Mark 6:1-29: How Our Opinions of Other People Inform Our Actions (maybe more than they should)

In the beginning of Mark 6, Jesus returns to his hometown (which interestingly remains unnamed in the gospel of Mark) and people are not altogether enthusiastic about what he has to say. This is where we find the well-known quote, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own town." After that disappointing episode, Jesus sends his disciples out and tells them not to waste their time with people who won't listen. They are to shake the dust off their shoes and move on. This was a bit of an insult in the time, as if to say, "There is nothing here worth taking with me, not even the dirt." Next, we read a bit of a flashback regarding the circumstances under which Herod had John the Baptist beheaded. Essentially, he was seduced by his daughter (or step-daughter) into doing something he didn't particularly want to do. In these three stories, we find some interesting lessons about how we see other people, and how we choose whether to give other people power over us.

It's rather obvious why a prophet would have trouble in his hometown, among people who saw the individual grow up, get into trouble as a teenager, work a trade, and eventually abandon being a productive member of society to be an itinerant preacher, and a preacher unaffiliated with the state church at that. We make rather quick judgments about people, and the impressions we have of the people we know stick over time. It is as if we have taken a snapshot of an individual at a particular point in time, and whenever we interact with that individual, we rely on our snapshot rather than the current reality of who that person is. We don't always notice when people grow and change, because we have a rigid impression that becomes ingrained very quickly. It takes a bit of effort to see a person as they are and recognize every step of growth and progress they make in their lives. We don't necessarily want to understand people very deeply; we think we already do understand what a person is about based on the snapshot we keep in our mind.

Thus, when a person tries to kick an old habit or develop a new discipline, it's often the people who have known that person for a long time that present the greatest challenges. Maybe we don't actually want people to change all that much. When people change, it suggests that our reality is unstable--that we can't rely on things to remain as we expect them to be. Whatever the reason, we often have a difficult time hearing unexpected things from people who are most familiar to us. The reverse is also true: The people who have known us the longest are likely to have the hardest time hearing unexpected things from us. This does not mean that we should never change. Responsible, aware people will always be growing in some way, and growth necessarily translates as change at some level. Part of growth involves not basing our self-worth on other people's opinions, but rather on deeper, honest self-assessment based on an intentional set of guiding principles.

This is why the disciples were told to shake the dust off of their shoes and move on. There is often nothing to be gained by arguing one's point of view with someone who simply cannot hear what you have to say. An individual's inability to listen, however, reflects more about them than about you. The disciples would have done well to listen respectfully in addition to hearably presenting the truth as they saw it, but at the end of the day, if someone wasn't interested in the disciples' perspective, there was little value in sticking around.

It would be a mistake to extrapolate too much from that story, however. Some relationships are worth a bit of extra effort. Sometimes a person needs to see reliable, dependable behavior that reflects deeper convictions over time before becoming open enough to hear truth spoken clearly. Most of us can afford to give people multiple chances, otherwise we are relying on a snapshot of a person that may be inaccurate and obsolete as soon as we have filed it away. The important part is not that we write people off or dismiss those who disagree with us. The important part is that we do not base our deep guiding principles on whether other people agree with or accept us. People can ask some incredible questions that help us to sharpen and refine the principles on which we most want to base our actions, and they can challenge us in positive ways even if they don't agree with us. So, the goal is to be very clear with oneself so that one can connect with other people without placing demands on them or making assumptions about them.

Herod is an example of what happens when we do otherwise. By the biblical account, Herod was not a very secure individual. In fact, he was quite emotionally immature, often making decisions based on fear rather than on a grounded set of principles. When Herodias' daughter (named Salome in some other accounts) dances for Herod and his guests, he promises to grant her anything she desires. Even though he is intrigued by John the Baptist, he has the prophet executed because he was unwilling to tell the girl, "No." It is easy to imagine that Herod was experiencing a significant amount of anxiety in that moment, and in the many moments that followed. There are probably many things he feared would happen if he did not honor his promise. He sacrificed his own self-governance and abdicated personal responsibility instead of standing by a set of intentional principles.

We are capable of doing better than Herod, and in some ways, we may be in a position to do better than Jesus and the disciples. Jesus and his disciples did not keep visiting places over and over again and giving people second, third, or eleventh chances, and it is possible for a person with well-defined guiding principles to model a different way of being over and over again with the same individual or group. The goal, after all, is not to convince other people how they ought to live, but rather to fully inhabit our own lives -- to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. This does not require anyone else's approval; it just requires our own willingness to grow. As we become more clear about who we want to be in the world, we will likely conflict with the snapshots that other people have of us. As we create the lives we most want, we are also likely to find that some of our own snapshots are outdated and inaccurate. We don't need to be afraid of seeing reality as it is. In fact, being honest about current reality is the only way to move forward into a vision of something better.

So, from this first portion of Mark 6 we learn not to base our self-image on the opinions of others, but to develop a set of deep guiding principles that will lead us toward the lives we most want to create. We learn that giving power to other people can lead us to make decisions that go against what we actually want to create in the world. And we learn that we cannot control other people's reactions to us; we can only control our own beliefs and actions. People have inherent value, but people's opinions are sometimes based on fears and falsehood rather than a deep sense of truth, beauty, and creativity. So, are your actions lining up with your guiding principles? How are you allowing other people to determine your sense of value? In what ways are you playing small because you fear what other people will say or think? What would it look like if you pushed past that fear and inhabited yourself more authentically?

2 Kings 11-14: Pictures of Human Immaturity

The saga of royalty in Israel and Judah continues in 2 Kings 11-14. Elisha's last crotchety advice and his posthumous miracle-working are included in this passage, although there is little to be said about these stories that has not already been pointed out about folklore of the Ancient Near East. While the recounting of Judah's history in 2 Chronicles matches the tale in 2 Kings closely, there are a couple of interesting differences to point out. The Chronicler includes a bit of information about both Joash and Amaziah that the authors of the Book of Kings either did not know or chose to omit.

It seems like a small thing, but these two versions of Joash's reign hold a contradiction that demonstrates that the Bible is written from a multitude of subjective points of view, and thus cannot be taken as completely literally accurate. The context is the story about Joash having the high priest Jehoiada oversee the collection funds to repair the temple. It takes a bit of time and persistence, but the king eventually gets temple repairs under way. 2 Kings 12:13-14 states, "The money brought into the temple was not spent for making silver basins, wick trimmers, sprinkling bowls, trumpets or any other articles of gold or silver for the temple of the Lord; it was paid to the workers, who used it to repair the temple." It then goes on to articulate how honest the workers were. Compare that to 2 Chronicles 24:14; after all the repairs were diligently completed, "they brought the rest of the money to the king and Jehoiada, and with it were made articles for the Lord’s temple: articles for the service and for the burnt offerings, and also dishes and other objects of gold and silver." According to Chronicles 24:7, this was necessary because Athaliah had misused the items for Baal worship.

It really doesn't matter whether Joash and Jehoiada approved of making some new altar pieces with the money that was collected. The point is that one of these accounts is simply factually wrong. For most readers, that is no problem. One person knew something another person didn't, or perhaps there was some political reason an author had for suggesting that things happened a certain way. It certainly doesn't have any bearing on our understanding of spirituality. However, this passage is one of many that reflects the problem with asserting that there are no contradictions of any kind in the Bible and that it is a completely trustworthy account of history, as some people do.

The Chronicler also includes some details about the remainder of Joash's reign that the version of history in 2 Kings completely omits. Both tell of how Joash handed over temple and palace riches to Hazael, king of Aram, and how this led Joash's officials to assassinate him. In addition to correcting some details about the circumstances of Joash's death and burial, however, the Chronicler reveals that Joash had turned away from worshiping Yahweh after the death of high priest Jehoiada, going so far as to murder Jehoiada's son when the priest Zechariah spoke out against the king. 

Joash's son Amaziah, who succeeded him on the throne, is also a bit more colorfully put on display by the Chronicler, who includes interactions between Amaziah and a couple of unnamed prophets, as well as a reason why folks in Israel might have gotten tired of this king of Judah. Jehoash was king of Israel at the time, and the story tells of him breaking down a wall of Jerusalem and stealing "all the gold and silver articles found in the temple." So, either Joash didn't really give everything away to the king of Aram or Judah had bountiful resources to the extent that they could have things made of gold and silver in the temple again. Or perhaps these articles were plunder from Amaziah's successful military campaigns. In any case, Amaziah's reign ended in assassination as well. It was a tough gig being king of Judah.

Entertainment value of ancient stories aside, a consistent theme through these tales is the wealth and lives that were sacrificed in defending and maintaining a religion. If we take the biblical historians at their word, incredible amounts of a nation's resources were spent on religious paraphernalia that had no practical value to the people, and consistent with the biblical narrative up to this point, thousands of people were killed under the auspices of Yahweh's favor for the Israelites. If a people is favored by a divine being, why couldn't this omnipotent divine being simply protect them from harm and let the "infidels" kill one another off? What can be said about the character of a deity who requires his followers to take up arms and kill those who don't belong to the tribe? The criticism leveled at Islam in the twenty-first century is that this supposed religion of peace promotes violence, and yet, where must Muslims have learned this dichotomy? If the God of Christianity in the twenty-first century is the same Yahweh worshiped by the ancient Israelites, someone somewhere along the way got something very wrong. The divine propensity for violence as a solution to any problem in the Old Testament is incompatible with the message of patient love and compassion conveyed by the New Testament. 

So what can be said about the consistency of the Bible, then? Perhaps it is not a consistent depiction of the nature of a divine being, but rather a trajectory taken by a people on a path of spiritual and emotional maturity. Perhaps in its infancy, humanity's immaturity led it toward violence and clear delineations between Us and Them. Fear was the primary motivator on nearly every level of a people's development, even if they were not conscious of fear as a driving principle. Immature people cannot comprehend concepts like unconditional love and self-sacrificial compassion toward the Other. And yet, love and compassion were necessary at some level for any society to have lasted. The prophets will actually speak into this immaturity before the Old Testament is through. The bottom line is that no human society could never have developed if everyone only did what seemed personally advantageous in the moment. Perhaps the Old Testament, then, is largely about the failure of humanity to thrive in a state of immaturity.

If this is the case, then the New Testament is not about a different deity, but nor is it really about a deity at all. It is about human maturity. The teachings of Jesus become lessons in developing emotional and spiritual maturity so that one is not governed by fear and is thus capable of authentic love, genuine compassion, and unfettered joy. The New Testament is not the story of armies and kings and how many thousands of people God allowed this person or that person to drive off a cliff so their riches could be plundered. The New Testament is about the part in the trajectory toward maturity where individual people learn to live in deep connection with themselves and one another. 

Of course, this message is largely overshadowed by miracle stories and the establishment of doctrinal formulas that reinforce the idea that people are incapable, broken, and weak. What could be developed as a message of hope that people can grow into mature iterations of themselves, and that society can thus grow in maturity, has been used to create the same waste of resources and death tolls as the immature ancient Israelite religion and worse. Perhaps humanity is still not ready for the idea of maturity -- the idea that fear need not have a place in our personal guiding principles. Perhaps humanity is still in its infancy, where violence and fear outweigh our capacity as a species for rational thought, love, and creativity. Perhaps humanity in the twenty-first century is not all that different from humanity as expressed by the bloodthirsty, short-sighted ancient Israelites. 

Whatever humanity's maturity level may be, though, there exist in the world today individuals who are willing to accept their capability to create something better. There are individuals who understand that the welcome conflict of growth is different than senseless fear-driven violence -- who recognize that all people have value and are worthy of respect, even people who don't realize their potential for maturity. There are individuals in the world today who can clearly envision a way of being that radiates trust and hope in the present while still being well-grounded in deep convictions -- individuals who are continually taking time to connect with themselves so that they can connect with others more deeply. There are individuals in the world today who are not governed by fear or judgment, but by a calm sense of purpose, an evocative passion to create rather than destroy. There are individuals in the world today who understand that people who embody personal responsibility and capability can and do influence humanity toward greater maturity. 

Perhaps you are one of them.