1 Kings 1-2: Violence. Easy, Base, Fearful, Primal Violence (and hope for a wiser and more noble future)

One of the primary themes in The Godfather is the infectious spread of violence when a person is willing to kill another in order to make life a little easier. Once dishonorable man thinks, "Why should I negotiate with someone or make less of a profit from my shady dealings when I could just remove the obstacle altogether with a bit of murder?" From there, a cycle of vengeance costs many lives. In one scene, Michael Corleone is walking through an Italian village and asks, "Where are all the men?" His bodyguard responds, "They have all been killed in vendettas." When Michael's father dies and he gains the throne of the family, so to speak, his first act is to order the strategic deaths of his chief enemies. The story of Solomon's rise to power at the beginning of 1 Kings also reads like a gangster tale.

It is somewhat amusing that David admonishes Solomon to keep all of the laws that Moses gave them, and then encourages him to kill troublemakers. Perhaps in his old age he forgot that one of those Mosaic laws forbade murdering people. Or perhaps that law was moot given all of the laws that were punishable by the death penalty. Or perhaps David knew that when the king does it, it isn't illegal. In any case, Solomon is not thought of as evil in the least because of his violent actions; he is deemed wise.
  
Incidentally, by the time the writers of the Books of Chronicles recorded the story, they summarize in one sentence: When David was old and full of years, he made his son Solomon king over Israel (1 Chr. 23:1). Adonijah is never mentioned as a pretender to the throne, and Solomon's violent rise to power is no longer an important part of the tale. Chronicles contains much more about the preparations for the temple, in which David is more intensely involved before his death than in the Samuel/Kings account. It's possible that this later document's less violent version of the story indicates a shift in the culture; perhaps the Jewish people in Babylonian exile learned to abhor violence. If that is the case, though, we have somehow managed to regress.


After three thousand years, we still haven't quite figured out how to solve problems without violence. Part of it has to do with power. When some people want to feel powerful, they think that violent actions toward another person will do the trick. And when people perceive themselves as powerless, they are more likely to do desperate things. At either end of the spectrum, it becomes challenging to see other people as valuable human beings. Maybe it becomes difficult to see oneself as a valuable human being as well. When a sense of human dignity is discarded, we are capable of justifying some rather shameful behavior. 

In some parts of the world at this very moment, there are groups of people living out the conviction that their survival depends on killing another group of people. Violence seems like the only reaction to their circumstances that makes any sense. And perhaps they are right. There are very few people getting wealthy from trying to end such conflicts. Peace just isn't a lucrative enterprise, it would seem. At least not in the short term. There is certainly money to be made from equipping violent people with implements of destruction, however. Desperation obviously makes for ideal consumers. 

It isn't necessarily wrong that violence is the only possible response for some groups of people whose survival is threatened. In their current circumstances, perhaps they would be quiet victims of genocide if they didn't take desperate and violent action. The real issue, perhaps, is why we are content to live in a world in which those circumstances are possible. We aren't necessarily talking about new dictators killing off the competition like Solomon. Some of the ongoing violence in the world is unnecessary if people were willing to see others as human beings worthy of dignity and respect. That would require certain people or groups to give up something, though, and we are wired to hold on to every bit of money or property that we get our hands on. Our survival depends on it, as far as our subconscious primal fears are concerned.

We have all of history to show us that violence begets violence when we are left to our automatic reactivity. We justify it with righteous indignation when we are the offenders, and we condemn it with vehement outrage when we are its victims -- or when there is some political value to affiliating ourselves with one side or the other. We want it to seem as though we have no choice, but there are always choices. There is a way that honors and respects people as fellow human beings -- that acknowledges the value, beauty, and dignity of all people. There is a way that calls upon our innate creativity rather than our primal reactivity. We can be more than animals if we choose to be.

Finding solutions without resorting to the easy path of violence will require some shifts in our perspective. Fears about survival will have to be confronted and dismantled. The desire for enough wealth and power to subjugate other people will have to be seen for what it is: a bestial response to fear. It will take work to see people differently and treat people with respect, especially since our fearful ways of seeing people are so well-rehearsed. There will be moments when we slip as a species, but we are more than the sum of our evolutionary subconscious reactions. We have some measure of control over our decisions, and the more we strive to make conscious decisions based on a deeper truth, beauty, and creativity, the easier those decisions will be.

Solomon was said to be wise, and yet he was the last ruler over a united Israelite kingdom. If even the wisest Israelite couldn't conceive of a better way than violent reactivity -- if even the wisest Israelite couldn't create a better society with longevity beyond his own lifespan -- what hope do we have? I'm sure at some point, this was the excuse of the Israelite people. It's a tempting excuse to be sure. "Better people than I have tried and failed, so what hope do I have?" Every hope in the world. The only reason we consider some people to be better than us is because they tried. Their level of achievement places no limitation on you.

If we do nothing to create the lives we most deeply want and the world we most want to live in, that is our choice (and not a terribly wise one at that). It has nothing to do with our capability and everything to do with our fear. Solomon was an imaginary figure. Even if he was based on a flesh and blood human being, what we know of him is a fantasy. His perceived limitations do not in any way define the limits of human potential. We are capable of more. We simply must decide to walk a different path. We must persistently determine to see more clearly the value of every person. It is not necessarily an easy path, but it is most assuredly a wise path.

Judges 13-16: Samson, Bruce Banner, and Finding Where the Spiritual Rubber Hits the Road

It's one thing to speak in the abstract about spirituality and divinity -- to have an academic or philosophical conversation about God and belief and the biblical narrative.  It is sometimes more challenging to recognize where belief impacts how we live.  While we may not always realize it, our actual beliefs are more clearly expressed in our actions than we ever consciously state in an abstract conversation.  Whether a person claims to believe in a loving god who saves people from harm, a vengeful god who punishes the wicked, or something else altogether, those claims don't really have a lot of meaning until they impact daily life.

One can draw all sorts of clever lessons from the story of Samson.  The bottom line is that Samson is a man who gets very violent when he gets angry.  In today's terms, he has an anger management problem.  Of course, because he's an Israelite from the tribe of Dan and the people he kills are Philistines, Samson is a hero.  Today, when someone from one culture commits suicide while killing thousands of people from another culture, we have a different name for that.  Whatever we call him, Samson was obviously a powerful man who was reviled by people because he demonstrated his power in uncontrolled fits of violence.  Conveniently, the writers of Judges attribute Samson's strength to God.  I would submit that the divine character is not the source of rage, vengeance, and hatred.

Several years ago, a close friend of mine in a large church endured horrific treatment by a coworker for a series of months.  Instead of handling the problem professionally, senior staff treated my friend as if he were culpable for the abuse he endured.  Eventually, things came to a head and my friend was essentially asked to resign.  Although it was a traumatic experience for months, it was the best thing that could have happened to him.  The environment wasn't going to change.  The only thing that could change was his role in the system.  In the end, he won by getting out of the abusive situation.

No doubt, people at the church thought they had won as well: The abuser got to keep his position, the pastor didn't have to handle the messy issue, and other people could go about their business without getting caught up in the drama of the conflict.  It's easy to think of ourselves as winners when we get what we want.  But what we think will make us happy in the short term is not always what will satisfy us in the long term.  The things we want in the moment are not always the things that connect us more deeply with ourselves and other people.  Sometimes we want it easy, but we don't grow much through easy situations.  We grow when we recognize the decisions that are in greatest alignment with the core of who we are, and choose to do those things even when they are challenging.

From the outside, it was very easy for me to side with my friend.  I know him better than I knew anyone else in the situation, and I care about his well being.  It was easy for me to value him over the anonymous people that had "made his life miserable."  And yet, I have this belief (at least I claim to) that every human being has value, that every person holds within them a divine self -- a deep core of truth, beauty, and creativity.  How do I reconcile that belief with a person or a group of people who seem to have a very different character?  This is where the rubber hits the road in terms of spiritual belief.  What do we do with situations that challenge the way we want to see the world?

In the midst of an abusive situation, a person might feel justified in feeling hatred, seeking vengeance, and looking for ways to bring the building down around his enemies, even if he gets hurt in the process.  When we start thinking and acting based on what we fear, we lose our sense of who we are.  Feeling threatened can lead us to sever our connection to our values.  We even have the Samson story telling us that God approves of rage and vengeance if it's directed toward the right people.  But does that ring true with what you honestly believe?  It doesn't ring true for me.  I know that rage and vengeance and hatred are the exact opposite of what I want to express to other people, and those uncontrolled and unquestioned emotions separate me from who I most want to be in the world.

Rage, vengeance, and hatred all stem from fear.  In Samson's situation, it might be seen as fear that the Israelites would always be subjected to Philistine authority.  In my friend's situation, there were plenty of things for him to fear, too: that more people might get hurt if he didn't do something, that he might not find another job, that he might be embarrassed, that his relationships would suffer... a lot of understandable fears.  The other people in the system may have had some fears as well: The abuser in the situation may have had some legitimate anger issues that he feared would never be controllable.  The pastor may have feared the ramifications of some difficult and unpleasant decisions.  Other people in the system may have feared for their jobs if they don't cooperate.  Everyone may have feared instability in relationships that mattered to them.  And fear leads us to do some pretty inhuman things sometimes.

We don't have to take that path, though.  When we see fear for what it is and recognize how easily it escalates into irrationality, we can stop our legitimate anger from building into uncontrolled rage or hatred.  Anger is useful.  It helps us to see what we want to change in our lives.  When we use it to determine how we want to control or manipulate other people, we've missed the gift in the anger.  Samson hurt a lot of Philistines, but did his actions really accomplish anything for his family or his people?  Our fear separates us from our truest, most noble selves and we can easily slip into hostile reactivity when we don't manage that fear.

Seeing our fear for what it is and disarming it can also help us see how other people's actions are based on fear and not their truest, most noble selves.  We can have compassion for people who are caught up in hostile reactivity, because we know what it's like.  We know how easy it is to let fear rule our thoughts and actions.  We can't change those people, but we can be willing to see them more fully -- their humanity and their divinity, even in times when they don't see it in themselves.  Everyone has value, even people whose behavior we find deplorable.  The behavior is not the person.  The fear that fuels the behavior is not the person.  The person we are tempted to hate is honestly just like us: a beautiful and creative being who sometimes lets fear get in the way of deep connection to themselves and other people.  

Within us all is the character of the divine, even in the times when we lose sight of it.  We can always reclaim it and reconnect to it when we are willing.  If there is anything of value in the Samson story, it is that possibility of reconnection to the divine.  It is through that connection that we have a chance of seeing our way past irrational fear and into honest hope.  It is through that connection that we have a chance of personal responsibility and meaningful awareness of ourselves and other people and the world we share.  It is through that connection that our deepest truths can be made manifest in the way we live moment to moment, where the rubber hits the road.