empowered, or others with whom you would like a deeper connection. That could even be the start of a meaningful community of individuals who are willing to be intentional about their own identities and their relationships with one another. Everything has to start somewhere. You could start something in the next three days.
Thus, the story of Jesus at the Temple in John 2 has a couple of underlying messages about Judaism, at least as it was historically expressed. First, there is a clear message that the system was corrupt. People were profiting from the spiritual practices of others, and this compromised the integrity of Jewish spiritual identity. Second, the system focused on the wrong things. The temple building was not intended to be the most important feature of spiritual identity, but it had become so. The perspective of people -- particularly people in power -- was so skewed that they missed the very point of having a spiritual identity in the first place.
When Jesus raises a ruckus, then, the authors are commenting on how corrupt and misguided the Jewish system had become. They connect this to a resurrection legend and equate Jesus with the "real" temple where sacrificial offerings are made to a supernatural. We might interpret some different meanings from the story if we start out with a different set of assumptions, and we have been approaching the stories in John from the perspective that the Jesus character is in some way an exemplar.
What observations can we make about Jesus in this story? He clearly did not hold making money as the highest priority. He had an understanding of spiritual integrity that did not prioritize physical buildings. He acted publicly on his principles with impressive conviction. He knew himself well enough that he didn't seek approval from others -- he didn't need external validation.
Jesus' perspective isn't made explicit in this story, but he obviously disagrees with the perspective of the Jewish religious leaders. This seems to be a difference of how one ought to relate to the divine. The Jewish people had a system of well-defined sacrificial acts that they believed connected them to their supernatural -- where they believed divinity was situated. If we consider the possibility that what we call "divinity" is really a set of inward human qualities, then relationship with the divine is really about being connected with that deepest, most noble part of ourselves. Sacrifices don't make any sense in that context. Does what Jesus suggested make any sense from that perspective of inner divinity?
Well, he starts off suggesting that there is something wrong with making money off of the sacrificial system. This has to mean that there is something wrong with the system itself, because many people could not offer the appropriate sacrifice from their own possessions. That's why the livestock and money-changers were there in the first place. So, if there is something wrong with the sacrificial system, this means that there is something amiss about the prevailing view of relationship with the divine -- something off about the common understanding of spiritual identity.
When challenged, he states that if the Temple is destroyed, he will raise it up in three days, which the disciples in the story interpret as a reference to the resurrection. What if these words mean something else? What if the most important thing about spiritual identity is meaningful connection within ourselves, followed closely by meaningful connection with other people? Without the building to distract people, they might start to recognize their own deepest, most noble selves -- their own identities. And they might be able to connect in community with other people in a more sincere and meaningful way. Without the sacrificial system to distract them, people might begin to grasp the true heart of spiritual identity rather quickly. The groundwork for meaningful community had already been laid in the culture. Within three days, all of the necessary elements for spiritual identity could be brought together without the need of a physical structure or a complex system of sacrifices.
After all, what does it take for people to develop clarity about their spiritual identity? They would need to be confident in their ability to engage in that process, and -- because human beings are relational -- they would need a community within which to develop that personal clarity. Perhaps a spiritual leader or guide is also an important element in the mix. They don't need a building, to be sure. They don't need to follow a prescribed set of rituals, particularly when those rituals become rote practice instead of personally significant. They certainly don't need to pay people for the means to connect with divinity. Within a relatively short amount of time, all the essentials for meaningful spiritual community and meaningful personal development could be put in place. True understanding takes a lot longer, but it starts from having a useful foundation.
It bears repeating that we never need to pay for spiritual integrity. We may choose to pay for the services of a coach or guide. We may choose to contribute resources to a community in which we have found meaning. There is something off, however, if we are ever compelled to give money that we aren't giving out of our own desire. Our spiritual well-being does not have a price tag. Our spiritual well-being is our responsibility. No matter what promises are made about more money coming back to us if we give beyond our means or beyond our comfort, our financial well-being is our responsibility, too. When money is coerced from us, there is something wrong with the situation. When we offer money out of our own sense of abundance -- out of our own identity as generous people -- then we can most meaningfully connect that to spiritual integrity.
Little Experiments: What can you do in three days? If you want to build up your spiritual identity a bit more, there are some meaningful actions you can take that do not require a lot of time. These are steps in a journey, not the destination, but they can still be incredibly meaningful and important.
In the next three days, you could:
Start in on that personal development book you've been meaning to read.
Connect with someone with whom you haven't spoken in a while.
Commit to a practice of meditation.
Decide to give out of your abundance to a cause that you care about.
Seek out a community of like-minded people who are challenging and supporting one another.
If you wanted to, within the next three days, you could plan a simple dinner and invite people who have helped you clarify your own identity, people you have inspired and empowered, or others with whom you would like a deeper connection. That could even be the start of a meaningful community of individuals who are willing to be intentional about their own identities and their relationships with one another. Everything has to start somewhere. You could start something in the next three days.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Mark 15: Sifting Through the Crucifixion Narrative
Continuing for another couple of weeks with the Passion story as it is related in the gospel of Mark, we read of the crucifixion event and some connections with the Hebrew Scriptures made by the early church. It bears repeating that there is very little evidence of a historical Jesus, but we wouldn't necessarily expect there to be. There is very little evidence from the first century of any single person who wasn't a powerful political or military figure, or a historian who wrote about important political and military figures. The Christian cult is mentioned in a couple of historical documents, but in these reports historians repeat what the early church believed about Jesus, rather than verify their story.
Even if there were more evidence of a historical Jesus, this would not necessarily validate any particular story about him. That a person names Nunzio exists is one kind of assertion; to say that Nunzio is manager of an Italian restaurant is another kind of assertion; and to say that Nunzio never buys wine for his restaurant because he can just turn water into alcohol whenever he wishes is yet another kind of assertion. To prove that Nunzio is a real person does not thereby lead to the conclusion that Nunzio can turn water into wine. Even to prove that Nunzio seemed to turn water into wine on one occasion does not necessarily conclude that he could do it again, or that he could perform any other amazing feat. With regard to Jesus, there is simply no way to prove the claims of the gospel narratives.
This is not a glaring indictment for most believers. Many people would say that accepting the gospel narratives requires faith, and they believe that their lives are improved by that faith. I have suggested that believing in a historical Jesus or that such a person performed miracles is rather shallow when one considers the minimal impact such belief could have in an individual's life. To believe in unicorns or dragons matters not at all (save that one may be a target for those who would take advantage of such gullibility), until one decides to quit one's job, leave one's family, and go hunting for unicorns or dragons. Then, it matters a great deal. Belief in what Jesus symbolizes -- belief to the extent that the values represented by the Jesus archetype permeate one's life -- would seem to be more vital than belief that Jesus actually existed.
Thus, when reading the Passion story in any of the gospels, one might do well to push past the question of whether something really happened and look to the symbolism as one would look at any other mythological tale. What is the wisdom being communicated? Where does one find oneself in the story? If the story is about Hercules slaying a hydra, does one identify most with the heroic role, with the role of the nephew Iolaus, with the townsfolk who were victims of the danger until someone heroic came along, or with the naysayers after the event who minimized the accomplishment? Can one learn something from every character in the story about oneself, or about what a best possible version of oneself might look like? This would seem to be a more valuable approach than blind belief that someone accomplished something unique a long time ago, and that the intangible benefits are available to anyone who just believes the story.
For the early church, it was important to set Jesus up as a unique messianic figure connected to Hebrew Scripture. This was possibly an unfortunate misinterpretation of the intentions of the prophets, particularly Isaiah, who cast vision for every individual to live into the ideal of compassionate justice. When the words of the ancient scriptures are made to be about a single person, it rather lets everyone else off the hook for living into that ideal. Several of the quotes and details of the crucifixion story are thus attributable to attempts on the part of the early church to affirm that Jesus was a unique fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy. The mythologizing of the story can be seen in the wine mixed with myrrh which Jesus refuses, the fall of darkness over the land, the casting of lots (gambling -- rolling dice) for his clothing, the presence of criminals alongside him (although this would certainly not be unusual, since criminals were crucified in droves in the Roman empire), and the words that Jesus speaks, which are a reference to a psalm of lament.
An interesting feature of the story is the tearing of the temple curtain from top to bottom. Many have interpreted this as a symbol that the separation between God and man was no more -- that people did not have to go through priests and sacrificial rituals to connect with the divine. Others have suggested that this is a symbol that God no longer lives in houses made by human hands, which would have been a significant concept in the first century. In any case, it was certainly an indictment against the religious power structures of the time, and it was a call to a change of perspective.
The burial scene is intended to provide enough details to make the resurrection event convincing, even though that event is a bit odd as it is told in the earliest version of the gospel of Mark. The verification that Jesus is dead, the traditional appropriate Jewish treatment of the body, and the heavy stone rolled across the tomb entrance are to make resurrection reports credible and impressive. Normally, a poor man crucified as a criminal would have been tossed in a mass grave, and whether he was still there or whether he had gotten up and walked off somewhere would be very difficult to determine. Like the other seemingly historical aspects of the story, hanging one's faith on whether things happened exactly as a gospel narrative suggests is a rather shallow reading. The real value is in determining the application in one's own life, and there are more worthwhile applications that mere belief in an event.
When I say that it is unfortunate that the early church appropriated Hebrew scripture to assert that Jesus was a unique messianic figure, I mean that it is very difficult to reclaim some of the ideas of those writings if one believes that they applied specifically to one particular person. Lament psalms were meant to be available to a community and to any individual who experienced the kind of suffering and pain reflected in the poem/song. Connecting a lament psalm to Jesus takes it somewhat off the market for personal expression, because, from the perspective of believers, no one suffered or felt pain like Jesus.The lament becomes about Jesus' suffering instead of our own, and our own suffering is made insignificant by comparison.
Except that our own suffering isn't insignificant. Comparing it to someone who has suffered more might seem like our preoccupation with our own pain isn't legitimate, but that doesn't keep us from feeling the pain. It just gives us reason to feel guilty or ashamed about feeling our pain. One big lesson that we could take from understanding how the gospel writers and the early church made use of well-known Hebrew scriptures is to reclaim our experience. The original intent behind much of the prophetic writing in the Old Testament was for individuals and communities to be more intentional in their behavior and to have more integrity to their values. These ideas are not unique to the Old Testament. This has been a challenge in many cultures from many different perspectives throughout human history. Seen as such, the Hebrew scriptures become one resource among many resources to influence individuals toward living in a way that contributes to holistic well-being in their own lives and in the lives of their communities and neighborhoods. We need to experience our own suffering without being ashamed of feeling pain, and we need to recognize our own role in influencing our realities.
There are two symbolic results of the crucifixion that bear acknowledgment -- truths that the early church recognized and expressed as well as it could in the culture of the first century. First, there is that image of the curtain being torn in two. There is no separation between the divine and humanity. Since whatever we call divine is intrinsic to humanity, we can connect with those qualities within ourselves whenever we wish. We might become more skillful at introspection, but we are never denied access to our deepest, most noble self and we do not have to go through any particular ritual actions to connect with ourselves. God is a word people use to refer to a deep part of themselves, but we do not have to follow any linguistic protocol to connect with that part of ourselves that we could characterize as divinity.
Second, there is the idea of forgiveness. In the context of a covenant relationship between a supernatural and humanity, human beings had to somehow account for the things they did that were out of alignment with what their supernatural wanted. This is what the Jewish sacrificial system was largely about: staying in alignment with the values of their supernatural. It became something of an obsession in Jewish society. Keeping oneself pure, remaining personally in step with religious law, became more important than risky acts of justice or compassion. People were perhaps apt to disconnect from real, deep community because they didn't want to be scrutinized. Even today, a lot of people are more concerned about what they have done wrong, what other people have done wrong, what people might be thinking about doing wrong, or what wrong motives they may have had for doing something that seems quite good on the outside. It is also much easier to stay in a judgmental frame of mind when you're focused on how people are failing.
The early Christian church solved this issue, but most of them didn't seem to realize it. By inventing a dying and rising messiah figure who eliminated the need for ritual animal sacrifice, the early church essentially said, "We don't have to worry about sin anymore." This is not to imply licentiousness (although some people in the early church apparently did take it that way), but rather to say that the best thing to do when you fall short of your ideal is to get up -- hopefully with the help and embrace of a loving community of people -- and take another run at it. The idea of sinfulness is laced with shame, and it winds up not being incredibly helpful. If we were to accept that we have nothing to fear from getting something wrong, we might get past the self-obsession with where we might spend an imaginary afterlife and focus on things that matter right now -- like how we are in our relationships with the people we encounter every day.
Even for people who want to believe in the historical validity of the Passion story, then, there are these two big things that can transform the way we do life. We are not separated from whatever it is we call divine, and we are capable of making mistakes and moving on. There are often consequences when we fall out of alignment with our deep guiding principles, but those consequences don't have to come with shame or insurmountable guilt. We are human beings. We are not perfect. We will disappoint one another because we will have expectations of one another that go unmet. That's life. Our real work is not to try not to do anything wrong and to do whatever we can to make up for all of the mistakes we make. Our real work is to bring our capability into full engagement in the communities where we live.
This doesn't mean permissiveness with regard to harmful behavior. It means focusing on what will create greater well-being rather than what someone has done wrong. We never just do harm to one person; our harmful acts always affect ourselves and a whole network of people -- often even people that we will never meet. The idea behind grace is not that we shrug our shoulders and say, "Ah, well, I'll do better next time," but instead to direct our focus away from our own "eternal destinies" and toward how we can positively influence the world around us right now, in this moment. This is how we move beyond our fears of scarcity, fears of embarrassment, fears of insignificance, and fears of powerlessness and move into transformational relationships with the people around us. Whether the Passion story sources that kind of focus for you or whether you draw inspiration from somewhere else, we are capable of building incredible powerful connections with other people when we are willing to set shame aside and bring our authentic selves forward.
Even if there were more evidence of a historical Jesus, this would not necessarily validate any particular story about him. That a person names Nunzio exists is one kind of assertion; to say that Nunzio is manager of an Italian restaurant is another kind of assertion; and to say that Nunzio never buys wine for his restaurant because he can just turn water into alcohol whenever he wishes is yet another kind of assertion. To prove that Nunzio is a real person does not thereby lead to the conclusion that Nunzio can turn water into wine. Even to prove that Nunzio seemed to turn water into wine on one occasion does not necessarily conclude that he could do it again, or that he could perform any other amazing feat. With regard to Jesus, there is simply no way to prove the claims of the gospel narratives.
This is not a glaring indictment for most believers. Many people would say that accepting the gospel narratives requires faith, and they believe that their lives are improved by that faith. I have suggested that believing in a historical Jesus or that such a person performed miracles is rather shallow when one considers the minimal impact such belief could have in an individual's life. To believe in unicorns or dragons matters not at all (save that one may be a target for those who would take advantage of such gullibility), until one decides to quit one's job, leave one's family, and go hunting for unicorns or dragons. Then, it matters a great deal. Belief in what Jesus symbolizes -- belief to the extent that the values represented by the Jesus archetype permeate one's life -- would seem to be more vital than belief that Jesus actually existed.
Thus, when reading the Passion story in any of the gospels, one might do well to push past the question of whether something really happened and look to the symbolism as one would look at any other mythological tale. What is the wisdom being communicated? Where does one find oneself in the story? If the story is about Hercules slaying a hydra, does one identify most with the heroic role, with the role of the nephew Iolaus, with the townsfolk who were victims of the danger until someone heroic came along, or with the naysayers after the event who minimized the accomplishment? Can one learn something from every character in the story about oneself, or about what a best possible version of oneself might look like? This would seem to be a more valuable approach than blind belief that someone accomplished something unique a long time ago, and that the intangible benefits are available to anyone who just believes the story.
For the early church, it was important to set Jesus up as a unique messianic figure connected to Hebrew Scripture. This was possibly an unfortunate misinterpretation of the intentions of the prophets, particularly Isaiah, who cast vision for every individual to live into the ideal of compassionate justice. When the words of the ancient scriptures are made to be about a single person, it rather lets everyone else off the hook for living into that ideal. Several of the quotes and details of the crucifixion story are thus attributable to attempts on the part of the early church to affirm that Jesus was a unique fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy. The mythologizing of the story can be seen in the wine mixed with myrrh which Jesus refuses, the fall of darkness over the land, the casting of lots (gambling -- rolling dice) for his clothing, the presence of criminals alongside him (although this would certainly not be unusual, since criminals were crucified in droves in the Roman empire), and the words that Jesus speaks, which are a reference to a psalm of lament.
An interesting feature of the story is the tearing of the temple curtain from top to bottom. Many have interpreted this as a symbol that the separation between God and man was no more -- that people did not have to go through priests and sacrificial rituals to connect with the divine. Others have suggested that this is a symbol that God no longer lives in houses made by human hands, which would have been a significant concept in the first century. In any case, it was certainly an indictment against the religious power structures of the time, and it was a call to a change of perspective.
The burial scene is intended to provide enough details to make the resurrection event convincing, even though that event is a bit odd as it is told in the earliest version of the gospel of Mark. The verification that Jesus is dead, the traditional appropriate Jewish treatment of the body, and the heavy stone rolled across the tomb entrance are to make resurrection reports credible and impressive. Normally, a poor man crucified as a criminal would have been tossed in a mass grave, and whether he was still there or whether he had gotten up and walked off somewhere would be very difficult to determine. Like the other seemingly historical aspects of the story, hanging one's faith on whether things happened exactly as a gospel narrative suggests is a rather shallow reading. The real value is in determining the application in one's own life, and there are more worthwhile applications that mere belief in an event.
When I say that it is unfortunate that the early church appropriated Hebrew scripture to assert that Jesus was a unique messianic figure, I mean that it is very difficult to reclaim some of the ideas of those writings if one believes that they applied specifically to one particular person. Lament psalms were meant to be available to a community and to any individual who experienced the kind of suffering and pain reflected in the poem/song. Connecting a lament psalm to Jesus takes it somewhat off the market for personal expression, because, from the perspective of believers, no one suffered or felt pain like Jesus.The lament becomes about Jesus' suffering instead of our own, and our own suffering is made insignificant by comparison.
Except that our own suffering isn't insignificant. Comparing it to someone who has suffered more might seem like our preoccupation with our own pain isn't legitimate, but that doesn't keep us from feeling the pain. It just gives us reason to feel guilty or ashamed about feeling our pain. One big lesson that we could take from understanding how the gospel writers and the early church made use of well-known Hebrew scriptures is to reclaim our experience. The original intent behind much of the prophetic writing in the Old Testament was for individuals and communities to be more intentional in their behavior and to have more integrity to their values. These ideas are not unique to the Old Testament. This has been a challenge in many cultures from many different perspectives throughout human history. Seen as such, the Hebrew scriptures become one resource among many resources to influence individuals toward living in a way that contributes to holistic well-being in their own lives and in the lives of their communities and neighborhoods. We need to experience our own suffering without being ashamed of feeling pain, and we need to recognize our own role in influencing our realities.
There are two symbolic results of the crucifixion that bear acknowledgment -- truths that the early church recognized and expressed as well as it could in the culture of the first century. First, there is that image of the curtain being torn in two. There is no separation between the divine and humanity. Since whatever we call divine is intrinsic to humanity, we can connect with those qualities within ourselves whenever we wish. We might become more skillful at introspection, but we are never denied access to our deepest, most noble self and we do not have to go through any particular ritual actions to connect with ourselves. God is a word people use to refer to a deep part of themselves, but we do not have to follow any linguistic protocol to connect with that part of ourselves that we could characterize as divinity.
Second, there is the idea of forgiveness. In the context of a covenant relationship between a supernatural and humanity, human beings had to somehow account for the things they did that were out of alignment with what their supernatural wanted. This is what the Jewish sacrificial system was largely about: staying in alignment with the values of their supernatural. It became something of an obsession in Jewish society. Keeping oneself pure, remaining personally in step with religious law, became more important than risky acts of justice or compassion. People were perhaps apt to disconnect from real, deep community because they didn't want to be scrutinized. Even today, a lot of people are more concerned about what they have done wrong, what other people have done wrong, what people might be thinking about doing wrong, or what wrong motives they may have had for doing something that seems quite good on the outside. It is also much easier to stay in a judgmental frame of mind when you're focused on how people are failing.
The early Christian church solved this issue, but most of them didn't seem to realize it. By inventing a dying and rising messiah figure who eliminated the need for ritual animal sacrifice, the early church essentially said, "We don't have to worry about sin anymore." This is not to imply licentiousness (although some people in the early church apparently did take it that way), but rather to say that the best thing to do when you fall short of your ideal is to get up -- hopefully with the help and embrace of a loving community of people -- and take another run at it. The idea of sinfulness is laced with shame, and it winds up not being incredibly helpful. If we were to accept that we have nothing to fear from getting something wrong, we might get past the self-obsession with where we might spend an imaginary afterlife and focus on things that matter right now -- like how we are in our relationships with the people we encounter every day.
Even for people who want to believe in the historical validity of the Passion story, then, there are these two big things that can transform the way we do life. We are not separated from whatever it is we call divine, and we are capable of making mistakes and moving on. There are often consequences when we fall out of alignment with our deep guiding principles, but those consequences don't have to come with shame or insurmountable guilt. We are human beings. We are not perfect. We will disappoint one another because we will have expectations of one another that go unmet. That's life. Our real work is not to try not to do anything wrong and to do whatever we can to make up for all of the mistakes we make. Our real work is to bring our capability into full engagement in the communities where we live.
This doesn't mean permissiveness with regard to harmful behavior. It means focusing on what will create greater well-being rather than what someone has done wrong. We never just do harm to one person; our harmful acts always affect ourselves and a whole network of people -- often even people that we will never meet. The idea behind grace is not that we shrug our shoulders and say, "Ah, well, I'll do better next time," but instead to direct our focus away from our own "eternal destinies" and toward how we can positively influence the world around us right now, in this moment. This is how we move beyond our fears of scarcity, fears of embarrassment, fears of insignificance, and fears of powerlessness and move into transformational relationships with the people around us. Whether the Passion story sources that kind of focus for you or whether you draw inspiration from somewhere else, we are capable of building incredible powerful connections with other people when we are willing to set shame aside and bring our authentic selves forward.
Monday, February 17, 2014
The "G" Word
I've wrestled with using the word "God" for some time now. I know that there are some people who invent their own definitions in order to keep using the word without necessarily meaning what other people mean by the word.
"God is the space between people."
"God is a person's ultimate concern."
"God is the life force that flows through all things."
This is all well and good, except that I know when I use the word "God" without going into detail to define it, other people are going to conjure up whatever their own image of God is, and most likely they're going to have an image of God that is somehow connected to the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God. Even if they have a different image of God, it's not likely to be identical to my image of God. I keep using capital-G "God" at this point because that term has come to be synonymous with a singular higher power, most often portrayed as intelligent, willful, and benevolent, with a vengeful streak toward people who hold different opinions or lifestyles than the person doing the portraying. Given that I can't control what a listener does with the word, I generally choose not to use the word "God" (unless I'm asking a question about someone's specific claims about their image of a deity).
That doesn't mean I don't have any ideas about God. Aside from acknowledging that no actual gods exist in objective reality -- that indeed there is no credible evidence to support claims of supernaturalism -- I still have some ideas about God. Those ideas extend to any god, goddess, ancestral spirit, fairies, and so on. If I were to use the word "God," I know what I would mean by it. Maybe it's better to get over what other people will do with the word in their interpretation.
God is a word people use to describe a deep part of ourselves. Sometimes, it's easier to imagine that inner part of our being as something outside of us. It's easier to imagine talking to something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being comforted by something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being loved by something external to ourselves. Some people get so accustomed to imagining this deep part of themselves as something external to themselves that they forget that God is the inner part of their being. They start to believe that what they imagine about God being external to them should be what everyone imagines about God. It's difficult for them to see that, since God is just a word people use to describe a deep part of themselves, everyone is going to have a different image of God.
People have concocted a lot of gods, as it turns out. None of those gods are real, but they are the ideas that were evoked from the inner lives of lots of different people. People feel angry sometimes, so they might imagine a god that is angry about the same things. People are awed by nature, so they might imagine that nature has gods too, that nature has a self. People imagine gods that act and feel the way those people act and feel, and sometimes people imagine gods that act and feel in ways that those people wish they could act and feel. From within different people, many different ideas of gods have emerged. None of those external ideas of gods actually do or feel anything, but they reflect what people do and feel within the innermost parts of their being.
Sometimes imagining that God is something external can be used as a buffer. When people say that God blessed them with certain abilities, they can speak boldly about themselves without seeming egotistical. When someone says that God punished a group of people with a hurricane, that person is actually expressing personal hatred or fear about a group of people and using an external idea of God as a deflector. When people pray that a person will recover from an injury or illness, they are actually expressing their own desire for the person's recovery... which is kind of odd, when you think about it. Why not just say what one wants or feels?
I believe people don't say what they honestly want or feel because they either fear how other people will respond or they fear that they are somehow not enough in their own lives. Using the idea that God is something outside of them allows people to talk about things they would be otherwise afraid to talk about. This doesn't make God real as something outside of them. It just offers people the illusion that they are not actually talking about themselves. It provides a persona on which people can project what they want and what they feel, and this feels safer than vulnerable authenticity.
The ideas people create about gods have inspired lots of stories, and many of these stories hold incredible bits of wisdom. Unfortunately, sometimes people forget to look for the wisdom within the stories and believe that the stories are intended to represent surface-level reality. Stories become "histories" rather than legends, and histories are about recounting factual data. Stories about gods aren't about factual data; they're about the inner development of people -- about growth within a person and between people. When we recognize that God or god (or goddess) is a word we use for something deep within ourselves, then it becomes easier to look at stories about God or gods (or goddesses) as lessons about who we are rather than vessels of factual data. Stories about gods are stories about us; when we make them more than that, they become less useful.
We don't insist that other people have the same innermost being as us. We shouldn't insist that people have the same God as us. Neither is possible. Whatever God you believe in is something you have imagined. If you don't believe me, ask 10 of your adult friends to describe God (or better, to draw a picture of God) using their own words and not quoting any sacred text. How many of your friends describe God exactly as you do? This isn't a matter of blind men describing an elephant. People have different descriptions of God because people have different selves. This is a problem for some, because they expect their God to do something that isn't possible -- something that they are not capable of doing.
Our innermost beings are not capable of producing miracles in the world around us. Our innermost beings are not capable of changing other people. When we forget that God is a word we use for something deep within us -- an intrinsic part of ourselves -- we develop untenable expectations. God is a way for us to forgive ourselves for doing something that goes against our guiding principles. God is a way for us to guide ourselves toward better decisions, greater integrity, or more authentic love for others. God is a way for us to comfort ourselves in the face of loss. Having a word for that deep part of ourselves is useful. Until we make that word mean something more.
When I hear anyone talk about deity or fairies or ancestral spirits or anything of the like, I understand that they are telling me something about themselves. Sometimes translation is difficult when people become more academic in their communication, but I know that these are just ways that say things about themselves that they would otherwise find difficult to communicate. No one can ever tell me anything about God that I don't already know. No one can ever tell you anything about God that you don't already know. I can't worship anyone else's God, and neither can you. I can't know anyone else's God, and neither can you. God is a word we use for something deep inside of us, an intrinsic part of us. We can never know someone deeply enough to truly know their God, but we can appreciate that when people speak of God, they are speaking of themselves. They are speaking of a very deep part of themselves.
I may still avoid the use of the word. It's a messy word because so many people believe that it means something different than what it actually means. I may still strive to speak about what I want and what I feel in a way that is vulnerably authentic and leave God out of the conversation altogether. Should I start using the word "God," though, you'll at least have some idea what I mean. More importantly, I'll have a clear idea what I mean. It helps me listen to people sometimes, except when they insist that their imagination defines objective reality for other people. Maybe this will help you in some way, too. There are probably volumes that could flow from what I've articulated here, but the basic idea that all those volumes would flow from is still fairly simple: God is a word we use to talk about our innermost being.
"God is the space between people."
"God is a person's ultimate concern."
"God is the life force that flows through all things."
This is all well and good, except that I know when I use the word "God" without going into detail to define it, other people are going to conjure up whatever their own image of God is, and most likely they're going to have an image of God that is somehow connected to the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God. Even if they have a different image of God, it's not likely to be identical to my image of God. I keep using capital-G "God" at this point because that term has come to be synonymous with a singular higher power, most often portrayed as intelligent, willful, and benevolent, with a vengeful streak toward people who hold different opinions or lifestyles than the person doing the portraying. Given that I can't control what a listener does with the word, I generally choose not to use the word "God" (unless I'm asking a question about someone's specific claims about their image of a deity).
That doesn't mean I don't have any ideas about God. Aside from acknowledging that no actual gods exist in objective reality -- that indeed there is no credible evidence to support claims of supernaturalism -- I still have some ideas about God. Those ideas extend to any god, goddess, ancestral spirit, fairies, and so on. If I were to use the word "God," I know what I would mean by it. Maybe it's better to get over what other people will do with the word in their interpretation.
God is a word people use to describe a deep part of ourselves. Sometimes, it's easier to imagine that inner part of our being as something outside of us. It's easier to imagine talking to something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being comforted by something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being loved by something external to ourselves. Some people get so accustomed to imagining this deep part of themselves as something external to themselves that they forget that God is the inner part of their being. They start to believe that what they imagine about God being external to them should be what everyone imagines about God. It's difficult for them to see that, since God is just a word people use to describe a deep part of themselves, everyone is going to have a different image of God.
People have concocted a lot of gods, as it turns out. None of those gods are real, but they are the ideas that were evoked from the inner lives of lots of different people. People feel angry sometimes, so they might imagine a god that is angry about the same things. People are awed by nature, so they might imagine that nature has gods too, that nature has a self. People imagine gods that act and feel the way those people act and feel, and sometimes people imagine gods that act and feel in ways that those people wish they could act and feel. From within different people, many different ideas of gods have emerged. None of those external ideas of gods actually do or feel anything, but they reflect what people do and feel within the innermost parts of their being.
Sometimes imagining that God is something external can be used as a buffer. When people say that God blessed them with certain abilities, they can speak boldly about themselves without seeming egotistical. When someone says that God punished a group of people with a hurricane, that person is actually expressing personal hatred or fear about a group of people and using an external idea of God as a deflector. When people pray that a person will recover from an injury or illness, they are actually expressing their own desire for the person's recovery... which is kind of odd, when you think about it. Why not just say what one wants or feels?
I believe people don't say what they honestly want or feel because they either fear how other people will respond or they fear that they are somehow not enough in their own lives. Using the idea that God is something outside of them allows people to talk about things they would be otherwise afraid to talk about. This doesn't make God real as something outside of them. It just offers people the illusion that they are not actually talking about themselves. It provides a persona on which people can project what they want and what they feel, and this feels safer than vulnerable authenticity.
The ideas people create about gods have inspired lots of stories, and many of these stories hold incredible bits of wisdom. Unfortunately, sometimes people forget to look for the wisdom within the stories and believe that the stories are intended to represent surface-level reality. Stories become "histories" rather than legends, and histories are about recounting factual data. Stories about gods aren't about factual data; they're about the inner development of people -- about growth within a person and between people. When we recognize that God or god (or goddess) is a word we use for something deep within ourselves, then it becomes easier to look at stories about God or gods (or goddesses) as lessons about who we are rather than vessels of factual data. Stories about gods are stories about us; when we make them more than that, they become less useful.
We don't insist that other people have the same innermost being as us. We shouldn't insist that people have the same God as us. Neither is possible. Whatever God you believe in is something you have imagined. If you don't believe me, ask 10 of your adult friends to describe God (or better, to draw a picture of God) using their own words and not quoting any sacred text. How many of your friends describe God exactly as you do? This isn't a matter of blind men describing an elephant. People have different descriptions of God because people have different selves. This is a problem for some, because they expect their God to do something that isn't possible -- something that they are not capable of doing.
Our innermost beings are not capable of producing miracles in the world around us. Our innermost beings are not capable of changing other people. When we forget that God is a word we use for something deep within us -- an intrinsic part of ourselves -- we develop untenable expectations. God is a way for us to forgive ourselves for doing something that goes against our guiding principles. God is a way for us to guide ourselves toward better decisions, greater integrity, or more authentic love for others. God is a way for us to comfort ourselves in the face of loss. Having a word for that deep part of ourselves is useful. Until we make that word mean something more.
When I hear anyone talk about deity or fairies or ancestral spirits or anything of the like, I understand that they are telling me something about themselves. Sometimes translation is difficult when people become more academic in their communication, but I know that these are just ways that say things about themselves that they would otherwise find difficult to communicate. No one can ever tell me anything about God that I don't already know. No one can ever tell you anything about God that you don't already know. I can't worship anyone else's God, and neither can you. I can't know anyone else's God, and neither can you. God is a word we use for something deep inside of us, an intrinsic part of us. We can never know someone deeply enough to truly know their God, but we can appreciate that when people speak of God, they are speaking of themselves. They are speaking of a very deep part of themselves.
I may still avoid the use of the word. It's a messy word because so many people believe that it means something different than what it actually means. I may still strive to speak about what I want and what I feel in a way that is vulnerably authentic and leave God out of the conversation altogether. Should I start using the word "God," though, you'll at least have some idea what I mean. More importantly, I'll have a clear idea what I mean. It helps me listen to people sometimes, except when they insist that their imagination defines objective reality for other people. Maybe this will help you in some way, too. There are probably volumes that could flow from what I've articulated here, but the basic idea that all those volumes would flow from is still fairly simple: God is a word we use to talk about our innermost being.
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
2 Kings 17: Creating Our Reality
The kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, and the Israelites were removed from the land and resettled elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire. 2 Kings 17 suggests a political reason and a spiritual reason for the event. Politically, King Hoshea thought he could extract himself from his role as vassal to the Assyrian emperor if he pledged loyalty to a king of Egypt. There's no way of knowing why he thought that would be better. Ultimately, it didn't matter, because Shalmaneser found out about the betrayal and responded with military action. He removed the Israelites from their land and moved in exiles from other places within the empire. This separation of people from their attachment to geographic sites was intended to preserve peace and limit the potential for uprisings within the empire.
Shalmaneser's actions make considerable sense. People today often behave the same way, whether it is people in certain positions of political power or people in positions of economic power. From a certain angle, multinational corporations bear some striking similarities to the empires of the Ancient Near East. The logic of the emperor's attempt to preserve power and docile compliance within his domain is enough to explain the circumstances without adding any supernatural reasons into the mix.
The Bible being a document of a superstitious time and people, however, places more emphasis on why the Israelites themselves were to blame, namely because of their spiritual infidelity. It is striking to look back at the development of their theology, from a mythology around a deity who made repeated unconditional promises to Abram about the land his descendants would occupy, to a religious construct that included unfulfilled (albeit vague) blessings for good behavior and death penalty curses for bad behavior, to a social commentary about why bad things happen to a people who are supposedly chosen and beloved by an omnipotent deity. Anything bad that happens can thus be blamed on human behavior, which as it turns out is pretty close to the truth when it's put in such general terms. There may be some disagreement about exactly which bad behavior brought about the undesirable consequences, but at least there is a bit of honesty in recognizing that the results people experience in their lives are largely consequences of their own actions.
Yet, much of what happened to the people of Israel was not so much a consequence of their actions as it was a consequence of their leader's actions. Their king did something that caused the entire country to be overthrown and displaced. It doesn't seem fair that one person's poor decision making skills wind up costing so many people so much, but that's what happens in systems of government, whether they are democracies or monarchies. We cannot control a lot of things about our circumstances, but we can control who we are in the midst of those circumstances.
What can we draw from this spiritual justification of a nation's failure, then? How can we translate this idea that we face a decision between serving a benevolent and righteous supernatural or committing destructive acts of spiritual infidelity or idolatry? With a bit of translation, it actually makes for some very useful observations. The historians of Kings are partially right when they suggest that the people of Israel created their own reality of destruction and exile. That's a truth worth exploring.
Even for the authors of this biased history, it was obvious that the people who resettled the lands of the exiled Israelites were creating their own gods. It just wasn't as easy for them to look at their own god as a human invention. We create idols, too, and more often than not those idols originate from our fears, our insecurities, the lies we believe about ourselves, other people, and reality. We look outside of ourselves for a sense of purpose and well-being, idolizing money or titles or power or significance. We create destructive habits because we fail to recognize that so many of the things we think we value are actually valueless. We spend so much time seeking after some external means of alleviating our irrational fears that forget to examine our own selves, our own deep and abiding values, our own ideals and principles that got buried beneath piles of vows about what we must and must not do, assumptions about what is possible or impossible, and lies about how we are either not enough or better than.
If we want to encounter divinity, we might want to spend some honest moments looking within ourselves. Chances are, we already know what we want our lives to be about. We already know what we actually value. Those things are sometimes challenging; they might take a lot of work and we might have to dismantle a lot of fears and false beliefs to really engage them. But when we dig into real meaningful values that engage our sense of connection with people, that tap into our true capabilities and passions, that inspire us to envision a better life and a better world characterized by justice and compassion, we are tapping into something more powerful than any idols we can set up in our lives.
We cannot honestly improve our lives, the lives of other people, or the world around us by being preoccupied with judgments about ourselves or other people, fears about scarcity or insignificance, or lies about our own brokenness or weakness. Human beings may be well practiced at escalating anxiety and reactivity, but there are other options for how we connect with our deepest, most noble, visionary selves. We have the opportunity to bring forth something inspiring by the way we live and the choices we make. We can honor a deeper truth than where our fears and assumptions lead us. We are creative by nature, and thus we are creators by nature. We choose what we create.
Shalmaneser's actions make considerable sense. People today often behave the same way, whether it is people in certain positions of political power or people in positions of economic power. From a certain angle, multinational corporations bear some striking similarities to the empires of the Ancient Near East. The logic of the emperor's attempt to preserve power and docile compliance within his domain is enough to explain the circumstances without adding any supernatural reasons into the mix.
The Bible being a document of a superstitious time and people, however, places more emphasis on why the Israelites themselves were to blame, namely because of their spiritual infidelity. It is striking to look back at the development of their theology, from a mythology around a deity who made repeated unconditional promises to Abram about the land his descendants would occupy, to a religious construct that included unfulfilled (albeit vague) blessings for good behavior and death penalty curses for bad behavior, to a social commentary about why bad things happen to a people who are supposedly chosen and beloved by an omnipotent deity. Anything bad that happens can thus be blamed on human behavior, which as it turns out is pretty close to the truth when it's put in such general terms. There may be some disagreement about exactly which bad behavior brought about the undesirable consequences, but at least there is a bit of honesty in recognizing that the results people experience in their lives are largely consequences of their own actions.
Yet, much of what happened to the people of Israel was not so much a consequence of their actions as it was a consequence of their leader's actions. Their king did something that caused the entire country to be overthrown and displaced. It doesn't seem fair that one person's poor decision making skills wind up costing so many people so much, but that's what happens in systems of government, whether they are democracies or monarchies. We cannot control a lot of things about our circumstances, but we can control who we are in the midst of those circumstances.
What can we draw from this spiritual justification of a nation's failure, then? How can we translate this idea that we face a decision between serving a benevolent and righteous supernatural or committing destructive acts of spiritual infidelity or idolatry? With a bit of translation, it actually makes for some very useful observations. The historians of Kings are partially right when they suggest that the people of Israel created their own reality of destruction and exile. That's a truth worth exploring.
Even for the authors of this biased history, it was obvious that the people who resettled the lands of the exiled Israelites were creating their own gods. It just wasn't as easy for them to look at their own god as a human invention. We create idols, too, and more often than not those idols originate from our fears, our insecurities, the lies we believe about ourselves, other people, and reality. We look outside of ourselves for a sense of purpose and well-being, idolizing money or titles or power or significance. We create destructive habits because we fail to recognize that so many of the things we think we value are actually valueless. We spend so much time seeking after some external means of alleviating our irrational fears that forget to examine our own selves, our own deep and abiding values, our own ideals and principles that got buried beneath piles of vows about what we must and must not do, assumptions about what is possible or impossible, and lies about how we are either not enough or better than.
If we want to encounter divinity, we might want to spend some honest moments looking within ourselves. Chances are, we already know what we want our lives to be about. We already know what we actually value. Those things are sometimes challenging; they might take a lot of work and we might have to dismantle a lot of fears and false beliefs to really engage them. But when we dig into real meaningful values that engage our sense of connection with people, that tap into our true capabilities and passions, that inspire us to envision a better life and a better world characterized by justice and compassion, we are tapping into something more powerful than any idols we can set up in our lives.
We cannot honestly improve our lives, the lives of other people, or the world around us by being preoccupied with judgments about ourselves or other people, fears about scarcity or insignificance, or lies about our own brokenness or weakness. Human beings may be well practiced at escalating anxiety and reactivity, but there are other options for how we connect with our deepest, most noble, visionary selves. We have the opportunity to bring forth something inspiring by the way we live and the choices we make. We can honor a deeper truth than where our fears and assumptions lead us. We are creative by nature, and thus we are creators by nature. We choose what we create.
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Mark 9: Being Transfigured
The transfiguration narrative found in Mark 9:1-13 is quoted or adapted by the authors of Matthew and Luke, and it is referred to by the author of 2 Peter. While this seems to be impressive evidence for the event, we have already seen that the authors of Matthew and Luke used the Gospel of Mark as a source when composing their own Jesus narratives. Also, many biblical scholars believe that the Second Epistle of Peter was written several decades after Peter's death, making it a piece of pseudepigrapha (meaning that the actual author of the work attributed it to a famous person of the past for purposes of symbolism or, less ethically, legitimacy). Since the author of 2 Peter also refers to other New Testament texts as scripture, it is quite likely that the author had access to the Gospel of Mark and/or other gospels. So, what we have is essentially a story recorded by the author of Mark and repeated by other authors.
This idea of a person shining with divine light or being otherwise transfigured is also not unique to Christianity. In the Hebrew scriptures, Moses shone with divine radiance after his meetings with Yahweh (which would certainly be a conscious connection within the context of a first century Jewish sect), and there are clear parallels in Hinduism and Buddhism, not to mention numerous tales in Greek mythology of gods turning mortals into other things and, on occasion, elevating them to divine status. There is something about the connection between our mortal reality and the divine ideal that has found its way into the stories of many cultures, so perhaps we too can find something useful in this imagery.
Some believers are content to look at this account, conclude that Jesus was divine, and smirk or shake their head with a bit of superiority at Peter's misguided suggestion to build shelters on the mountain for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. We miss something, though, if we interpret from the story that "normal" people are somehow unworthy or incapable of tapping into what we call the divine. We all want someone to say of us, "This is my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased." Some people have such a hard time hearing that from anyone in their lives that they can only hope to hear it after they die and arrive into an eternal, sacred, supernatural existence. Sometimes, we spend our time around people who don't support and encourage us. Sometimes, we fail to listen to the voices of acceptance and encouragement that actually speak into our lives. Sometimes, we make it challenging for people to acknowledge us because we fear the vulnerability of self-disclosure. Sometimes, we decide that the acknowledgment we receive doesn't count because it doesn't come from the "right" people.
Approval from people we respect and trust is important. If we base our identity on approval from other people, though, we abdicate power that is actually our own responsibility to wield. When we are children, we are understandably emotionally immature; we rely on the adults around us to understand that we are acceptable or to understand what we need to do to become acceptable. When we grow into adults, though, some of those lessons need to change if we are to become more emotionally mature. As more emotionally mature people, our understanding of ourselves as acceptable or worthy is not based on what other people think of us; it is based on what we think of ourselves. We must be able to say to ourselves, "You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased," if we are to hear it effectively from other people in our lives.
This means a couple of things. If we don't see ourselves as acceptable, it's important for us to figure out why. Is there something we want to do differently in our lives? Something for which we need to take personal responsibility? Or have we bought into a lie -- a false belief about who we are that isn't actually based in reality? What do we think it means to be worthy or acceptable? What would it take for us to be well-pleased with ourselves? If we can address these questions honestly, then we can take some steps toward being who we want to be in the world. Other people can serve as valuable sources of feedback as we identify the many ways in which we are acceptable, as mirrors to point out positive things that we might miss about ourselves.
On the other hand, people can also be mirrors to show us how we miss some opportunities for growth, too. Once we reach a point of determining that we are acceptable, we sometimes get the impression that we have to stalwartly defend that position. We don't. We are acceptable not because we are flawless, but because all people are, at their core, acceptable. Our behavior may not always be acceptable, but that's different. Behavior is not identity. Once we understand that we are -- by virtue of our humanity -- acceptable and worthy, we can address the criticisms of other people with honesty and care. So, our willingness to pronounce ourselves as beloved paves the way for us to hear both acknowledgment and criticism in a meaningful way, because we are not allowing ourselves to be defined by what other people see, but we are allowing what other people see to speak into our own sense of identity.
The other thing that the voice from the cloud said was, "Listen." We must learn to listen to ourselves, not the self-critical thoughts or the predictions of doom and failure that often go on inside our heads, but our deepest, most noble selves -- the self that lives in a deeper part of us than our accumulated lies and fears about ourselves. The transfiguration story is about the communion of the earthly with the divine. For many Christians, Jesus represents that intersection. Even throughout the history of the Christian church, however, there have been theologians who have suggested that the divinity within Jesus (as he is represented in the gospels) is no different from the divinity within every person. The difference, as proposed by some of these thinkers, is that Jesus knew it and accepted it.
Whatever we believe about an authentic historical Jesus, the Jesus presented to us in this transfiguration story is a model of self-acceptance, a person who understood who he was at his core and embraced that identity. He was not surprised to hear a voice from the cloud call him beloved, because he knew this about himself already. We might imagine that it was still encouraging and moving for him to hear, but the impression we are given is that Jesus knew himself and didn't spend much time on lies or fears about himself, other people, and the world.
If we accept that we likewise have some inner quality of fearless truth, undeniable beauty, and inspiring creativity, we too can embrace that identity and bring our most noble selves forward in the world. We can pay a little less attention to the false beliefs and fears we have developed over time and pay a little more attention to our deep guiding principles, our values, our visions of what the world can be and who we can be in it. We can become different people from the versions of ourselves that are wrapped up in whether other people approve of us or not. We can engage in different behaviors than the versions of ourselves that place artificial limitations on who we can be and what we can accomplish. Although we may not glow or sparkle, we can be, in a word, transfigured.
This idea of a person shining with divine light or being otherwise transfigured is also not unique to Christianity. In the Hebrew scriptures, Moses shone with divine radiance after his meetings with Yahweh (which would certainly be a conscious connection within the context of a first century Jewish sect), and there are clear parallels in Hinduism and Buddhism, not to mention numerous tales in Greek mythology of gods turning mortals into other things and, on occasion, elevating them to divine status. There is something about the connection between our mortal reality and the divine ideal that has found its way into the stories of many cultures, so perhaps we too can find something useful in this imagery.
Some believers are content to look at this account, conclude that Jesus was divine, and smirk or shake their head with a bit of superiority at Peter's misguided suggestion to build shelters on the mountain for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. We miss something, though, if we interpret from the story that "normal" people are somehow unworthy or incapable of tapping into what we call the divine. We all want someone to say of us, "This is my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased." Some people have such a hard time hearing that from anyone in their lives that they can only hope to hear it after they die and arrive into an eternal, sacred, supernatural existence. Sometimes, we spend our time around people who don't support and encourage us. Sometimes, we fail to listen to the voices of acceptance and encouragement that actually speak into our lives. Sometimes, we make it challenging for people to acknowledge us because we fear the vulnerability of self-disclosure. Sometimes, we decide that the acknowledgment we receive doesn't count because it doesn't come from the "right" people.
Approval from people we respect and trust is important. If we base our identity on approval from other people, though, we abdicate power that is actually our own responsibility to wield. When we are children, we are understandably emotionally immature; we rely on the adults around us to understand that we are acceptable or to understand what we need to do to become acceptable. When we grow into adults, though, some of those lessons need to change if we are to become more emotionally mature. As more emotionally mature people, our understanding of ourselves as acceptable or worthy is not based on what other people think of us; it is based on what we think of ourselves. We must be able to say to ourselves, "You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased," if we are to hear it effectively from other people in our lives.
This means a couple of things. If we don't see ourselves as acceptable, it's important for us to figure out why. Is there something we want to do differently in our lives? Something for which we need to take personal responsibility? Or have we bought into a lie -- a false belief about who we are that isn't actually based in reality? What do we think it means to be worthy or acceptable? What would it take for us to be well-pleased with ourselves? If we can address these questions honestly, then we can take some steps toward being who we want to be in the world. Other people can serve as valuable sources of feedback as we identify the many ways in which we are acceptable, as mirrors to point out positive things that we might miss about ourselves.
On the other hand, people can also be mirrors to show us how we miss some opportunities for growth, too. Once we reach a point of determining that we are acceptable, we sometimes get the impression that we have to stalwartly defend that position. We don't. We are acceptable not because we are flawless, but because all people are, at their core, acceptable. Our behavior may not always be acceptable, but that's different. Behavior is not identity. Once we understand that we are -- by virtue of our humanity -- acceptable and worthy, we can address the criticisms of other people with honesty and care. So, our willingness to pronounce ourselves as beloved paves the way for us to hear both acknowledgment and criticism in a meaningful way, because we are not allowing ourselves to be defined by what other people see, but we are allowing what other people see to speak into our own sense of identity.
The other thing that the voice from the cloud said was, "Listen." We must learn to listen to ourselves, not the self-critical thoughts or the predictions of doom and failure that often go on inside our heads, but our deepest, most noble selves -- the self that lives in a deeper part of us than our accumulated lies and fears about ourselves. The transfiguration story is about the communion of the earthly with the divine. For many Christians, Jesus represents that intersection. Even throughout the history of the Christian church, however, there have been theologians who have suggested that the divinity within Jesus (as he is represented in the gospels) is no different from the divinity within every person. The difference, as proposed by some of these thinkers, is that Jesus knew it and accepted it.
Whatever we believe about an authentic historical Jesus, the Jesus presented to us in this transfiguration story is a model of self-acceptance, a person who understood who he was at his core and embraced that identity. He was not surprised to hear a voice from the cloud call him beloved, because he knew this about himself already. We might imagine that it was still encouraging and moving for him to hear, but the impression we are given is that Jesus knew himself and didn't spend much time on lies or fears about himself, other people, and the world.
If we accept that we likewise have some inner quality of fearless truth, undeniable beauty, and inspiring creativity, we too can embrace that identity and bring our most noble selves forward in the world. We can pay a little less attention to the false beliefs and fears we have developed over time and pay a little more attention to our deep guiding principles, our values, our visions of what the world can be and who we can be in it. We can become different people from the versions of ourselves that are wrapped up in whether other people approve of us or not. We can engage in different behaviors than the versions of ourselves that place artificial limitations on who we can be and what we can accomplish. Although we may not glow or sparkle, we can be, in a word, transfigured.
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