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. 

Asking the Right Questions -- The Problem of Evil

One last big question religion pretends to answer is: Why is there evil in the world? We might consider "evil" to be synonymous with suffering, for the sake of clarity. Why do people suffer? Religious imagination actually makes this question more complicated that it needs to be.

Some answers offered through religion imagine a whole array of supernatural beings, good and evil, fighting for the precious commodity of human souls. It makes sense that if you're going to invent a supernatural to worship, you would also find it convenient to invent other lesser supernatural beings to answer other troublesome questions. That angels and demons and souls are not real things hasn't stopped religious institutions from perpetuating the idea that human suffering is caused by supernatural activity. Some religious communities even encourage people to invent their own personal stories of encounters with angelic or demonic forces, and the community accepts these inventions as fact in order to bolster a framework that is easily dismantled by thinking through how poorly it aligns with measurable, observable reality.

Other religious answers are less complex, keeping the supernatural involvement down to one entity who controls all things. In such a mythology, one god is responsible for all of the helpful and harmful experiences people have. The question then becomes why a god would cause harm to weaker, less capable beings. Some conclude that a god is punishing and rewarding people for their behavior, but this idea also becomes difficult to maintain unless the god in question is either capricious or outright malicious. In other words, the idea of an omnipotent supernatural punishing and rewarding people only works if the character of that supernatural makes it unworthy of adoration and admiration.

Observing that people who are devout in their practice of a religious tradition suffer just the same as heathens without a religious tradition should be a fly in the ointment. Some religions answer this complication by suggesting that their god tests the faithful by causing or allowing suffering, and that the reward for this testing happens in an afterlife. We've already dismissed the idea of an afterlife, but it is an easy last resort when a religious leader doesn't want to have to answer for promises of reward. Who can call a person to account when there is no way to verify or deny such a promise of posthumous reward for suffering? One can also perhaps bear the suffering of others more easily (or even callously) if one clings to a belief that an afterlife reward awaits those who suffer in their actual real life.

What all of this boils down to is that religions can't satisfactorily answer the question of suffering, but they are all equipped to make something up that can't be verified or falsified. Any valid attempt to refute answers that rely on supernaturals are met with nonsensical replies, like suggesting that one's faith must be strong in order to understand spiritual truths. Or, the oft-abused retort, from New Testament writings, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness to god." So, indoctrination in many religious traditions includes learning rebuffs to protect one from thinking through one's assertions with any sort of integrity to reality. Maintaining a particular religious mythology is more important to some people than finding an answer to human suffering that aligns meaningfully with reality.

One convenient facet of basing answers to suffering on supposed supernatural will or promised reward in an afterlife is that human beings are off the hook. If a god wants someone to suffer, then there is nothing for a human being to do, although perhaps the person experiencing the suffering should be told to straighten up and fly right so that their suffering would end. Likewise, if suffering now leads to reward in an afterlife, there is no reason to address human suffering. Human beings can ignore any suffering of others they find distasteful, confident that those individuals will be well rewarded after they die.

Even more convenient, when religious institutions connect human suffering with their concept of sin, they can justify the mistreatment or oppression of others. When you believe that an individual's suffering is directly tied to that individual's sinfulness or wrongdoing, then the individual can be blamed for whatever harmful experiences happen in their lives. While people within the religious tradition are seen as being tested by suffering, people outside that religious tradition -- experiencing the same suffering -- might be seen as being punished by a god for bad behavior. This allows religious leaders to use religion to encourage the dehumanization of other people. In other words, their answer to human suffering is to willfully cause more suffering.

For this reason, religion cannot meaningfully answer the question it poses regarding the existence of evil or suffering. Even though some religious groups imagine supernaturals that are benevolent and engage in practices that seek to create wholeness, the non-real foundation of their actions is easily corrupted and abused by those who imagine a different sort of supernatural or refuse to address their own culpability. We must look outside religious constructs to find meaningful answers.

Human suffering might be put into two categories: suffering caused by nature, and suffering caused by human action. Natural suffering would include all of the hardships people face that are not caused by human activity: weather events, genetic conditions and many diseases, attacks from wild animals, etc. Nature has certain features that are unpleasant for individuals to experience, but overall contribute to a balanced ecosystem. The suffering of human beings because of natural events has no greater meaning, although people can potentially learn things from the experience. Natural events are amoral -- there is no will or purpose behind them. Natural events are just things that happen, and human beings have to supply their own meaning as they recover and rebuild in the wake of such an event.

We still feel grief and pain at this kind of suffering, and that grief and pain can connect us with other human beings or isolate us. We can better manage our grief, though, when we are honest about the source of our suffering.

Suffering caused by human action is different. Sometimes, suffering is the result of human ignorance or negligence, but people are still accountable for their actions. A person might say that they never knew there was a connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, but their actions are still a contributing factor to their suffering. There is some evidence to suggest that even some "natural" events like wildfires are exacerbated by human activity. The answer to this sort of suffering caused by negligence is two-fold. First, we must learn to more accurately predict the consequences of our actions. Second, we must choose to act in such a way that minimizes suffering and increases well-being for the greatest number of people. There is nothing supernatural in any of this. This way of thinking places responsibility squarely on human beings. This is less convenient than most religious responses to suffering, but it is more realistic.

Again, our pain and grief at this kind of suffering is also very real. Recognizing human responsibility is not a way of alleviating that grief. We need one another for that very reason; expressing grief and caring for one another in times of suffering is one of the functions of meaningful, authentic community.

There is another category of suffering caused by human action, however, and this is the most challenging to address because it seems closest to a traditional definition of evil. Some suffering is caused by human beings willfully and knowingly doing harm to other human beings. When a human being uses a weapon to hurt another human being, there is no question of ignorance or negligence. When human beings willfully use chemicals or artillery or biological agents to cause harm, there is no question of ignorance or negligence. There may have been a time when human beings could claim ignorance when they oppressed or marginalized a population, but that time has passed. Human beings have a propensity for willfully and knowingly causing harm to other human beings, and this suffering requires a different response that either natural suffering or suffering caused by actual ignorance or negligence.

We cannot blame supernatural forces for the harm that human beings perpetrate on one another. We must look to ourselves in order to find meaningful answers and solutions. The most succinct answer as to the cause of this suffering is that when people experience fear, they react. Fearful people often create suffering. This may seem overly simplistic, but the solution to irrational fear is rather demanding and counter-cultural. When people are accustomed to reacting to their fear (and justifying or dismissing any harm done as a result of their reactivity), suffering is guaranteed. The only way to address human suffering caused by human fearfulness is to address the root fear. While this would ideally become a societal practice, it's more likely that change will begin (and is beginning) with individuals committed to living more intentionally.

There are countless examples regarding how fear connects to human beings causing suffering. People are afraid of all sorts of things. We fear scarcity of resources and power. We fear being ignored or taken for granted -- being invisible. We fear being oppressed or exploited. We fear being unlovable or unacceptable because we fear being ostracized and cut off and alone. We fear not having our needs and wants met, and we fear being unworthy of having our needs and wants met. Human beings live in an environment of constant fearfulness. It take real work to recognize what fears are driving us, what we actually want, and how we can move toward what we want in a way that creates wholeness. This is the most meaningful answer to suffering that we can possibly embody, and it will take some time to learn to do things differently, especially if we are accustomed to reacting to fear on a regular basis.

As we proceed beyond clarifying the right questions, the goal of dismantling irrational fear, decreasing suffering, and increasing well-being will be a primary topic. For now, it can suffice that we have a viable way of asking questions about suffering that don't resort to religious imagination or the invoking of supernatural will and afterlife rewards. Moreover, we actually have a more meaningful question than Why is there suffering? It is much more potent and evocative for us to ask What fears are prompting me to create suffering instead of creating wholeness? and What am I going to do differently? If a growing number of people are willing to ask the right questions, we can find more meaningful and transformative answers for our lives and for our world.

To summarize the interrelated questions we can meaningfully ask and address in the weeks ahead:

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? 
What fears get in my way? How can I dismantle those fears and understand what I actually want?
How can I get what I most deeply want and need by creating less suffering and greater wholeness?

Isaiah 34-35: Creating Our Own "Holy Way"

The next two chapters of Isaiah are contrasting predictions about the fates of "Yahweh's people" and the fates of everybody else. Some of the symbolic themes from previous portions of Isaiah return here. The blindness and deafness that Yahweh commanded the prophet to enforce (Is 6:9-12) will now be removed. Water, symbolic in much of the prophetic literature, is used here as an assurance of life, but of course only Yahweh's people will have access to the streams and pools of water in the wilderness. After acknowledging the literary context of these prophecies, we might gain something from recognizing one last time the flaws in the suggested dependence upon a supernatural and the Us vs Them perspective of this prophetic writing before considering a more intentional perspective that might better align with our guiding principles.

These are the final poetic chapters of "Proto-Isaiah"; after a short narrative, the book of Isaiah continues with words written at a much later time, as indicated by specific historical references in the text. Recall that no autograph of the book of Isaiah has been discovered, and that the earliest copy we have is from the early first century BCE. On top of that, there are thousands of differences between existing copies of the book. One prevailing conclusion by scholars is that the book was assembled by an editor from disparate writings (perhaps by the same author or school of authors). Thus, the sequence in which the writings appear may have been determined by someone at a much later time than when they were written. The only thing we can honestly assess is the end product, because we don't have anything earlier to examine. At the same time, honest assessment must include the fact that we cannot know the intentions of the author, and that the sequence in which texts are read has an influence on their interpretation.

In fact, "interpretation" may not even be the right word for what we do with such texts. We often read through the lens of our own wisdom and values, and we judge what we read based on what we already believe. The Unitarian Universalist tradition, for instance, currently recognizes six broad sources: direct experience, the words and deeds of prophetic people, ethical and spiritual wisdom from the world's religions, the call to love our neighbors in Jewish and Christian teachings, Humanist teachings, and the spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions. The intrinsic values of Unitarian Universalism were not drawn from these sources, however; the accepted values informed the choices of sources. The whole of Jewish and Christian scripture is not compatible with Unitarian Universalism, just as the whole of Islamic or Humanist teachings is not compatible with Unitarian Universalism. Our values are the scales on which the merits of a particular text are weighed.

This is true of everyone. American Christians reading the Bible do not honestly accept everything within its pages as legitimate timeless ethical and moral truth. They all recognize, to varying degrees, that there are cultural differences between twenty-first century Western society and the ancient Middle-Eastern societies in which the biblical texts originated. They determine the validity of a particular portion of scripture not based on the fact that it is in the Bible, but based on a set of values that they already accept as guiding principles in their lives. To be sure, those values are also supported by some portions of scripture. The call to reconciliation and love in human relationships is a major theme in the Bible, for instance. Yet, this theme is in conflict with passages like Isaiah 34-35, in which it is clear that the enemies of Judah are considered to be the enemies of Yahweh, and proclaiming their destruction is justified in the name of religious superiority. This is incompatible with the values of reconciliation and love.

Even if one interprets Isaiah as saying that human beings are free to seek reconciliation and love because God will take care of those other people, this does not resolve the conflict. The Bible also suggests that human beings are supposed to be emulators of God, and a perception of God as vengeful and destructive creates some problems. Readers of the Bible have to be selective and discerning, and that selectivity and discernment derives from the values through which the pages are read. We are always going to be biased readers. We can only strive to have biases that reflect our deepest values rather than our fears.

This brings us to a couple of flaws in the writing that we have noted before, but which bear repeating. Isaiah 33 and 34 both express a reliance on a supernatural to either punish or provide. There is surely some comfort in the idea that God is going to punish the people you don't like, although laying waste to the environment may be a bit extreme. There is surely some comfort in the promise that everything will be alright for you because God will provide what you need. There are problems with the implied converse of these assumptions, though. What happens when you do not have the things that you need? Has God abandoned you? Are you wicked? Are you being punished, or are you supposed to take comfort in the eventual good things that God is going to do, even if they happen long after you are dead? What about other people who suffer? If God has promised to provide for what his people need, doesn't it follow that people who are hungry or thirsty or oppressed are not God's people, and are thus wicked? The implications of God's partiality and the impossibility of interpreting "divine will" make such promises very problematic, even though they provide some shallow comfort.

Seeing the world as Us vs Them is a natural perspective for people to adopt. We are fearful by nature, and if we let our fear be in control, then we might imagine anything and anyone as a threat. We want to be right, and thus in our anxiety about possibly being wrong, we construct a worldview in which everyone else is wrong and blind to it. Thus, we get to be right at the expense of connection with other human beings, or at the expense of ever growing beyond what we are currently able to do in the world. Our fears are not values.

The people of ancient Judah were put in a position -- as the result of warfare -- in which they were in a constant state of acute fear. Foreign soldiers were laying siege to their cities and taking them into exile. They were not in a position to live by their values. They were living desperate lives. This happened multiple times in the history of Israel, and it is happening in some places today. People cannot live by a set of deep values when their lives are constantly threatened by legitimate, real dangers. It's important to know who is safe and who is dangerous when your life is literally on the line, and it's natural to invent some stories about the people who seem dangerous. In those stories, the people you perceive as dangerous are obviously going to be the bad guys, and when you feel desperate and powerless, the most hopeful story you can tell might seem to be that a powerful superhuman force will punish the bad guys and rescue the helpless victims.

Our tendency, though, is that we sometimes see ourselves as victims when we aren't. We sometimes feel threatened when we aren't. We sometimes believe we are powerless when we aren't. And we still make up stories about the people we perceive as dangerous, even when they aren't an actual threat to our safety and well-being. We have to learn to recognize the difference between actual threats to our well-being and anxiety that originates and thrives inside our own heads. There may be a lot of different people on the planet with a lot of different beliefs and a lot of anxiety prompting them to tell stories about how the wicked will be punished and the righteous will be saved, but in actuality, our well-being depends upon the well-being of everyone else. There is no Them. There is only one big Us. This idea may be as much of a hard sell to the oppressors as it is to the oppressed, but those of us who can recognize this simple truth and start living it out in our lives can influence things toward greater hope for everyone.

This is the real power that Isaiah 34 and 35 miss: Human beings are responsible for human relationships. The problems we create will not be resolved by supernatural intervention. We are responsible for living according to our values. We are responsible for finding solutions to the challenges in our lives. We are responsible to the people around us -- the people with whom we share our lives, our communities, and our world. There is no more empowering and hopeful truth than this. It just isn't necessarily what we want to hear when we look around and see evidence that other people are not behaving very responsibly. Since we can't really control anybody but ourselves, it's tempting to want a more powerful entity to take care of all the irresponsible people in the world and reward us for being so awesome. That isn't going to happen. We need a more reliable approach to navigating our own awareness of human responsibility and the apparent lack of awareness around us.

First, we can be more aware of our values. We are constantly interpreting the things we read and hear through the lens of our values, but we don't often take the time to articulate just what those values are. When we are aware of the ideals that matter most to us, it's much easier to determine how we want to be in particular situations, and it's much clearer when we are reacting out of anxiety or fears that are not aligned with our values.

Second, we can stand to see a larger perspective. When we are willing to bear witness to the actual suffering that takes place in the lives of people in more poverty-stricken countries, for instance, or even in the lives of people in our own neighborhoods, our own sense of suffering might be more realistic. We might be less inclined to play the role of victim inappropriately, and we might be less inclined to demonize other people for petty reasons. Our lives have value, and we need not be so self-sacrificial that we deny ourselves what we need. Still, being honest about our own positions on the spectrum of human suffering can help us live more intentionally.

Third, we can recognize our role in the world. Once we know what we care about most deeply, we can start living more intentionally according to those values. When we are willing to see the realities of people's lives, we can start to see opportunities to influence things toward greater well-being. This might mean funding education for a girl on the other side of the world, or it might mean spending time with people in our own neighborhoods. Our values and our own personal passions will guide us toward ways that we can influence the world, even if it is in some seemingly small way. I personally don't like building or fixing up people's homes, but I know a lot of people who love swinging a hammer. I really love teaching and tutoring people, whether its educating people about human trafficking or tutoring folks in a GED program. Some folks would be terrified to stand up and speak to a group of people. We all have values and passions that can direct us toward meaningful action.

This is how we contribute to a better world. We cannot wait for a supernatural to sweep in and destroy all the people we choose to see as villains and create a lush and thriving landscape just for us. This is not a realistic hope. Such stories might symbolically represent something to us, but our real hope is in our values and our willingness to live intentionally by them. Our ability to recognize our values and live intentionally is not impeded by other people's lack of awareness. This doesn't have to create an Us and Them dichotomy, but it's alright to acknowledge that some of us are becoming more practiced at managing our anxiety. We may be frustrated sometimes by other people, but if we look around, we will probably also spot some people who are living more intentionally. Two or three people with shared values and a willingness to live intentionally might be able to create more together than one person can create alone. Having community with people who have shared values can be a source of hope when we start to feel angry or frustrated.

So, what are your values? What ideals matter most deeply to you?
Where are you on the spectrum of human suffering? Do you need to focus on your own well-being before you consider how you can positively influence other people's lives?
What actions do your values and passions call you toward?
Who are your potential collaborators? With whom will you build partnership and mutual support?

The answers to these questions strengthen weak hands and make feeble knees firm. The answers to these questions inspire courage and help to dismantle irrational fear. The answers to these questions help us see and hear and act and speak with greater clarity. The answers to these questions are our streams in the desert, our refreshment and empowerment in life. The answers to these questions are our Holy Way, and all are welcome to travel on it. (cf. Is 35:3-8)

Isaiah 27-28: Authentic Hope

We're going to push through to Isaiah 39, which recounts the illness and naivete of Hezekiah that we saw in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles (about a year ago now). It seemed like a good idea to intersperse the books of prophets with the "historical" books that most clearly connect to them, but given the time it takes to get through a book like Isaiah, this may have been an ill-conceived plan. Still, we'll cover everything eventually, so we may as well continue through the break in Isaiah.

That being said, there's an awful lot that has already been said about the content of Isaiah, with the people of Judah seeing themselves and their religion as superior to all others, without much evidence on which to base that opinion. Isaiah 27 clearly expresses one of the main purposes of this book: to offer hope to people in a pretty hopeless situation. Isaiah 28 balances this with the assertion that hope has to be genuine and sincere in order to be meaningful. Clearly, the author(s) of these chapters believed their own words to be sincere and honest.

It's worth mentioning yet again that there is obvious figurative language going on here, particularly with regard to the sea dragon that Yahweh will kill with his "cruel" sword. Most folks will not look at this and assume an actual sword or an actual sea serpent. A great percentage of the Bible is written in this sort of figurative language, and yet for some reason, many people want to take as much of it as possible literally. Don't be over-simplistic when you read mythology or other ancient writing. Look for the meaning underneath the words and you'll learn a great deal more about the people who wrote the words.

In Isaiah 5, the imagery of a vineyard is used to suggest that the Israelites have fallen short of their calling to create a just and righteous society. This imagery is used again in Isaiah 27 to suggest that all is not lost. There is still hope. The authors forecast a time when Yahweh will guard Jerusalem and there will be no competitors to the city. Fortified cities will be ruins useful only for grazing cattle. If anyone opposes Yahweh in that time (produce something different than what he wants from his vineyard), he will destroy those people. Otherwise, everyone will have a splendid time.

What Yahweh apparently wants from people is a society built on justice, but the authors are also clear that Yahweh wants exclusive adoration as the people's supernatural. Everyone who goes against this monotheistic mandate will be destroyed. So, this idea of creating a just society is not because it will be better for everyone, but because direct assault from the deity will be the response to anything less. This hopeful vision has dark implications. This is not a vision of a time when everyone will get along peacefully because there is greater understanding, this is a vision of a time when people will have peace by force, when the supernatural will take direct action against those who act differently. This is fascism, pure and simple, with a supernatural in the role of supreme commander.

No wonder that the authors desired a different sort of flawless leadership. Isaiah 28 suggests that the religious and political leaders were of little use to the people. They spent their time in drunkenness and lies, and when they had any words of hope to offer, those words were hollow. The chapter indicates that suffering at the hands of enemies is punishment from Yahweh that has a fruitful purpose. However harsh the punishment, it would not last forever, and eventually the people of Judah would be of some use. They would be beaten into usefulness. Of course, this is not a message to individuals, but to the people as a collective. An individual life might not see any purpose behind the suffering, but hope lies in the story of one's people, not in one's personal story.

It is unfortunate that passages like this have been twisted and interpreted into a perverse exaltation of suffering. There are those who believe that suffering makes a person more holy or more honorable, that the experience of suffering is somehow useful in and of itself. Even worse, there are those who believe in a supernatural who desires that people suffer, because they are being purified for some greater work. This is complete rubbish. While it is true that some people come out of experiences of suffering strengthened and determined to do great things, there are many more people who simply suffer, reaping no benefit from the experience. Suffering happens, and some people are able to make sense of it and turn that experience into an asset. This should not be held up as an ideal, however. Needless suffering is not a blessing or a gift.

Moreover, suffering is never something that we should inflict on others, with the expectation that it will make them stronger. There is no supernatural glorification in human suffering, and there is no supernatural who desires human suffering. We experience suffering, and there are potentially some words of hope that can help us through that experience, even help us draw strength from the experience, but those words are not, "God wants you to suffer." Especially those words are not, "God wants you to suffer because he has something great in store for you." Not only is such a claim trite, it is dishonest. There is no god in control of our suffering or in control of what happens in the wake of our suffering.

Often natural processes cause suffering. Nature is unintelligent and has no emotional impulse toward people, so there is no greater meaning to natural suffering. Sometimes people get sick. Sometimes people are caught in an area of natural disaster. It is possible that people can make meaning from the suffering they experience, but the experience itself has only the meaning that we give it.

Other suffering is caused by human action. Some people inflict suffering on others. This is the sort of suffering that we might set our sights on ending. Most of the time, fear is the emotion behind suffering inflicted by human beings, not the tough love of a supernatural. Human beings do horrible things to one another, and it isn't part of a divine plan. People commit atrocities when they give their fear control. Again, we might learn to draw some personal strength from our experiences of suffering, but there is no greater meaning or message than what we give it.

Of course, some will claim that suffering through the pain of surgery is necessary for healing in some circumstances. Suffering the experience of childbirth is necessary for life to continue. Suffering through difficult classes is necessary for the process of learning to take place. Yes. Fine. Draw the definition of suffering as widely as you like. The authors of Isaiah were writing to people who were besieged by foreign armies to the point that many people starved to death or at least considered eating their own children. They had no place to put the bodies of those who died from lack of food or water, and there was no efficacious way to treat the diseases that erupted in a city when it swelled with all of the people who sought refuge in its walls. When the siege was finally broken, many survivors were enslaved by the conquering army, taken to a foreign land with a foreign language and a foreign culture to live out the rest of their days. Their entire lives were shattered. Isaiah says that this was because Yahweh had a plan. He caused this to happen because he was crushing them like grain for bread. This is not a palatable message of hope.

We do not have a supernatural who is going to take control one way or the other. No one will be exacting punishment or crushing us for greater usefulness, and no supernatural will be standing guard over us as we grow into just and compassionate people. There is no real hope in that myth. The real hope is with us. We are the hope of the human story, as individuals and as a collective. Our potential to act in a way that brings justice, equity, and compassion is hope for others. In our own lives hope lies in the understanding that things do not have to be as they are. Hope also springs from the recognition that no one deserves suffering. Our worth and identity are not based on the suffering we endure. Every person has inherent worth and dignity just by virtue of being human; the rest is a matter of experience.

Things do not have to be as they are. This is true in our personal lives as well as in larger systems of power. Whatever suffering that exists in the world because of human action, there is a way to address this suffering. When the government of Uganda recently passed a law against their LGBT citizens, the Quakers established a New Underground Railroad to get people out of immediate danger. This is one small example, but think about your own community. How many organizations exist to help alleviate systemic suffering? From solving the problem of homelessness to ending human trafficking, there are people collaborating right now to build a better world than what we see today.

This is perhaps the most important message of hope: We are stronger together. People are relational, and while we value our individuality, we can accomplish great things when we work together. No one deserves suffering, and yet we can only touch a small number of lives as individuals. When we join our voices and our strengths with others, however, we can become much more powerful forces for justice, equity, and compassion. Our ability to cooperate and collaborate offers profound hope.

Thus, in our own lives, we can be confident that we do not deserve suffering, that there is nothing about our worth or identity that makes it necessary for us to suffer. Our individual suffering does not have supernatural origins or purpose, but we can choose to give our experience meaning. In the lives of others, we can also be confident that suffering is not deserved. When we are able to have an influence in alleviating the suffering of another, we can be vessels of hope. When we stand and act together with others, we can embody hope on an even larger scale.

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.

Isaiah 9-10: Vessels of Justice

Isaiah's words to Ahaz, king of Judah, as he was preparing to be overwhelmed by foreign armies were words of encouragement. He said that the enemies that seemed so fearsome at the time would be no threat at all by the time Hezekiah -- the son of Ahaz who was about to be born -- was eating solid food. Ahaz didn't listen to Isaiah, not completely at least. He gave in to his fear and voluntarily became a vassal of Assyria. Isaiah criticized that fear and stopped advising Ahaz; he saw hope in the future king.

In Isaiah 9, the prophet (or someone writing in his name) waxes poetic about how great Hezekiah is going to be. He will be a king who is pious and wise; a king who will rule a land that is no longer oppressed by foreign powers; a king who leads with justice and righteousness. Then, the chapter becomes a rebuke of Judah's previous sister kingdom, Israel. The prophet accuses Israel (or its rulers and prophets at least) of pride and wickedness. He sees the destruction of the kingdom as the consequence of the utter depravity of the people, who wrote oppressive laws that benefited the wealthy and trampled the poor. The people of Assyria will also be punished for the pride of their king. Isaiah says that the king was intended as a tool for Yahweh, but thought himself more important than the god who wielded him. Yet, there will be some from Israel who are spared. Isaiah sees these as the ones who turned sincerely to Yahweh in their time of desperation.

We've discussed many times that decisions have consequences. Whether someone is ruler of a nation or barely ruler of a household, human decisions have consequences. This explains a fair bit of suffering (and "evil") in the world, and it certainly explains a considerable amount of what the people of Israel and Judah experienced at the hands of the empires around them. Some suffering is not the consequence of human decisions, though. Earthquakes, storms, disease, and the like cause a great deal of suffering, but their cause is natural. Maybe human behavior causes suffering in deciding to live in a place frequented by hurricanes, but every locale has its natural threats. In any case, natural causes of suffering don't occur because of human behavior. 

People like explanations, though. Belief in some higher power that orchestrates reality suggests for some people that all the suffering that people experience is ordained, whether that suffering comes from natural events or from human decisions. God is behind the earthquakes and typhoons, and God is the commander of invading armies. This is the perspective of the Hebrew scriptures, but it's not a viable way to live. It would be one thing if every person who lived as a devout believer survived unharmed when missiles or tornadoes struck, but they don't. Plenty of devout people suffer right alongside "wicked" people. The prophets' idea that the righteous are spared while the wicked suffer is based on a flawed perception of reality.

We like to be able to point fingers at something, though. When Israelites got raped, enslaved, or killed by the Assyrians, it was easy for the people of Judah to point and say, "Those Israelites must have been wicked to the core, every last one of them. That's why God made this happen to them." Certainly, that sort of belief might encourage some people to straighten up and fly right, for awhile at least. It's not reality, though. The reason people suffered was, in part, because their leaders made some bad decisions. Their suffering wasn't even necessarily the consequence of decisions those individuals made, but it was the consequence of human decision. Instead of pointing fingers and deciding that people who suffer must deserve it for some reason, the people of Judah could have had some compassion.

Isaiah does have some compassion when he writes that the people are going to suffer because of their oppressive decrees; he understands that poor people don't inherently deserve to be poor. If society was doing its job, he suggests, there would be an end to oppression; there would be light where they had been darkness. This isn't what a supernatural is supposed to do. A supernatural didn't invent their unjust laws; people did. So a supernatural isn't responsible for creating justice and equity; people are. When we understand suffering as either a natural occurrence or the consequence of human decisions, we can begin to take responsibility for the kind of world we live in. As long as we claim that a supernatural is in control, we may create the illusion that we can estimate the worthiness of people by the degree of suffering they experience, and we may fail to recognize how often our experience is the direct result of our own decisions and actions.

If people are responsible for creating what many people call Isaiah's "peaceable kingdom" (in the next chapter), then we have a guide for our day-to-day behavior. If people are capable of behaving with justice, equity, and compassion as priorities, we have the power -- and the responsibility -- to build a better world. We can vote with issues of justice, equity, and compassion in mind rather than a fear of losing power or a sense of entitlement. We can use our personal resources in a way that reflects our commitment to justice, equity, and compassion rather than fear of scarcity or an implied commitment only to our own comfort. We can speak out (in love) when we have the opportunity to address issues of justice, equity, and compassion, rather than staying silent out of fear of reprisals or a sense that someone else's suffering is none of our business. The idea that something is "none of our business" often means only that we think it inconvenient.

Isaiah put his hope in Hezekiah's rule and in the faithfulness of his god. We know now that one person cannot create a better world; we can all have a role in building a better world. We can bring the light of justice, equity, and compassion into dark places. We don't have to be messiahs or kings or any more than ourselves. There will be more to say about the peaceable kingdom and about how we connect with the "divinity" within us -- our deepest, most noble selves. For now, it is enough to read the words of Isaiah and recognize our capability -- our responsibility -- to be vessels of justice, equity, and compassion, to contribute to a better world by our intentional acts of integrity, and to engage with others in a spirit of hope and celebration.