Six Things Your Community Could Be Providing

We've taken a look at the necessary ingredients for meaningful, authentic community. Now, we return to the big questions we hope such a community might help us answer.

1. How do I live in such a way that I'll be satisfied with how I influence the world around me?
2. What am I passionate about? What personal life dream of mine creates greater wholeness in the world?
3. Where do I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where do I find authentic community? 
4. What fears get in my way? How can I dismantle those fears and understand what I actually want?
5. How can I get what I most deeply want and need by creating less suffering and greater wholeness?

Specifically, let's look at the intersection of questions 1, 2, and 5. We've already dismantled the criticism that these questions are selfish. We know that we may have to do a bit of introspection and self-examination to determine meaningful answers to these questions, and that can seem like hard work. On the other hand, these questions are all interconnected, so it's likely that the answers are connected too.

Chances are that we are already engaged in community in some way. Human beings are relational, so it's an intrinsic part of being human to form community. Sometimes, the communities we find ourselves in are by happenstance, and sometimes our participation in them is a conscious decision. Whatever the case, we can choose to be more intentional in how we show up in those communities. This involves knowing ourselves well enough to understand what moves us toward wholeness, and it involves giving ourselves permission to do those things.

Knowing ourselves well enough to understand what moves us toward wholeness is a fancy way of saying understanding what we really want. We have to get past our anxiety in order to know this. When we're anxious, what we want in the immediate sense is for the anxiety to go away. If we can't manage our anxiety well, our autopilot reactions will make decisions for us. We can't get what we most deeply want unless we shift into a more intentional way of choosing our responses. 

Sometimes our anxiety is specifically about what we want. We believe that we have to want something noble or grandiose or selfless in order to be "good" people. Or we tell ourselves that we don't deserve what we want, or that we haven't earned it. And we usually don't have a very reasonable sense of what it would take for us to deserve or earn what we most deeply want. Sometimes we even justify not tending to our own needs because we are waiting on a supernatural to arrange our lives differently. And these are just a handful of the nearly infinite roadblocks we put in our own paths. 

The first hurdle, then, is recognizing that what we most deeply want is important. When we understand our personal guiding principles -- our internal guidance system -- and can connect what we want with our deepest values, this hurdle becomes easier to cross. Knowing the principles by which we want our lives to be governed gives us a solid foundation for determining whether we are identifying what we deeply want or we are instead just coming up with the most expedient way to make our anxiety go away. 

Our guiding principles also give us a way to cast vision in our lives, to imagine what a best possible version of ourselves might look like. This vision is, essentially, a way of identifying what we most deeply want. When we engage our imaginations, we can ask ourselves: What would I look like if I were in complete integrity with my guiding principles? The answer to that question is a vision toward which we can orient our decisions -- and something with which we can realign ourselves when we get off course. And we know when we are off course by recognizing when we are reacting out of anxiety rather than making intentional choices.

Orienting around our guiding principles may give the impression that what we most deeply want needs to be lofty and demanding. This is not necessarily so. Most often, what we most deeply want is not so different from what everybody most deeply wants. We just put a lot of obstacles in our own way, including believing that what we want has to fall into neat categories of either "shamefully selfish" or "impressively selfless". The truth is that what we most deeply want is probably rather simple, and our deepest wants probably help meet other people's needs too.

If what we most deeply want is a sense of belonging, for instance, the healthy community we create from that desire is going to benefit others as much as it benefits us. Rather than judging what we are passionate about, then, we have the potential to connect what we are passionate about with our deepest values and make intentional decisions in our lives. We can create community around anything, provided it aligns with our life-affirming guiding principles. 

(I'll reiterate here what I've said elsewhere: If you think your guiding principles aren't life-affirming, you haven't uncovered your actual guiding principles yet. You may have uncovered a fear you didn't know about, but our deepest values are not built on fear. Don't make excuses or feel ashamed when you get to this point, just be honest about the fear and keep searching for the deeper life-affirming values that it's covering up.)

Being honest about what is fulfilling to us -- and being sharp about distinguishing what we most deeply want from our anxious reactivity -- gives us a way toward creating greater wholeness for ourselves and for the world around us. When we engage in any community intentionally, we have the opportunity to develop deeper understanding of ourselves, more meaningful connection with the people around us, and a greater sense of purpose. Meaningful, authentic community inspires our creativity and provides us with accountability so we can stay aligned with our deepest values more consistently. 

The surface level activities of the community don't really matter (provided they're aligned with your life-affirming values). Bowling league, neighborhood parenting co-op, book club, activist organization, community garden, artist collective, whatever. We can be intentional about how we show up in any community, ensuring that our authentic needs are met in legitimate ways and simultaneously contributing toward wholeness in the lives of others. 

If you want a way to consider the strengths and growth edges of your particular community, some research by a couple of students at Harvard suggest six categories of human need that are met by authentic, meaningful community. You can read about their observations of various secular communities at www.howwegather.org. Their evaluation includes some theistic language, but it's easily ignored or translated. I just mentioned the six categories a couple of paragraphs back, but I'll list them again. If your community does one or more of these things well, that's something to celebrate. If it has challenges with one or more of these areas, that may be something you want to build up.

First, community provides for a basic human need in and of itself. Making sure the community has integrity -- that it is meaningful and authentic, as we've discussed over several entries -- is important. Belonging is important for human beings, but building community with a clear identity in which people are genuinely welcomed and accepted can be challenging.

Second, meaningful authentic community gives people opportunities for personal transformation. When we feel safe and can be honest about our deepest values, community can help us align our lives better. We can grow in our personal integrity and authenticity. 

Third, meaningful authentic community give people opportunities for social transformation. This means, we develop more mature and intentional ways of engaging in the world around us. We become more aware of how we can contribute to greater wholeness in the world.

Fourth, meaningful authentic community helps us identify a sense of purpose. Life doesn't have a larger purpose, but human beings are meaning makers -- we determine what will give us a sense of purpose. Even though defining purpose comes from within ourselves, being in community can inform that journey. 

Fifth, meaningful authentic community engages our creativity. Human beings are, by nature, creators. This doesn't mean we are all artistic, but rather that we all have the ability to contribute to creating something new. Community can provide us with collaborators and inspiration.

Finally, meaningful authentic community provides us with accountability -- people who will pay attention to what we say we want in our lives and will keep us encouraged and empowered to take the next steps in that journey. When we set public goals, healthy communities will hold us to those goals until we redefine them. People who care about us, care about what we want for our lives.

If we understand our personal guiding principles, we can identify our deepest wants and needs more easily. Any community can become a place where we engage in having our personal needs met while we contribute toward greater wholeness in the lives of others. Every community can probably become better at the mutual practices of self-disclosure, active and unconditional love, hospitality, truth-telling, and celebration. Every community can probably become better at setting healthy boundaries and clarifying shared purpose or vision. And every community can be evaluated by how well it provides a genuine sense of belonging, opportunities for personal transformation, social transformation, defining purpose, engaging creativity, and offering accountability.

Selfishness 3

One last little piece of the illusion of selfishness. We've seen that there is no credible evidence for an afterlife where people are rewarded or punished for anything, and we can see evidence all around us that supernaturals are not providing for the real needs of people. We can even see that the figures who serve as examples of behavior in various religious traditions habitually took responsibility for their own well-being, as they were able. Still, we encounter this idea that focusing on your own personal growth is selfish time and again, especially from religious leaders. Perhaps one final piece of the problem is our tendency toward either/or thinking.

Our brains still work in mysterious ways, even as science continues to reveal more and more about human thinking and tendencies. Thinking in either/or propositions is a common way to address issues. "Either I can exercise, or I can sit in front of a screen." "Either I'll be a leader, or I'll be a follower." "Either I can focus on my own well-being, or I can tend to the well-being of others." In logic, this kind of argument is called a fallacy -- a "false dichotomy". This flawed thinking isn't necessarily intentional, but it is lazy. There are so many more options than we usually choose to consider, and we often fail to seek out both/and solutions, maybe because they require a little more work. Our idea of selfishness is caught up in this flawed thinking.

If there really are only two options that we're willing to consider, it may be simply a matter of changing our thinking habits. "I want to exercise, and I also want to watch a movie. How can I figure out a way to do both?" If we really believe that focusing on our own well-being and tending to the well-being of others are competing goals, then we can change our habit of either/or thinking and ask something like, "How can I be personally responsible for my own life and tend to the well-being of others in a satisfying way?" We can re-frame what seems to be a choice between mutually exclusive options once we are willing to admit that our thinking is problematic.

The logical fallacy of our either/or thinking actually disguises something even deeper than the possibility that we can think in terms of both/and propositions. Those who decry selfishness might consider the options to be, "I can do what I want, or I can do what someone else wants." Obviously, to choose what you want is "selfish," and to choose what someone else wants is selfless. Religious traditions often mistakenly teach that selflessness is the preferred option. A more open-minded person might shift to a both/and formula and ask, "How we can we both get what we want?" The most honest question, though, is "What do I really want?"

All of this talk about selfishness only makes sense in terms of surface level desires. When we stay on the surface of our being, we might believe we want things we don't actually want. And we might think we don't want things we actually do want. We might say we don't want to do laundry or wash dishes, but we actually do want clean clothes and dishes. On the surface, we focus on avoiding pain or inconvenience or frustration, but when we get past that and ask what we really want, it becomes clear that doing the laundry and washing the dishes gets us what we actually want. It's a matter of more mature awareness of what we value, not merely a matter of "selfishness."

Likewise, we might say we want something awful to happen to a rude driver, or a malicious co-worker, or an incompetent retail clerk. When we think more deeply about our own lives and experiences, though, we have occasionally done something that inconvenienced (or even endangered) another driver on the road because we were in a hurry or we weren't paying attention. Perhaps we have also made decisions that other people didn't like because it was part of our job. We may even have been thrown off by a simple process because one little thing in our environment was different, or we were distracted by something else in our personal lives. 

As much as we may get angry or frustrated when other people's behavior inconveniences us or challenges us, we actually don't want to live in a world where a sort of vicious karma punishes our every mistake with misfortune. We actually want people to be graceful with us when we almost miss our exit on the freeway, or when we make a thoughtful decision that has painful consequences for someone, or when we just have a moment when our brains aren't firing on all cylinders. We want to be known and understood. We want other people to see our inherent worth and dignity -- and to acknowledge and respect our unique abilities and strengths that may have required a lot of hard work to cultivate. 

Our anxiety prompts us to hold ourselves apart, to demand something different for our own lives than we hope for in the lives of others. Our fear prompts us to defend our own difficult decisions by mocking the difficult decisions of others. Our fear prompts us to refuse rights to other people because we think their freedom will somehow jeopardize our own rights and freedom. Our fear prompts us toward scarcity thinking, believing that I can't have what I need if someone else gets what they need. Either/or propositions are fueled by our anxiety, just as the idea of "selfishness" is really a way of saying that we allow our fear to convince us that we want something we don't actually want -- our anxiety doesn't let us get past the surface level desires to what we most deeply value.

When we are able to connect with what we most deeply value, we begin to realize that what we want requires well-being in our own lives and well-being in the lives of those around us. When we are willing to cast a vision of wholeness for our lives -- or our neighborhoods, or our workplaces, or the world -- we see that our lives are interconnected with the lives of others, that we cannot experience wholeness and well-being in our lives without contributing to wholeness and well-being in the lives of others. Yet we cannot connect with what we most deeply value, what we most deeply want, without learning to manage our own anxiety and confronting our tendency toward lazy thinking. And we cannot learn to manage our own anxiety or confront our mental laziness by focusing on other people. We have to turn our gaze inward and develop our own selves if we want to maximize the meaningful contribution we are able to make in the world.

So, there is really no such thing as selfishness. There are degrees of emotional immaturity and maturity. There are habits of lazy, flawed thinking that we can change and develop into more mature, intentional thought processes. There are anxious, fear-driven reactions that keep us from living with integrity to what actually matters most to us. And there are more emotionally mature, self-aware actions that align with our deepest values and create greater wholeness in our own lives and the lives of others. Well-being is only an either/or proposition when we allow our flawed, surface level, anxious, scarcity thinking to run the show. When we are honest, we acknowledge that well-being in our own lives is inextricably connected to well-being in the lives of others. And when we focus on our own capacity to clarify our deepest values and live with integrity to those values, we transform the world. 

Selfishness 2

We're in the midst of examining a criticism that "good" people don't focus on their own wants and needs, but focus on the needs and wants of others. Previously, we acknowledged that shame can cause us to think that we are not worthy of having our needs and wants met, and we asserted that if we want to be fully alive human beings, it's important for us to recognize the worthiness of our own vision for our lives and the world around us.

There are a couple of other points we need to consider from critics, however, including the belief that we harm other people by focusing on what we want -- essentially, that everyone cannot simultaneously have their wants and needs met. We should also address the argument that Jesus or some other legendary spiritual leader offers a model of self-sacrificial living. In fact, let's tend to that last point first and then move on to the idea that it costs someone else when we focus on what we most deeply want.

Throughout the history of some religious traditions, suffering has been equated with righteousness or worthiness. This began because the people who engaged in those religious practices were marginalized in their particular society, and they had to do something to explain their suffering in the face of a belief that they were set apart -- "chosen" by their god. Either their god was malicious or powerless, or there was some greater reason for their suffering as marginalized people. Even though some such religious traditions have become more powerful -- even oppressive -- practitioners often still cling to the idea that they are persecuted. Their persecution makes them like a beloved spiritual leader of mythology, and thus their suffering marks them as more holy -- chosen or set apart by their loving god who values their suffering for some reason.

The fact of the matter is that this coping mechanism creates tons more harm than well-being. Liberal and feminist theologians especially have written quite a bit on the damage done by the belief that suffering makes one more acceptable, lovable, or worthy in the eyes of a deity. Self-sacrifice can be a powerful gesture, but only when it is an intentional choice that one makes to nurture a system toward wholeness. Giving up one's personal safety, in and of itself, does not nurture anything. Choosing between what feels safe and what one actually wants for the world -- a personal creative life dream -- can be worth the risk. There is a big difference.

Even when one looks at the example of Jesus, for instance, the model of behavior is not self-sacrificial. There is an abundance of examples in the gospel narrative of Jesus going off by himself for solitude. He chooses to fast on occasion, but he never goes hungry when he actually needs to eat. He reprimands people who don't behave the way he wants them to, and he thinks highly enough of his own ideas that he challenges the rationale of religious authorities. He even chastises his disciples when they don't meet his needs or wants. There are moments in which the Jesus of the gospel narratives is downright arrogant, and there is no reason for us to criticize the self-assurance of someone who has conviction about what will bring wholeness to the world. The lessons of the teachings attributed to Jesus have little to do with self-sacrifice and lots to do with being aware of one's own power to transform one's own life and the lives of others.

Too often, believers seem to focus on one episode at the end of the story, in which religious and political leaders abuse their power with violent retribution toward a person who upsets the status quo. They invent in their heads a Jesus who could have resisted such power, making him a willing sacrifice rather than a victim of oppressive and fear-filled authorities. Yet this behavior is in contrast to the rest of the stories told about the life and actions of a bold and self-confident Jesus who is consistently willing to express what he wants people to do and how he wants people to think.

Anyone who includes self-sacrifice into their religious values is choosing to imagine that their own wants and needs are inconsequential, which is the same thing as denying their inherent worth and dignity. Some religious traditions thrive on telling people lies about being unworthy, unacceptable, and unlovable -- perhaps making their invented deity look all the more magnanimous for deigning to love such wretches. Do you know how people create wholeness when they think of themselves as inherently unworthy, unacceptable, and unlovable? They don't. Why would they? Their self-image is dominated by weakness and powerlessness. This image of humanity is flawed, fear-driven, and useless, except to those that like having an easy time manipulating the masses. That's the one thing to be said for teaching people that they are weak and worthless -- it makes them a lot easier to control.

Contrast that with people who believe in their own inherent worth and dignity -- who believe in their own capability and beauty and creativity. People who recognize personal responsibility in their lives ought also recognize that they have the power to wield that responsibility thoughtfully. This means taking the consequences of one's action into consideration. Powerless people don't have choices, but people who are willing to recognize their own power also recognize the ability to choose actions that nurture wholeness in their lives and the lives of those around them. Really, it's the people who live into an identity of being weak, unlovable, powerless, and unworthy who are harmfully self-indulgent.

There is something that gets in the way of creating wholeness, though, even for those people who recognize their own worth and power and responsibility. Fear. Just as shame convinces us of lies about ourselves, our fear gets in the way of living life as fully as we could. Our fear convinces us that we need certain things in order to be safe, or to prove how lovable or acceptable we are. And we wind up doing the things that placate our fear rather than doing the things we actually want most deeply. Most people don't ever think about what they want for their lives and the lives of those around them because they never get past thinking about what they have to do to be safe, or heard, or respected, or loved, or successful. We don't really know what we want more deeply because we never get past wanting to be free of our anxiety.

From this perspective, the criticism is absolutely true: Everyone cannot go about alleviating their fears without hurting anyone else. Focusing on our anxiety and trying to make it go away as quickly as possible almost always means we hurt someone else in the process. We also hurt ourselves. Letting fear control us is not the same as tending to what we most deeply want. We don't actually get what we most deeply want by indulging our fear. We need a way to get past our fear and anxiety, and get to the heart of what we really want for our own lives and for the world. And we need a way to know when it is our fear talking and when it is something deeper within us that longs for wholeness.

The criticism of selfishness really doesn't hold up when we consider the full implication of intentional people living with integrity to their deepest values. Certainly, when we think of the typical fearful behavior of human beings on reactive autopilot, self-indulgence is harmful. That isn't what we're talking about when we encourage living into a best possible version of oneself, or developing a meaningful creative life dream. If our passion is nurturing the world toward wholeness, we have to be competent at nurturing wholeness in our own lives. Respecting our own needs, valuing our own vision, caring for ourselves -- these are behaviors of personally responsible human beings, and it takes personally responsible human beings to create wholeness.

Selfishness 1

Some people have criticized questions like, "What do I really want?" and "What is my personal creative life dream?" as being too selfish. Their reasoning is that we should focus our attention on other people and not on ourselves. I can only imagine that at some point in their childhood they were reprimanded for being insensitive to what others wanted or needed--for being too focused on their own wants. Children don't have the same capacity as (some) adults to evaluate their wants and needs or bring their actions into alignment with deeper values. Those values are still developing even into adulthood for a lot of people. Let's consider this criticism, though, and see if we are willing to risk being seen as selfish.

The argument, as I understand it from a variety of sources, is that "good" people (which is often synonymous with believers of a particular religious tradition) ought not concern themselves with their own wants and needs, but ought instead to concern themselves with the wants and needs of others. Their reasoning involves a version of some or all of the following points: (1) Good people will be rewarded in an afterlife for suffering here on earth, so demonstrating your goodness by being self-sacrificial in this life will result in your needs and wants being satisfied for eternity. (2) Their scriptures affirm that their supernatural will provide what they need, so they need not worry about their own needs. (3) Insisting on what you want causes harm to others because you can only get what you want at the expense of someone else. In other words, everyone cannot simultaneously have their wants and needs met, so your gain means someone else's loss. (4) The example of Jesus (for Christians) or another legendary spiritual leader reflects a model of self-sacrificial living.

There may be other points offered in support of self-sacrifice and in opposition to selfishness, but these four are the ones I read and hear most often. We should consider each of these arguments in turn, and then consider whether living into a "personal creative life dream" or focusing on what you really want is actually a selfish act. Let's take our time with this over a few weeks rather than brushing past what seems like an important criticism.

First, though, we can brush past the first point. We've already dispensed with the idea of an afterlife. Being self-sacrificial in this life will get you the experience of self-sacrifice in this life. And maybe it will get you a false sense of superiority or piety. Most likely, it will get you a sense of resentment and frustrated entitlement. What it won't get you is your needs met. No one else is responsible for your life but you. It's nice when other people meet our needs and attend to our wants, but it isn't ultimately their responsibility. Likewise, it isn't your responsibility to meet other people's needs or wants. It's nice when you do, and we'll see why it's important that we connect what we want and need with what other people want and need. Meeting other people's needs at the expense of your own, though, doesn't earn you any points with a supernatural, it just creates voluntary suffering on your part. If you're alright with that, that's your prerogative, but it won't result in a better afterlife for you. 

The next point is more concerning, because there is some serious potential for harm in living by a belief that you needn't worry about your own well-being because a supernatural will provide everything you need. What does one say about the people of faith who are starving or going without clean water or dying from curable diseases and treatable health conditions? If all of those people were atheists, then it would be a powerful motivator to believe in a god, but this isn't the case. Some suffering people wind up believing that they must have done something wrong, and that their god is now punishing them. Some people believe that others suffer so that there is someone to care for, as if their god causes suffering in some people's lives so that other people can extend care. If this is the case, believers are doing a pretty poor job of it, and their god operates out of a rather twisted morality. 

While it's true that we don't really need that much to live a happy and healthy life, it's also true that those basic necessities are not guaranteed. The ample evidence indicates that people cannot expect a supernatural to provide for their needs. We are responsible for our own lives. And what people cannot provide for themselves, it falls to other human beings to provide. If people continue to go without food or clean water, that's not on a supernatural who made a promise to provide -- it's on us, the rest of humanity who continue on with more comfortable lives instead of attending to the basic needs of other human beings. More specifically, it's on the people who have the resources to improve the well-being of others on a larger scale, but that's jumping ahead a little bit.

I understand that, for believers, it must seem that there is a supernatural working things out in your life when you get the job you wanted, or when you avoid a nasty traffic collision, or when your child gets a clean bill of health. I attended a graduation recently at which it was said that we were celebrating students' accomplishments, and that they couldn't have done it without God's help. This logical inconsistency made perfect sense to the believers in the room, as if it was the divine will of a supernatural that they should complete the assignments they chose to complete, attend the classes they chose to attend, earn the grades they legitimately earned, and so orchestrate their lives that they complete a degree program. If their god is responsible for those degrees, there is no reason to celebrate their individual achievements. 

Actually, if a supernatural is ultimately going to get its way, despite human action, we have no reason to do anything. Where does one draw the line? If we starve or feast, run late or arrive early, succeed or fail, get mugged or walk the streets safely, exercise or sit on the couch -- why should we take responsibility for any of this if a supernatural always works things out to get what it wants. (Which seems like the very definition of selfish, actually.) Of course, then one must ask why an omnipotent loving supernatural wants so many believers to suffer, but believers usually credit their god with the desirable things and blame something else for the suffering. They've invented a powerful evil counterpart to their benevolent god, to make an even more convoluted explanation of suffering that ends up undermining their very definition of their god. It makes for great horror movies, though, so I'm grateful for that.

Sometimes desirable things happen to us. Sometimes we even cause them, because we work hard or pay attention or otherwise commit ourselves toward a particular outcome. It's not so unreasonable to think that you will get a job for which you're qualified, for instance. If you think it would take a miracle for you to get hired, you must not think very highly of your skills. Sometimes desirable things happen that we don't think we've earned, like a child getting well after a serious illness. Yet, if we've tended to that child and taken them to doctors and done our part to create a healthy environment, we have contributed to that healing. Perhaps it doesn't feel "right" that one person's child should die from a disease and another person's child should live. It's more convenient to pin it on a god and be grateful. When we think we are undeserving of the desirable things that happen in our lives, there is something less healthy at work within us, however.

When things go the way you want them to, and you think, "God was watching out for me," or something to that effect, consider this: Are you actually saying that you aren't worthy of good things happening in your life? Why do you think that? Who is "worthy" of getting into a traffic collision? Who is "worthy" of avoiding it? Who is "worthy" of getting a job they aren't qualified for or receiving a degree they didn't actually earn? Our inherent worth as human beings is not tied to what happens to us or what we accomplish. Some of the desirable things in our lives are things we earn, and it is dishonest to suggest that we didn't. You earned your degrees. You worked to develop your skills. And some desirable things are just luck.

Actually, some desirable things must be just luck even if you are a believer who proposes the existence of a benevolent, loving deity. To think that a god spared you from a nasty traffic collision means that your god didn't spare other people. And it's a sure bet that believers are involved in some traffic collisions. You may even know some believers who have been in traffic collisions. Why would your supernatural allow them to be in a traffic collision and spare you? To teach them a lesson that you don't need to learn? What a strange belief system that requires so many convoluted twists just to make reality seem more orchestrated than it is. 

All impish critique aside, whatever your belief in a supernatural, it is shame that causes us to believe that we don't deserve desirable things. It is shame that causes us to believe that we are unworthy of good things in our lives. It is shame that results in us concluding that we aren't worth our own attention and that we must be content with whatever comes our way (by the grace of a supernatural or just by dumb luck). It is shame that suggests to us that we are unlovable or unacceptable, and that we must do something to earn or prove ourselves lovable and acceptable. The idea that a supernatural will provide what we need, and that we must be content with that, is rooted in shame --  a false belief about ourselves. The idea that we must focus our attention on the needs of others and set our own needs aside is rooted in shame. Shame falsely accuses and convicts us of selfishness when we consider too long our own dreams and desires for our lives and for the world, and shame convinces us to keep our lives small and unassuming, perhaps with a veneer of imitation humility that we simply aren't important enough to make a real difference in the world. Shame is bullshit. 

 If we want to live into our deepest values, we must confront our shame. We must recognize the worthiness of our own vision for our lives and for the world around us -- we must recognize our own worthiness as human beings with amazing capacity for truth, beauty, and creativity. We each have something powerful to contribute to the world, and there is nothing selfish in recognizing that. 

1 Samuel 1-3: Our Divine Calling

The two-volume book of Samuel presents a history of the three legendary kings who ruled over a united Israelite monarchy: Saul, David, and Solomon.  In the story, Samuel is a prophet, both in the sense of proclaiming God's message and in the sense of being a seer.  He is directly involved in placing both Saul and David on the throne.  Before we get to the kings themselves, however, the mythical story of Samuel is recounted.  Born as a result of fervent prayer, Samuel is raised by a priest, Eli, whose sons are an embarrassment to their holy stations.  Even Eli seems to be so far removed from sincere and authentic ministry that he has a difficult time telling the difference between drunkenness and prayer.  At least he eventually recognizes that Samuel is hearing a calling from the Lord and not just dreaming, otherwise the story may have been much shorter.

In Samuel's origin story, his dedication is contrasted to the behavior of Eli's sons, who are self-serving and indulgent to the extreme.  For some, this out-of-control self-indulgence is the image conjured when they consider looking within themselves to find Truth.  If everyone did that, they believe, the world would collapse into selfish violence and disregard for others, because everyone would believe whatever they liked.  This is an understandable fear, especially when some prominent belief systems teach that people are rotten and broken and need some outside supernatural assistance just to hold society together.  And yet, a quick glance at the world suggests that people already twist prominent belief systems to suit their own self-interest.  Against the teachings of their own holy books, they justify violence, bigotry, and oppression as it suits them.  What keeps people from self-indulgence at the expense of other people is not an imposed set of rules, because those rules are easily twisted and broken.

Although it's easy to look at the caricatures of Eli's sons and see them as vaudeville-style villains, it's important to remember that all self-indulgence, violence, bigotry, and oppression is based ultimately on fear.  Eli's sons are no different from a lot of people today, afraid that they will suffer if they don't take what they want by force.  They abuse their position as a way of addressing their fears about their lives and their identities.  The pattern of bullying in which they engage is a symptom of profound, unaddressed fear that has taken over their beliefs and runs the majority of their lives.  We don't know what that fear may have been, but based on our own internal dialogue, we could probably guess a great portion of it.

That fear is not what people find when they look within themselves deep enough to find Truth, Beauty, and Creativity.  Although fear does come from within, it is based on untruths or half-truths.  Fear always seems perfectly reasonable, but when we examine many of our fears, we find that they are based on assumptions.  Fears are almost always given power by unverifiable beliefs that we have developed over a long period of time.  Looking within and basing our lives on the Truth we find there involves dismantling those fears and getting beneath them to something deeper, something that is not threatening, something that connects us to other people rather than fueling animosity. 

Developing this level of spiritual maturity is not necessarily an easy thing, even for people who live their lives doing holy work, like Eli's sons.  It seems easier to react to our fears and build beliefs that look like protective concrete walls with barbed wire and booby traps.  We feel protected for the moment because our fears have been addressed, but fear never shuts up.  We can never be insulated or guarded enough to be completely safe and secure from irrational fears.  All of our efforts just strengthen the power of our fear and create patterns of behavior that cement those irrational beliefs firmly in place.  Reacting to our fears expends a phenomenal amount of time and energy.

Getting to the heart of who we are, at the deepest core of our being, may also take considerable time and energy.  But the results are very different.  Instead of ultimately ineffectual protection against irrational fears, by recognizing and living in accordance with the deep Truth within us, we create connection with other people.  We have the opportunity to turn our creativity toward more meaningful pursuits, building the lives we most want rather than the walls that we think will make us feel safe in the moment.  Through reaching beneath the fears and false beliefs, we have the resources to build ourselves into the people we most want to be rather than the people we think we must be in the face of all that seems to threaten us.  The process still requires some effort and dedication, but in reality, we are exerting that effort every day; the choice is merely a matter of what we are building.

Eli's sons built for themselves lives that seemed secure and happy.  Samuel built a life of dedication to something deeper, something more meaningful, from a very early age.  In the story, he is called by a voice he doesn't recognize.  At first, Eli doesn't recognize what Samuel is experiencing, either.  The divine reaches out to Samuel, and for the biblical writers, this was most easily depicted as an externalized calling from a deity who was enthroned upon the ark of the covenant.  When we think of the divine calling us today, we have a much richer symbolic palette from which we can draw.  Although we may envision it in myriad different ways, it is the character of the divine -- that deep Truth, Beauty, and Creativity -- that calls us from beyond all of the irrational fears and false beliefs we have built up in its way.

Make no mistake, the divine does not call to a select few who have drawn some spiritual lottery, even though it may seem like only a select few respond earnestly to the call.  Within all of us, there calls the voice of our divine self, not in any audible sense, but as an internalized spiritual awareness that tugs at us.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, this calling from within is continuous and relentless.  Our divine self does not give up.  It calls us to see other people through compassionate eyes, so that we might recognize the value inherent in everyone we meet.  It calls us to see our impact on the world, to be purposeful about creating something meaningful.  It calls us to see ourselves as beautiful and capable.  It calls us to fearless connection.  It calls us to unashamed love.

Judges 9: Healthy Ambition and the Senseless Fear that Is Selfishness

So far, the book of Judges has been mostly about people who accomplished military victories for the Israelites.  After Joshua led a fairly straightforward invasion of the land to which the Israelites felt themselves entitled, it's no small wonder that they had a few enemies.  According to the writers of Judges, the oppression the Israelites experienced in the ongoing contest for power in the region is attributed to their disobedience to their god.  When the Israelites behave themselves, their god protects them.  When the Israelites are bad, their god lets them get overrun by other people who worship other gods.  Then, someone comes along and drives back the infidels -- often through some kind of subterfuge -- leading the Israelites into a period of prosperity which inevitably cycles back to their faithlessness, abandonment, and misery.

Abimilek is a bit of a detour from that formula.  Here we have a ruthless murderer who worms his way into leadership from within a tribe of Israel's own ranks -- a wicked ruler chosen by a wicked people.  He's killed by a nameless woman who drops a millstone on his head and a nameless armor-bearer who mercifully grants him an honorable death.  The writer of this tale is clear that God is the one who created the strife that led to Abimilek's downfall, but it seems like unnecessary effort on God's part.  A person who is willing to kill dozens of his own relatives just to solidify a tenuous position of political power is likely to rub a few people the wrong way.

The people under Abimilek's rule worshiped a god named or titled "Baal-Berith" (or "lord of the covenant").  It's difficult to say what sort of deity Baal-Berith was.  There simply isn't enough factual information about this particular god to know how he was different from the Israelites' other gods.  What's clear from the narrative is that the people who put Abimilek in power were motivated by selfish goals.  Not all that different from twenty-first century politics.  Their own motivations ultimately worked against them.  They focused their attention on things that ultimately had no value, and they suffered as a result.

It isn't difficult to look back through history and find people who acted out of selfish ambition, caring nothing for how much harm they did to others in order to get money or power.  Some of them passed on a legacy to their progeny that we can still see at work in the world today.  Many of them ultimately brought about their own destruction.  There are also wealthy, powerful people who act out of a deep desire to have a positive impact on the world.  The difference isn't in the value of their bank accounts or the reach of their power.  The difference is in how they attained what they have and how they make use of it.

Most of us will not be Abimileks.  Most people don't have the capacity to kill seventy siblings and lay claim to a throne.  We also aren't likely to be Ghandis or Mandelas.  Still, all of us face choices about whether we will act out of selfish ambition or act out of a deeper sense of truth.  Let's be clear: Selfishness is just another word for fear.  We become selfish when we are afraid that we won't get what we want, that we will be overlooked, that someone will take advantage of us somehow.  We believe in the scarcity of whatever it is that we want, and we set our minds so fervently toward a goal that we lost sight of what is important and true about ourselves and other people.  We get selfish about things we don't need -- about things that actually may do more harm than good to us and to the people around us.  Fear convinces us otherwise.

Here it is, as redundant as it may seem by this point: There is enough.  Whatever it is, there is enough.  We don't always see clearly how to distribute it wisely and healthily, but there is enough.  Enough land, enough water, enough fuel, enough food, enough love, enough power, enough respect, enough time.  We live in abundance when we are willing to recognize it.

This isn't to say that ambition is bad, just that the target of our ambition is often misguided.  Let us be ambitious and creative in how we can provide clean drinking water to the world, or in how we can ensure justice for all people, or any number of noble goals.  There is a place for ambition, and it can power our creativity to have a profound impact on the world.  It's the potential selfishness of our goals that warrants examination.   When our ambition justifies hurting other people for the sake of our own personal gain, we have stepped out of alignment with our deepest selves.  That's the part that is based on some kind of self-deception.

In reality, it's safe for us to acknowledge the value of other people, for us to listen to ideas that came from other people's minds, for us to respect beliefs that are different from our own.  It's safe for us to peel back the armor of fear and recognize our worth as human beings is exactly equal to everyone else's.  Our value is not based on political title or bank account or education or square footage or how much blood we have shed or what kind of car we drive.  We all possess a deep awareness of this truth that surpasses petty fears.  We all possess divine beauty and creativity.  We all have the capacity to inspire and be inspired.  We are all capable of listening and we are all capable of accepting other people's beliefs without feeling somehow threatened.

It may seem that we have a long way to go before we create a world that embraces the value of every person, but the process of creating that world has already begun.  It is up to each of us to choose how we will be in our own lives.  We don't have to be heroic.  We just have to determine how we will dismantle our own fears and create our own meaningful lives.  When we act in accord with the truth, beauty, and creativity within us, we cannot act out of selfish ambition.  When we choose to acknowledge the value of every person, we will find ways within our means to express that truth.  As Ghandi said, "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.  As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.  ... We need not wait to see what others do."