Numbers 22-24: You Cannot Change What Is True by Proclaiming Lies (and a talking donkey)

Most of the book of Numbers is about what the Israelites said and did, a sort of idealized history of the community's nomadic years under Moses' command.  Chapters 22-24 contain a stories about Balaam (a non-Israelite prophet or diviner) and Balak, leader of Moab.  Since the Israelites have run roughshod over some of Moab's neighbors, Balak is apparently afraid of what the locust-like hordes of Israelites will do if they cross his borders.  So Balak asks Balaam to curse the Israelites, and after an initial refusal, Balaam agrees with the caveat that he can't do anything to change God's approval of the Israelites.

You can read the story for yourself.  You may marvel that Balaam seems to think talking donkeys are commonplace, and you may be a bit shocked that God would tell someone to take a journey just so he could send an angelic assassin to meet him on the road.  There are many folklore elements of the tale that are charming in their own way, but the meat of the story comes later, when Balaam actually speaks prophetic blessings about the Israelites instead of cursing them, much to Balak's chagrin.  The poetic "prophecies" were written down much later, and even if Balaam actually spoke the words, no Israelite was around to hear them.  So we are looking at poems that were written after the fact essentially to acknowledge how God blessed the Israelites and laid low all of the other communities of the area.

Later on, in chapter 31, the Israelites are going to kill Balaam because he apparently had something to do with Israelites being seduced by Moabite women and religion.  Based on the Israelites' own story about themselves in previous chapters, it doesn't really seem that they needed much outside influence to seduce them away from their miserable lives in the wilderness, but it's nice to have someone to shoulder the blame, even if that person only managed to demoralize Balak about the Israelites' favored status.  Jewish rabbinic literature spends a great deal of time expanding on the story, elaborating Balaam into a much more villainous character, which allows them to draw contrasts between "godly" prophets and Gentile prophets.  Muslims have their own varied stories about Balaam, although his name doesn't actually appear in the Qur'an.  Some literary characters begin to take on a life of their own.

There is some real value of the story, though, apart from the assertion that God loves the Israelites and destroys everyone else.  Throughout the tale, Balaam consistently says that he cannot say anything contrary to what the Lord puts in his mouth.  In other words (without the religious trappings), one cannot change what is true by proclaiming lies.  The reality of a situation is solid -- a discernible truth.  Sometimes our perception of that truth is skewed, and we are prone to misjudging things simply because we don't see things fully.  But we cannot make up our own version of what we want reality to be and expect it to work out the way we want.  There are things over which we have some measure of control, and there are things which we don't control at all.  It's important to recognize the difference.

When things we don't like happen, it's tempting to go into denial and assume that there is something we can do to turn the tide of locust-like hordes on our borders, or to change the attitude of a hostile co-worker, or to break the cycle of addiction in a family member's life.  We want to believe that we can force everything to work out the way we want, if we just figure out the right thing to do.  As if speaking the right words, taking the right actions, spending the right amount of money, or whatever the case may be, will cause reality to bend to our will.  Denying reality only serves to consume our time and energy.  Reality is.  Our challenge is not how to change reality, but how we are going to be in the midst of it.

There will be times when people do horrible things.  There will be times when the hordes overrun your borders.  There are things that are out of our control, and the sooner we acknowledge that, the happier we will be.  There are also things we can influence.  There are ongoing injustices in the world that can addressed.  We can take meaningful action that has an impact on the future, but that action has to be in line with reality if it is going to have any value.  I cannot assume that shooting a doctor is going to end abortion -- violent actions will have greater repercussions on my own life than on any greater issue I want to address.  Writing an angry letter may get an appeasing response, but will it really change the course of things?  It's not necessarily easy to take meaningful action, but if we are passionate about something, it's worth considering if there is anything we can do to have a meaningful positive impact.

Engendering fear in other people almost always involves distorting reality.  Fostering hope requires a little more effort, but often involves creating a reasonable way to take action with an intended result.  If you don't know what you're trying to accomplish, your actions may only serve to keep you busy for awhile.  But if you see clearly what you can and cannot influence, are willing to address things in partnership with reality, and can do so in a way that fosters hope in other people, you can potentially have a positive impact with lasting value.  The first step to it all, though, is recognizing what is real and how little of that reality you actually control.  You cannot change what is true by simply saying it isn't so.  Accept what is, and you stand a better chance of seeing how to get from there to where you want to be.

Prophecy and the Reason for the Season (Hint: It's not to bludgeon people with religious compulsions)

Prophecy has become a topic of conversation for the Christmas season, as Christians point to the prophet Isaiah, as well as a couple of other Old Testament prophets, to prove Jesus as the son of God.  The word prophecy doesn’t quite mean the same thing that it used to, which is perhaps part of the issue.  Whereas “Prophet” was once the title given to a person who was inspired to proclaim divine will, at some point it came to mean a fortune teller, prognosticator, or predictor of future events.  Thus, at this time of year, many Christians go on a short-term crusade to “prove” the legitimacy of the church’s claims about Christ’s singular divinity, adding on the insistence that people say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” in the hopes that people will remember the “reason for the season” and turn to the Christian God.

My tone may suggest that I have some problems with that attitude.  I don’t actually care what Christians want to believe about Jesus in the privacy of their own homes or churches.  It does bother me, however, when I hear other people attempting to dictate what everyone else should believe.  And here’s why: people can’t see into the future.  Smart and well-informed people might make some insightful predictions about a particular trend, and sometimes listening to those people is a good idea, especially when it concerns the national economy and such.  But a smart person also checks the facts.  A prediction based on faulty information isn’t a very reliable prediction.  Nostradamus (perhaps the most widely known “prophet” outside of the Bible) only has a 9% success rate with his forecasts, but of course some devotees will claim that the other 91% just hasn’t happened yet.

The Jewish prophets weren’t even trying to predict the future, though.  They were “prophets” – proclaimers of divine will.  They were sharing their insights about what was wrong and right with the world in which they lived from a divine perspective.  Later on, people were so insistent on labeling Jesus as the Messiah figure who appears in some of that “prophecy” that they even write some silly things about his actions just to make the story fit together.  The bottom line is that the prophets were writing for their contemporaries.  Incidentally, this goes for the writers of the books of Daniel and Revelation, too, but that’s another topic altogether.

Just as one cannot use a word as its own definition, one cannot prove Biblical fortune-telling by the Bible itself.  Instead, it would perhaps be more satisfying to actually remember the reason for the season, by which I mean, the meaning ascribed to this time of year before it was reclaimed and repurposed by a zealous imperialistic religion.  The winter solstice has meant a lot of things to different cultures throughout history.  Some see the passing of the solstice as a time of renewal, passing from dark to light as the days gradually begin to lengthen once again.  It is a time for generosity, for sharing what we have with an attitude of abundance.  It is a time for human warmth and affection to stand in for the warmth that is lacking from the sun.  Winter reminds us of many things worth celebrating.  We run the risk of missing the actual peace with one another and joy with life itself when we put on battle gear and set ourselves on a mission.

So, whether you prefer “Blessed Solstice” or “Happy Hannukah” or “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” or any other iteration of the spirit of this time of year, remember that it isn’t the words that matter most.  It is the attitude we cultivate, the people we honor, the gifts of life we appreciate, the hope we maintain for the future, and the joy we are willing to share in spite of differences.  Which is largely what the prophets were getting at anyway.  We are the reason for the season, actually.  All of us who share this time and place together.