Asking the Right Questions -- Community

Another question that religion often seems to answer has to do with people's search for community -- a sense of belonging. Religion answers the questions, "Where can I find community? Where can I feel like I belong?" with caveats. You can find community here, if you believe the things we tell you to believe, or at least claim to. Religions are largely based on a set of beliefs, beliefs that often run counter to reality, and in order to be part of the community, you have to at least pretend to buy into those beliefs. Some people are so desperate for a sense of belonging that it seems like a pretty good deal.

A person looking for a sense of belonging enters into religious community and is told what to hope for in an afterlife, how to find a sense of purpose in service to an imaginary supernatural, and what to believe about the way the world works. It's very convenient to have someone tell you what to think, because then you don't have to go through the trouble of thinking for yourself. Some people appreciate that. So, we wind up with entire communities of people who have stopped thinking for themselves, willingly participating in a joint delusion that their emperor is wearing the latest high couture, because it's easier than wrestling with the messiness of reality.

The relationships people develop in these kinds of religious communities often wind up falling short of authentic connection, because the delusions offer easy responses to any concern that might be raised. People say, "I'll pray for you," because it's easier than actually diving into the muck of someone's pain. People say, "Trust God and it will all work out," because they have given up the capacity for taking personal responsibility in their lives. People say, "Those evil people who don't believe the same things we believe are going to hell," because it's easier to write off people who don't conform than it is to engage with people and learn from different perspectives.

And it's no wonder that people opt for easy, quick-fix answers. If they started trying to figure out the nuances of their religion's beliefs, they'd only confuse themselves. Out of one side of their mouths, religious leaders speak about infinite love, and out of the other side of their mouths, they speak with contempt for other human beings. It's more about power and influence than it is about helping people take personal responsibility for their lives, but because people have what seems like a reasonable substitute for community, they don't question it.

Of course, there are some religious leaders who say exactly what I'm saying here. They see possibilities for their tradition to take a different path that focuses on authentic connection and personal empowerment. Yet, they want to hang on to the same delusional foundations in order to create something different. They still want their communities to believe that prayer changes reality, and that a supernatural can take care of things that people are too weak to handle for themselves. It's hard to build a community of personally responsible human beings when you reinforce the belief that there is ultimately a supernatural who is in control.

Even in liberal religious communities, gaining a sense of belonging often requires conformity. It may not even be about belief in a supernatural or the power of prayer. Some religious groups require that their participants be passionate about fighting back against oppressors -- their version of "evil" people. Some religious groups expect people to use non-judgmental, politically correct language. In order to fit in and find community, people have to meet certain belief standards. While the motives may be noble, the end result is often just another set of trite phrases and pat answers.

Whether a religious community leans toward fundamentalism or liberalism, there is a tendency for individuals to stop thinking for themselves and go along with the herd. Those that don't, leave. This isn't just a feature of religious groups, of course. Groups of human beings tend toward homogeneity and mindless conformity. Religious communities amplify the issue by insisting that they know things that they don't actually know -- and often just plain aren't true. A homogeneous, mindless herd of people who believe that an all-powerful supernatural is on their side and is directing their actions can do a lot of damage.

At the same time, communities need clear identities. It's appropriate for a group to make a claim like, "We are people who first and foremost believe in shaming oppressors and fighting back against oppressive systems." Or even, "We are people who believe that prayer is an effective means of changing reality." If you share that belief in common, then you might find a sense of belonging with like-minded folks. Some groups even claim to be welcoming to everyone, but what this claim of hospitality actually means is, "We welcome anyone to come and be like us, and believe what we believe, and do things the way we do things."

Unlike the question of hope in an afterlife (which is better focused on hope in what we can do in this life), and unlike the question of purpose (which is better framed as one's decision rather than a destiny prescribed by a supernatural), the question of community and belonging is an appropriate question for people to ask. "Where can I find a genuine sense of belonging?" and "Where can I find authentic community?" are important searches that everyone engages in. Too often, though, religious communities require people to take the words genuine and authentic out of those questions, and people settle for a less than authentic community because they fear that there isn't anything else for them. People give up their own sense of personal responsibility, their own sense of self, in order to have a sense of community, because there are plenty of places that say, "You're welcome here, if you believe what we tell you to believe. You can belong here, as long as you do things the way we do things."

This question of community is worth a great deal more exploration, but for now it can suffice to say that the right framing of these questions doesn't leave out the most important words: Where can I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where can I find authentic community? We need connection with other human beings that empower us to live into a best possible version of ourselves, not restrict us to living into a best possible version that someone else imagined for us after reading an ancient text through a particularly warped lens. We need community that affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person and allows for people to deepen their own connection to their deepest, most noble selves. Our sense of belonging is most meaningful when we are able to bring our whole selves into that community and find resources to grow and develop as individuals.

As we'll see moving forward, meaningful community includes five important characteristics: (1) mutual self-disclosure, (2) mutually expressed active and unconditional love, (3) mutual hospitality -- or willingness to be of service and to receive from others, (4) mutual honesty in communication, and (5) sincere affirmation. Healthy communities also have the ability to set clear boundaries and to define a central shared purpose or vision, but boundaries and purposes that create wholeness aren't based on delusions. Meaningful community does not require belief in anything beyond humanity. Meaningful community does not need to involve a supernatural. Meaningful community is possible if a group of people chooses to be intentional about putting these ideals into practice.

Before we look more deeply at how we might locate our hope realistically, take personal responsibility for our sense of purpose, and find a sense of belonging and create meaningful community without buying into mass delusions, there is one more basic question that religious pretends to answer. We'll take a brief look at the problem of evil next. In the meantime, don't leave out the most important words in your questions. Finding meaningful answers requires asking the right questions:

How do I live in such a way that I'll be satisfied with how I influence the world around me?
What am I passionate about? What is my personal life dream that creates greater wholeness in the world?
Where do I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where do I find authentic community? 

John 7:1-31 Rules and Restrictions vs. an Internal Guidance System

The first half of John 7 is a convoluted bit of storytelling. Jesus tells his brothers that he's not going to travel with them to celebrate the Festival of Booths because his "time has not yet come," but then he sneaks off after them and makes public appearances anyway. People in the crowd have mixed opinions of him. Some people think he's pretty amazing. When Jesus asks why people are looking for an opportunity to kill him, others in the crowd say, "You must be crazy! Who's trying to kill you?" Then, just a few lines later, people are asking, "Isn't that the man the officials are trying to kill?" It's hard to tell who couldn't get their story straight, the authors of John or the people of Jerusalem.

The Festival of Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles, is also called Sukkot. It is a seven-day Jewish Thanksgiving, a time to express gratitude for the fall harvest. Sukkot is one of three annual festivals for which first-century Jews would make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so it would be a good time to be seen by a bunch of people, and it would also be a good time to get lost in a crowd. In the middle of the Sukkot, there was a water ceremony, which may inform the second half of John 7.

There are a couple of interesting things to lift out of this piece of the story. First, according to the story, Jesus' brothers had their doubts about Jesus. They had a hard time seeing the same problems and possibilities that he saw. Their suggestion to make a public appearance at Sukkot is interpreted as a bit of goading (which Jesus eventually gives in to, but he apparently doesn't want his brothers to get credit for the idea).

Like Jesus' brothers, when we hear or read something that challenges our way of seeing the world, we often reject it or refute it in our minds without really considering the possibility. As a consequence of my personal path, I wind up reading and listening to a lot of assertions that run counter to my own beliefs and mental models. Some of that is repetitive, and once I've wrestled with a particular issue and arrived at a satisfying conclusion, I don't have to wrestle with it anew every time I encounter that same issue. The temptation, though, is to accept or reject something without thinking about it. This is a more emotional reaction that has more to do with anxiety than conviction.

Other people have reactions to some of my assertions, too. And, like Jesus' brothers, one of the most common challenges we fire at someone with whom we disagree is, "Prove it!" Of course, we also find problems with evidence that proves something we don't want to believe. We can be slippery and tricky when we want to be.

Even though he eventually sneaks off and does what his brothers suggest, he says something interesting in response to their challenge for him to prove himself. "My time has not yet come, but your time is always here." The gospel writer uses the idea that Jesus' time had not yet come as a literary device, kind of like fate or destiny. The twist is that second part -- your time is always here. People were not ready to hear and accept a truth that challenges their way of seeing the world and required more personal responsibility of them. In a sense, Jesus was pointing at people and telling them to change, and that rarely goes over well. Jesus' brothers had nothing to lose by living responsible and intentional lives, though. Just like us. They could have set an example of principled action in their own lives any time without risking much. The time for that is always here. It is always our time.

After lying to his brothers and sneaking off to the festival, Jesus is recognized as a confident teacher of spiritual ideas, but people have varied reactions to his ideas. Some people are impressed with his wisdom. Others want to know his credentials. Some people criticize him based on where he was born and raised. Others don't seem to think that matters. When we don't like what someone has to say, their background and credentials still become easy targets. It takes a lot of work sometimes to challenge concepts and ideas, but attacking the letters (or lack of letters) after someone's name or attacking where a person comes from takes a lot less effort. The Jesus character doesn't respond to these petty attacks, and really, we shouldn't expect anyone else to. Moreover, we aren't obligated to respond to petty attacks either. If someone doesn't like what we have to say, they won't like it more just because we can produce a diploma or pedigree.

Jesus does try to point out the flaw in a specific criticism: Jews saw no problem with performing circumcisions on the Sabbath, but they apparently were criticizing him for doing other spiritual work on the Sabbath. This conflict is also perhaps exaggerated in the New Testament narratives. The Pharisees certainly developed a complex array of rules and strictures as "hedges" to keep people from skirting too close to breaking the law, but these rules were not the actual religious law. They were like putting a device on a vehicle so that it could only go 35 mph, just to make sure that a driver couldn't speed most of the time. Jesus' way is depicted as taking that device away and being personally responsible for driving the speed limit. So, his logical argument about circumcision on the Sabbath is a bit of a straw man; he's making a point about something that is not really a major issue.

The real issue seems to be much more complex. The authors of John are attacking a legalistic spiritual system, not a specific practice. Where we restrict ourselves within a narrowly defined set of acceptable behaviors, we prevent ourselves from personally responsible growth. For instance, when we decide that if we can't say something nice, we shouldn't say anything at all, we never learn how to speak difficult truths gently. When we restrict ourselves to the rules of polite society because of what other people might think of us, we never learn to be the kind of people that we most want to be. And our anxiety about all the rules we try to follow probably winds up bubbling over in ways that we don't like.

People know the difference between right and wrong. We know what causes harm and we know what creates greater well-being, and we are still learning more and getting sharper in that knowledge. We also forget a lot of that when we feel threatened. In this story, Jesus says, "You know where I'm from," which is kind of like saying, You know what I'm saying makes sense, even if you don't like it. Your deepest, most noble self says more or less the same things to you that my deepest, most noble self says to me. Living according to the values of our deepest, most noble selves is sometimes messier than living by a set of contrived external rules, though. We have to be more thoughtful and more intentional in our lives, and that can seem like hard work.

Our ways of thinking can be lazy sometimes. We don't like to put in the effort to consider other possibilities. Yet, if we want to have more fulfilling experiences of life, if we want to live into our authentic selves, if we want to contribute in some way to a better world, we have to grow beyond the easy restrictions of external rules. We have to develop what some might call an "internal guidance system": clear principles to guide us toward greater well-being in our own lives and in the lives of others.

We've gotten so accustomed to making lazy decisions based on external rules that we often don't pay attention to our deepest values. They seem less important or less attainable somehow, so we stick with safe decisions. Our restrictions aren't the same as the ancient Jewish restrictions, but they serve the same purpose. They usually start with words like must, should, have to, or need to. When we think those words or say them out loud, this is a cue for us to stop and think through what we're doing. It's possible that we've set our guiding principles on a back burner in order to take a lazier route.

Don't get me wrong. Lazy thinking is very useful, and our brains have developed fast and efficient decision making processes for a reason. There are some decisions, however, that we need to engage more thoughtfully, through the lens of our guiding principles. At first, we may not trust that we can make wise decisions without our collection of should's and have to's, but like anything else, we can become more confident with practice.

We begin by recognizing when we are being thoughtless. When we are accepting or rejecting ideas without actually considering them. When we are going along with a set of restrictions or rules that actually don't align with who we most want to be in the world. From that point of recognizing, we can engage our guiding principles more intentionally. More work? Yes. More fulfilling life? Absolutely. But I can't prove it to you. If you want proof, you'll have to test it out in your own life.

A Little Experiment: Noticing. Pay attention to the language of your thoughts and words this week. How many times do you say "should" or "have to" or something similar? How accurate are those statements? Do the things you decide from that space of restriction align with your deepest values and guiding principles?

Another Little Experiment: Listening. As you listen to people this week, consider that their perspective might be valid. This doesn't mean that your perspective is invalid. You might just have different ways of seeing the world. Can you learn something from listening without judging or demanding proof?

One More Little Experiment: Sharing. This is similar to some of our earlier little experiments, but once you've listened without judgment to another perspective, try sharing your perspective. The goal is not to convince the other person that you're right and they're wrong or that your way of seeing the world is better than theirs. The point is just to say what is so for you. Whether they accept or reject your perspective doesn't matter. You're just sharing your point of view.

John 4:1-42 Conquering Shame with Truth and Inspiring Others

In John 4, we proceed with what may be a familiar story about Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well. A seemingly editorial feature can be seen in the parenthetical explanations about various details in the story. Some things apparently required more explanation than others, but we can imagine that the original audience would have known that needing to go through Samaria was culturally distasteful. If the Jesus character speaks freely to people who are culturally unclean, or "less than" people, then either this behavior is unique to the Jesus character or it serves as a model for human behavior.

The text itself paints a picture of Jesus as a fairly unique individual. He apparently has some psychic ability, to be able to know specifics about the woman's life that she had not shared, and the authors imply that he does not require physical food but is rather sustained by spiritually-motivated action. In the text, the Jesus character claims a unique identity for himself as the Messiah. If we were to leave things there, however, there would be little value in our lives. If we adopt the perspective that Jesus is used here as an exemplar of human behavior, we must get past the obviously unique characteristics the authors grant him. So, we should not try to emulate psychic powers, and we should not claim a unique position for ourselves in a spiritual hierarchy.

What human behaviors can we see at work in the story, then? To start, there is the blatant issue of prejudice. Samaritans are obviously undesirables, based on the context of the story. There are complex historical reasons for Jewish animosity toward Samaritans. To begin with, Samaritans were not of pure Jewish lineage, but had intermarried with people of various ethnicities, which made them inferior people in the eyes of the Jews. The Samaritans had their own temple and their own religious tradition that had branched away from "proper" Judaism, influenced no doubt by the Samaritan propensity for being conquered by foreign powers. Samaria was synonymous with impurity and sacrilege in the eyes of many ancient Jews.

The Jesus character cares nothing for these prejudices. Human beings are human beings. There is no judgment for the lineage or the religious practices of Samaritans (suggesting that the authors had a more virtuous position as well). Yes, Jesus does make a snide comment about salvation coming from the Jews, but his general demeanor is not judgmental. Instead, the Jesus character looks ahead to a time in which spiritual identity will not be connected to geographic location. Indeed, the book of John was written after the Roman destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and apparently the authors interpreted this upheaval as an opportunity to redefine the center of spiritual identity. One need not go to a particular mountain to find divinity; one need only look within oneself.

There are essentially two things taught in this passage. The first has to do with spiritual identity. Whatever you call divine, divinity is not a physical thing. Personal identity is first and foremost about honesty. Identifying with a particular tradition frivolously is of no real value. To connect your identity thoughtlessly to a particular place or even a particular culture is to give away some of your personal responsibility. Taking appropriate responsibility in your life requires telling the truth about who you are. You cannot bring your authentic self forward if you are pretending to be someone you aren't.

For the Samaritan woman, there were plenty of untrue things that she could have believed about herself -- things that others most likely had claimed about her. As a Samaritan, she was "impure" and potentially "blasphemous." She also had a string of relationships that had the potential to imbue her with shame. What is wrong with me that I have had five husbands and am now in a relationship with someone else? After things went badly in my first relationship, I'm 'damaged goods.' No one will want me now. I am lucky with whatever I get at this point. In fact, the profound shame with which she lives is implied by her late-morning trip to the well, after all the "respectable" women have already come and gone. There are plenty of lies she could be telling about herself, plenty of things on which she could base her identity that would not reflect her authentic self.

We do very similar things. Sometimes we adopt identities that are handed to us by society, and sometimes we just make things up about ourselves. We feel shame because of the things that have gone differently than we would have liked, and we often blame ourselves for things that were not entirely ours to control. This is not a true reflection of who we are. Shame does not create anything worthwhile; it only keeps us from bringing ourselves forward fully.

The message here is that you know better. You know that there is more to you than a failed relationship, or a whole series of failed relationships. You know that there is more to you than getting fired from a job. You know that there is more to you than what other people say about your ethnicity or religion. You might know what it would be like if you showed up as a best possible version of yourself. It's wise to acknowledge the circumstances of your life honestly, but they don't have to define you. When you are willing to be honest, the truth about you is that you are enough. You are capable of being your authentic self without all the false pieces of identity you've accumulated over the years.

Here is the second thing taught in this passage: If you look around you, you'll see an awful lot of people wrestling with the same things you wrestle with. You'll see a sea of people who are living with shame and anxiety rather than honestly showing up as themselves. It's good to feed yourself -- to develop your own integrity and intentionality. When we enter into other people's lives with the ability to tell the truth about ourselves, we can influence others toward greater well-being. When we are willing to stop allowing shame to govern how we see ourselves, we can influence others to do the same. Not everyone will get it. Not everyone will be willing to tell the truth about themselves, because sometimes it's easier to give up personal responsibility to a false identity. Some people will see your way of being and take notice, though. Some people will recognize that they could be engaging in life differently -- defining themselves by their values and guiding principles rather than the labels other people put on them.

So, spirit and truth. We can look within ourselves to define our deep values and guiding principles, and we can be honest about our authentic selves. We are not restricted to identities derived from shame. And we are influencers. How we show up has an influence on other people's lives. What we do for ourselves cannot be just about us, because human beings are relational by nature. Because of our connection with others, what we create in spirit and truth will have meaning for people beyond just ourselves.

There are three things that are exemplified in Jesus' behavior here that can offer some guidance about how we can be living water -- or manifest a best possible version of ourselves more often. First, he is non-judgmental. He is unwilling to allow shame to be a part of how he sees others, just as he does not allow shame to define himself. Even as he is honest about the Samaritan woman's home life, he does not deem her unworthy as a result. He engages with her as a human being of worth and dignity. It doesn't matter what color people's skin is, what ethnic or cultural background they demonstrate, what religious identity they embrace, or what sexuality they embody. No human being deserves our derision or shame. When we judge other people, we reinforce our own self-judgment. When we are willing to see the inherent worth and dignity in others, it is easier to see our own.

Second, the Jesus of this story is willing to engage. He does not simply look kindly upon the woman and smile. He engages with her about her life and suggests some possibility about her identity. He offers her hope. Likewise, we can express what we see of value in other people, not to force on them a positive false identity to replace a negative one, but to open the door of possibility. We can sincerely express what we appreciate in others. In this story, Jesus does not demand that the woman see things the way he does; he states his perspective and allows her the freedom to define herself.

Third, the Jesus of this story speaks about what is important to him. When he is offered food by the disciples, he seizes on the opportunity to express what he cares about most -- his values and his passions. It is as if he is saying, "This is what feeds my soul." Of course, Jesus is made to suggest that the disciples should care about what he cares about, but this is a characteristic of their relationship. We don't have to insist that other people be passionate about the things that feed our souls. When we are willing to let people know what we value, though, it has the potential to bolster our own commitment, inspire others, and perhaps even find collaborators in building the kind of world that we most want to live in.

We see two layers of possibility in this tale, then. First layer: Use introspection to define your deep values and guiding principles, and let these things define the truth about your identity. Be aware of the multitude of people around you, wrestling with the same issues of shame that you wrestle with and just as in need of hope as you. Second layer: All of those human beings have inherent worth and dignity. It doesn't matter what their lives or circumstances have been like. If you are willing to engage, you can grow in connection and live into your authentic self more easily. When you engage, speak about the things that matter most to you -- your values and guiding principles, your vision for yourself, your creative purpose and personal life dream. This is how we build a better world.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

A Little Experiment: Be aware of your shame. Notice the next time you find yourself thinking or saying something prejudiced about a person based on skin color, ethnicity, sexuality, or religion. Consider, to what fear is that prejudice connected? What judgment about yourself is connected to your judgment of that person? What would it take for you to see the inherent worth and dignity of that person?

Another Little Experiment: Be more aware of your shame. Notice the next time you limit yourself or pass judgment on yourself. On what is this self-critique based? Are you being honest? How does your personal shame prevent you from living out your deepest values (or how does it prevent you from being a best possible version of yourself)? Are you OK with that?

One More Little Experiment: Be living water. What feeds your soul? What is it that nourishes you emotionally or psychologically? How does this nourishment reflect your guiding principles? Tell someone in your life. Ask them what nourishes them.

Mark 15: Sifting Through the Crucifixion Narrative

Continuing for another couple of weeks with the Passion story as it is related in the gospel of Mark, we read of the crucifixion event and some connections with the Hebrew Scriptures made by the early church. It  bears repeating that there is very little evidence of a historical Jesus, but we wouldn't necessarily expect there to be. There is very little evidence from the first century of any single person who wasn't a powerful political or military figure, or a historian who wrote about important political and military figures. The Christian cult is mentioned in a couple of historical documents, but in these reports historians repeat what the early church believed about Jesus, rather than verify their story.

Even if there were more evidence of a historical Jesus, this would not necessarily validate any particular story about him. That a person names Nunzio exists is one kind of assertion; to say that Nunzio is manager of an Italian restaurant is another kind of assertion; and to say that Nunzio never buys wine for his restaurant because he can just turn water into alcohol whenever he wishes is yet another kind of assertion. To prove that Nunzio is a real person does not thereby lead to the conclusion that Nunzio can turn water into wine. Even to prove that Nunzio seemed to turn water into wine on one occasion does not necessarily conclude that he could do it again, or that he could perform any other amazing feat. With regard to Jesus, there is simply no way to prove the claims of the gospel narratives.

This is not a glaring indictment for most believers. Many people would say that accepting the gospel narratives requires faith, and they believe that their lives are improved by that faith. I have suggested that believing in a historical Jesus or that such a person performed miracles is rather shallow when one considers the minimal impact such belief could have in an individual's life. To believe in unicorns or dragons matters not at all (save that one may be a target for those who would take advantage of such gullibility), until one decides to quit one's job, leave one's family, and go hunting for unicorns or dragons. Then, it matters a great deal. Belief in what Jesus symbolizes -- belief to the extent that the values represented by the Jesus archetype permeate one's life -- would seem to be more vital than belief that Jesus actually existed.

Thus, when reading the Passion story in any of the gospels, one might do well to push past the question of whether something really happened and look to the symbolism as one would look at any other mythological tale. What is the wisdom being communicated? Where does one find oneself in the story? If the story is about Hercules slaying a hydra, does one identify most with the heroic role, with the role of the nephew Iolaus, with the townsfolk who were victims of the danger until someone heroic came along, or with the naysayers after the event who minimized the accomplishment? Can one learn something from every character in the story about oneself, or about what a best possible version of oneself might look like? This would seem to be a more valuable approach than blind belief that someone accomplished something unique a long time ago, and that the intangible benefits are available to anyone who just believes the story.

For the early church, it was important to set Jesus up as a unique messianic figure connected to Hebrew Scripture. This was possibly an unfortunate misinterpretation of the intentions of the prophets, particularly Isaiah, who cast vision for every individual to live into the ideal of compassionate justice. When the words of the ancient scriptures are made to be about a single person, it rather lets everyone else off the hook for living into that ideal. Several of the quotes and details of the crucifixion story are thus attributable to attempts on the part of the early church to affirm that Jesus was a unique fulfillment of Hebrew prophecy. The mythologizing of the story can be seen in the wine mixed with myrrh which Jesus refuses, the fall of darkness over the land, the casting of lots (gambling -- rolling dice) for his clothing, the presence of criminals alongside him (although this would certainly not be unusual, since criminals were crucified in droves in the Roman empire), and the words that Jesus speaks, which are a reference to a psalm of lament.

An interesting feature of the story is the tearing of the temple curtain from top to bottom. Many have interpreted this as a symbol that the separation between God and man was no more -- that people did not have to go through priests and sacrificial rituals to connect with the divine. Others have suggested that this is a symbol that God no longer lives in houses made by human hands, which would have been a significant concept in the first century. In any case, it was certainly an indictment against the religious power structures of the time, and it was a call to a change of perspective.

The burial scene is intended to provide enough details to make the resurrection event convincing, even though that event is a bit odd as it is told in the earliest version of the gospel of Mark. The verification that Jesus is dead, the traditional appropriate Jewish treatment of the body, and the heavy stone rolled across the tomb entrance are to make resurrection reports credible and impressive. Normally, a poor man crucified as a criminal would have been tossed in a mass grave, and whether he was still there or whether he had gotten up and walked off somewhere would be very difficult to determine. Like the other seemingly historical aspects of the story, hanging one's faith on whether things happened exactly as a gospel narrative suggests is a rather shallow reading. The real value is in determining the application in one's own life, and there are more worthwhile applications that mere belief in an event.

When I say that it is unfortunate that the early church appropriated Hebrew scripture to assert that Jesus was a unique messianic figure, I mean that it is very difficult to reclaim some of the ideas of those writings if one believes that they applied specifically to one particular person. Lament psalms were meant to be available to a community and to any individual who experienced the kind of suffering and pain reflected in the poem/song. Connecting a lament psalm to Jesus takes it somewhat off the market for personal expression, because, from the perspective of believers, no one suffered or felt pain like Jesus.The lament becomes about Jesus' suffering instead of our own, and our own suffering is made insignificant by comparison.

Except that our own suffering isn't insignificant. Comparing it to someone who has suffered more might seem like our preoccupation with our own pain isn't legitimate, but that doesn't keep us from feeling the pain. It just gives us reason to feel guilty or ashamed about feeling our pain. One big lesson that we could take from understanding how the gospel writers and the early church made use of well-known Hebrew scriptures is to reclaim our experience. The original intent behind much of the prophetic writing in the Old Testament was for individuals and communities to be more intentional in their behavior and to have more integrity to their values. These ideas are not unique to the Old Testament. This has been a challenge in many cultures from many different perspectives throughout human history. Seen as such, the Hebrew scriptures become one resource among many resources to influence individuals toward living in a way that contributes to holistic well-being in their own lives and in the lives of their communities and neighborhoods. We need to experience our own suffering without being ashamed of feeling pain, and we need to recognize our own role in influencing our realities.

There are two symbolic results of the crucifixion that bear acknowledgment -- truths that the early church recognized and expressed as well as it could in the culture of the first century. First, there is that image of the curtain being torn in two. There is no separation between the divine and humanity. Since whatever we call divine is intrinsic to humanity, we can connect with those qualities within ourselves whenever we wish. We might become more skillful at introspection, but we are never denied access to our deepest, most noble self and we do not have to go through any particular ritual actions to connect with ourselves. God is a word people use to refer to a deep part of themselves, but we do not have to follow any linguistic protocol to connect with that part of ourselves that we could characterize as divinity.

Second, there is the idea of forgiveness. In the context of a covenant relationship between a supernatural and humanity, human beings had to somehow account for the things they did that were out of alignment with what their supernatural wanted. This is what the Jewish sacrificial system was largely about: staying in alignment with the values of their supernatural. It became something of an obsession in Jewish society. Keeping oneself pure, remaining personally in step with religious law, became more important than risky acts of justice or compassion. People were perhaps apt to disconnect from real, deep community because they didn't want to be scrutinized. Even today, a lot of people are more concerned about what they have done wrong, what other people have done wrong, what people might be thinking about doing wrong, or what wrong motives they may have had for doing something that seems quite good on the outside. It is also much easier to stay in a judgmental frame of mind when you're focused on how people are failing.

The early Christian church solved this issue, but most of them didn't seem to realize it. By inventing a dying and rising messiah figure who eliminated the need for ritual animal sacrifice, the early church essentially said, "We don't have to worry about sin anymore." This is not to imply licentiousness (although some people in the early church apparently did take it that way), but rather to say that the best thing to do when you fall short of your ideal is to get up -- hopefully with the help and embrace of a loving community of people -- and take another run at it. The idea of sinfulness is laced with shame, and it winds up not being incredibly helpful. If we were to accept that we have nothing to fear from getting something wrong, we might get past the self-obsession with where we might spend an imaginary afterlife and focus on things that matter right now -- like how we are in our relationships with the people we encounter every day.

Even for people who want to believe in the historical validity of the Passion story, then, there are these two big things that can transform the way we do life. We are not separated from whatever it is we call divine, and we are capable of making mistakes and moving on. There are often consequences when we fall out of alignment with our deep guiding principles, but those consequences don't have to come with shame or insurmountable guilt. We are human beings. We are not perfect. We will disappoint one another because we will have expectations of one another that go unmet. That's life. Our real work is not to try not to do anything wrong and to do whatever we can to make up for all of the mistakes we make. Our real work is to bring our capability into full engagement in the communities where we live.

This doesn't mean permissiveness with regard to harmful behavior. It means focusing on what will create greater well-being rather than what someone has done wrong. We never just do harm to one person; our harmful acts always affect ourselves and a whole network of people -- often even people that we will never meet. The idea behind grace is not that we shrug our shoulders and say, "Ah, well, I'll do better next time," but instead to direct our focus away from our own "eternal destinies" and toward how we can positively influence the world around us right now, in this moment. This is how we move beyond our fears of scarcity, fears of embarrassment, fears of insignificance, and fears of powerlessness and move into transformational relationships with the people around us. Whether the Passion story sources that kind of focus for you or whether you draw inspiration from somewhere else, we are capable of building incredible powerful connections with other people when we are willing to set shame aside and bring our authentic selves forward.

Mark 13: Days of Future, Past

Mark 13 contains several biblical passages that have fueled speculation about the "end times" throughout Christian history. Part of this speculation arises from assumptions about when the gospels were composed, and part of this speculation arises from a human desire to feel special. If you believe that you are among a select group of people who know an incredible secret, that can be very psychologically persuasive. Even for people like me who believe that there is no supernatural, it helps to have reminders that all human perception is limited -- it helps to know what would convince you to believe something different. If you don't know what would convince you to revise your beliefs, then your beliefs are more likely to be incongruous with reality. That is what happens to some people who believe that Mark 13 is describing something about their circumstances rather than the circumstances of people in the first century.

The Jewish people during the days of Roman occupation didn't like the Roman Empire very much. They staged rebellions every so often, and these rebellions were led by "messiahs" -- men who people thought would fulfill a prophetic role and establish a Jewish kingdom that surpassed all other kingdoms. Jesus was just one of a number of messiahs running around in the first century, but if the portrayal of Jesus in the gospels is anywhere close to an accurate depiction of an actual human being, he was not the typical militaristic messiah that people were becoming accustomed to seeing. Most messiahs collected a militia and struck out against Roman authorities. Eventually, as one might imagine, Rome became rather weary of this, and under the military leadership of Titus (who would become emperor), the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE. Literally, the stones of the temple were pushed down a steep hillside so that they could not be easily used to reconstruct the place.

People were scattered, some forcefully relocated and some fleeing to the hills. The historian Josephus reported that 97,000 Jews were captured or enslaved. Prior to the Roman attack, Caius Caesar had intended to have a statue of himself erected in the temple in Jerusalem (this was perhaps the desecrating sacrilege -- a term that refers back to the book of Daniel), but historical records suggest that he died before it could be installed. Another Roman emperor may have followed suit, or there may have been some other Roman religious paraphernalia installed at the temple. It is clear that Roman authorities pilfered the temple treasury, and that some of the Jewish sects known collectively as Zealots retaliated against what they saw as abuses of Roman rule. This chaotic environment was the norm of first century Jerusalem, but particularly during the period between 50 and 70 CE.

Logically speaking, the gospel of Mark, with its reference in chapter 13 to the destruction of the temple, must have been written after 70 CE. At least the version that we now have (and there are no extant complete copies of Mark that lack this "little apocalypse" section) must have been completed after the destruction of the temple. Some evidence (internal monetary and administrative terminology) suggests that Mark was written in or near Rome, which would make a great deal of sense in the aftermath of the siege of Jerusalem. The book also appears to be written to an audience of people already converted to Christianity, since is assumes familiarity with the Old Testament and includes themes of mature discipleship and comfort. If one insists that this biography was written in the midst of persecution, then this could push the date of composition to the end of Domitian's reign (89-96 CE), but its use by the authors of Matthew and Luke would limit the latest possible date for the document's completion to about 92 CE.

With that in mind, then, Mark 13 offers a contextualization of the destruction of the temple within the framework of Christian identity. Thus, all of the words about upheaval, persecution, fleeing to the hills, and false prophets or messiahs are about first century realities. You may have noticed the words, "this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place" (Mk 13:30), and you may have noticed that included in "all these things" that was supposed to happen before that generation passed away was that the Son of Man would visibly descend from the heavens, send forth angels, and collect those who were chosen for salvation from across the planet. This, as you may be aware, did not happen.

Attempts to reconcile this failure of prophecy with a belief that the Bible is absolutely true has caused a lot of people a lot of problems. Some believers interpret a different definition of "generation" and are still expecting a major supernatural event. Some believers want to include themselves as part of those who suffer persecution, assuming that public admonition or even ridicule is equivalent to being beaten in synagogues and tried before political authorities. More often than not, in developed nations, some Christians proclaim messages of hatred and judgment or try to deny people equal treatment under the law, and then wear the subsequent "persecution" as a badge of honor. Mark 13 is not talking about so misrepresenting the Christian message that you suffer adverse consequences in your society.

What can we derive from this collection of passages intended for first century people in a situation we will never experience? Consistently throughout the last two thousand years, people have predicted the end of the world, some of them Christian, and some of them thinking that they were following the advice of Mark 13, attending to the secret signs around them. No predictions about the end of the world have come to pass. Perhaps people are profoundly unskilled at interpreting signs, or perhaps people cannot actually make risky predictions about the future with any sort of accuracy. It even says right there in Mark 13:32-33 that nobody knows when this supernatural event will happen. The value in this chapter is not about how to predict things to come.

Rather, the value in this passage is recognizing that people need hope, especially in extremely dire circumstances. One reason that religion thrives is because it offers people hope. Sometimes they still take that hope and infuse it with anxiety, which is understandable given the level of anxiety in our world. Let's assume for a moment that there will not be a massive supernatural event in which all of the elect are gathered from across the world by the Son of Man. Let's assume for a moment that human fear is the biggest threat to our well-being -- our own fear and the fear of people around us. Fear is, after all, the underlying motivator of all of the first century upheaval as well as the upheaval we continue to see in the world. How do we respond to our circumstances if we have no firm grasp of the future? How do we respond to fear if we cannot trust a supernatural to eventually rescue us?

Sometimes I feel like I'm repeating myself, but this just seems like the best place to start, and I don't hear a lot of other people saying it. We have to recognize who we are, at a deeper level than our fears, at a deeper level than our daily struggles to make it through traffic and get a certain number of tasks done and pay our bills on time. We are human beings of inherent value who need connection with other human beings. And other people are human beings of inherent value who need connection with us. We are, at our core, loving beings -- even though our fear gets in the way. What we long for is the same thing that everyone else longs for: wholeness and well-being in every facet of our lives. We want to be able to express ourselves as individuals, and we want meaningful relationships with other people. We want our lives to have purpose, and we want hope that what we do will make a difference.

The remarkable thing is that we can create these things in our lives and in the lives of others. We can't know the future, but we can know ourselves. We can express ourselves authentically, and we can connect with other people. We can create meaning by reaching beyond our fears and recognizing what matters most in our lives -- who we most want to be in the world. We can help others create meaning in their lives, too. We create hope for ourselves and other people every time we recognize how little actions make a big difference in someone's life. Every time we recognize commonality or offer a simple smile to a stranger, we bring forward a little bit more the best possible versions of ourselves. With a little intentionality, we might be able to bring our deepest most noble selves forward even more. Whatever future that creates, we'll be more deeply satisfied with the journey.

The "G" Word

I've wrestled with using the word "God" for some time now. I know that there are some people who invent their own definitions in order to keep using the word without necessarily meaning what other people mean by the word.

"God is the space between people."
"God is a person's ultimate concern."
"God is the life force that flows through all things."

This is all well and good, except that I know when I use the word "God" without going into detail to define it, other people are going to conjure up whatever their own image of God is, and most likely they're going to have an image of God that is somehow connected to the Judeo-Islamo-Christian God. Even if they have a different image of God, it's not likely to be identical to my image of God. I keep using capital-G "God" at this point because that term has come to be synonymous with a singular higher power, most often portrayed as intelligent, willful, and benevolent, with a vengeful streak toward people who hold different opinions or lifestyles than the person doing the portraying. Given that I can't control what a listener does with the word, I generally choose not to use the word "God" (unless I'm asking a question about someone's specific claims about their image of a deity).

That doesn't mean I don't have any ideas about God. Aside from acknowledging that no actual gods exist in objective reality -- that indeed there is no credible evidence to support claims of supernaturalism -- I still have some ideas about God. Those ideas extend to any god, goddess, ancestral spirit, fairies, and so on. If I were to use the word "God," I know what I would mean by it. Maybe it's better to get over what other people will do with the word in their interpretation.

God is a word people use to describe a deep part of ourselves. Sometimes, it's easier to imagine that inner part of our being as something outside of us. It's easier to imagine talking to something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being comforted by something external to ourselves; it's easier to imagine being loved by something external to ourselves. Some people get so accustomed to imagining this deep part of themselves as something external to themselves that they forget that God is the inner part of their being. They start to believe that what they imagine about God being external to them should be what everyone imagines about God. It's difficult for them to see that, since God is just a word people use to describe a deep part of themselves, everyone is going to have a different image of God.

People have concocted a lot of gods, as it turns out. None of those gods are real, but they are the ideas that were evoked from the inner lives of lots of different people. People feel angry sometimes, so they might imagine a god that is angry about the same things. People are awed by nature, so they might imagine that nature has gods too, that nature has a self. People imagine gods that act and feel the way those people act and feel, and sometimes people imagine gods that act and feel in ways that those people wish they could act and feel. From within different people, many different ideas of gods have emerged. None of those external ideas of gods actually do or feel anything, but they reflect what people do and feel within the innermost parts of their being.

Sometimes imagining that God is something external can be used as a buffer. When people say that God blessed them with certain abilities, they can speak boldly about themselves without seeming egotistical. When someone says that God punished a group of people with a hurricane, that person is actually expressing personal hatred or fear about a group of people and using an external idea of God as a deflector. When people pray that a person will recover from an injury or illness, they are actually expressing their own desire for the person's recovery... which is kind of odd, when you think about it. Why not just say what one wants or feels?

I believe people don't say what they honestly want or feel because they either fear how other people will respond or they fear that they are somehow not enough in their own lives. Using the idea that God is something outside of them allows people to talk about things they would be otherwise afraid to talk about. This doesn't make God real as something outside of them. It just offers people the illusion that they are not actually talking about themselves. It provides a persona on which people can project what they want and what they feel, and this feels safer than vulnerable authenticity.

The ideas people create about gods have inspired lots of stories, and many of these stories hold incredible bits of wisdom. Unfortunately, sometimes people forget to look for the wisdom within the stories and believe that the stories are intended to represent surface-level reality. Stories become "histories" rather than legends, and histories are about recounting factual data. Stories about gods aren't about factual data; they're about the inner development of people -- about growth within a person and between people. When we recognize that God or god (or goddess) is a word we use for something deep within ourselves, then it becomes easier to look at stories about God or gods (or goddesses) as lessons about who we are rather than vessels of factual data. Stories about gods are stories about us; when we make them more than that, they become less useful.

We don't insist that other people have the same innermost being as us. We shouldn't insist that people have the same God as us. Neither is possible. Whatever God you believe in is something you have imagined. If you don't believe me, ask 10 of your adult friends to describe God (or better, to draw a picture of God) using their own words and not quoting any sacred text. How many of your friends describe God exactly as you do? This isn't a matter of blind men describing an elephant. People have different descriptions of God because people have different selves. This is a problem for some, because they expect their God to do something that isn't possible -- something that they are not capable of doing.

Our innermost beings are not capable of producing miracles in the world around us. Our innermost beings are not capable of changing other people. When we forget that God is a word we use for something deep within us -- an intrinsic part of ourselves -- we develop untenable expectations. God is a way for us to forgive ourselves for doing something that goes against our guiding principles. God is a way for us to guide ourselves toward better decisions, greater integrity, or more authentic love for others. God is a way for us to comfort ourselves in the face of loss. Having a word for that deep part of ourselves is useful. Until we make that word mean something more.

When I hear anyone talk about deity or fairies or ancestral spirits or anything of the like, I understand that they are telling me something about themselves. Sometimes translation is difficult when people become more academic in their communication, but I know that these are just ways that say things about themselves that they would otherwise find difficult to communicate. No one can ever tell me anything about God that I don't already know. No one can ever tell you anything about God that you don't already know. I can't worship anyone else's God, and neither can you. I can't know anyone else's God, and neither can you. God is a word we use for something deep inside of us, an intrinsic part of us. We can never know someone deeply enough to truly know their God, but we can appreciate that when people speak of God, they are speaking of themselves. They are speaking of a very deep part of themselves.

I may still avoid the use of the word. It's a messy word because so many people believe that it means something different than what it actually means. I may still strive to speak about what I want and what I feel in a way that is vulnerably authentic and leave God out of the conversation altogether. Should I start using the word "God," though, you'll at least have some idea what I mean. More importantly, I'll have a clear idea what I mean. It helps me listen to people sometimes, except when they insist that their imagination defines objective reality for other people. Maybe this will help you in some way, too. There are probably volumes that could flow from what I've articulated here, but the basic idea that all those volumes would flow from is still fairly simple: God is a word we use to talk about our innermost being.

Isaiah 7-8: Calm Down, Trust Yourself, and Act with Integrity

Recalling the historical narrative of Judah from 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, Ahaz was king of Judah when Israel and Aram joined forces and set out to conquer Jerusalem. Isaiah acted as adviser to Ahaz during this time, offering him reassurance, encouraging him to stand firm, and illustrating his advice with the imminent birth of a son to the young wife of Ahaz. This use of children as images of hope is augmented by Isaiah's two children in this passage as well.

Like the symbolic names of Hosea's children, which proclaimed judgment on an unjust and unfaithful society, Isaiah names his children "A remnant shall return" and "The spoil speeds, the prey hastens." The name of the first son is in reference to Isaiah's confidence that the people of Judah will not be utterly destroyed, and the name of the second son is an indication that Judah's enemies will be utterly destroyed. Although Ahaz names his child Hezekiah, while Ahaz's wife is still pregnant, Isaiah refers to the child by the symbolic name "God is with us," which may indicate that this portion of Isaiah was written after the conflict with Israel and Aram was resolved and after it was clear what kind of leader Hezekiah would be.

Christians have appropriated this name, "Immanu-el," and this word of reassurance by Isaiah to Ahaz, as a reference to Jesus, but this makes little sense. Isaiah is obviously offering some near-future hope for Ahaz, indicating that the immediate enemies of Judah would be no threat at all by the time a child about to be born was eating solid food. As it happens, Hezekiah was a young boy when Israel fell to Assyria, and his leadership as king was a time of hope for Judah, as he ushered in a wave of internal religious and political reforms. As we shall see, Isaiah was an adviser to Hezekiah, too. In a case of the apple falling not far from the tree, both Ahaz and Hezekiah ignored Isaiah's advice; Ahaz voluntarily made Judah subject to Assyrian rule, and Hezekiah made a dangerous alliance with Egypt against Assyria.

There's no real need to go into whether El was really the same deity as Yahweh. There are plenty of other people making hypotheses about that sort of thing, and we can't really know for sure what the author of Isaiah was thinking. Our task here is to discover if there is something of value for us in this report of advice given to a king over 2500 years ago. Believers might claim the promise that their version of God is with them and has their best interest in mind if they only trust and wait (what Ahaz was instructed to do). This is somewhat flawed theology on a couple of levels. First, the words of Isaiah 8 are clearly to a particular individual about a particular situation, and to other people in different situations, different prophetic advice is given. Second, it's easy to overlook in our assertions that our supernatural will hear our prayers that other people may be praying for the exact opposite thing -- or at least something that is incompatible with what we're praying. Third, if the only point of human existence is to trust a supernatural and wait for everything to just be worked out for us, then we have no real purpose and human life is rather meaningless.

If we consider that there is no external deity orchestrating things on our behalf, but that whatever we call divinity is something within us -- something that is a human characteristic that all people have within them -- we can look at Isaiah's words a bit differently. It's true that circumstances do change, and it's true that patience often serves us better than reactivity. Isaiah's words might be taken here to mean that we should not become anxious at every apparent obstacle or threat in our lives, but that we should respond to our circumstances out of a deep connection with our innermost being. We should not work so hard to defend ourselves; we should instead confidently be ourselves. Rather than try to convince other people of our perspective, we might get more traction out of simply living out our deepest, most noble selves.

Permit me a personal story, if you will. I once worked for a company that had a number of anxious people. A systematic reinforcement of poor communication skills combined with a pervasive sense of entitlement and a lack of clear shared vision resulted in what was, for me, a toxic environment. I had some ideas about how to improve things, not only for my own preferences, but for the sake of everyone connected to the company. I also have an unusually high tolerance for change, and at the time, I did not appreciate or respect that few people share my eagerness to change things, even if it is for the better. The more aggressive I was in promoting a different way of doing things, the more aggressive the resistance became on the other side. In some ways, my situation was like that of Ahaz.

Had I been a little more patient, the situation may have turned out differently. Personnel changed, and people who were more interested in purposeful improvement assumed leadership positions. By then, though, I was long gone. Being more patient, however, would not have meant doing nothing. Developing and maintaining a deep connection with oneself is work. Listening compassionately to other people's anxiety can be work, too. Managing one's own anxiety and dismantling one's own fears is work. Being patient with a set of circumstances doesn't at all mean that no work is being done. In all honesty, in my own Ahaz situation, I had not done the work I needed to do within myself to support the kinds of actions I was suggesting.

It's easy to react to what we perceive as threats. We want to fight back, or defend ourselves, or just roll over and make the anxiety go away through passivity. When we feel threatened, it's important to be realistic about that anxiety. Sometimes, there is some action that we can take, and sometimes there isn't as much of a threat as we might think. Even if there is something we can do, though, it's important for us to act with integrity to who we most want to be in the world, rather than acting out of rabid defensiveness or overwhelming anxiety.

Isaiah was really suggesting three things to Ahaz, which I'm interpreting here into a non-religious context.

First, calm down. Whatever it is in your life that allows you to bring your own anxiety under control, be committed to doing that. If you don't know what brings your anxiety under control, be committed to discovering that. Knowing how to become less anxious (and actually doing it) is the most important thing you can do in your life, for your own well-being and for the well-being of everyone around you.

Second, trust yourself. Your deepest, most noble self is trustworthy. There may be lies that you have come to believe about yourself, other people, and reality, and there may be vows that you have made about what you must or must not do or be. Beneath those artificial protections, though, you are capable. You are trustworthy. You are enough. You are creative. You are beautiful. You are insightful. You have inherent worth and dignity. If you don't know and trust this about yourself, commit to discovering this truth about you. Develop a discipline of introspection. Engage in self-discovery activities. Work with a trusted friend or coach to learn how to be more connected to who you really are and what you really want. You cannot be who you most want to be in the world if you don't know who that is. This is important because you are important.

Third, act with integrity. I don't mean here "integrity" in the sense of keeping your word; sometimes promises need to be broken. I mean "integrity" in the sense that we say a bridge or a building has integrity. I mean allowing your words and actions to be congruent with your authentic self. Once you have managed your anxiety and honestly analyzed the threats, and once you have connected with yourself beyond the fears and lies we all carry around and recognized who you most want to be in the world, be that person. Act in accordance with who you are. This goes beyond horoscope-style adjectives; who you are engages the very things that nourish you, your passions, your convictions, your commitments, your dreams. Acting with integrity means creating the world we most want to live in.

That's what Isaiah was suggesting to Ahaz. It takes a bit of work. No wonder Ahaz had a hard time following through. It's possible, though. It's possible for you. Whether there are no apparent threats on your horizon, or whether you feel constantly under fire, you can calm down, trust yourself, and act with integrity to who you most want to be in the world. One big help is having people to journey with, people who embrace the same commitment in their own lives. We are bound to stumble a bit; we are bound to get anxious or act out of line with who we most want to be. When we journey together with others, it seems a lot easier to be graceful with ourselves and get back on track.

Mark 10: Wealth and the Kingdom of Heaven

After the teaching on divorce, the author of Mark records a story about a rich man seeking advice from Jesus about how to "inherit eternal life," or as Jesus rephrases the goal, "enter the kingdom of God." Incidentally, the author of Matthew uses the phrase "kingdom of heaven" synonymously with "kingdom of God" when he copies this story, but the author of Luke kept most of the terminology identical to what is found in Mark. It's a challenging story, although some commentators suggest clever loopholes around the blatant message that wealth presents a challenge to spiritual and ethical integrity.

There are those who think that this message was just about one person's inappropriate greed or attachment to his possessions. This ignores the bit of the tale in which Jesus tells his disciples that anyone with wealth -- any rich person -- will have a difficult time entering the kingdom of heaven. It's clear that this passage is about wealth, not just one man's particular weakness. We'll come back to that.

Some scholars also wish to point out that a specific gate into the city was called the "Eye of the Needle," and that this gate was a particular challenge to camels. It doesn't matter. The author is clearly suggesting that wealthy people will have a very difficult time entering the kingdom of heaven, ultimately using the word "impossible." Contextualizing the metaphors of the passage doesn't make its message any easier.

What exactly is the kingdom of God, though? In Mark, there are three statements about reward. First, Jesus claims that people who sacrifice everything for the sake of the "good news" will receive a hundredfold reward in this temporal life, and this is specified in terms of relationships, property, and the hardships that go along with them. Second, people who sacrifice everything for the sake of the "good news" will have eternal life in the "age to come." Third, there will be a hierarchical relationship in the kingdom of God which will turn the earthly order of power and respect on its head: the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Not only does that not clear things up, but the bit about receiving a hundredfold houses, fields, siblings, mothers, and children simply does not ring true in real life experience of people who have made sacrifices for the "good news." Unless, one wants to specifically define what the "good news" actually is (which I will do in my own way), and follow that with the claim that no one has ever sacrificed enough for the "good news" in order to test this promise that they will receive a hundredfold reward, in which case there would have been no point in making the promise in the first place.

The gospel of Luke is more vague than Mark about the kingdom of God, simply saying that everyone who sacrifices for the kingdom of God will receive "much more" in this temporal life, and "in the age to come eternal life." The author of Matthew has a very specific idea of what that eternal life will be like, though. Jesus will be seated on a "throne of glory," and all the disciples will have thrones of their own, from which they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel. By this count, Judas would need to be included in that enthronement, but we won't worry about that. This is obviously also before Jesus considered extending his mission beyond just the Jews, but we won't worry about that either. The point is that different people have different ideas about what the "kingdom of God" actually means.

I am less inclined to concern myself with claims about living forever or afterlife. There is no way to prove any claims about such things, and there seem to be an awful lot of competing versions of the "age to come" floating around, none with more merit than any other. When I think about the "kingdom of heaven" or the "kingdom of God," the first hitch for me is that bit about kingdom. I don't think of spirituality in monarchical or feudal terms; the metaphor just opens the way for a lot of assumptions that don't make any sense. I get what the gospels writers were going for, but the word kingdom isn't as useful now as it was two thousand years ago. The second hitch for me is the bit about "heaven" or "God," for obvious reasons. From my perspective, why would I sacrifice anything for the sake of the monarchical establishment of an imaginary being? And yet, there's something deeper to that term that I can sink my teeth into.

Often, when the gospel writers have Jesus speak about the kingdom of heaven, what he says is that it is "at hand," it is a present reality and not something that only becomes knowable or enter-able upon physical death. If the kingdom of heaven is at hand, then what evidence do we have of that? Some would point to miracle stories, but this is a dead-end. Most of the miracle stories in the Bible were most likely confabulations to begin with, and even if they weren't, no one is performing any miracles today to demonstrate the remaining present-tense reality of the kingdom of heaven. So, I prefer to look at the example set by Jesus in the gospel narratives (and some other people, come to think of it), in the way that people are treated in those stories. The Jesus of the gospels treats people as if they have value, regardless of their station in life or their material possessions. He speaks with people who are interested in what he has to say, whether they are respected religious leaders or outcasts. He tells parables that clearly reflect the priority of caring for fellow human beings, particularly those who can't care for themselves very well. This points to a definition of the kingdom of heaven that I can get behind (although I still want to call it something else).

There is a growing movement among some Christian churches, called the missional church movement, that strives to embody this kind of definition of the kingdom of heaven. The focus for these believers is less on church growth and membership numbers and more on being a meaningful presence in the neighborhood, caring for the people around them without regard for what those people believe about God or Jesus. I respect this. Some of these churches still want to get people saved and usher them into a personal relationship with Christ, which I respect a bit less, but I respect that they start by caring for people. Many people in the missional church movement see their work as partnership or participation with God in building his kingdom. Their actions have value and meaning in a larger faith context.

In this way, the kingdom of heaven becomes something of a replacement for the metaphor of Promised Land that the ancient Jews held. Promised Land or kingdom of heaven is that better world that is characterized by greater justice, greater equity, and greater compassion than what we experience and express today. The Promised Land/kingdom of heaven isn't something that we encounter upon death, and it isn't something that is going to happen to us -- it's something we create. While I don't believe that there is any sort of supernatural aid in that creative action, I do believe that we must be connected to our deep, most noble selves in order to consistently engage in that sort of intentional living. I don't have a better metaphor than Promised Land or kingdom of heaven, but I think of that action as building a better world.

And building a better world does require sacrifice, and we don't have any guarantees that we're going to get anything we sacrifice back, in this life or in some future life. What we often wind up sacrificing to build a better world, though, are things that don't really do us a lot of good to begin with. We don't need to sacrifice deep, meaningful relationships, but we often need to give up our sense of obligation and entitlement in those relationships. We could stand to give up our fear of scarcity, or our over-protectiveness. We could stand to sacrifice the lies we hold about ourselves: that we are not enough, that we are failures, that we are worthless. We can't easily build a better world of justice, equity, and compassion if we are battling those kinds of fears and lies on a regular basis.

We can't really know what the author of Mark (and those who cribbed his writing) thought wealthy people had stacked against them. It does seem in our current reality that people who have more often live as though they have more to lose. It isn't just a matter of bank account totals; there are issues of prestige, influence, lifestyle, relationships... There aren't a whole lot of people who willingly choose to give up that identity. It's easier to just do a little bit toward creating a better world -- just enough to feel proud of the contribution -- and trust other people to do their little bit, too.

We sometimes forget a couple of things, though. We sometimes forget how creative we can be when in comes to inventing justifications and excuses. If we aren't careful, we might actually start believing something that isn't true, just because it seems like something we would like to be true. We also forget that not everyone is equally positioned to build a better world. The reason we would even think about building a better world in the first place is that there are people who are suffering from the injustices and inequities we have come to accept as normal. Some of those people simply can't do as much to affect their circumstances as we would like to think. Even some of those people who want to do something to make the world a better place are hard-pressed to contribute much and still exercise personal responsibility for their own lives. Money is not the only thing that goes into building a better world, but money and all its trappings can sometimes separate people from others. It can separate people from awareness of the reasons why anyone would want to build a better world.

Which is where the "good news" comes in. For many Christians, good news has a very specific definition which has to do with Jesus' (mythologized) death and resurrection and the supernatural results in terms of individual sins. I think that there is even better news than that. You have inherent worth and dignity. All people do. Whatever lies you have come to believe about how unworthy you are or how unlovable you are, or how insignificant you are -- those lies are not you. You are a creative, capable, worthy being. No matter what happens to you or around you, nothing can change your inherent worth and dignity. That is good news if ever I have heard good news.

Recognizing our own inherent value, and recognizing the inherent value of all people, allows us to live out opportunities to build a better world, doing what we able to do, as we are able to do it. We don't have to sacrifice everything we have -- but we might want to give up some things we don't need. We might want to give up some ideas that aren't useful to us anymore. We might want to give up irrational fear and false beliefs about ourselves and other people. When we make those kinds of sacrifices, we lighten our own lives, and we create space for participating in building a better world in a way that is authentic to us. It doesn't have to become all-consuming. It's more of a way of being, a way of relating to other people, that is more possible when we aren't wrapped up in ourselves. Plus, it never hurts to be really honest with ourselves about what we have, what we actually need, and how much we can realistically offer of our personal resources toward creating a better world for everyone.

Mark 10: Divorce and Personal Responsibility in Human Relationships

People get married for all sorts of reasons in the twenty-first century. Considerable research has gone into the views of marriage and women in the first century, and to some extent this research has helped to make some sense of words written centuries ago. In Mark 10, some specific and absolute instructions regarding divorce are expressed through words attributed to Jesus, and it is worth considering the spirit of those words in addition to how those instructions may be of use to us.

First, it is worth noting that the author of Mark is, to a certain extent, promoting greater justice for women. Jewish society and law favored men. Since wives were largely seen as the property of husbands, married women could be stoned to death for adultery, while married men were not necessarily subject to such severe punishment. A divorced woman also had fewer options in society, since the primary role of women at the time was that of wife and mother. With priority placed on virginity, it was challenging for a divorced woman to remarry; divorced men did not face such difficulties. In fact, it was legal at the time for a man to have multiple wives, but a woman could not have multiple husbands. While some interpretations of Jewish law allowed for a husband to divorce a wife for any reason, limiting the circumstances under which divorce was acceptable meant greater security for women.

Second, rather than inventing something that could be considered heresy, Jesus is portrayed as quoting from accepted scriptures. The Pharisees, according to the story, intended to test Jesus, perhaps expecting that he would side with either Hillel or Shammai, two competing houses of rabbinic thought. Hillel taught that a man was justified in divorcing a wife if he became in any way displeased with her, even over trivial matters. Shammai taught that divorce was only permissible for serious offenses. Jesus perplexed his inquisitors by quoting from the Torah and deriving an even stricter position on divorce than the strictest school of Jewish thought. When the author of Matthew copies the story from the gospel of Mark, he adds a point of clarification, however. According to the gospel of Matthew, not only does Jesus allow for divorce on the grounds of unchastity (adultery or other sexual immorality), but he also encourages men who are willing to do so to forgo marriage altogether.

The version of this teaching in the gospel of Matthew brings up that it is preferable to become a eunuch, and the most direct definition of this word suggests that Jesus advocated willing castration. There were different sorts of eunuchs in the ancient world, however, and only certain roles required eunuchs to be castrated, primarily working in a harem. Some people in the ancient world who lived as men were not born with male genitalia. These men were also called eunuchs; they are probably included in the group Jesus refers to as eunuchs from birth. We have more precise language now than what was available in the ancient world. There were also men who abstained from sexual relations with women (even though they were physically capable) for reasons of religious conviction. This is probably what the author of Matthew is actually endorsing. There were also men who had no interest in sexual relations with women, although they were physically capable and not prohibited from doing so by any sense of religious purity. These men could also be labeled eunuchs, or natural eunuchs (to differentiate them from mutilated eunuchs); natural eunuchs may round out Jesus' category of eunuchs from birth. This was common enough in society that Josephus suggested that some people with masculine physical bodies had feminine souls. All of this suggests that we can't always know what the biblical authors were really intending by their words. It's obvious that the author of Matthew expresses through Jesus a preferred alternative to traditional heterosexual marriage relationships, and that this is very different from what the author of Mark conveys.

What is the point of going through all of this? Just to demonstrate that we can't superimpose biblical morality verbatim over twenty-first century culture. Even the Bible itself doesn't agree on how this teaching on divorce should be interpreted. Humanity has not necessarily matured all that much from two thousand years ago, though. There are places in the world in which women are still treated as property; still stoned, burned, or shot for issues of familial honor; still subjected to the whimsical abuses of the men around them. Religion has not matured with technology and knowledge and economy. Religion has, in many ways, reinforced primitive behavior. In part, this is because our religions do not necessarily challenge us to interpret truth from ancient texts, but rather allow us to project our preferences onto whatever scriptures we revere. If we look closely at the implications of Mark 10, we might find that it is a call toward greater emotional maturity in our relationships.

Through Jesus, the author conveys an absolute message that divorce is simply not justified. We know that this is not true. People get married without recognizing the long-term consequences of their decision. Sometimes people get married to people whose character turns out to be very different than what was portrayed during a courtship. Some spouses are abusive or dangerous, and it isn't reasonable to expect a person to adhere to a commitment without regard for personal safety. Breaking a vow is sometimes necessary for our own well-being. We run the risk of treating that flippantly, however, interpreting our well-being the way Hillel might -- considering the slightest offense as grounds for throwing in the towel. There are relatively few relationships that are actually restrictive, abusive, or dangerous enough to require for matters of personal safety that we break a commitment. So, what we are usually talking about is divorce as a personal preference.

There is no longer much of a societal stigma against divorce in most of the Western world. Even people who self-identify as Christians (but who are not particularly active in a faith community) are as likely as non-believers to end a marriage. "Nominal Conservative Protestants" are actually more likely to divorce than the religiously disinterested. So, even among people who worship Jesus, his words on divorce are not necessarily taken very seriously. According to the gospel of Mark, divorce was only permitted in the first place because people are hard-hearted. If we aren't going to take the strong words about the severity of divorce seriously, perhaps we can at least recognize the condition of our own hearts.

What the author of Mark calls hard-heartedness, we might call a lot of other things: selfishness, stubbornness, emotional immaturity. In all of our relationships, marriage and otherwise, we often dig our heels in and demand that the other person change if the relationship is to continue. If we aren't happy, we look for someone to blame, and we either try to fix that person or we require that they fix themselves. When that doesn't work, we might feel justified in moving on, and we might feel a strange mixture of superiority and victimhood when we do. The truth is that we have a lot to do with the quality of our relationships. The people with whom we're in relationship have a part to play, of course, but it's dishonest to suggest that someone else is responsible for our own happiness. When we allow ourselves to make demands of everyone but ourselves and to write off relationships that don't meet our standards, we limit our own growth and development as human beings. We stunt ourselves emotionally. This is the actual problem Mark 10 addresses.

If we think we can dismiss a spouse for any miniscule slight, it creates a power dynamic that requires nothing from us and dooms the other person to failure. If we create relationships characterized by equality, respect, and genuine love, those relationships stand a much better chance of being satisfying. That kind of relationship requires something of us. We have to take responsibility for our own role in creating that kind of dynamic with another person. If our relationships are to be mature and deeply satisfying, we have to be emotionally mature ourselves. We have to learn what we want and learn how to communicate that clearly to another human being. We have to learn how to listen and how to allow our guiding principles to be lived out in the messiness of human relationships. We have to be intentional about our words and actions. We have to keep growing.

The end result of an honest, loving, authentic relationship may not look like what any other two people would create. The goal is not to create a marriage or friendship or partnership that matches up with an arbitrary list of characteristics or a mold that society has created out of majority practice. Acting out what a spouse or partner or friend is "supposed to" be or do is not the goal. Sincerity, vulnerability, personal integrity, and bold authenticity are the key characteristics worth evoking. The goal might be better framed as a relationship in which you are willing and able to be completely yourself and in which the other party is able to be completely authentic as well, with no expectation that one individual is worth more than the other. Chances are that the result of such an intentional goal will look nothing like what first century Jewish marriages looked like, and that's probably a good thing. The point is that the quality of our relationships is our responsibility.

Sometimes, we will find that other people are not willing to participate in sincere, trusting, authentic relationships. Some people are not yet capable of living with intentionality and integrity. Some people aren't sure what their guiding principles are, and they aren't even sure how to figure it out. If we find ourselves in relationships with such people, we have choices. It isn't a matter of what is permissible under the law; it's a matter of what's permissible to our own deep sense of well-being. We can hopefully approach such circumstances with a deeper sense of self than just our personal preferences; we can hopefully get beyond our shallow stubbornness, selfishness, and immaturity.

Relationships are systems, though, and individuals cannot carry systems by themselves. When we have done all that there is to do -- when we have dismantled our irrational fears; deepened our sense of who we want to be in the world; confronted our lies about ourselves, other people, and relationships in general -- and we still find a relationship wanting, we can choose appropriate endings. There is no shame in doing our best, even if the end result winds up being less than we had hoped. If the time should come, we are capable of ending relationships with integrity and authenticity, too.

Mark 9: Stumbling Blocks and Concrete Overcoats

We are still mining a section of Mark 9 comprised of a string of short scenes with a couple of overlapping themes. Having considered the theme of authentic power a couple of weeks back, we're on to this business of causing another person to sin. Although it may be tempting to write this concept off and stand on the principle that all people have personal responsibility for their own actions, there is also truth to the statement that none of our decisions take place in a vacuum. Our actions have an influence on the people around us, and part of personal responsibility includes an appreciation for how what we do affects others.

The author of the gospel of Mark places the warnings about putting stumbling blocks in front of people quickly on the heels of using a child as an example, although the final scene of this chapter goes further than just talking about how people treat children. Still, what we learn as children sticks with us for a long time. As children, we make vows about how we must be and what we must do without even realizing that we're making vows. We also develop ideas about what or who we should be afraid of (or even hate) when we are children, when we are too young to even question why. So, it is especially important for adults to be conscientious about what we teach the children in our lives. Children cannot be held responsible for their beliefs about themselves, other people, or reality, but when children grow into adults, we expect them to suddenly be able to take responsibility for themselves. If we have filled the minds of the children in our lives with fear, what kind of adults do we expect them to be?

Children are not the only people susceptible to influence, though. Influential messages bombard us all the time in the form of advertising, political commentaries on television or radio, and less blatantly through just about every form of entertainment. We are responsible for aligning our beliefs and actions with our deep guiding principles rather than the influence of a paid angry or attractive spokesperson, but that isn't always an easy feat. We are also responsible for recognizing how our beliefs and actions influence adults around us. Bullying people into agreement, arguing from a position of half-informed righteous indignation, or promoting an identity of victimhood all come from fear. When we become afraid or anxious, and we lose our connection to our deepest selves, our influence on other people can be harmful. To make matters worse, our fear or anxiety can make us less aware of the impact we're having. Even though we can hold an expectation that other people should be emotionally mature and centered, and even though we aren't ultimately responsible for other people's behavior, it's better for us to empower other people to live based on their principles than it is for us to foster fear.

One interpretation of this scene in Mark is that the afterlife was seen to involve a continued physical existence. The author of the gospel of Mark is possibly saying that it's better to enter into a blessed afterlife maimed than to suffer in one's entirety. The gospels don't actually say much about hell, though, and even this passage is lacking much of its reference to hell in the earliest copies of the text. Plus, throughout the gospel narratives, the authors suggest (through words attributed to Jesus) that the kingdom of God (or the kingdom of Heaven, depending on who's writing) are not future-tense possibilities, but are present realities. Jesus is quoted as saying, "The kingdom of God is at hand," meaning, it's right here and now. So, perhaps the author of Mark is suggesting something else when he proposes mutilating oneself and entering the kingdom of God with a few parts missing.

If the kingdom of God is at hand, presently accessible to those willing to be a part of it, then it must not be a physical location. Perhaps as some have suggested, heaven is a state of mind -- a way of being. If so, then what is sin? And how can one's hand or eye or foot cause one to sin? Many people have pointed out that sin is an old archery term that essentially means, "to miss the mark." Some people would suggest that God sets the mark, but this is problematic, given that the supposed moral bull's eye established in the Hebrew Scriptures consists of a list of prohibitions that were impossible to keep, even for the ancient Israelites who invented it. If one considers Jesus to be a divine figure, a different mark was established in the gospels: love. Jesus' one big commandment was to love, and although that may be tricky to navigate in some situations, it's not a bad bull's eye for life. For people like myself, who don't recognize any superhuman divine beings, the bull's eye comes from deep guiding principles.

Sin, then, is what shifts our focus, the action that stems from something other than our guiding principles or the noblest form of love. Various believers might point to specific behaviors that constitute sin, but the problem is not really the behaviors. The problem is what lies at the root of the behaviors. As you may already have guessed, I believe that fear is what lies at the root of what the gospel writers call sin. When we allow fear to govern us, we forget about love or guiding principles and shift away from the mark we've set for who we want to be in the world. We let fear about ourselves, other people, or reality prompt our actions rather than bringing our most authentic selves forward. I'm not keen on what the church has done with the concept of sin, because it has become a weapon of judgment and condemnation wielded by people who have no more reason than anyone else to feel righteous. Fear is something that affects all people, but we are also all capable of dismantling fear if we choose to do so.

The point, then, is that your hand can't cause you to miss the mark. If you steal something with your hand or strike someone with your fist, your hand doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your deep guiding principles fueled those actions.
Your foot can't cause you to miss the mark. If you step on someone as you ascend whatever ladder of success you're climbing or turn around when you see an opportunity to help someone less fortunate, your foot doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your compassion for and connection to other human beings fueled those actions.
Your eye can't cause you to miss the mark. If you see other people as objects to be manipulated or you remain willfully blind to how your actions harm the people around you, your eye doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your capacity for love fueled those actions.
So, if we're going to amputate the cause of our "sin," our physical body isn't what we need to operate on. We need to amputate our fear.

Since Spencer Johnson and Sheryl Sandberg made it famous, the question has often been asked, but bears repeating:
What would you do if you weren't afraid?

I don't know what you're afraid of. You may fear scarcity -- that there isn't enough _________ for you and everyone else, so you have to protect what you have and do everything you can to get what you deserve. You may fear that, deep down, you are selfish or worthless at your core -- that you have to do everything you possibly can to prove how generous and worthwhile you are, including pleasing everybody around you, even at the expense of your own well-being. You may fear people of a certain ethnicity, religion, or sexual identity. You may fear that you are insignificant. Anything you fear -- especially irrationally -- can distract you from what actually matters most to you. Fear can prompt you to behave in ways that simply don't line up with who you most want to be in the world. Staying immersed in our irrational fears and expecting to be principled or loving people is like putting on a concrete overcoat and expecting to be able to swim. Dismantling our irrational fears opens the way for our guiding principles to be lived out more intentionally.

I'll bet you just glossed over it a paragraph back. Think about it:

What would you do if you weren't afraid?
          What would you create?
                    What would you stand for?
                              How would you be more authentically yourself more of the time?

The author of Mark includes a few sentences about salt at the end of this scene. Many people would suggest that salt symbolized purity for a great many ancient religions. If that's what salt means in this instance, the author of Mark is saying, "Have purity in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." When we live with integrity (or purity) to our deep guiding principles, we can be more connected with the people around us -- and even with people far away from us. Fear is not wise or just or compassionate or even honest. It's hard to live at peace with people -- even people about whom we care deeply -- if we keep fear in the driver's seat. If we recognize our ability to live with integrity by meaningful guiding principles, we can be at peace with others, because we trust our deepest, most noble selves.

So, with or without any religious convictions about Jesus' identity, the words of this section of the gospel of Mark can prompt us to have some conviction about our own identities. We do not need to be people defined by fear. We can be people defined by a deeper sense of truth, beauty, and creativity inherent to all human beings. We can be people who exhibit justice and compassion without suspicion or obligation. We can be people defined by vulnerable, authentic love. Some might call that a glimpse of the kingdom of God. Some might just call it being fully human.

What will you do as a capable, authentic, beautiful, creative human being?