All mythological heroes, from Sumerian tales through modern movies, face what Joseph Campbell has termed the "Road of Trials." In the prototypical ordering of hero myths, this time of testing begins after the hero has crossed the threshold of normal life and experienced a "rebirth" into a heroic identity. In the Jesus story, baptism by John the Baptist serves as this crossing of the threshold. Jesus' heroic identity is announced, and he immediately goes into the wilderness to be tested.
The Gospel of Mark is the earliest written Jesus myth that made it into the canon of the Bible. In just a couple of verses, we learn that the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, where he was tested by an adversary, and that angels tended him during this time when he lived with wild animals. Mark indicates that Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, which in terms of Jewish storytelling was a shorthand for "a very long time." It is also thought that the number 40 referred to a period of testing or punishment, which makes it perfect in the context of the Jesus story.
In the Gospel of Matthew, the story becomes fleshed out a bit, with three specific temptations indicated, and the author of the Gospel of Luke borrowed heavily from the Gospel of Matthew for his version. (Incidentally, the writers of the Gospel of John had little use for the temptation story.) Many people have extracted lessons from this story about Jesus' character and how to follow his example. For instance, some people observe that Jesus used scriptural references to resist the temptations, and thus assume that knowing the Bible inside and out will lead to a more "holy," temptation-free life. In the Gospel of Matthew, however, there is a constant effort to prove the identity of Jesus by referring back to Jewish scripture, often taking the original scripture completely out of context in order to legitimize Jesus as the Jewish "messiah" of legend. Perhaps more significant is the implication that Jesus understood the temptations of wealth (bread is frequently symbolic of money in Jewish literature), fame, and power, and realized that these things frequently distract people from true wisdom and happiness. More on these things in a moment.
Some people are fond of the idea of being tested. After all, overcoming challenges makes us stronger and more capable people. When we prove ourselves to other people, we might get a promotion or a closer relationship or some other desirable privilege. Some of these challenges are very clear, with distinct rewards for success, and we choose to take them on because we want the reward. Of course, some individuals focus on how to get the rewards with a minimum of effort, overlooking that the designated trials are often intended to reflect inward character. We can go through our lives as if our only goal is to pass the next test in a long series of trials, neglecting our responsibility to infuse our lives with meaning. It might be said that part of the test is knowing how unimportant some tests are.
Of course, if we interpret tests as being spiritually significant, we can perceive a great deal of importance -- even eternal importance. There are those who believe that if they pass the trials of this life, they will be rewarded with greater joy and pleasure in an afterlife. Obviously, failing the trials of this life will yield a different result, but most folks believe that Hell is reserved for other people. Reward or punishment in an eternal afterlife certainly seems to be more motivating than anything that could happen in our temporally restricted physical life on Earth. Here's the thing though: there is a lot of good that can be done in this life, and there is a lot of joy and gratitude and satisfaction to be felt in this life. We don't really need to use belief in an afterlife as motivation. If we are doing the things that align with our deepest selves and honor our connection to the people around us, we will be creating what the gospel writers called the "kingdom of God." Since this term was often put in Jesus' mouth, we'll have more time to explore it in later entries. For now, the appropriate point is that there is no great trial-giver in the sky sending tests into our lives and scoring us on our successes to determine any sort of eternal destination.
We can absolutely test ourselves, setting goals and action plans that challenge us. There may be a great deal of personal satisfaction in overcoming challenges, even when the tangible rewards are slight. Sometimes building our sense of our own capability is an effective reward. When we start looking at our lives as a series of tests from something beyond ourselves, however, we risk losing that sense of our own capability. Not everything in life is a test. Illness is not a test, for instance. We cannot overcome most actual illnesses simply by our own efforts -- we rely on doctors to prescribe medicines and treatments so our bodies can heal. Illnesses may occur for any number of reasons, but there is no intentionality behind an illness -- no one decided to give us an illness to test us.
Likewise, things that happen because of someone's irresponsibility are not necessarily tests either. Being injured in a traffic collision because someone ran a red light is a result of human carelessness, and while we may face challenges as a result, our circumstances are not designed by anyone just to test us. We may find it challenging to pay our bills on time, and we may justifiably consider it an accomplishment when we pay off our last credit card and become debt free. However, there is no one orchestrating those financial challenges as some sort of Herculean trial. There are many things in life that are simply facets of living. We exist in a complex society with a lot of other people, and there are very real challenges that emerge in that system. That in no way implies an intelligence on the other end of these challenges waiting to reward or punish us. We ultimately decide which challenges in life we will tackle, and what our success will mean to us.
Which is why the story of Jesus' trials in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke are potentially more spiritually valuable for us than the earlier version in the Gospel of Mark. The spiritual truth in the tale has nothing to do with an intelligent spiritual adversary who is out to trick us -- we do well enough at tying our own spiritual shoelaces together in knots. The spiritual truth in the tale has nothing to do with how well we must memorize the scriptures of a particular religion. There are plenty of spiritual leaders who know their scriptures very well and still wind up in scandalous or violent headlines. Being able to recite words does not necessarily guarantee that we understand their meaning. The interesting spiritual piece in the temptation story is about the temptations themselves.
We are still living in a society that glorifies wealth, fame, and power over other people. It has apparently been a reality of human community for a very long time if these three things were considered the primary distractions from spirituality two thousand years ago. As many people have said, none of these three can provide happiness or satisfaction in life. Money is only as valuable as what one does with it, and the same goes for fame and power. The more time we spend worrying about our popularity or our bank accounts or our titles, the less time we have for the things that are truly meaningful. Money and popularity and power are not bad things, though, despite what one may infer from the gospel writers. These three temptations simply have incredible distraction potential. When we give them too much importance in our lives, we run the risk of missing the things that have true value: our integrity, our relationships, our connection to the world around us.
In the hero-myth of the gospels, Jesus knew what was important to him. He had a level of self-awareness that comes from intentional, honest introspection. While wealth, fame, and power hold some allure, there are more important things in life. At a very deep level, we know that, but we often forget it. We might try to fool ourselves with the justification that we can do more good in the world if we have more resources, but the truth is that we already have enough. The challenge of knowing what has value in life is not a test from on high, nor is it trial we can bluff our way past. It is a challenge issued from deep within ourselves, and if we answer that challenge with a life that focuses on what matters most, our rewards will be immeasurable, not in some distant afterlife, but here and now.
Showing posts with label overcoming challenges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label overcoming challenges. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Judges 1-3: Divine Codependency, Personal Responsibility, and Why You Don't Have to Be Afraid of Yourself
The book of Judges is a colorful collection of Israelite hero stories, proclaiming the champions who rose up and saved the day at various points in time when the Israelites were oppressed. It's a kind of Hall of Fame in one respect, but for the rank and file Israelites it winds up being a Hall of Shame as well. These champions are only necessary, according to the narrative of this collection, because the Israelite people fall away from their faith and God punishes them by allowing foreign powers to conquer them. Over and over again. Beyond its narrative cohesion, there is something to be learned from this cycle of falling away from the cultural religion, being subjected to the rule of a foreign king, and being rescued by a hero anointed by God into a time of peace before falling away from the cultural religion once again. Each hero's story also has a spiritual lesson or two for us.
Judges 1 seems like a bit of housekeeping. "Here is how the Israelites finished up with the work that Joshua started." The Israelites are still committing some brutal acts, burning down cities and killing everyone there except for their spies. As before, those peoples the Israelites don't wipe out are made into slaves. Some of the atrocities are justified because the "victim" is literally getting equal justice for what he has done to others, as is the case with Adoni-Bezek. On the one hand, it means the the Israelites are really no better than any of the people they're conquering, since they're willing to commit the same acts of torture and maiming. On the other hand, the Israelites are morally above the cultures around them, since they are the agents of justice.
Chapter 2 really seems to be the beginning of the story, a sort of proper prologue with an angelic proclamation and an outline of what the book is all about. We'll talk more about the cycle of disobedience, punishment, rescue, and peace in a moment. Chapter 3 gives us a sense of what these hero stories are going to be like. The Israelites start worshiping the local gods and forget about their strict cultural religion, God gets angry and "sells them" into the hands of a conquering king, the Israelites cry out for God to rescue them, and God raises up Othniel, who goes to war (presumably with an army behind him), and the land has peace until Othniel dies. This is the template from which all the stories are based -- a sort of generic hero tale from which the other judges' tales improvise.
Take the story of Ehud, who was left-handed. Being left-handed was not seen as culturally appropriate, much less as a blessing. People who couldn't use the proper hand for things were seen as cursed or stupid. And then along comes Ehud. The Israelites fall away from God, God gets mad, foreign king conquers them, and the Israelites cry out to God. So God chooses as their deliverer this left-handed nobody with a little dagger. But because no one expects a weapon to be drawn with an attacker's left hand, he catches fat King Eglon by surprise and kills him. Then, there is the humorous and embarrassing bit about the servants not wanting to check on the king because they thought he was just on the toilet for an extraordinarily long time while Ehud made his escape.
Ehud displays some qualities that the Israelites admire. He uses what seems to be a disability to his advantage, he is sneaky and "underhanded" in order to win a victory for the greater good of his society, and he is clever enough to get away with it. Ehud may not be a historical figure, or his tale at least may be elaborated considerably for effect, but there is still spiritual value to the story. We have a tendency to look at our own failings (and to notice the disabilities of others, too). We notice more what we are challenged by than we give credence to our capability. This perspective hinders us from seeing possibility. We get so caught up in thinking about our scarcity that we fail to notice our abundance. If we choose to see every quality as a potential advantage, we stand a much greater chance of seeing our capability and creating meaningful and satisfying lives.
We also stand a better chance of seeing the capability of other people. When we focus on other people's disabilities or failings, we create an image of them that is less than a fully able human being. By adopting an attitude that left-handedness is just a different way of achieving the same goal, and in some circumstances perhaps an even better way of achieving the same goal, our perspective can shift just enough to see the divinity in other people. When we acknowledge the value of every person and start from that angle, we are better able to see abundance.
That doesn't mean that we should be finding clever ways to kill people we don't like, as Ehud did. It's a story, like Paul Bunyan or Hercules or Jason and the Argonauts. It's from a culture that focused on genocidal behavior as an acceptable way of gaining property without having to build it all from scratch. We have to look beyond the actual behavior of the judges to get the spiritually meaningful bits that apply to our own lives. This is sometimes difficult. Poor Shamgar is something of an afterthought. "Oh, yes. This other fellow was also quite good."
But what about the whole structure of the book? Sure, we can look at Ehud and say, "Wow, I shouldn't focus on what I can't do as well as everyone else. I have my own set of strengths." We can feel really good about ourselves for the moment, and maybe about other people too. And then what? How do we relate to the larger-scale cycle of behavior that forms the basis of all these hero stories?
I'll start by saying that we should not start looking for the equivalent of judges in our own culture or sub-culture. Competent leaders should be acknowledged, sure. As Tina Turner sang in that Mad Max movie, though, we don't need another hero. There is no god watching the earth or any portion of it and deciding whether or not to give people over to foreign powers based on their level of worship. And there is no reason to think that if we just obey the dictates of a particular church and follow the rules that our lives will be peaceful and happy. There are two big lessons in this cycle, however, that can make a big difference in how we look at our opportunities to create satisfying lives that have a meaningful impact in the world. The first lesson is about God's behavior in the story, and the second lesson is about the Israelites themselves.
God doesn't learn very quickly. He really loves this girl and even though she keeps sleeping around and ignoring him, he keeps coming back like a lost puppy. Sure, he'll get mad and let her get herself into serious trouble, but he always shows up to rescue her before things get really out of hand. It is the very picture of codependency and insanity. He keeps doing the same thing for the Israelites, expecting them to behave differently, and then getting really angry when they don't change. He doesn't change his expectations or redefine his relationship with them (not yet at least) even though it's apparent that they cannot live up to what he wants in a relationship. Perhaps the only reason he keeps going back to them is because he knows that his standards are so unreasonable that no one would be able to live up to them, so he settles for being angry at the same folks instead of branching out and being disappointed in different people.
In the Christian version of the story, God eventually learns. The New Testament is the Christian impression of what a different sort of relationship might look like. God isn't as interested in being angry about his girl not living up to his unreasonably high standards. It's still a relationship of co-dependency, but God accepts the limitations of the people he loves a little bit better. Neither version is an ideal template for human relationships, even though we engage in codependency more often than we would like to admit. Examine whether this looks like a pattern in your own life and be willing to address it, even if it means seeking some outside assistance in breaking habits that have been ingrained over a long period of time.
Learn from God's frustration. Saving people over and over again doesn't acknowledge their freedom or capability, and it assumes an unrealistic responsibility for someone else's well-being. Start from the understanding that every adult is personally responsible for their own actions and beliefs. Yes, parents have some responsibility for their own children's safety. We're talking about adults here (although personal responsibility is a phenomenal thing parents could teach their children). Yes, we sometimes place our safety in the hands of an experienced guide when we hike off into unfamiliar territory. We aren't talking about choices we make in special circumstances. If you're looking for excuses not to be personally responsible for your decisions, just stop. And if you're making allowances for someone else to abdicate personal responsibility, you aren't doing anyone any favors. Our ability to create, our ability to fully acknowledge the truth and beauty within every person, our ability to be inspired -- these are compromised when we are unwilling to take personal responsibility for our beliefs and our actions.
Which is just another way of saying that our relationship to the divine within us is hampered. Even when we are ready to admit that there is no higher intelligence watching over our lives from the outside, arranging things that we don't control on our behalf, blessing the good people and punishing the wicked people -- that doesn't guarantee that we are able to fully tap into the wisdom we hold within. We may look to our truest, most noble selves in times of great catastrophe, whatever that looks like in each person's life, but it's much easier to go on autopilot most of the time. Until we find ourselves once more in an out-of-control situation and we look for something to save us from our own decisions. It isn't a healthy or satisfying way to live -- being unconscious until there is something traumatic to worry about.
Our divine selves do not want sacrifice or selflessness from us. Our divine selves are simply the truest manifestation of who we are as human beings. There is nothing judgmental at that deep level. The judgment comes from the lies and fears that hide our deepest selves. You know what you want your life to look like. You know what matters most to you. Beneath the fear and the fear and the older fear and the fear you forgot about, and beneath the lies about yourself and the lies about other people and the lies about how life is supposed to be, you know. It seems vulnerable to unwrap all of those snug fears and lies and look beneath them, but it is at that core that your true strength lies. It seems dangerous to look that deeply into yourself, but it is the safest thing in the world. That clarity is the key to creating and inspiring.
The Israelites may not have really known what their god wanted from them. They may have gotten the impression that he wanted them to be miserable. He did have a lot of rules and he did threaten some extreme punishments. Maybe their god didn't really know how to express what he wanted. Whatever the case, they were afraid of the authentic divine and they chose something more appealing. Simpler. More fun. Less frightening. Who knows. The divine is not something to be feared. The whole thing about divine reward or divine punishment is a bit of a misstatement. When we are in tune with our innermost selves, the results are absolutely satisfying and fulfilling. That's the reward. When we rely on the lies and the fear to dictate our actions, our lives are frustrating, shallow, and painful. That's the punishment. To be completely honest, sometimes life is legitimately frustrating and painful. It's just that when we are in tune with our innermost selves, we know what to do with that frustration and pain.
So, recognize your strengths, and recognize that what you think of as weaknesses may actually be strengths in the right circumstances. Be aware of codependency, and make the necessary changes regarding personal responsibility to honor your self and the people around you. You are responsible for your beliefs and actions. Other people are responsible for their beliefs and actions. Stop being afraid of what your divine nature wants for you. It's you. You are you. Let yourself be yourself. The cycle of fear and distrust and miraculous rescues does not have to be a theme in your life. Know yourself at the deepest level possible, and you will find strength and peace and beauty and inspiration and truth. It may take a little work. It is so worth it.
Judges 1 seems like a bit of housekeeping. "Here is how the Israelites finished up with the work that Joshua started." The Israelites are still committing some brutal acts, burning down cities and killing everyone there except for their spies. As before, those peoples the Israelites don't wipe out are made into slaves. Some of the atrocities are justified because the "victim" is literally getting equal justice for what he has done to others, as is the case with Adoni-Bezek. On the one hand, it means the the Israelites are really no better than any of the people they're conquering, since they're willing to commit the same acts of torture and maiming. On the other hand, the Israelites are morally above the cultures around them, since they are the agents of justice.
Chapter 2 really seems to be the beginning of the story, a sort of proper prologue with an angelic proclamation and an outline of what the book is all about. We'll talk more about the cycle of disobedience, punishment, rescue, and peace in a moment. Chapter 3 gives us a sense of what these hero stories are going to be like. The Israelites start worshiping the local gods and forget about their strict cultural religion, God gets angry and "sells them" into the hands of a conquering king, the Israelites cry out for God to rescue them, and God raises up Othniel, who goes to war (presumably with an army behind him), and the land has peace until Othniel dies. This is the template from which all the stories are based -- a sort of generic hero tale from which the other judges' tales improvise.
Take the story of Ehud, who was left-handed. Being left-handed was not seen as culturally appropriate, much less as a blessing. People who couldn't use the proper hand for things were seen as cursed or stupid. And then along comes Ehud. The Israelites fall away from God, God gets mad, foreign king conquers them, and the Israelites cry out to God. So God chooses as their deliverer this left-handed nobody with a little dagger. But because no one expects a weapon to be drawn with an attacker's left hand, he catches fat King Eglon by surprise and kills him. Then, there is the humorous and embarrassing bit about the servants not wanting to check on the king because they thought he was just on the toilet for an extraordinarily long time while Ehud made his escape.
Ehud displays some qualities that the Israelites admire. He uses what seems to be a disability to his advantage, he is sneaky and "underhanded" in order to win a victory for the greater good of his society, and he is clever enough to get away with it. Ehud may not be a historical figure, or his tale at least may be elaborated considerably for effect, but there is still spiritual value to the story. We have a tendency to look at our own failings (and to notice the disabilities of others, too). We notice more what we are challenged by than we give credence to our capability. This perspective hinders us from seeing possibility. We get so caught up in thinking about our scarcity that we fail to notice our abundance. If we choose to see every quality as a potential advantage, we stand a much greater chance of seeing our capability and creating meaningful and satisfying lives.
We also stand a better chance of seeing the capability of other people. When we focus on other people's disabilities or failings, we create an image of them that is less than a fully able human being. By adopting an attitude that left-handedness is just a different way of achieving the same goal, and in some circumstances perhaps an even better way of achieving the same goal, our perspective can shift just enough to see the divinity in other people. When we acknowledge the value of every person and start from that angle, we are better able to see abundance.
That doesn't mean that we should be finding clever ways to kill people we don't like, as Ehud did. It's a story, like Paul Bunyan or Hercules or Jason and the Argonauts. It's from a culture that focused on genocidal behavior as an acceptable way of gaining property without having to build it all from scratch. We have to look beyond the actual behavior of the judges to get the spiritually meaningful bits that apply to our own lives. This is sometimes difficult. Poor Shamgar is something of an afterthought. "Oh, yes. This other fellow was also quite good."
But what about the whole structure of the book? Sure, we can look at Ehud and say, "Wow, I shouldn't focus on what I can't do as well as everyone else. I have my own set of strengths." We can feel really good about ourselves for the moment, and maybe about other people too. And then what? How do we relate to the larger-scale cycle of behavior that forms the basis of all these hero stories?
I'll start by saying that we should not start looking for the equivalent of judges in our own culture or sub-culture. Competent leaders should be acknowledged, sure. As Tina Turner sang in that Mad Max movie, though, we don't need another hero. There is no god watching the earth or any portion of it and deciding whether or not to give people over to foreign powers based on their level of worship. And there is no reason to think that if we just obey the dictates of a particular church and follow the rules that our lives will be peaceful and happy. There are two big lessons in this cycle, however, that can make a big difference in how we look at our opportunities to create satisfying lives that have a meaningful impact in the world. The first lesson is about God's behavior in the story, and the second lesson is about the Israelites themselves.
God doesn't learn very quickly. He really loves this girl and even though she keeps sleeping around and ignoring him, he keeps coming back like a lost puppy. Sure, he'll get mad and let her get herself into serious trouble, but he always shows up to rescue her before things get really out of hand. It is the very picture of codependency and insanity. He keeps doing the same thing for the Israelites, expecting them to behave differently, and then getting really angry when they don't change. He doesn't change his expectations or redefine his relationship with them (not yet at least) even though it's apparent that they cannot live up to what he wants in a relationship. Perhaps the only reason he keeps going back to them is because he knows that his standards are so unreasonable that no one would be able to live up to them, so he settles for being angry at the same folks instead of branching out and being disappointed in different people.
In the Christian version of the story, God eventually learns. The New Testament is the Christian impression of what a different sort of relationship might look like. God isn't as interested in being angry about his girl not living up to his unreasonably high standards. It's still a relationship of co-dependency, but God accepts the limitations of the people he loves a little bit better. Neither version is an ideal template for human relationships, even though we engage in codependency more often than we would like to admit. Examine whether this looks like a pattern in your own life and be willing to address it, even if it means seeking some outside assistance in breaking habits that have been ingrained over a long period of time.
Learn from God's frustration. Saving people over and over again doesn't acknowledge their freedom or capability, and it assumes an unrealistic responsibility for someone else's well-being. Start from the understanding that every adult is personally responsible for their own actions and beliefs. Yes, parents have some responsibility for their own children's safety. We're talking about adults here (although personal responsibility is a phenomenal thing parents could teach their children). Yes, we sometimes place our safety in the hands of an experienced guide when we hike off into unfamiliar territory. We aren't talking about choices we make in special circumstances. If you're looking for excuses not to be personally responsible for your decisions, just stop. And if you're making allowances for someone else to abdicate personal responsibility, you aren't doing anyone any favors. Our ability to create, our ability to fully acknowledge the truth and beauty within every person, our ability to be inspired -- these are compromised when we are unwilling to take personal responsibility for our beliefs and our actions.
Which is just another way of saying that our relationship to the divine within us is hampered. Even when we are ready to admit that there is no higher intelligence watching over our lives from the outside, arranging things that we don't control on our behalf, blessing the good people and punishing the wicked people -- that doesn't guarantee that we are able to fully tap into the wisdom we hold within. We may look to our truest, most noble selves in times of great catastrophe, whatever that looks like in each person's life, but it's much easier to go on autopilot most of the time. Until we find ourselves once more in an out-of-control situation and we look for something to save us from our own decisions. It isn't a healthy or satisfying way to live -- being unconscious until there is something traumatic to worry about.
Our divine selves do not want sacrifice or selflessness from us. Our divine selves are simply the truest manifestation of who we are as human beings. There is nothing judgmental at that deep level. The judgment comes from the lies and fears that hide our deepest selves. You know what you want your life to look like. You know what matters most to you. Beneath the fear and the fear and the older fear and the fear you forgot about, and beneath the lies about yourself and the lies about other people and the lies about how life is supposed to be, you know. It seems vulnerable to unwrap all of those snug fears and lies and look beneath them, but it is at that core that your true strength lies. It seems dangerous to look that deeply into yourself, but it is the safest thing in the world. That clarity is the key to creating and inspiring.
The Israelites may not have really known what their god wanted from them. They may have gotten the impression that he wanted them to be miserable. He did have a lot of rules and he did threaten some extreme punishments. Maybe their god didn't really know how to express what he wanted. Whatever the case, they were afraid of the authentic divine and they chose something more appealing. Simpler. More fun. Less frightening. Who knows. The divine is not something to be feared. The whole thing about divine reward or divine punishment is a bit of a misstatement. When we are in tune with our innermost selves, the results are absolutely satisfying and fulfilling. That's the reward. When we rely on the lies and the fear to dictate our actions, our lives are frustrating, shallow, and painful. That's the punishment. To be completely honest, sometimes life is legitimately frustrating and painful. It's just that when we are in tune with our innermost selves, we know what to do with that frustration and pain.
So, recognize your strengths, and recognize that what you think of as weaknesses may actually be strengths in the right circumstances. Be aware of codependency, and make the necessary changes regarding personal responsibility to honor your self and the people around you. You are responsible for your beliefs and actions. Other people are responsible for their beliefs and actions. Stop being afraid of what your divine nature wants for you. It's you. You are you. Let yourself be yourself. The cycle of fear and distrust and miraculous rescues does not have to be a theme in your life. Know yourself at the deepest level possible, and you will find strength and peace and beauty and inspiration and truth. It may take a little work. It is so worth it.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Joshua 7-8: Our Spiritual Identities Are Strengthened by Landmarks and Reminders
We've called Joshua's attack on Jericho a cautionary tale of how fear can discolor inspired ideas. As an image of a strong Israelite leader at the time, though, the character of Joshua fit the bill. He spoke and acted with authority, whether he was punishing someone who had gone against his orders or slaughtering people who didn't believe in his god. His story continues in Joshua 7-8, as Joshua leads the Israelites in claiming by force a land inhabited by people who had legitimately built cities, bred livestock, and raised families. From an outsider's perspective, Joshua was a barbaric warlord who claimed to act on God's authority -- the sort of person we might emulate if we were ambitious narcissists, but not a model of how to create a better world.
Not everything in Joshua's tale needs to be taken as cautionary, however. His leadership demonstrates three important practices that could be of benefit to anyone on a spiritual journey. Joshua has the Israelites create landmarks to commemorate every major event in their communal experience, both the successes and the disappointments. He also adapts to issues within the community by changing his expectations, and he makes a significant event out of reminding the community of their identity. All of these practices are demonstrated in chapters 7 and 8, even in the midst of overseeing a violent invasion.
In the story that is told here, Joshua had commanded his men not to take for themselves any of the spoils of war from Jericho, but not everyone listened. This disobedience resulted in the Israelite soldiers losing a battle against the defending forces of Ai. Joshua does two noteworthy things in this difficult situation. First, he punishes the person who went against his orders, as one would expect from a strong military leader. But the second remarkable thing is that he changes his expectations of the soldiers, commanding that they are free to carry off the livestock and plunder from the next city they attack. After they are victorious, Joshua arranges for the Israelite community to be reminded of their spiritual and cultural identities in a ceremony that recounted the entirety of the law to which they were committed as a people.
At this ceremony, they left relics of the occasion, just as they had done at every significant event since Joshua's leadership began. They left piles of rocks when a significant part of their journey was complete, when a city was successfully destroyed, when a member of their community was punished, every time something memorable happened in the life of the Israelite community. The memorializing of the events presumably made it more difficult to forget them, thus strengthening cultural memory and identity.
Whether or not Joshua was a real person, these are practices that we can adopt in our own lives. We may not be invading cities or sentencing people who disobey us to death by stoning, but we are all on our own journeys. We all struggle from time to time with our identities, especially when there are people around us (or an entire society) with conflicting impressions of who we should be. Standing with conviction about who you are and what you stand for isn't always easy, and it can be helpful to have a few practices in place to reinforce our personal responsibility and integrity.
Just like the Israelites, we occasionally need reminders about who we are. We get into patterns of behavior that can almost become automatic if we let them. Sometimes we are susceptible to what other people expect from us, to the point that we may lose our own integrity in the process of living by someone else's expectations. Taking time to remind ourselves what we believe and what we want our lives to be about can be a powerful reinforcement in our lives, whether it's something we choose to do monthly, weekly, or even daily during times of exceptional duress. Of course, this requires knowing what we believe and understanding who we want to be in the world, which is really what the journey is about anyway.
Based on our beliefs, we set goals for ourselves. Sometimes these goals are very intentional and sometimes we are barely conscious of where we are headed. The more time we spend examining our beliefs and our identities, the more opportunity we have to be aware of what we're expecting of ourselves. When we encounter challenges, whether those challenges are because of our own capability at the time or because other people aren't doing what we expect or want, it's important not to let those challenges overwhelm us. The challenges are there to help us hone our beliefs and expectations, not to punish or restrict us. It may be that we are demanding some unreasonable things from ourselves (or other people), or that our beliefs about ourselves or the world around us are somehow being influenced by our fears. Whatever the case, the challenges we encounter give us an opportunity to assess what we're making important in our lives, whether our expectations are reasonable, and whether there are some changes we can make to better enable us to have lives built on what matters most to us.
Challenges along the journey are rarely outright roadblocks. We are capable of adapting to the challenges, refining our sense of who we are, and aligning ourselves more clearly with the truth, beauty, and creativity within us. Whether we overcome our challenges with ease or we struggle against them, whether we see the immediate results as successes or disappointments, the challenges are worth commemorating. We may not pile stones around our houses and workplaces, but across the landscape of our lives, we can create markers in our minds for significant events and how those events helped to define who we are and what we believe. These significant events may be the kinds of things that are similar in everyone's life -- marriages, births, deaths, the plundering of cities -- or they may be things that are significant because of what you learned about yourself. They landmarks remind us of the pitfalls we have faced and the bridges we have built, and our awareness of them can help prevent fighting the same battles over and over again in our lives.
What we believe may change over time -- if we are growing as human beings, it's likely that our beliefs will grow too -- but what we believe and how those beliefs inform our behavior is always within our control. We are responsible for the lives we create and the impact we have on other people and the world. Establishing spiritual landmarks and taking time to remind ourselves who we are helps us be more aware of that personal responsibility, and our willingness to be flexible as we face challenges with integrity keeps us growing in satisfying ways.
It may be that you are unsure what you believe, and that all of this seems rather impractical or unrealistic. That's a fair critique at this point. It's easy to say "create spiritual landmarks," and it's a much more difficult thing to clearly explain how one might go about doing that. The easy answer is that you already know how to remember significant events and that there is no right or wrong way to remind yourself who you are and what is important to you, as long as you are willing to be honest with yourself. It requires a bit of time away from the distractions of all the other noise -- perhaps a stillness and quiet that can be intimidating if it's unfamiliar. No one can really tell you who you are or what matters to you. I can say with some confidence that the truth about you is not based on any fears you may have, but rather on a deeper, calmer, quieter place within you. The moments when you are aware of the deep truth, beauty, and creativity within you or within other people -- these are the moments worth commemorating. These are the moments that will help you get back to the core of who you are and what matters most in life.
Not everything in Joshua's tale needs to be taken as cautionary, however. His leadership demonstrates three important practices that could be of benefit to anyone on a spiritual journey. Joshua has the Israelites create landmarks to commemorate every major event in their communal experience, both the successes and the disappointments. He also adapts to issues within the community by changing his expectations, and he makes a significant event out of reminding the community of their identity. All of these practices are demonstrated in chapters 7 and 8, even in the midst of overseeing a violent invasion.
In the story that is told here, Joshua had commanded his men not to take for themselves any of the spoils of war from Jericho, but not everyone listened. This disobedience resulted in the Israelite soldiers losing a battle against the defending forces of Ai. Joshua does two noteworthy things in this difficult situation. First, he punishes the person who went against his orders, as one would expect from a strong military leader. But the second remarkable thing is that he changes his expectations of the soldiers, commanding that they are free to carry off the livestock and plunder from the next city they attack. After they are victorious, Joshua arranges for the Israelite community to be reminded of their spiritual and cultural identities in a ceremony that recounted the entirety of the law to which they were committed as a people.
At this ceremony, they left relics of the occasion, just as they had done at every significant event since Joshua's leadership began. They left piles of rocks when a significant part of their journey was complete, when a city was successfully destroyed, when a member of their community was punished, every time something memorable happened in the life of the Israelite community. The memorializing of the events presumably made it more difficult to forget them, thus strengthening cultural memory and identity.
Whether or not Joshua was a real person, these are practices that we can adopt in our own lives. We may not be invading cities or sentencing people who disobey us to death by stoning, but we are all on our own journeys. We all struggle from time to time with our identities, especially when there are people around us (or an entire society) with conflicting impressions of who we should be. Standing with conviction about who you are and what you stand for isn't always easy, and it can be helpful to have a few practices in place to reinforce our personal responsibility and integrity.
Just like the Israelites, we occasionally need reminders about who we are. We get into patterns of behavior that can almost become automatic if we let them. Sometimes we are susceptible to what other people expect from us, to the point that we may lose our own integrity in the process of living by someone else's expectations. Taking time to remind ourselves what we believe and what we want our lives to be about can be a powerful reinforcement in our lives, whether it's something we choose to do monthly, weekly, or even daily during times of exceptional duress. Of course, this requires knowing what we believe and understanding who we want to be in the world, which is really what the journey is about anyway.
Based on our beliefs, we set goals for ourselves. Sometimes these goals are very intentional and sometimes we are barely conscious of where we are headed. The more time we spend examining our beliefs and our identities, the more opportunity we have to be aware of what we're expecting of ourselves. When we encounter challenges, whether those challenges are because of our own capability at the time or because other people aren't doing what we expect or want, it's important not to let those challenges overwhelm us. The challenges are there to help us hone our beliefs and expectations, not to punish or restrict us. It may be that we are demanding some unreasonable things from ourselves (or other people), or that our beliefs about ourselves or the world around us are somehow being influenced by our fears. Whatever the case, the challenges we encounter give us an opportunity to assess what we're making important in our lives, whether our expectations are reasonable, and whether there are some changes we can make to better enable us to have lives built on what matters most to us.
Challenges along the journey are rarely outright roadblocks. We are capable of adapting to the challenges, refining our sense of who we are, and aligning ourselves more clearly with the truth, beauty, and creativity within us. Whether we overcome our challenges with ease or we struggle against them, whether we see the immediate results as successes or disappointments, the challenges are worth commemorating. We may not pile stones around our houses and workplaces, but across the landscape of our lives, we can create markers in our minds for significant events and how those events helped to define who we are and what we believe. These significant events may be the kinds of things that are similar in everyone's life -- marriages, births, deaths, the plundering of cities -- or they may be things that are significant because of what you learned about yourself. They landmarks remind us of the pitfalls we have faced and the bridges we have built, and our awareness of them can help prevent fighting the same battles over and over again in our lives.
What we believe may change over time -- if we are growing as human beings, it's likely that our beliefs will grow too -- but what we believe and how those beliefs inform our behavior is always within our control. We are responsible for the lives we create and the impact we have on other people and the world. Establishing spiritual landmarks and taking time to remind ourselves who we are helps us be more aware of that personal responsibility, and our willingness to be flexible as we face challenges with integrity keeps us growing in satisfying ways.
It may be that you are unsure what you believe, and that all of this seems rather impractical or unrealistic. That's a fair critique at this point. It's easy to say "create spiritual landmarks," and it's a much more difficult thing to clearly explain how one might go about doing that. The easy answer is that you already know how to remember significant events and that there is no right or wrong way to remind yourself who you are and what is important to you, as long as you are willing to be honest with yourself. It requires a bit of time away from the distractions of all the other noise -- perhaps a stillness and quiet that can be intimidating if it's unfamiliar. No one can really tell you who you are or what matters to you. I can say with some confidence that the truth about you is not based on any fears you may have, but rather on a deeper, calmer, quieter place within you. The moments when you are aware of the deep truth, beauty, and creativity within you or within other people -- these are the moments worth commemorating. These are the moments that will help you get back to the core of who you are and what matters most in life.
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