Judges 6-8: Heroes Rarely Change the World

We love stories about heroes.  Super heroes.  War heroes.  Mythical heroes.  Small town heroes.  They are more than merely average human beings.  They exemplify, even if only for a moment, the kind of people we would like to be.  They do the things we would like to think we would do.  If we were able.  If we could rise above the distractions of every day life.  If we had a little more power.  Or a lot more power.  At the very least, stories about heroes warm our hearts and give us hope. 

And yet, how much of an impact do heroes really have?  No matter how many wars are fought, conflict persists between countries and peoples.  No matter how many evil plots are foiled in our favorite comics, there are still more villains.  Heroes may inspire us for a time, but we slip back into life as usual pretty easily.  Certainly, the real people we consider to be heroic make a significant impact on a few people.  The firefighter who saves a local family is rightly titled a hero, and that family's existence is forever impacted by that act of heroism.  But life goes on.  There will be more fires.  The family will move on in their lives, and ultimately, the world will keep doing what it does.

In fact, world-changing events often have very little to do with individual actions.  The things that change reality on a global scale are often things like diseases, stock market crashes, catastrophes.  The moments in history when a single person's efforts are seen as world-changing are often quite the opposite of what we would consider heroic: the assassins or charismatic revolutionaries whose actions spark chain reactions.  Of course there are those people who discover or invent the next step in medical, scientific, or technological progress: the Flemings, Einsteins, and Berners-Lees of the world.  And there are those individuals who accomplish extraordinary feats: the Lindberghs, Amundsens, and Hillarys that change the way we see human capability.  Still, at the end of the day, most world-changing events are more accurately portrayed as group efforts rather than the personal accomplishments of one person.

The book of Judges demonstrates clearly that even an incredibly heroic figure is still likely to have a minimal impact on a culture or society.  Gideon, who doesn't at first trust his calling as a hero, accomplishes great things for the Israelites, and yet at the end of his life, they are right back to living the way they were before.  Gideon is chosen, for unknown reasons, to serve as God's tool.  He actually goes back and forth a bit with God's messenger to make sure the angel has the right guy.  Once he's convinced, Gideon destroys the altar his community had raised to a local non-Israelite deity, and he summons his tribe's warriors to join him in fighting against Israel's numerous oppressors. 

He still had his doubts, and he took a couple of days to verify that God was on his side.  Then, God took a turn testing Gideon by telling him to dismiss the majority of his soldiers.  At the ultimate conflict, the Israelites surprised their enemy because of their small numbers and created chaos with trumpet blasts and fires.  Cleverness is once again shown as an admirable trait.  Gideon had some trouble with other Israelite tribes.  To those that chastised him for taking all the glory for himself, he offered soothing diplomacy.  Those that ridiculed his efforts and refused to help received Gideon's vengeance once the enemy was dispatched. 

Although the Israelites wanted to place Gideon in a role of power, he instead set up a golden shrine for the Israelites to worship.  His words deferred power to God, but his actions led his tribe right back to a different sort of idolatry.  Maybe he knew that the leadership they offered would be more trouble than it was worth.  In any case, when Gideon died, the Israelites went back to their old ways.  He was one man in the midst of a culture that was set in its habits, and his efforts ultimately had little impact on that culture.

It seems like a disheartening tale on the one hand, but it is an incredibly insightful tale about the limits of personal control over other people.  Gideon served in a way that was meaningful to him, in the way in which he was divinely inspired and empowered.  When the offer of leadership was made, he declined.  That was a step beyond his willingness or capability.  A few of us may be Einsteins or Berners-Lees or Lindberghs -- we may be the ones who discover, invent, or accomplish something that changes the world for large numbers of people.  Most of us will have opportunities to be a hero to someone through much less earth-shattering acts.  The secret is to follow a deep passion rather than external obligation.

None of the great thinkers or doers whose names we all know spent their energy trying to be heroic any way they could until they found something that would have a big impact.  Rather, they focused their time and energy on things that were personally satisfying passions, and the results were profound.  Gideon didn't set out trying to get the Israelites to acknowledge him as a leader, and everything he did wasn't perfect.  Still, he made a difference in a small way and when it ceased to be inspiring or satisfying, he stopped.  The firefighter who saves the family chooses to run into the building (hopefully with specialized training to support that decision).  She or he probably expects a little acknowledgement at the end of the day, but it's also to be expected that life will go on eventually.  Running into the building is just a part of who a firefighter is.  It's honest.  It means something personal to the firefighter. 

Why spend time trying to be heroic or successful if the things you're doing to be heroic or successful don't really have any personal value to you?  It's true that if you spend your time focused on things that have personal value that you may not be heroic or successful in anyone else's eyes, but does that really matter if you are personally satisfied with the results of how you spend your time and energy?  You don't owe the world anything.  And the world doesn't owe you anything either. 

Like Gideon or a firefighter or any number of heroes in newspaper stories all over the world, you will have opportunities to do significant things that will most likely be forgotten by most people.  You may even have a chance to do something that will be remembered by a lot of folks.  Either way, if you are focused on the things that have deep personal meaning to you -- if you are authentic to your most noble self -- you will have a greater impact that you will ever have the privilege of seeing.  You cannot determine whether your actions will change people's lives or the course of society.  You don't get to decide whether your actions will be meaningful to anyone else.  What you can determine is whether your actions are meaningful to you.  The ripples those actions create are out of your control.

Judges 4-5: Wisdom and Strength Are Gender-Neutral

The surprising plot twist in the story of Ehud was that a southpaw can be heroic.  In the story of Israel's next judge, Deborah, the unexpected lesson is that women can be heroic, too.  At least on the surface.  The story is just as bloody as other tales of Israelite warfare, but this time it's a woman directing the Jewish army and a woman who kills the enemy general when he flees.  The efforts of two women, Deborah and Jael, effectively end the oppression from the Canaanites and grant Israel forty years of peace.  Even in the modern world, this story may seem impressive for all the wrong reasons.

Obviously, the writers of the book of Judges had a bit of an ulterior motive in recording tales about unlikely heroes.  It shouldn't be surprising when a left-handed person accomplishes something great or when a woman displays wisdom or strength.  Human beings are capable.  Even though different people are skilled in different specific areas, this has nothing to do with gender.  When the Israelites told the story of Deborah, they were addressing this truth in a way, but the fact that there are so few women prophets and heroes in the biblical narrative demonstrates how limited a foothold that truth found in Israelite culture.  Even today, thousands of years later, we are still debating whether women have opportunities and rewards equal to men in our society.

Sometimes when a woman CEO or a woman scientist or a woman artist does something noteworthy, the fact that it was a woman accomplishing something impressive is often given more weight than the accomplishment itself.  Thousands of years after Deborah is said to have sat beneath a palm tree settling Israel's disputes, there is some doubt in Western culture as to whether women are as capable as men.  It's understandable on a certain level.  The primary religion of our culture has an image of God as an old white man whose physical incarnation was a male who was surrounded by other males.  Women were there in the story, too, but there were no female disciples of Jesus.  The church structure of the Christian church has historically placed power in the hands of men and treated woman as inferior, and it has used an ancient fable about a woman giving in to a talking snake's temptation as justification for viewing women as weaker than men.  Never mind that the same book which holds that old folktale also demonstrates the strength and wisdom of women.  After centuries upon centuries of social, political, and religious systems built around the concept that men are leaders and women are supporters, it's no wonder that we still have not settled for once and all in the minds of everyone that women and men have equal value.

As with so many things, the reason comes down to fear and habit.  We don't always dig down into our automatic assumptions, especially when our thoughts seem to match the views of a larger population, but any assumption that one group of people is inherently inferior to another group of people is usually based on irrational fear.  That fear becomes habitual over generations, so that we accept things as normal without ever assessing whether those habits are based in truth.  Perhaps our minds also create some early beliefs when we're figuring out the differences between boys and girls, hearing stories and watching movies in which princesses are consistently helpless and in need of rescuing by dashing, capable princes -- the kind of stories that reinforce stereotypes of previous generations so that a new generation doesn't need to be told that women are inferior.  Somehow their brains just put the connections together without any adult having to say out loud the real moral of so many stories.  Because saying out loud that men are more capable than women -- than men deserve more respect, money, permission, or power just because they were born with the right genitalia -- seems a bit far-fetched.

I'm not sure what all of the fears are that are wrapped up in this cultural perception of inequality.  I could say, as others have, that the men in charge of the early church were afraid of the local wise women who handled the problems of a community without the need for recognizing the authority of organized religion.  That fear seems reasonable and powerful.  It doesn't make sense for the large numbers of people today who have bought into the idea that women (or people from other cultures, or people with less money, or people with more money) are somehow inferior human beings.  Only you can look at your beliefs honestly and evaluate them against the truth of human value.  Your beliefs about other people, and your beliefs about yourself, can be based on fear or they can be based in truth.  You may have to dig down a bit to track a belief to its source.  Some of these ideas have been with us for a very long time.

The book of Judges prompts us to evaluate our beliefs -- our assumptions about other people and about human value.  The truth is that different people do have different strengths and skill sets, but these strengths and skill sets are not based on gender, skin color, finances, or culture.  Even though personal strengths and skills may differ, every person has equal value as a human being.  This doesn't mean every person is equally capable of doing any given task.  It means that our value is not a function of what tasks we can perform.  Every person has value.  That is the starting point.  When we embrace the belief that every person we meet holds within them deep and undeniable truth, beauty, and creativity -- and when we are able to look in the mirror and acknowledge those qualities in ourselves -- maybe the differences we notice will matter less and our irrational fears will give way to a practice of seeing more clearly what connects us all.

Judges 1-3: Divine Codependency, Personal Responsibility, and Why You Don't Have to Be Afraid of Yourself

The book of Judges is a colorful collection of Israelite hero stories, proclaiming the champions who rose up and saved the day at various points in time when the Israelites were oppressed.  It's a kind of Hall of Fame in one respect, but for the rank and file Israelites it winds up being a Hall of Shame as well.  These champions are only necessary, according to the narrative of this collection, because the Israelite people fall away from their faith and God punishes them by allowing foreign powers to conquer them.  Over and over again.  Beyond its narrative cohesion, there is something to be learned from this cycle of falling away from the cultural religion, being subjected to the rule of a foreign king, and being rescued by a hero anointed by God into a time of peace before falling away from the cultural religion once again.  Each hero's story also has a spiritual lesson or two for us.

Judges 1 seems like a bit of housekeeping.  "Here is how the Israelites finished up with the work that Joshua started."  The Israelites are still committing some brutal acts, burning down cities and killing everyone there except for their spies.  As before, those peoples the Israelites don't wipe out are made into slaves.  Some of the atrocities are justified because the "victim" is literally getting equal justice for what he has done to others, as is the case with Adoni-Bezek.  On the one hand, it means the the Israelites are really no better than any of the people they're conquering, since they're willing to commit the same acts of torture and maiming.  On the other hand, the Israelites are morally above the cultures around them, since they are the agents of justice.

Chapter 2 really seems to be the beginning of the story, a sort of proper prologue with an angelic proclamation and an outline of what the book is all about.  We'll talk more about the cycle of disobedience, punishment, rescue, and peace in a moment.  Chapter 3 gives us a sense of what these hero stories are going to be like.  The Israelites start worshiping the local gods and forget about their strict cultural religion, God gets angry and "sells them" into the hands of a conquering king, the Israelites cry out for God to rescue them, and God raises up Othniel, who goes to war (presumably with an army behind him), and the land has peace until Othniel dies.  This is the template from which all the stories are based -- a sort of generic hero tale from which the other judges' tales improvise.

Take the story of Ehud, who was left-handed.  Being left-handed was not seen as culturally appropriate, much less as a blessing.  People who couldn't use the proper hand for things were seen as cursed or stupid.  And then along comes Ehud.  The Israelites fall away from God, God gets mad, foreign king conquers them, and the Israelites cry out to God.  So God chooses as their deliverer this left-handed nobody with a little dagger.  But because no one expects a weapon to be drawn with an attacker's left hand, he catches fat King Eglon by surprise and kills him.  Then, there is the humorous and embarrassing bit about the servants not wanting to check on the king because they thought he was just on the toilet for an extraordinarily long time while Ehud made his escape.

Ehud displays some qualities that the Israelites admire.  He uses what seems to be a disability to his advantage, he is sneaky and "underhanded" in order to win a victory for the greater good of his society, and he is clever enough to get away with it.  Ehud may not be a historical figure, or his tale at least may be elaborated considerably for effect, but there is still spiritual value to the story.  We have a tendency to look at our own failings (and to notice the disabilities of others, too).  We notice more what we are challenged by than we give credence to our capability.  This perspective hinders us from seeing possibility.  We get so caught up in thinking about our scarcity that we fail to notice our abundance.  If we choose to see every quality as a potential advantage, we stand a much greater chance of seeing our capability and creating meaningful and satisfying lives.

We also stand a better chance of seeing the capability of other people.  When we focus on other people's disabilities or failings, we create an image of them that is less than a fully able human being.  By adopting an attitude that left-handedness is just a different way of achieving the same goal, and in some circumstances perhaps an even better way of achieving the same goal, our perspective can shift just enough to see the divinity in other people.  When we acknowledge the value of every person and start from that angle, we are better able to see abundance.

That doesn't mean that we should be finding clever ways to kill people we don't like, as Ehud did.  It's a story, like Paul Bunyan or Hercules or Jason and the Argonauts.  It's from a culture that focused on genocidal behavior as an acceptable way of gaining property without having to build it all from scratch.  We have to look beyond the actual behavior of the judges to get the spiritually meaningful bits that apply to our own lives.  This is sometimes difficult.  Poor Shamgar is something of an afterthought.  "Oh, yes.  This other fellow was also quite good."

But what about the whole structure of the book?  Sure, we can look at Ehud and say, "Wow, I shouldn't focus on what I can't do as well as everyone else.  I have my own set of strengths."  We can feel really good about ourselves for the moment, and maybe about other people too.  And then what?  How do we relate to the larger-scale cycle of behavior that forms the basis of all these hero stories?

I'll start by saying that we should not start looking for the equivalent of judges in our own culture or sub-culture.  Competent leaders should be acknowledged, sure.  As Tina Turner sang in that Mad Max movie, though, we don't need another hero.  There is no god watching the earth or any portion of it and deciding whether or not to give people over to foreign powers based on their level of worship.  And there is no reason to think that if we just obey the dictates of a particular church and follow the rules that our lives will be peaceful and happy.  There are two big lessons in this cycle, however, that can make a big difference in how we look at our opportunities to create satisfying lives that have a meaningful impact in the world.  The first lesson is about God's behavior in the story, and the second lesson is about the Israelites themselves.

God doesn't learn very quickly.  He really loves this girl and even though she keeps sleeping around and ignoring him, he keeps coming back like a lost puppy.  Sure, he'll get mad and let her get herself into serious trouble, but he always shows up to rescue her before things get really out of hand.  It is the very picture of codependency and insanity.  He keeps doing the same thing for the Israelites, expecting them to behave differently, and then getting really angry when they don't change.  He doesn't change his expectations or redefine his relationship with them (not yet at least) even though it's apparent that they cannot live up to what he wants in a relationship.  Perhaps the only reason he keeps going back to them is because he knows that his standards are so unreasonable that no one would be able to live up to them, so he settles for being angry at the same folks instead of branching out and being disappointed in different people.

In the Christian version of the story, God eventually learns.  The New Testament is the Christian impression of what a different sort of relationship might look like.  God isn't as interested in being angry about his girl not living up to his unreasonably high standards.  It's still a relationship of co-dependency, but God accepts the limitations of the people he loves a little bit better.  Neither version is an ideal template for human relationships, even though we engage in codependency more often than we would like to admit.  Examine whether this looks like a pattern in your own life and be willing to address it, even if it means seeking some outside assistance in breaking habits that have been ingrained over a long period of time.

Learn from God's frustration.  Saving people over and over again doesn't acknowledge their freedom or capability, and it assumes an unrealistic responsibility for someone else's well-being.  Start from the understanding that every adult is personally responsible for their own actions and beliefs.  Yes, parents have some responsibility for their own children's safety.  We're talking about adults here (although personal responsibility is a phenomenal thing parents could teach their children).  Yes, we sometimes place our safety in the hands of an experienced guide when we hike off into unfamiliar territory.  We aren't talking about choices we make in special circumstances.  If you're looking for excuses not to be personally responsible for your decisions, just stop.  And if you're making allowances for someone else to abdicate personal responsibility, you aren't doing anyone any favors.  Our ability to create, our ability to fully acknowledge the truth and beauty within every person, our ability to be inspired -- these are compromised when we are unwilling to take personal responsibility for our beliefs and our actions.

Which is just another way of saying that our relationship to the divine within us is hampered.  Even when we are ready to admit that there is no higher intelligence watching over our lives from the outside, arranging things that we don't control on our behalf, blessing the good people and punishing the wicked people -- that doesn't guarantee that we are able to fully tap into the wisdom we hold within.  We may look to our truest, most noble selves in times of great catastrophe, whatever that looks like in each person's life, but it's much easier to go on autopilot most of the time.  Until we find ourselves once more in an out-of-control situation and we look for something to save us from our own decisions.  It isn't a healthy or satisfying way to live -- being unconscious until there is something traumatic to worry about.

Our divine selves do not want sacrifice or selflessness from us.  Our divine selves are simply the truest manifestation of who we are as human beings.  There is nothing judgmental at that deep level.  The judgment comes from the lies and fears that hide our deepest selves.  You know what you want your life to look like.  You know what matters most to you.  Beneath the fear and the fear and the older fear and the fear you forgot about, and beneath the lies about yourself and the lies about other people and the lies about how life is supposed to be, you know.  It seems vulnerable to unwrap all of those snug fears and lies and look beneath them, but it is at that core that your true strength lies.  It seems dangerous to look that deeply into yourself, but it is the safest thing in the world.  That clarity is the key to creating and inspiring.

The Israelites may not have really known what their god wanted from them.  They may have gotten the impression that he wanted them to be miserable.  He did have a lot of rules and he did threaten some extreme punishments.  Maybe their god didn't really know how to express what he wanted.  Whatever the case, they were afraid of the authentic divine and they chose something more appealing.  Simpler.  More fun.  Less frightening.  Who knows.  The divine is not something to be feared.  The whole thing about divine reward or divine punishment is a bit of a misstatement.  When we are in tune with our innermost selves, the results are absolutely satisfying and fulfilling.  That's the reward.  When we rely on the lies and the fear to dictate our actions, our lives are frustrating, shallow, and painful.  That's the punishment.  To be completely honest, sometimes life is legitimately frustrating and painful.  It's just that when we are in tune with our innermost selves, we know what to do with that frustration and pain.

So, recognize your strengths, and recognize that what you think of as weaknesses may actually be strengths in the right circumstances.  Be aware of codependency, and make the necessary changes regarding personal responsibility to honor your self and the people around you.  You are responsible for your beliefs and actions.  Other people are responsible for their beliefs and actions.  Stop being afraid of what your divine nature wants for you.  It's you.  You are you.  Let yourself be yourself.  The cycle of fear and distrust and miraculous rescues does not have to be a theme in your life.  Know yourself at the deepest level possible, and you will find strength and peace and beauty and inspiration and truth.  It may take a little work.  It is so worth it.

Joshua 22-24: Choose This Day Whom You Will Serve

Cultural ideals and values change over time, even within a cohesive culture.  As Joshua reaches the end of his life, he gathers the Israelites one last time to reaffirm their faith and to reinforce their adherence to an insular mono-cultural religion.  Of course, the Israelites in the story agree, especially given the choices Joshua rhetorically offers.  There are lots of choices when it comes to faith and belief, however, and not all of them are mutually exclusive, either-or decisions.

Now, obviously, we are skimming past some passages in the book of Joshua.  For instance, we blew right past the beginning of Joshua 10.  Although we can find spiritual value in any story, it didn't seem particularly important to discuss God responding to Joshua's prayer for the sun to stop moving in the sky to give the Israelites an upper hand in battle.  It's one of those scenes that makes for great storytelling but cannot be taken as factual truth by anyone who understands basic physical laws.  As bizarre as it seems, in modern civilized society, there are people who will fight tooth-and-nail to defend the concept that their god can break physical laws if he wants to, even though no one has ever reliably and verifiably documented such a thing.  If it can just be a nice story that the Israelites told their children, then it's harmless.

We also don't need to spend a great deal of time on Joshua 22, in which a group of Israelite soldiers returns home after years of war and sets up a big altar.  The rest of the Israelites, accustomed to battle and bloodshed, march over there -- ready for war -- to find out what this altar is all about.  It's a testament to how our minds work.  When we are convinced that opposition and threats are all around us, we will see enemies to fight everywhere, even in the faces of those close to us.  The Israelites are portrayed as a pretty bloodthirsty people in this book.  This chapter demonstrates how their single-mindedness about conquering the Other threatened to damage their own society when they ran out of Others to conquer.  In the end, they worked it out, and everything was fine because they were willing to listen to one another -- a practice worth emulating in our personal conflicts.

In chapters 23-24, Joshua tells first the leaders and then the whole assembly of Israel that God will continue to good things for them if they continue to be obedient, and that God will do evil things to them if they are disobedient.  This is very telling.  There is no concept of a devil yet in Israelite culture, there is only their god and other people's gods.  Other people's gods were obviously inferior, and their god was mighty and awesome.  To that end, the Israelite god was capable of doing good or doing evil.  According to Joshua.  I'm not just making this up.  The God of the Old Testament, at least up until this point, is capable of doing good or evil. 

Is this the modern Christian definition of the divine character?  Probably not in most people's minds.  During a period of captivity, the Jews learned all about an Opposer, and this "Satan" became a part of their mythology.  It's convenient to split that capacity for evil away from a god that people are supposed to be able to love and trust.  It's hard to completely love or trust someone who has blatantly threatened to obliterate you from the face of the planet if you do something wrong.  This perception of God softened and changed over time because people needed something different than the Infallible Supernatural Military Leader and Imposer of Order.  People needed something a bit less volatile to believe in.

But this idea still exists, this God who is equally capable of doing great good or doing great evil.  It's in the Bible, after all.  It even leads to debates about the definitions of good and evil.  It's evil for a dictator to commit genocide just because he doesn't like what a group of people is doing, but some people could persuade themselves to think of it as righteous, justified, even good if God were to do exactly the same thing.  It's one of the primary reasons that religion and morality have become strange bedfellows.  If any act becomes good (righteous, justified, "right") if God is behind it, then God has become amoral -- beyond morality itself.  Any definition of good that doesn't contain an exclusion clause for God would seem to create problems for the god some Christians believe in.

Yet, the modern Christian view of God has evolved away from the idea that God is capable of both good and evil.  If God approves of something, in their thinking, then it must be good, because God is incapable of evil.  This is much like Nixon saying, "When the president does it, that means that it's not illegal."  In Joshua's time, there was no ethical confusion.  According to the story, their god had done some pretty impressive things when he liked what they were doing, and he had done some pretty horrible things when he didn't like what they were doing.  He had proven himself mightier than the gods of all the people the Israelites conquered, to the point of providing for the Israelites the security of homes they didn't build and the abundance of vineyards and orchards they didn't plant.  The story-book version of the Israelite god is not someone to whom you can easily say No. 

Which brings us to Joshua's last inspirational speech.  He leads the Israelites in a reaffirmation of their communal faith.  And if they weren't willing to devote themselves to the god that provided so much and threatened so effectively, he commanded them to choose what other deity they were going to serve, the gods of their forefathers or the gods of the surrounding cultures.  Not much of a choice.  It's the kind of tactic that strategic parents use: "Would you like to clean your room, or would you like for me to take away your video game privileges for a week?"  You can defy the logical choice, but there's a cost.

What if there were other choices, though?  As far as people or ideals to serve, there are many more choices than what Joshua mentioned in his ritualized reaffirmation ceremony.  Some people serve the ideals of patriotism, some people serve money, some people serve their children, some people serve nature, some people serve a particular corporation, some people serve aesthetic beauty, and more.  Some people serve more than one thing in a meaningful way.  It's worth knowing what you serve, but it isn't necessarily an either-or decision. 

It isn't enough to say, "I serve myself," because that's what everyone does when it comes down to it.  Did the Israelites have a better choice for self-preservation than to agree with Joshua?  It wouldn't have been really self-serving to provoke the wrath of their god.  It also isn't enough to say, "I serve God."  Which one?  The biblical God?  There is no such thing.  The biblical depiction of God is an inconsistent patchwork that evolved over time as a culture developed.  Which version of the biblical God do you serve?  Whatever your answer is, you will be defining the divine character based as much on personal beliefs as on biblical depictions.  What matters to you about the character of God is based on what matters to you personally.

Joshua's admonition still has some value.  You don't have to choose "this day;" there's no pressure.  It's worth a little thought, though.  What or whom do you serve?  It may be more than one thing.  What does it mean to serve?  Does it mean mindless obedience?  Does it mean fear of consequences?  Or does it mean heartfelt devotion mixed with autonomy?  Do you bring your full self into service, or do you shut down part of who you are in order to serve?  Are you trying to serve something that really doesn't matter to you, just because someone said you should?  If it didn't matter what other people thought of you, what or whom would you serve?

As for me, I will serve my divine self -- the insight, beauty, and creativity at the core of who I am.  Through that deep self, I am awed and inspired by the world around me.  Through that deep self, I can trust in my ability to find satisfying solutions to the challenges I face.  Through that deep self, I can see the divine character of other people more clearly, and I can think of them and treat them in a way that honors them, that reflects a respect for their capability, even when they are not fully embracing that capability themselves.  Through serving my divine self, I can be honest about what matters to me and make clear decisions that contribute to a fulfilling life.  And from that deep self I can boldly connect with other people and share life with them.

That service is not easy.  I believe things about myself that are not true.  I believe lies about other people and about the networks and systems we create.  I make decisions out of irrational fear from time to time.  I serve my self imperfectly.  Just like everyone else.  I also forgive myself from that deep well and continue serving, and that brings me delight and satisfaction.

We all serve something.  Know what you serve.

Joshua 9-21: The Truth about Your Superiority Complex and the Fear that Fuels It

As we've mentioned, the book of Joshua was probably written by a collection of different authors at a much later time in Israel's history than the events described in the book.  As a part of the "Deuteronomistic history," this book (and the books that follow in the biblical structure) were most likely created to justify a shift toward monotheism and more prominent leadership role of the priesthood under King Josiah late in the 7th century BCE, with the book possibly being completed as much as a century later.  It's evident that the story being told in Joshua is that the Israelites, empowered by their faith, conquered a large swath of the area around the Jordan River, taking livestock, property, and riches from the cities and killing every man, woman, and child of nearly every kingdom they conquered.  In the parlance of our time, we call this genocide, but in the minds of the Israelites, this was simply claiming what God had promised them.  God was in fact instigator and accomplice in their violence, according to the book of Joshua.

Many of the stories that pepper the chapters on the distribution of land, as well as the tales of conquest, end with statements like, "And there they remain to this day."  This suggests that many of the stories were intended to explain a situation, like why a particular group of Israelites were granted access to a particular well, or why a certain group of foreigners/infidels/heathens became slave labor for the Israelites instead of being slaughtered outright.  The stories are not intended to question the status quo, but rather to justify it in a way that put any questions or objections to rest, much like a parental, "because I said so."  Since we are looking back from a different vantage point, we have the opportunity to see some things about the Israelites' self-identity that they may have been unable to see, on account of their immersion in the culture.  Perhaps we can even use such observations to gain a little perspective about our own worldviews.

There's no question that the Israelites thought of themselves as better than everyone else.  On the surface at least.  Their god was better than anyone else's god.  Their entitlement to property and buildings and livestock was more legitimate than anyone else's.  Even their lives were worth more than other people's lives.  Perhaps there was some kind of collective narcissism at work, much like what happens in today's world when extreme nationalism shoves aside any thought of treating other people humanely.  If we accept the narrative of the Bible as how the Israelites saw themselves, perhaps the vehement superiority was actually a defense mechanism for what they feared about themselves, that they were, at their core, slaves.

When we fear something about ourselves, we can go to great lengths to disprove that fear.  If we fear that we are worthless, we might do everything in our power to demonstrate to everyone how valuable we are.  If we fear that we are unlovable, we might do all manner of self-destructive things just to devour illusions of love from other people.  And if we believe that we are no better than slaves, powerless, worth less than "real" people?  We might go to great length just to show everyone just how powerful we can be.  And how worthless they are.  "It doesn't matter if we were slaves in Egypt.  We're so powerful we can take your cities and all of your stuff and kill every last one of you!  We're not weak and powerless.  You're the weak and powerless ones!"

Either way, the lie wins.  If we roll over and accept the lie, we live like we are worthless or unlovable or powerless or selfish or whatever our own personal lies may be, and we never work up the courage to look at the truth about who we are.  And if we defend ourselves against the lie, we go one step further and create a different lie about who we are.  We live like we are more than everyone else.  We miss the truth about who we are and the truth about the other people around us.  All because of fear.  People don't lay waste to a city and slaughter everyone inside unless they are afraid of something.  And in our lives, we don't dehumanize other people or ignore our own value and capability unless we have given in to fear.

Maybe it doesn't manifest as a superiority complex in your life, but for the Israelites, fear told them that they had to prove how powerful and right they were, and they overlooked the atrocities they committed because they marched under the banner of a righteous and perfect god who approved of their actions.  There was no group of people that the Israelites could accept as equals -- at least not in the book of Joshua.  Those they didn't slaughter, they made into slaves.  That's right.  The people whose cultural identity revolved around escaping slavery in Egypt accepted other people only under terms of forced labor.  The irony seems to have been lost on the writers of Joshua, but hopefully our ability to recognize it will alert us to similar ironies in our own lives.

So, the Israelites failed to see their own authentic value as human beings, failed to see other people's authentic value as human beings, committed genocide, stole property, and engaged in slavery, and they thought of all of this as being righteous because of a myopic religion, all the while failing to recognize that their behavior was fueled by fear.  They bolstered their cultural identity with some admirable traits as well.  When they made a promise, even if that promise was made because of a deception, they kept their word.  The Israelites placed great value on the vows they made.  (Just hang on to this little tidbit, since it will become much more important in the book of Judges.)  The writers of Joshua go to great lengths to detail how fairly the land was distributed.  And whether it was because of a fear that God (or someone representing God) would punish them or whether it was out of respect for one another, the Israelites seemed to treat each other like people of equal value, even if they were from different tribes.  We cannot stomach being "all bad" even when we justify a great amount of ugly behavior.  Somewhere inside of us there is a glimmer of our true selves that insists on being expressed.

The fear tells us that if we examine ourselves and really look deep into the core of who we are, that we will see something less than human.  That the lie will turn out to be true.  That we will really turn out to be vacuous, weak, unlovable, selfish, ugly.  But the lie only has power as long as we are afraid of it.  Confront the lie for what it is, and the fear can no longer govern our behavior.  The Israelites didn't have to be conquerors, murderers, looters, destroyers, or slavers, just as they didn't have to be weak, worthless, or enslaved.  But they believed that their only choices were very clear extremes.  That's what fear will do.


What fear are you ignoring?  What lies are you avoiding about your true nature?  Are you afraid that you are weak?  Stupid?  Worthless?  Unlovable?  What are you doing with those lies?  Giving in and living like you're something less than human?  Or fighting against it to prove the lie wrong?  Are you hurting other people just to show how powerful you are?  Are you hurting yourself just to show how lovable you are?  What is it that keeps you from embracing your identity as a beautiful, creative, capable, valuable, worthy human being?  Whatever it is, it's a lie. 

Here's a little secret: When you want to, you can look at any other person, no matter how much or how little you know about them, regardless of how they're behaving, and you can see the divine within them -- you can see a deep and undeniable value, beauty, and creativity that no amount of lies can destroy.  You can also just see the lies about who they think they are.  Or who you think they are.  What you see is your choice.  The same goes for yourself.  If you look for the truth within you, you will find a deep and undeniable worthiness, beauty, and creativity.  Or you can stop short and just see the lies.  What you see is your choice.  And what you do with what you see is your choice too.   

Joshua 7-8: Our Spiritual Identities Are Strengthened by Landmarks and Reminders

We've called Joshua's attack on Jericho a cautionary tale of how fear can discolor inspired ideas.  As an image of a strong Israelite leader at the time, though, the character of Joshua fit the bill.  He spoke and acted with authority, whether he was punishing someone who had gone against his orders or slaughtering people who didn't believe in his god.  His story continues in Joshua 7-8, as Joshua leads the Israelites in claiming by force a land inhabited by people who had legitimately built cities, bred livestock, and raised families.  From an outsider's perspective, Joshua was a barbaric warlord who claimed to act on God's authority -- the sort of person we might emulate if we were ambitious narcissists, but not a model of how to create a better world. 

Not everything in Joshua's tale needs to be taken as cautionary, however.  His leadership demonstrates three important practices that could be of benefit to anyone on a spiritual journey.  Joshua has the Israelites create landmarks to commemorate every major event in their communal experience, both the successes and the disappointments.  He also adapts to issues within the community by changing his expectations, and he makes a significant event out of reminding the community of their identity.  All of these practices are demonstrated in chapters 7 and 8, even in the midst of overseeing a violent invasion.

In the story that is told here, Joshua had commanded his men not to take for themselves any of the spoils of war from Jericho, but not everyone listened.  This disobedience resulted in the Israelite soldiers losing a battle against the defending forces of Ai.  Joshua does two noteworthy things in this difficult situation.  First, he punishes the person who went against his orders, as one would expect from a strong military leader.  But the second remarkable thing is that he changes his expectations of the soldiers, commanding that they are free to carry off the livestock and plunder from the next city they attack.  After they are victorious, Joshua arranges for the Israelite community to be reminded of their spiritual and cultural identities in a ceremony that recounted the entirety of the law to which they were committed as a people.

At this ceremony, they left relics of the occasion, just as they had done at every significant event since Joshua's leadership began.  They left piles of rocks when a significant part of their journey was complete, when a city was successfully destroyed, when a member of their community was punished, every time something memorable happened in the life of the Israelite community.  The memorializing of the events presumably made it more difficult to forget them, thus strengthening cultural memory and identity.

Whether or not Joshua was a real person, these are practices that we can adopt in our own lives.  We may not be invading cities or sentencing people who disobey us to death by stoning, but we are all on our own journeys.  We all struggle from time to time with our identities, especially when there are people around us (or an entire society) with conflicting impressions of who we should be.  Standing with conviction about who you are and what you stand for isn't always easy, and it can be helpful to have a few practices in place to reinforce our personal responsibility and integrity.

Just like the Israelites, we occasionally need reminders about who we are.  We get into patterns of behavior that can almost become automatic if we let them.  Sometimes we are susceptible to what other people expect from us, to the point that we may lose our own integrity in the process of living by someone else's expectations.  Taking time to remind ourselves what we believe and what we want our lives to be about can be a powerful reinforcement in our lives, whether it's something we choose to do monthly, weekly, or even daily during times of exceptional duress.  Of course, this requires knowing what we believe and understanding who we want to be in the world, which is really what the journey is about anyway.

Based on our beliefs, we set goals for ourselves.  Sometimes these goals are very intentional and sometimes we are barely conscious of where we are headed.  The more time we spend examining our beliefs and our identities, the more opportunity we have to be aware of what we're expecting of ourselves.  When we encounter challenges, whether those challenges are because of our own capability at the time or because other people aren't doing what we expect or want, it's important not to let those challenges overwhelm us.  The challenges are there to help us hone our beliefs and expectations, not to punish or restrict us.  It may be that we are demanding some unreasonable things from ourselves (or other people), or that our beliefs about ourselves or the world around us are somehow being influenced by our fears.  Whatever the case, the challenges we encounter give us an opportunity to assess what we're making important in our lives, whether our expectations are reasonable, and whether there are some changes we can make to better enable us to have lives built on what matters most to us.

Challenges along the journey are rarely outright roadblocks.  We are capable of adapting to the challenges, refining our sense of who we are, and aligning ourselves more clearly with the truth, beauty, and creativity within us.  Whether we overcome our challenges with ease or we struggle against them, whether we see the immediate results as successes or disappointments, the challenges are worth commemorating.  We may not pile stones around our houses and workplaces, but across the landscape of our lives, we can create markers in our minds for significant events and how those events helped to define who we are and what we believe.  These significant events may be the kinds of things that are similar in everyone's life -- marriages, births, deaths, the plundering of cities -- or they may be things that are significant because of what you learned about yourself.  They landmarks remind us of the pitfalls we have faced and the bridges we have built, and our awareness of them can help prevent fighting the same battles over and over again in our lives.

What we believe may change over time -- if we are growing as human beings, it's likely that our beliefs will grow too -- but what we believe and how those beliefs inform our behavior is always within our control.  We are responsible for the lives we create and the impact we have on other people and the world.  Establishing spiritual landmarks and taking time to remind ourselves who we are helps us be more aware of that personal responsibility, and our willingness to be flexible as we face challenges with integrity keeps us growing in satisfying ways.

It may be that you are unsure what you believe, and that all of this seems rather impractical or unrealistic.  That's a fair critique at this point.  It's easy to say "create spiritual landmarks," and it's a much more difficult thing to clearly explain how one might go about doing that.  The easy answer is that you already know how to remember significant events and that there is no right or wrong way to remind yourself who you are and what is important to you, as long as you are willing to be honest with yourself.  It requires a bit of time away from the distractions of all the other noise -- perhaps a stillness and quiet that can be intimidating if it's unfamiliar.  No one can really tell you who you are or what matters to you. I can say with some confidence that the truth about you is not based on any fears you may have, but rather on a deeper, calmer, quieter place within you.  The moments when you are aware of the deep truth, beauty, and creativity within you or within other people -- these are the moments worth commemorating.  These are the moments that will help you get back to the core of who you are and what matters most in life.

Joshua 2-6: When Divine Inspiration Gets Sidetracked by Fear

About half of the book of Joshua is folklore about how incredibly successful this man was as a military leader when the Israelites were slaughtering innocent people and taking their land, wealth, and communities.  It's difficult for rational people to look upon some of the content as factually viable, since the stories include things like the sun standing still for a day and such.  That being said, there is powerful allegorical value in these stories, particularly the first and most highly developed story about the fall of Jericho.  These Old Testament stories were written from the standpoint that the Israelites were better than everyone else because God said so, and all the other people who were living in the area around the Jordan River at the time were expendable because they weren't chosen by God.  It isn't a stretch from that perspective to draw "spiritual" lessons from the story about trusting God and overcoming enemies through faith.  But what if one approaches from a different set of assumptions?

If we start from the belief that all human life is valuable, that people are worthy of respect regardless of their beliefs, Joshua's acts seem deplorable.  The Israelites' actions dehumanize their enemies.  If we start from a belief in abundance rather than scarcity, it seems at the very least misguided to drive off or kill people just to claim their resources.  Yet we still haven't outgrown that behavior in some respects.  And if we start from a belief that houses the character of the divine within every human being, Joshua's actions are inspired, representative of the kind of creativity available to any of us if we are willing to tap into our internal resources and trust ourselves.  The problem is not with Joshua's outlandish tactics, it's with the fear he entertains regarding the people of Jericho.

One challenge in reading or hearing any sort of story as adults is that we typically have a set of beliefs in place before we determine what the story has to offer.  Our opinions of any new information are based on what we already believe about the world, other people, and ourselves.  It is nearly impossible for us to approach new information with a truly open mind, free from any beliefs about reality.  For many people who grew up in a Christian context, biblical stories were even used to help frame our beliefs about the world, other people, and ourselves, but we weren't really able to understand the nuances of the stories beyond what adults were telling us to believe.  As adults, we have the opportunity to reassess our beliefs and to re-contextualize the stories we know or encounter anew.

If it is true that all human beings hold within themselves the deep truth, beauty, and creativity that we associate with the character of the divine, then we are capable of doing incredible things when we push past the layers of fear that have accumulated over time and embrace that truth, beauty, and creativity within us.  With calm patience, we can collapse seemingly insurmountable obstacles that would hold firm in the face of the greatest display of force.  Our strength is not in our ability to be violent, but in our ability to be intentional.  What happens after the walls come down and we are granted access to new territory, though?

Once again, if it is true that all human beings hold within themselves the deep truth, beauty, and creativity that we associate with the character of the divine, then this truth should inform all of our dealings with other people.  When we seek to do harm to others, we are harming a system of which we ourselves are a part.  We cannot bring violence to other people without doing some harm to our own identities and well-being.  Honestly, our only reason for intending harm toward others is fear, and that fear is almost always irrational.  In Joshua's case, there were likely manifold fears that prevented him from seeing the divinity in the people he conquered.  He was afraid that his culture could be corrupted, that his people were too weak to hold to their beliefs in the face of alternative practices.  He was afraid of death at the hands of the defenders of the cities the Israelites were assaulting.  He was afraid of how his people would see him, whether they would hail him as a hero or reject his authority.  Understandable fears, but unnecessary fears.

Joshua is a character of fiction, a bit of folklore to build cultural identity for an ancient people.  But we experience fears that may seem insignificant by comparison to a leader of an entire society, and those fears still manage to derail our creativity and inspiration.  We fear what people will think of us, and we fear what people will do to us.  We fear things about ourselves as well, that we will be found out, revealed as imposters or weaklings.  We fear that we have to fight for survival, that we have to defend ourselves at every turn.  We learned to fear from a variety of sources, and we have practiced that fear until it frames our reality.  We have to look beyond that fear to see the truth and beauty and inspiration in the world around us, and we have to look beyond that fear to see the truth and beauty and creativity within ourselves.  The more ingrained the fear, the more dismantling we need to do to see what is true.

Dismantling fear is easier said than done.  Even the prospect of it brings up a whole new onslaught of fears.  Our entire society is addicted to fear, and the thought of disregarding fear is counter-cultural to say the least.  It will not happen all at once, but as we are willing to see our own beauty and creativity, and as we are willing to see the beauty and inspiration in others, we will build confidence in that truth.  We can bring the walls down with confidence and discover ways to make the world a better place rather than a more violent one.  We can create a life that serves our most noble intentions rather than our most fearful ones.

The message of Joshua is a cautionary tale.  We have within us immense power.  When we tap into that divine essence, we can find inspiration to do incredible things in our lives and in the lives of other people.  But when we unleash that power out of fear, we can destroy instead of create.  We court the power of judgment and death instead of bringing hope and life.  We are capable of either path.  The difference is that when we identify ourselves as destroyers, we act in defiance of our true nature.  The fear that convinces us that destruction is the only option will never bring us satisfaction, peace, happiness.  That fear will always be restless.  But we are not destroyers.  That is not our identity as human beings, no matter what we have been led to believe or what we have accepted as reality.  We are creators.  At our core we are capable, strong, life-affirming creators.  To deny that is to deny our humanity.