Isaiah 2-4: Embracing Human Responsibility

The book of Isaiah was composed in stages by different authors, and even the passages that were written earliest show signs of later editing. Still, the first portion of the book seems to directly address the Assyrian crisis, specifically indicating a spiritual reason for political and military threats. Isaiah 2-4 indicates some of the problems the prophet sees in the society of Judah as well as his vision of what Yahweh wants the world to be.

He begins by envisioning the Temple as a place of spiritual learning, where all people learn to manage their conflicts without war, essentially relying on the wisdom of Yahweh to guide their decisions. As it is, he sees pride as a major error of people everywhere. A coming judgment will clearly show how misplaced that pride is. According to the prophet, society will be turned on its head. All supernatural provision will be withheld, and insolent children will be in charge of a place where everyone seeks to profit from the suffering of neighbors. There is a karmic sense of justice in that whatever the wicked will experience the same suffering they have wrought upon others.

No one will be able to argue effectively against this judgment from God, because the evidence is in their lives: they are caught red-handed with the spoils gained from oppressing the poor, and their very posture and gait is incriminating. Even though their leaders are leading them astray, the people are responsible for their actions. The judgment will strip them of adornment and reveal their shameful and unmerited pride. Once this spiritual cleansing transpires, Yahweh will create an atmosphere of comfort and refuge. The judgment is not intended to wipe people out, but to eradicate any justifications for pride and oppressions so that the people, faced with the bare honesty of their inappropriate attitudes and actions, have no option but to change. It is as if people are incapable of change unless a higher power gives them no alternative.

However, the kind of pride the author of Isaiah is criticizing should not be mistaken for genuine acknowledgment of one's ability and accomplishments. It's healthy to be honest about one's abilities and strengths, and it's healthy to fully embrace what one can accomplish in the world. Destructive pride is the belief that you are intrinsically worth more than other people -- that you deserve wealth, comfort, and respect that other people do not deserve. When one's sense of Self become over-inflated, then it becomes easier to justify profiting from other people's suffering. An unbalanced sense of pride dismisses the inherent worth and dignity of other people and makes equitable, just relationships impossible. Isaiah challenges that kind of pride and envisions a world in which people are honest about their own value, and everyone else's value, too. The author also envisions a world in which Yahweh is active in the lives of people and is acknowledged as every nation's god.

It's nice to dream about what the world could be. It's perhaps even more pleasant to dream about what someone else is going to do to make the world better. Of course, when there are hostile armies at your doorstep, a believer must do something with beliefs about a deity. Either that deity is not as powerful as the hostile forces, or the deity is completely in charge of what's going on. If a deity is completely in charge of things, and there is an enemy army threatening to take over one's home, then the deity must be sending a very powerful message. That deity's worshipers had better shape up, or else.

This kind of situation was an ongoing struggle for ancient Judah. One of the biggest problems is that misidentifying the causes of the effects one experiences still leaves no reasonable means of improving one's situation. If you assume that bill collectors are harassing you because God is trying to teach you a lesson, you won't necessarily determine that you need to manage your finances more responsibly. Even more to the point, if one is waiting for God to cleanse the wickedness from people and establish less prideful, more peaceful, just relationships between human beings, one is going to wait a long time. Addressing human pride and oppression and violence is not the job of some extra-human authority; human relationships are the responsibility of human beings. Envisioning what an external divine being is going to do is just one way to maintain an attitude that human beings are incapable of being more just and equitable and compassionate -- and if the responsibility for a just, equitable, compassionate world is shifted to God, the people don't have to be capable.

As challenging as this may be to accept, there is no supernatural being who is just waiting for the right moment to sweep in and change the world. It's understandable if we would prefer to sit back and wait for a superhuman someone, bigger and more capable than us, to transform reality, because waiting doesn't require a whole lot of effort. If we have any real desire to see change in the world -- to see justice, or real equality, or authentic human relationships that aren't based on how much one person can take advantage of another -- creating that world is on us. It's up to us to set aside unhealthy pride that convinces us that we have more inherent value than other people, and it's up to us to maintain an honest assessment of our capability and worth. It's up to us to build just relationships with other people and to be willing to make some sacrifices when we realize that we are profiting from someone else's suffering. It's up to us to be authentic in our power and not adorn ourselves with clothing or lifestyles or honorifics that conceal who we really are behind a smoke screen of what we want people to think of us.

God is not going to change the world or punish the world. Our experiences in life are the results of human decisions. If an army attacks, we might justifiably blame that on our leaders. In our own personal lives, though, what we experience is ours to manage. If we don't like our reality, we have the power to learn from it and create something better. That kind of creation isn't always easy, but it at least has a chance of building the kind of world we want to live in. Waiting for someone else to solve our problems for us will get us nowhere. So, if you choose to pray, pray for courage. Prayer cannot in and of itself create justice or peace or equality, but human action can. We are capable of creating a better reality, if we are courageous and intentional in our actions. That creation starts with the relationships that already matter to us. That creation starts with greater awareness about the decisions that we make every day about how we treat other people (and ourselves). In other words, we engage in creating a better world by first engaging in creating and re-creating ourselves.

2 Samuel 11-24: Pride and Gratitude (Infusing Our Thankfulness with Honesty and Recognizing the Extent of Our Abundance)

The rest of David's story as recorded in 2 Samuel is fraught with conflict befitting a soap opera, and not one you'd want to have on while the kids are in the room at that. The Chronicles version is somewhat cleaner, eliminating all of the indulgent behavior of David and his offspring and including in its place a riveting catalog of personnel. While this was likely an important account for ancient Israelite culture, such lists do not contain any more spiritual value for 21st century Westerners than any other extra-biblical lists of people. There is something realistic about the indulgent version of David in 2 Samuel, where he takes advantage of his position of authority, sleeps with another man's wife, conceives a child with her, and has her husband murdered. His household is a mess of incest, murder, revolution, and greed. In the midst of it all, there is a military adviser trying to hold things together politically and a spiritual adviser trying to hold David together morally.

As exciting as the story is, the spiritual message is somewhat odd. This immoral man is Yahweh's hope for the future of his people, despite his lack of capability when it comes to making the truly difficult decisions? Well, yes. No person can be perfect, so anyone chosen as leader will come with weaknesses and challenges. Somehow the Israelites who recorded the earlier version of their history understood that being in a position of power--even with the approval of the almighty--didn't make a person a better human being than anybody else. We might not sleep with another person's spouse and then conspire to have someone killed on a battlefield, but we are occasionally going to do things that are selfish and fail to value other people as much as we ought. We might not have children who try to usurp power and prove their superiority by sleeping with our harems in public, but from time to time we will be challenged by other people's behavior. And in spite of all of that, we have plenty of reasons to feel and express gratitude.

David expresses his gratitude in a song to Yahweh, whom he credits with victory in battle. David believes that his deity has protected him from human adversaries and has given him authority as king over foreigners. This is all well and good for a primitive society. Thousands of years later, however, we seem to still hear claims that God has protected us from harm and given us victory over adversity, even that God has made us prosperous or worked out circumstances for our benefit. In David's song, he comes close to claiming that he deserves God's blessing. The person who committed acts of adultery and murder just a couple of chapters back is claiming that:

"The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness;
    according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me.
For I have kept the ways of the Lord; I am not guilty of turning from my God.
All his laws are before me; I have not turned away from his decrees.
I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin.
The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
    according to my cleanness in his sight." (2 Sam. 22:21-25)

Really, David? What an interestingly blameless vision of yourself you seem to have cultivated. Perhaps you think that because you had a military victory or were otherwise fortunate that your previous behavior is unimportant to the point of being forgettable? Well, that's not an unfamiliar perspective to us, after all. When we dodge a bullet, slide in just under the wire, or avoid getting caught, it's tempting to think that what we did must not have been so wrong, because God protected us--he made sure we were safe and successful, so everything must be cool. A ludicrous claim, when you think about it. Gratitude is surely an attitude worth cultivating, but so is honesty.

Rather than a Davidic claim to superhuman holiness, it's worth recognizing that we Americans did nothing to earn the privilege of being born in one of the wealthiest places on the planet. We don't live blameless lives, not a one of us. We turn our backs on people, we give in to fear, we wrestle with moral and ethical issues, and we don't always come out smelling like a rose. None of us is perfect. None of us is truly worthy of a better life than anyone else. Many of us are lucky. Many of us are fortunate. Some would even say many of us are blessed. But what we have in our lives is not the result of our utter righteousness. And here I don't just mean the number after the dollar sign in our bank accounts, I mean clean water, abundant food, access to medical care, a level of safety that is unexpected in many parts of the world.

In this time of year when we think about gratitude a little bit more and acknowledge our undeserved privileges a little more easily, let's be honest as well as grateful. We haven't done anything to deserve our lives or our relationships. Whatever we have, it isn't because we did anything to be more worthy of it than anyone else. We have more to be grateful for than we ever take the time to realize. We aren't chosen, set apart for some greater purpose--we are simply fortunate. What we do with what we have is our responsibility. We can cultivate pride, or we can do all that we can to contribute to a better world. This is what gratitude enables us to choose. Honest gratitude allows us to recognize the worthlessness of our pride and to focus instead on our opportunities to practice generosity.

So, I invite you to take a moment--without needing to be clever or funny for an audience, without needing to impress anyone with your depth or insight, and without any reason to guard a sense of dignity or pride--just take a moment to be grateful for the many undeserved gifts of life. Through gratitude we have a chance to recognize our real abundance in life. That abundance doesn't mean that we should stop striving or growing. It simply puts that growth in a context: We don't need more, although we may want more. And when we have more, it means we have more to offer, not more to guard and protect. If we are honest, most of us will see that we truly have enough. Enough time. Enough money. Enough skill. Enough to be happy. Enough to share.