John 12: Walking in the Light

The remainder of John 12 is a bit scattered. Jesus says some things to the gathered crowd, then runs away, and finally shouts some parting words. It's unclear in the text whether he cries out as he's slipping away from the crowd or calling out from a hiding spot. Actually, this passage is probably just a piece of the tradition that settled into this spot in the narrative because it seems to continue the theme of light and darkness.

We've already addressed the matter of looking at "prophetic" scriptures and telling a story that seems to be a fulfillment of those words. The book of Isaiah was not written about Jesus. We've actually looked at the first third of Isaiah, and we'll return to the later additions to the book, but none of it is about Jesus. When other people don't see things the way we do, it's easy to write the other people off and say, "God must be blinding their eyes and hardening their hearts." After all, if other people knew what we know, they would see things as we see them, right?

Wrong. People have their own complex reasons for believing and thinking what they do, and we are not usually in a position to sort through another person's psyche to judge their perspective. Writing people off doesn't explain their position -- it just prevents us from having to examine our own perspective. When we believe that God sees things as we do, and that God has blinded others and hardened their hearts against the truth, we have no reason to consider that our own perspective may be off-kilter. Better to spend our time and energy expanding and focusing our own beliefs and ideas instead of judging other people as blind and stupid.

This passage also begins with a confusing event. Jesus is speaking, and then there is a sound. Some people heard the sounds and concluded that it was thunder. Jesus apparently acted as if there was something intelligible in the thunder, so some people hypothesized that he was hearing angels -- that he was hearing something no one else could hear. The explanation, however, is that the voice was not for Jesus' benefit, but for the benefit of the people... who heard only thunder. Should the reader assume that God also deafened the people against his voice, even though it was for their benefit that the words were uttered? Probably best to leave this aside and chalk it up to the mythology of the ancient community in which the authors of John lived.

Of the portions of this passage that can be useful for us in our lives, we can trace a couple of ideas. The authors have Jesus say that if he is lifted up, he will attract everyone, and the authors interpret that as a foreshadowing of the passion story. What if that phrase means something different? What if it means that his way of being would be appealing to all people if they only saw it clearly? This is followed by the theme of walking in the light, and then there is mention of the fear that prevents the Pharisees from being honest about their agreement with Jesus' teachings. The concluding paragraph gently asserts that Jesus has authority and should be listened to, returning to the metaphor of light.

The authors generally present Jesus as fearlessly loving toward other people. He doesn't worry very much about what other people think (although he is sensible enough to run away when people seem to turn violent). He acts out of his own deep values. He is authentic in his expression of himself. And in being his authentic self, he expresses love and care for the people around him. His deepest, most noble self doesn't lead him toward tyranny or abuse, but toward kindness, compassion, and cooperation. He wants other people to have the same freedom to express their own deep values authentically, because he trusts that human beings share certain guiding principles in common. Once the fear and false beliefs are out of the way, he seems to think that people are, at their core, loving and peaceful beings. If people cast aside their fear and live into a best possible version of themselves, then the world can be a better place.

One of the problems, though, is that people can't imagine what that would look like. People need to see that kind of authenticity modeled in order to even believe that it's possible to be directed by one's own internal guidance system of deep values. Thus, the statement that if Jesus' way of being authentic is lifted up, people will find it attractive -- people will believe that it is at least possible to live in a way that authentically reflects their deepest, most noble selves.

There is still a lot of fear to wade through, though. As is the case with the Pharisees, there are a lot of social controls that work to keep people behaving according to societal expectations. Should we suddenly start living by our own deep values and guiding principles, other people will talk. We might be ostracized or abandoned by some people. The authors of John judge the Pharisees and say that they were more interested in glory from people than the glory that comes from their own deepest, most noble selves. Our relationships with other people are important, though. Being part of a group makes us safer, and human connection is vital to our existence. It's a legitimate fear that if we start living differently, we will put some of our social safety in jeopardy.

Social constraints are like blindfolds. We can be led around by other people's ideas of propriety, but we can't know where we are being led. When we allow the habits of people around us, the marketing that constantly bombards us, and other external directives to determine our behavior, we are essentially walking around in the dark. When we recognize our own deep values and live with integrity to those guiding principles, we are able to walk around in the light -- to have a clearer trajectory for our lives. This is a big challenge, especially when we look around us and find that many of the people closest to us are content to live in the dark. It doesn't seem safe to start walking in the light when everyone around you is happy with the dark.

We can judge those other people, of course. We can call them lazy, shallow, or spineless. We can say that they can't think for themselves or that they let themselves be led around by the nose. We can believe that they are stupid, irresponsible, complacent, or apathetic. Really, though, what reason does anyone around us have to live with integrity to a clear set of guiding principles? What example do they have that living intentionally into a best possible version of oneself is even possible?

Whatever the example of Jesus might have been, that story has been contorted to be about human weakness rather than human potential. The Jesus figures of current Christianities are rarely expressed as exemplars and are much more frequently portrayed as unique divine individuals with superhuman capability. Even historical or living people who do extraordinary things are more often seen as extraordinary people, while we are all normal, ordinary -- incapable of anything more than shuffling through a mediocre life. How can we expect anyone to walk in the light when there is no real model of what that looks like?

This is one reason that living intentionally is so damn scary. We see so few people even trying to do it. It seems far-fetched. Outlandish. Unrealistic. Yet, there are people living intentionally into a best possible version of themselves. We may have to look for them, but there are models we can look to. It's scary to risk being thrown out of the synagogue, but sometimes we have to get ostracized from our familiar exemplars so that we can see another possibility. Our confidence in our own guiding principles is won by pressing through the uncertainty of doing something so few other people are doing, realizing that it isn't that we are extraordinary people, we are just doing something extraordinary. Just about anyone can walk in the light. Just about anyone can live into a best possible version of themselves. It's work, but just about anyone can do it. Few choose to do so.

Paraphrasing the summary of Jesus' teaching at the end of this chapter of John:

If you follow my example of living intentionally and fearlessly by a clear set of deep values, you aren't just trusting me -- you're trusting yourself. You're trusting your own deepest, most noble self to guide you well. If you watch me, you'll see my deepest, most noble self. There isn't a barrier between the way I behave and the deep principles I hold. I'm living this way because it's an authentic expression of who I am, and I'm living this way visibly and publicly so that you can discover how to live authentically in your own life. If you choose to keep living by your old habits, that's fine. It isn't my job to judge you or criticize the choices you make. Something deep inside you knows if you aren't living with integrity, and you're going to put yourself through enough torment without me adding to it. I trust that living intentionally in alignment with the values I hold most deeply means that my life is full and rich and satisfying. I know that's possible for you too. I hope that when you look at what I'm doing, you see possibilities for your own abundant life.

There is no reason this cannot be the message we carry to the world around us. Yes, it is safer to stay within the confines of our familiar social constraints. Yes, it is scary to start doing something different from the people around us. If we care about those people, though -- if we want their lives to be full and rich and satisfying -- one of the greatest gifts we can give is to let them see us living into those possibilities. We live intentionally for ourselves. We get the benefit of living into a best possible version of ourselves. We also influence others, though. And our authentic lives aligned with our guiding principles are going to have a positive influence on the people around us. It is never just about us.

John 9: Being Willing to Have Our Perspectives Challenged

As we observed in last week's interlude, the miracle story in John 9 assumes that there are clear lines that one can draw between people. It is as if people reside in well-defined boxes, and we only want to show approval for people who live in the same box we do. However, there are no "good people" or "bad people." Rather, there are actions which contribute to greater well-being and there are actions that do harm. The same person might engage in "good" and "bad" actions. In fact, we all do.

Perhaps that's the first flaw of the Pharisee perspective. They ask how a "sinner" can offer healing. They operate under an illusion of the world as clearly divided between worthy and unworthy, clean and unclean, loved and unlovable. These are labels that people apply to other people, but they are not reflections of reality. If the same individual can contribute to harm or to well-being, then there is always possibility in human decisions. This offers one reason to recognize that every person has worth and dignity. Every person is worthy of love and respect, even though every action isn't.

Some people will read this story and walk away with the impression that it's about Jesus healing people and the Pharisees judging people. It runs the risk of becoming a "Jesus and Christianity vs the Pharisees and Judaism" debate. This is unfortunate, even though it's probably one of the goals of the authors to lift up Christianity as superior to Judaism. The reality is that physical inconveniences exist even among believers. Belief in Jesus doesn't cure blindness, deafness, epilepsy, cancer, or any other actual physical condition. We get more from this story if we set aside the miraculous backdrop and look at the actual truths involved. When we recall that Jesus can be seen as an exemplar for human beings to emulate rather than a unique superhuman, we stand to get more from the story.

The authors of John portray Jesus as a bit of a provocateur. The character does things that he knows will agitate the Pharisees, but he does some of these things purposefully. John's version of Jesus is willing to publicly acknowledge the flaws in the religious/social system, and he is willing to care for those who are written off by their society. He can't care for every one of them, of course, but he contributes to the well-being of enough people to make a point.

Something is broken about the easy categorization of people into dichotomies. People are not static entities, and we are not made worthless by a bad decision or a bad day. We don't separate easily into neat boxes. The Pharisees can't wrap their minds around someone who doesn't meet their approval performing an action that ought to meet their approval. In the story, they keep questioning the recovered man to find the loophole that will allow them to maintain a worldview that is comfortable and familiar. Instead, they are told that, since they claim to understand things, they are culpable for the harm they do.

Thus, the story says something about ignorance as well. The same harmful action might be more easily forgiven if someone is ignorant about what they're doing than if someone does harm with full knowledge and awareness. We feel no guilt when we don't know we've done something harmful. It's only when we have awareness of the harmful results of our actions that our guilt kicks in to prompt us to set things right, insofar as that's possible. The Pharisees claimed to be knowledgeable and aware, so they must also be accountable for their actions. As they perpetuated and upheld a flawed system that benefited them and harmed others, their own responsibility was magnified.

Of course, some people claim to be knowledgeable and wise when they aren't. The call to accountability might have been intended to allow people a chance to step back and evaluate their awareness. Perhaps our knowledge or wisdom is not as thorough as we believe. Perhaps our easy answers fail to take some portion of reality into consideration. The instructive piece of the story might be found in the differences between the behavior of the Pharisees and the other characters (a trope that is becoming familiar in John).

The characters of Jesus and the blind man and his family were calm, reasonable, celebratory, self-aware. While others may have asked whether the blind man was suffering because of his own sin or his parents', he wasn't perpetuating any such ideas as far as the story tells us. All we know about him was that he was simply unable to see. The Pharisees and their religious worldview tried to concoct an explanation for the blindness that would make sense to them, and in so doing, they gave themselves a reason to look down on the man. They were able to judge people who were (in the Pharisees' opinion) flawed without having to acknowledge their own flaws. That's a pretty comfortable position.

Most likely, the Pharisees said and did what they did because they were afraid. That's what "sin" is after all -- fear put into action. People in positions of power have plenty to be afraid of. They were afraid of acknowledging their own weaknesses or flaws. They were potentially afraid of change, since their system kept them comfortable. They might have been afraid of being wrong. Their way of being wouldn't make sense anymore if they couldn't trust their assumptions about reality. They may even have been afraid of being just like everyone else. Fear prompted them to keep poking at a person who had been made well, rather than celebrating his well-being.

You can probably reason what the implications of this story are for our lives. When our fear drives our behavior, our perspective becomes skewed. We can start looking for ways to protect our worldview rather than looking at the world more honestly. When we choose to live into our principles and values rather than our fear, we can be more tuned in to what we can do to contribute to the well-being of others. We can also be purposeful in our approach to injustice and prejudice, and we can recognize our own flaws and weaknesses without being ashamed of them. This last one may seem a bit odd, but when we can embrace our own humanity, we are less inclined to judge others harshly because of their humanity. When we recognize that there is more that we all share in common than there is that makes us all different and unique, we can partner more easily with one another. At the same time, when we are conscious of our own weaknesses, we can engage intentionally with people who have complementary strengths -- we can learn something from other people.

We do better for ourselves and for the world around us when we don't try to figure out whether a person is worthy or unworthy, good or bad, wise or foolish -- and instead start from the awareness that everyone has worth and everyone has the potential to contribute to a better world. This isn't as easy as pointing at people and making snap judgments based on a little bit of information, but it creates a better foundation for our lives. When we feel prompted to call out someone's beliefs or behavior, maybe we can find ways to do so calmly and without malice. We create better lives and a better world when we are honest about our strengths and weaknesses and we seek out the strengths of others before we start judging their weaknesses. It might even serve us well to keep in mind that what we think of as weaknesses, other people might think of as strengths. The bottom line is that we all still have something to learn, and if our worldview tells us something different, we need to examine that worldview very carefully.

 A Little Experiment: Be curious. When you see someone doing something well, or even doing something differently than you would do it, be curious. Observe what they do. If appropriate, ask them about their process. Don't offer advice or judge, just learn how they do what they do well.

Another Little Experiment: Catch yourself. It's easy to use short, dismissive labels for other people, especially when we want to write them off or explain away actions we don't like. This week, when you catch yourself using a dismissive label for someone, especially when you're feeling judgmental or angry, stop. Often we use the word "just" along with these labels, as in, "She's just clueless," or, "That's just what you can expect from overweight people." Stop yourself when you reduce people to a stereotype or a one-word label and consider what you might not know about them.

One More Little Experiment: You too. Sometimes we use one-word labels to self-criticize and judge ourselves too. We may not know enough about other people to honestly understand their behavior, but we can know ourselves. Be honest about who you are. Don't go overboard in either a positive or a negative self-description, but acknowledge the truth about yourself. Rather than self-critical language -- like, "I'm just stupid," or "I'm worthless" -- be honest. Maybe you didn't have all the information you would have liked when you made a decision. Say that instead of deciding that you're stupid or foolish. Just tell the truth. Try it for a week or two and see what happens.

John 8:12-30 Being Light

After the story of the woman caught in adultery, the gospel of John narrative continues in chapter 8 with more arguments between Jesus and the Jews. The Pharisees and Jews in these sorts of passages in John almost serve as a sort of literary device. Their words offer nothing new, but they break up Jesus' words and prompt what he says next. Their interjections perhaps help with the flow of the passage, but the actual meat here is what the authors attribute to Jesus.

Recall that our basic framework for John is that the Jesus character is an example of the kind of people we can be. So, the words attributed to Jesus in John 8 are intriguing. He claims to be light for the world, to have valid testimony because he knows who he is, to be non-judgmental, and to live by a different standard that the world's standards. He also makes claims about the Father. Let's take that concept first, because the others will flow more easily from clarifying what that may mean.

Sure, when the gospel of John was written, it was in a Jewish context, which assumes the existence of an almighty supernatural. Lots of people still believe in such a god, but there are certainly other valid lenses through which one might look at the world and oneself. I would suggest that when people refer to "God," they are referring to a deep part of themselves. This may be one reason God always seems to agree with the perspective of whoever is speaking. Many people have written convincing enough arguments against the existence of God, but the idea may still be a useful metaphor for some individuals, especially those who haven't done much work to connect with a deeper part of themselves. From a Humanist perspective, we don't need to toss out the concept completely. We can interpret "Father" here as shorthand for a deepest, most noble self -- a part of ourselves that is a source for our values and guiding principles, a source for our vision of a best possible version of ourselves. 

I say a "deeper" part of ourselves not in terms of a physical location, but in terms of psyche I suppose. Most of the time, we operate out of very surface level reactions to the world around us. We don't always give a lot of thought to how our moment to moment decisions align with our guiding principles. Many of our moment to moment decisions may not even seem to have anything to do with our values or with being a best possible version of ourselves. It takes effort to think through our guiding principles and consider how best to apply them in a particular situation. Most of our thinking is pretty lazy. So, I use "deeper" part of ourselves to indicate a more intentionally thought through identity than our lazy, automatic kinds of decisions.

The Jesus character in John 8 says that he is in agreement with the Father, which we can interpret to mean that his identity is well aligned with his deepest, most noble self. He is claiming that he lives into a best possible version of himself -- that his actions and decisions are impeccably congruent with his guiding principles. This is why we might look to the narrative as a framework for how we can be as human beings. The idealized character of Jesus reflects our potential to live with the same level of integrity, the same degree of alignment to our guiding principles. 

Should we take on that potential and live more intentionally, the claims attributed to Jesus here are a part of the outcome of having greater alignment to our own values. We become light for the world, shining an example of a different way of living than people who are stuck on autopilot and never even consider a best possible version of themselves. Our testimony is consistently valid, because we learn to express what is so for us without demanding that other people agree with us. We know better where we come from and where we are going. In other words, we have an awareness of our own habits and tendencies, and we have a clear vision of who we want to be in the world. 

Perhaps most importantly, we don't need to judge anyone, because our identities are valid in and of themselves. Most of the time, judgment of other people is a reflection that we don't agree with them. They are doing things we don't approve of, and our judgment is a way of lifting up the merits of our own perspective by tearing down someone else's perspective. This is irrelevant when we live with integrity to our own guiding principles. Other people doing things differently than we would is not a threat to the value of our own vision of a best possible version of ourselves. 

Should we choose to judge someone, though, that judgment would look different. The foundation is that we live with congruence to our deepest values and we refuse to be threatened by other people's ideas and behaviors just because they're different from our own. From that space, we might still look at other people's life and recognize that they are acting on autopilot, that they are caught up in the throes of anxiety, or that they don't have a clear sense of their own guiding principles. In a way, this is a judgment against them. Some might call it awareness or even discernment. Maybe it's really just observation. 

When we use this judgment to be of service to others, it looks different from using judgment to bolster our own identities at the expense of someone else's. We might actually help people clarify their values. We could gently knock people out of autopilot mode. We can even help other people to develop a vision of a best possible version of themselves. From one perspective, we'd be using the same processes that we use to judge other people, but now we would approach that process with a clear sense of our own identity, and perhaps with a heavier dose of love and empathy thrown into the mix.

Here we go, then, with a possible interpretation of John 8:12-30.

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “The way I live shines as an obvious example to everybody. Whoever follows my example will never have to worry about fear or confusion, but will have the ability to live with clarity and integrity.” Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.” Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I am telling you what is so for me. I know my habits and tendencies, and I have a compelling vision for my life, but you do not know my history or my future. You barely have a sense of your own habits or a vision for yourself. You judge other people in order to validate yourself; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for I don't need to judge others to build myself up. I operate from a guiding principle of love that stems from my deepest, most noble self.

Then they said to him, “Where is this deepest self?” Jesus answered, “You haven't really seen my actions or heard my words clearly because you look through a lens of fear. If you let down your guard and take an honest look at my life, you would know my deepest, most noble self.” He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.

Again he said to them, “I'm not always going to be here, and you will search for me, but your fear will persist for the rest of your lives. You can't take the journey I'm taking.” Then the Jews said, “Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, ‘You can't take the journey I'm taking’?” He said to them, “You are operating out of habit and anxiety, I am operating out of my guiding principles and a vision of a best possible version of myself. I told you that your fear will persist for the rest of your lives, for you will live the rest of your days with the same fearfulness unless you take responsibility for doing something differently in your life.” 

They said to him, “Who are you to tell us what to do with our lives?” Jesus said to them, “Just talking to you is frustrating! I see your anxiety and your ingrained patterns clearly, and I hate that you keep choosing to live by those things; but my deepest, most noble self is not a source of hatred. I can only tell you what I know for myself, that living from a space of love and integrity is possible. I can't live your life for you, I can only tell you that you have the potential to do something different in your own life." They did not understand that he was speaking to them about clarifying their own guiding principles. So Jesus said, “When you take a step back from your anxiety and imagine an ideal way of being, then you'll realize that I'm living out that ideal, and that I'm not trying to build myself up, but I'm communicating what makes sense to me about living intentionally with integrity to my own values. And my values and guiding principles don't leave me doubting what I've done or said. I have confidence in who I am, and you could too.” As he was saying these things, many began to follow his example.

A Little Experiment: Be nonjudgmental. You don't need to judge anybody in order to validate or bolster your own identity or perspective. Catch yourself in the act of judgment this week and stop yourself. Maybe you want to prepare a phrase like, "We see things differently, and that's alright."

Another Little Experiment: Judge. When you catch yourself being judgmental, consider what the other person may be experiencing. Are they afraid of something? Do they perhaps feel unheard or un-valued? Is there a way you can be compassionate or loving to someone who sees the world through different lenses than you? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isaiah 9-10: Vessels of Justice

Isaiah's words to Ahaz, king of Judah, as he was preparing to be overwhelmed by foreign armies were words of encouragement. He said that the enemies that seemed so fearsome at the time would be no threat at all by the time Hezekiah -- the son of Ahaz who was about to be born -- was eating solid food. Ahaz didn't listen to Isaiah, not completely at least. He gave in to his fear and voluntarily became a vassal of Assyria. Isaiah criticized that fear and stopped advising Ahaz; he saw hope in the future king.

In Isaiah 9, the prophet (or someone writing in his name) waxes poetic about how great Hezekiah is going to be. He will be a king who is pious and wise; a king who will rule a land that is no longer oppressed by foreign powers; a king who leads with justice and righteousness. Then, the chapter becomes a rebuke of Judah's previous sister kingdom, Israel. The prophet accuses Israel (or its rulers and prophets at least) of pride and wickedness. He sees the destruction of the kingdom as the consequence of the utter depravity of the people, who wrote oppressive laws that benefited the wealthy and trampled the poor. The people of Assyria will also be punished for the pride of their king. Isaiah says that the king was intended as a tool for Yahweh, but thought himself more important than the god who wielded him. Yet, there will be some from Israel who are spared. Isaiah sees these as the ones who turned sincerely to Yahweh in their time of desperation.

We've discussed many times that decisions have consequences. Whether someone is ruler of a nation or barely ruler of a household, human decisions have consequences. This explains a fair bit of suffering (and "evil") in the world, and it certainly explains a considerable amount of what the people of Israel and Judah experienced at the hands of the empires around them. Some suffering is not the consequence of human decisions, though. Earthquakes, storms, disease, and the like cause a great deal of suffering, but their cause is natural. Maybe human behavior causes suffering in deciding to live in a place frequented by hurricanes, but every locale has its natural threats. In any case, natural causes of suffering don't occur because of human behavior. 

People like explanations, though. Belief in some higher power that orchestrates reality suggests for some people that all the suffering that people experience is ordained, whether that suffering comes from natural events or from human decisions. God is behind the earthquakes and typhoons, and God is the commander of invading armies. This is the perspective of the Hebrew scriptures, but it's not a viable way to live. It would be one thing if every person who lived as a devout believer survived unharmed when missiles or tornadoes struck, but they don't. Plenty of devout people suffer right alongside "wicked" people. The prophets' idea that the righteous are spared while the wicked suffer is based on a flawed perception of reality.

We like to be able to point fingers at something, though. When Israelites got raped, enslaved, or killed by the Assyrians, it was easy for the people of Judah to point and say, "Those Israelites must have been wicked to the core, every last one of them. That's why God made this happen to them." Certainly, that sort of belief might encourage some people to straighten up and fly right, for awhile at least. It's not reality, though. The reason people suffered was, in part, because their leaders made some bad decisions. Their suffering wasn't even necessarily the consequence of decisions those individuals made, but it was the consequence of human decision. Instead of pointing fingers and deciding that people who suffer must deserve it for some reason, the people of Judah could have had some compassion.

Isaiah does have some compassion when he writes that the people are going to suffer because of their oppressive decrees; he understands that poor people don't inherently deserve to be poor. If society was doing its job, he suggests, there would be an end to oppression; there would be light where they had been darkness. This isn't what a supernatural is supposed to do. A supernatural didn't invent their unjust laws; people did. So a supernatural isn't responsible for creating justice and equity; people are. When we understand suffering as either a natural occurrence or the consequence of human decisions, we can begin to take responsibility for the kind of world we live in. As long as we claim that a supernatural is in control, we may create the illusion that we can estimate the worthiness of people by the degree of suffering they experience, and we may fail to recognize how often our experience is the direct result of our own decisions and actions.

If people are responsible for creating what many people call Isaiah's "peaceable kingdom" (in the next chapter), then we have a guide for our day-to-day behavior. If people are capable of behaving with justice, equity, and compassion as priorities, we have the power -- and the responsibility -- to build a better world. We can vote with issues of justice, equity, and compassion in mind rather than a fear of losing power or a sense of entitlement. We can use our personal resources in a way that reflects our commitment to justice, equity, and compassion rather than fear of scarcity or an implied commitment only to our own comfort. We can speak out (in love) when we have the opportunity to address issues of justice, equity, and compassion, rather than staying silent out of fear of reprisals or a sense that someone else's suffering is none of our business. The idea that something is "none of our business" often means only that we think it inconvenient.

Isaiah put his hope in Hezekiah's rule and in the faithfulness of his god. We know now that one person cannot create a better world; we can all have a role in building a better world. We can bring the light of justice, equity, and compassion into dark places. We don't have to be messiahs or kings or any more than ourselves. There will be more to say about the peaceable kingdom and about how we connect with the "divinity" within us -- our deepest, most noble selves. For now, it is enough to read the words of Isaiah and recognize our capability -- our responsibility -- to be vessels of justice, equity, and compassion, to contribute to a better world by our intentional acts of integrity, and to engage with others in a spirit of hope and celebration.

Mark 7:24-37: When Prejudice Gets in the Way of Values

People often concoct a pleasingly dishonest image of those they admire. We often have a hard time thinking of our heroes or idols as flawed. So, when Jesus comes off as a bit of a bigot in Mark 7:24-30, it may be tempting to explain it away, but defending Jesus here might miss a bigger spiritual truth.

Here is the story, in a nutshell: The character of Jesus wants to have some time to himself, and instead he is accosted by a foreign woman -- a non-Jew who has heard of him. This woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter; the woman believes she is possessed by an evil spirit. Jesus dismisses her, calling her a dog, compared to the more valuable children of Israel. Then the woman does something rather impressive; she stands up to Jesus and challenges his prejudice. Jesus acquiesces, heals her daughter, and sends the woman home.

People wishing to protect an impression of Jesus as a sacred or holy figure have interpreted this exchange in a variety of ways. Maybe Jesus was just testing the woman, thus people must be persistent in begging God for what they want. It is as if to say that you have to want something badly enough to be nuisance in order for God to pay attention to you. There is actually another parable that supports this idea. The version of this story that is told in the gospel of Matthew, however paints Jesus in an even worse light. He ignores the woman at first, and then makes the interpretation of his metaphor about throwing children's food to dogs very clear. She doesn't deserve his help because she's not Jewish.

Recognizing that this exchange may never have happened, or that it may have transpired differently than gospel authors preserved it, the best means of extracting something useful from the story is to take it at face value. There is no way for any person to even confirm the existence of the Jesus depicted in the gospel narratives, so it would be rather presumptuous to assume to know the thoughts of a person from another culture and another time. While it may say something embarrassing about human nature, it is better to be honest than to protect a character who doesn't need protecting.

Try as we might, we are not color-blind or culture-blind. We make judgments about people, whether we want to or not. We assume things based on appearances, and we often act based on our assumptions. We have to. There is no way that we could ever have all of the information necessary to make a completely informed decision, much less know everything about another human being's character, beliefs, tendencies, desires, weaknesses, and strengths. We have to operate on assumptions to a certain extent. Being aware that we are making assumptions, however, can be helpful.

Like the character of Jesus in this story with the Phoenician woman, we are prone to taking one look at people and deciding whether we want to have anything to do with them. To be blunt, we often assess in a split second whether or not another person has any value to us. A lot of folks, we may write off as dogs not worthy of any meaningful attention. Some of us may write off people who are from different cultures, who look different from us, who have different income brackets or different lifestyles -- we may write people off for things we invent about them with no concrete information.

Sometimes people will challenge us, like the Phoenician woman challenged Jesus in the story. They may challenge us directly, or we may be challenged by something a person says or does that flies in the face of our assumptions. When that happens, we have an opportunity to rethink, to tap into our actual values and guiding principles, and to shift our behavior into alignment if necessary.

Sometimes, though, we have to challenge ourselves. People may not have the opportunity to challenge our assumptions, and even when we do give people that opportunity, we often make it difficult for them. Once we have made up our minds, we like to stay rooted. So, if we want to be really sharp about this, we have to learn to challenge ourselves. When we notice our assumptions and judgments and prejudices getting in the way of who we actually want to be in the world -- drowning out our actual values and deep guiding principles -- we have the option of changing. We can choose to allow deeper truths to inform our actions rather than allowing our assumptions, prejudices, and fears to hog to driver's seat.

We will sometimes be wrong. Sometimes, people will live up to our worst assumptions about them, even when we are trying to let go of those assumptions. The question is whether we want to be the kind of people who assume the worst about people or whether we believe in something more important than that. If we believe that all people have value, for instance, we have a choice about whether we look for that value in people or whether we look for reasons to dismiss them as mangy mutts that don't deserve our attention. We can actually have a greater positive impact in other people's lives and on the world we share when we choose to truly see people as human beings with undeniable worth and dignity -- and when we do that, we also become better embodiments of our own dignity and worth.

Jonah: A Challenge to Recognize that Everyone Is Worthy of Mercy

Although there is more to learn from the books of Kings and Chronicles, the book of Jonah is as well considered here as anywhere else, since it is set during the reign of Jeroboam II, in the 8th century BCE. This fictional book was probably written much later, in the 5th or 4th century BCE, given the subject matter of this short tale, which in part asserts that God cares about Gentiles too.

The summary of this familiar tale is as follows: Yahweh asks Jonah to go proclaim judgment on the Assyrian capital, Ninevah. Jonah runs away and gets on a boat headed as far away from Ninevah as possible. The boat gets caught in a bad storm (because Yahweh is angry at Jonah), and the unwilling prophet gets thrown overboard and swallowed by an immense sea creature. After Jonah’s prayer (which may have been inserted into the story later), Yahweh tells the beast to vomit Jonah up on a beach, and it does. Then Yahweh sends Jonah to Ninevah again, and this time Jonah goes. He preaches hellfire and brimstone to the people of Ninevah so effectively that they become a repentant population. This really pisses Jonah off, because he was at least hoping to see the city get destroyed and all the evil-doers punished. Yahweh has mercy on Ninevah, and Jonah goes outside the city to sulk. Yahweh then teaches Jonah a little lesson about how the prophet’s selfish anger contrasts with the merciful and active Yahweh.

Jonah is one of those biblical stories that doesn’t need a whole lot of interpretation. If we translate the text into a new way of defining divinity, we might say that Jonah was a man who was compelled by a deep desire to create a better world, but that he allowed fear of how he would be received by others guide him 180 degrees from where he most wanted to be. Even when he stopped running, he interpreted his vision of a better world as requiring that some people (and even some animals) be destroyed—another layer of irrational fear that still kept him from seeing clearly. When other people responded with receptivity toward Jonah’s vision, he became angry because he had prepared for a fight.

He wanted people who were different from him to suffer—to be annihilated—and his narcissistic attitude wasn’t eager to find creative ways to coexist with others, even when they were willing to adapt a new way of being because of his message. Jonah had a narrow way of viewing the world. One might say he had limiting mental models. He wanted justice for other people, but he was quite happy with claiming grace for himself. He let his fear and anger control him rather than digging into those emotions to discover something he could work on within himself. But in the end, the story affirms that everyone is worthy of mercy. Everyone is worthy of grace.

We can probably find a lot of points of comparison with Jonah. Perhaps when someone goes speeding past us recklessly on the road, we hope they get into an accident, or at least that a cop is waiting around the next curve for them. When people behave differently than we want them to, we make them our enemies in our minds. We are often eager to speak judgmental words against things we don’t like, but we rarely take the time to speak inspiring words about the lives we most want to create. We are tempted to rejoice when people we don’t like suffer, and we are loathe to celebrate with people we don’t like, even when it wouldn’t cost us a thing to do so. We draw lines of Us and Them, just like Jonah did with the people of Ninevah.

However, Jonah did a few admirable things, too. He took the blame when the ship was having trouble, and even though we know that doing something bad won’t bring foul weather your way, in the context of the story Jonah was clearly at fault. Jonah also overcame his initial fear of how he would be received by people in Ninevah. He didn’t keep digging beyond that, but it took courage for him to make the first step out of his comfort zone. We also don’t know if Jonah learned anything in the end. It might be that he realized how unsatisfying his selfish perspective was, and he might have started to look with fresh eyes at people who were different from him.

Even though we don’t know how Jonah’s story truly ends, though, we have the great opportunity and responsibility of determining whether we will learn something from his story. If we are willing to dig into our fears and our anger and get to the root of what holds us back in life, we may find that our way of seeing the world is not very helpful to us. If we are willing to recognize how people are similar to us—that there really is no Them except in our own minds—we may find that our inherent creativity is as useful for building connections as it is for destroying them. If we are willing to articulate the kind of world we want, and if we are willing to ask ourselves the difficult questions that dig into why we want what we want, we might discover for ourselves a compelling vision that we just cannot run away from. It requires a level of honesty and insight that Jonah wasn’t prepared for, but there’s no reason for us to be ruled by our irrational fears and our anger. Underneath all of our judgments and fears about other people, we know that human beings have a lot more in common with each other than they have differences. Sometimes the differences seem huge, but often that is just because our minds make the differences more important than they actually are.

So, what’s really important?

No…

            what’s really important?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dismantling Fear of Same-Sex Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark 3:13-35: True Family and Recognizing Fearful Fruits

The remainder of Mark 3 has three distinct pieces: a list of The Twelve (the group of men who were supposedly authorized to run the sect in Jesus' absence), a discourse about sources of power, and a teaching about true family. The list of The Twelve is most likely an important credentialing of early church leaders, even though the authors of Matthew and Luke do not agree with the author of Mark or with one another as to who should be included in this list. We discussed discipleship a few weeks back, and while some may find spiritual lessons in these lists of names, there is much more attractive meat on the table in the verses that follow the list.

In the midst of his exorcisms and healing miracles, Jesus is accused of being in league with the prince of demons. In some circles, this is still an effective way to attack a person who challenges religious power structures. The response of Jesus as recorded in Mark (and copied by the authors of Matthew and Luke) is that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. In other words, if a person is doing good work in the world, how can he do this through an evil source? (Although Hollywood directors have been able to conceive of situations in which it would be advantageous for a powerful demon to drive off a less powerful demon, there was apparently no argument to the gospel writer's logic.) This leads into an illustration about robbing a strong man in all three synoptic gospels, and in the gospels of Matthew and Mark there is a warning about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, essentially saying that it is unforgivable to assert that work done by God is actually empowered by Satan. Mark moves on from there, but the authors of Matthew and Luke tacks on a little something extra. In Luke, this amounts to Jesus stating, "You're either for me or against me." In Matthew, however, there is a striking lesson about good and evil, in which the author scripts the famous line, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks."

This chapter of the gospel of Mark ends with Jesus' family coming to see him, either because they were concerned that he was a few cards short of a full deck or just to pay him a visit, depending on which version of the story you read. In all three synoptic gospels, however, the authors agree on one thing: Jesus' true family are those people who behave the way God wants them to behave. This stretch of the gospel of Mark, taken in its full context as it occurs in other gospels, allows for some striking extrapolations about people and behavior.

For one thing, people may not be who they think they are or who they claim to be, but an observant person can know the truth about an individual based on the visible fruit born out of action. For example, there are lots of people who claim to be Christian yet consistently behave contrary to the teachings of Jesus. The gospel writers suggest in this passage that we don't actually need people to tell us what they believe, because we'll know what kind of people they are by their words and actions. If a person is constantly speaking hatefully about certain groups of people, this passage suggests that we can tell something about the mind of the speaker. Put more bluntly, when people speak hatefully about the GLBT community, or illegal immigrants, or any sort of religious group, it says more about the people speaking than it says about the objects of their derision. According to this passage, people cannot hide what is in their hearts.

Honestly, more than using this passage as a means of judging people as good or evil, keen observation can suggest to us when people are allowing their fears to run rampant and when they are tapping into a deeper sense of beauty, truth, and inspiration. People who say hateful things are really just communicating that they are afraid of something, maybe not even what they're being hateful about. Fear is incredibly powerful, and we are not trained to keep our irrational fears in check. Thus, when fear is prominent in our hearts, our actions will reflect it.

Another extrapolation, then, is that we need different sorts of people to sharpen our perspectives. When we are willing to engage openly and honestly with people who disagree with our beliefs, we stand a chance to learn something about ourselves and other people. Articulating what we want our lives to be about is one way that we can measure whether our own actions are lining up with what we want to create in the world, or whether we have allowed some measure of fear to take root in our own minds. Our vision of what we want in our lives does not have to match what other people envision. We do not need for anyone to agree with our beliefs or approve of our decisions for our own lives. When we recognize that clearly, we can engage more openly with people who disagree with us without either side needing to convince the other of anything. Our interaction can become a dialogue of learning, clarifying, and understanding.

We also benefit from the comfort of people who are like-minded. People who understand us also sharpen us, provided they are not the only people with whom we interact. Of course, it's easier to spend time around people who bolster our own points of view than it is to spend time with people who challenge us. Most people don't have trouble connecting with others who think like they do, but the sharpening happens when we have a clear sense of what we want to create in the world -- what kind of people we want to be. People with similar perspectives can also cultivate similar fears, and it can seem that our irrational fears are validated by outside confirmation. On the other hand, recognizing fear for what it is and dismantling it in cooperation with other people can be powerfully effective.

So, actions reflect beliefs. We can know whether fear is at work in our lives or in the lives of the people around us by observable words and actions. When we see that fear is at work in other people, we can avoid judging people as evil, and we can acknowledge that they are human beings of worth who happen to be experiencing fear. When we see fear at work in our own lives, we can more easily keep from judging ourselves, and we can seek ways to dismantle our irrational fears and get closer to living like the people we most want to be. This is easier when we have a group of people we can trust, around whom we can be vulnerable. The gospel writers had Jesus call these people his family. We can call it whatever we want, but the sentiment is that we can seek out people who are "true" brothers and sisters, working toward the same things, confronting the same challenges, holding the same ideals. We can seek out "true" mothers and fathers, mentors who have had a little more practice and who understand the irrational fears we want to dismantle in our lives. Some of us have actual blood-relative families that can be included in the category of "true family," but the hope expressed in the story of Jesus is that even when those human individuals disappoint, there are others in the world seeking the same things we are seeking.

This is actually true whether one wants to do harm or good in the world. We can find people who agree with our values, no matter what our values are. As one version of our passage reads, a person can use wealth to bring about good, and a fearful person can use wealth to bring about harm. I would like to suggest that any amount of harm we may want to inflict -- any hatred on which we may want to act -- is irrational fear wanting to be expressed. Honestly, we can do better than manifest more fear in the world. There is something deeper about us than the fears and beliefs we have taken on, and that something deeper is creative and hopeful and honest. We can tell the truth about how much we have in common with the people around us, even when it challenges some familiar and comfortable fears. We can create rather than destroy, even though creation often seems like much harder work. We can do these things because within each of us, despite all of our fears and beliefs about ourselves, we are capable, worthy, beautiful human beings. If we set aside our irrational fears and embrace our capability, how can we not create something incredible in our lives and the lives of people around us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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