Ruth: A Lovely Story about King David's Great-Grandparents (plus a few lessons in respect, integrity, and trust)

Following the book of Judges in the Protestant canon, there is a short story about a woman named Ruth and how she and her second husband, Boaz, met and fell in love.  On its surface, it is a charming tale about all the things that sell romantic books and films.  Digging a little deeper, however, we can find some interesting tidbits, even though its themes are steeped in the cultural norms of the ancient Israelites.  While the original intent of the story may have had something to do with demonstrating the kind of people David's ancestors were, we can still glean a lesson or two from the story itself.

After losing her first husband, Ruth travels with Naomi, her mother-in-law, back to Naomi's home country, where she remarries one of her husband's closest relatives.  In the culture of the time, this Levirate marriage was an honorable way for childless widows to be cared for, and it was an expected way for the family line to be carried on.  There are other elements of Ruth's relationship with Naomi and her "courtship" of Boaz that readers may assume, but much of what is implied is doubtless lost on us modern readers, since we are not of the story's culture.  Some people wish to read sexual themes into various aspects of the story, and while this is titillating, it doesn't truly add much value to the tale.  There are actually three slightly more important spiritual themes at work in this short book. 

First, it bears mention that Ruth is from Moab, a country whose culture was often at odds with Israelite culture.  Moabites were polytheistic, and the biblical narrative suggests that Israelites were tempted into worshiping Moabite deities from time to time.  The Moabites are said to have been spawned from the incestuous relations of Lot with one of his daughters, and they are the people who hired the sorcerer Balaam to curse the Israelites.  In other words, Moabites are not often depicted favorably in the literature of the ancient Israelites.  So, Ruth's culture is a big deal.  Especially since her great grandson is going to be the one and only King David.  Obviously, the inclusivity of the story is a significant change from the conflict-riddled language of earlier portions of the Israelite tale.  Yes, the fact that Naomi's boys marry Moabites is mentioned, but throughout the story, people treat one another as human beings.  Their heritage is a matter of fact, not a source of embarrassment.

As has been mentioned, Boaz also behaves in an honorable way toward Ruth.  Although he quickly develops feelings for her, there is another man who is first in line by the cultural expectations of Levirate marriage.  Boaz deals with things in a straightforward and honest manner, even though it could potentially cost him the relationship he wants.

Thirdly, the primary characters in this story display a profound trust.  There is little inherent anxiety in Ruth's decision to return with Naomi, and there is a sense of calm in the integrity Boaz displays.    Ruth does take action instead of just sitting back and hoping that things will be alright, but even this action is taken with a sense of quiet confidence.  We could learn a great deal from this depiction of calm and purposeful human interaction.

So, after chapter upon chapter of Israelites treating everyone around them shamefully, including other Israelites, we come across this vision of how things could be if people treated one another with mutual respect, behaved with integrity, and trusted themselves and the people around them.  We might almost wonder if we're reading the same book.  People don't always behave as characters in a storybook, but we have choices about the kind of people we are going to be.  We can choose to treat other people as human beings of equal value, irrespective of how we are treated.  We can choose to act in accord with our most noble selves, to embody authenticity and integrity, even if there are people around us who choose otherwise.  We can choose to approach situations with calm trust, even when others become anxious or fearful.

Your decisions ultimately determine how meaningful and satisfying your life is going to be.  Even if your experiences don't look like the story of Ruth and Boaz, your choices matter.  It's not like anyone told Ruth that she was going to be great-grandmother to a famous king.  She simply did what mattered most to her in that moment, and life took its course.  We are not responsible for orchestrating some strategic master plan in our lives.  We are responsible for the choices we make here and now, in this moment, to be people of integrity.  People who see irrational fear for what it is.  People who see the inherent worth in others.  People who know and value themselves.  If we are able to choose moment by moment to be true to our innermost selves, our lives will never fail to be fulfilling.  And as an added bonus, our impact on the world could be tremendous.

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.

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.

Joshua 1: Courage Is a Vital Ingredient to Living with Integrity

About half of the book of Joshua is folklore about this Israelite leader's success in conquering the Promised Land.  The other half is about how the land was divided up among the Israelites, which reads about as interesting as any tax roll.  Joshua's life as depicted in the Bible would make a very exciting movie, and let's face it, telling stories with the community gathered together was the ancient civilization equivalent of a movie theater.  We can draw spiritual truth from these stories as easily as we can draw spiritual truth from the stories of any culture, but the book of Joshua begins with one of the most blatant and timeless admonishments found anywhere in scripture.  Be strong and courageous.

Moses was dead, and Joshua had been selected to fill his shoes.  The Israelite people hadn't been entirely respectful of Moses' leadership.  They were quite an unruly lot from time to time.  Now a new leader has to manage a rather belligerent young society, while they most likely did what any classroom of students do with a new teacher: test boundaries and see what they can get away with.  Now, the Bible doesn't include much about the Israelites' bad behavior in the relatively short book of Joshua, but if the previous books are anything to go by, Joshua had his hands full.  Fortunately, most of his reported leadership was a series of successful military battles, so his popularity was probably much higher than his cantankerous predecessor who was always telling people what they couldn't do and meting out punishments for their constant complaining.

The biggest problem when someone new takes charge, or when we enter some new phase of life -- a new job, a new city, parenthood, retirement -- is that we have gotten accustomed to things being a certain way, and now we have to deal with change.  Some people aren't wired to enjoy change.  They like the appearance of a predictable, secure existence, even if that includes a predictable level of stress.  Unpredictable pleasure is almost more threatening than predictable pain to some people.  While I respect the preferences of those people and understand the comfort to be found in predictable patterns, I would submit that very little in life is truly predictable and consistent.  We are faced with a certain amount of upheaval over the course of our lives, no matter how well we may have planned everything out.  Since there is no way to truly avoid change, what matters most is how we handle it.

Our beliefs determine a lot of our decisions.  What we believe about ourselves and other people (and life in general) informs how we respond to changes, however slight they may be.  Whether the change is someone moving our coffee cup or someone firing us from a job, whether it's a little rain on our picnic or a natural disaster destroying our home, our beliefs are the source of our responses.  And those beliefs are constantly being challenged.  If we believe that people are inherently good, there will be evidence to the contrary whenever we get around enough people who all want to get to the same place at the same time.  If we believe that people are inherently selfish, there will be generous acts that challenge that belief.  Whether you believe that you are attractive or unattractive, there will be people who disagree with you, some more vocally than others.  Our beliefs cannot remain intact by mere observation of things around us.  Strong beliefs originate from someplace deeper.

Not all of our beliefs are beneficial to us.  If we want our beliefs to be useful, we have to sort through them and stake our claim on the beliefs that truly make sense to us.  Our beliefs also change over time.  We may start off thinking one way about a particular group of people and wind up changing that belief when we gain new information.  When we are aware of how our beliefs are affecting our decisions, we can take a bit more conscious responsibility.  There aren't a lot of people who are going to confront us on what we believe, so we are best off taking some initiative to confront ourselves. 

Plenty of folks claim to believe one thing and then act completely contrary to that claim.  These people are being dishonest somewhere along the line.  Either they know what they believe and are unwilling to admit it because they fear what people will think of them, or they don't know what they believe and make a claim based on what they think they're supposed to believe in.  Some of these people even have strong convictions that are essentially empty of meaning because there is no real thought behind the convictions.  It is spiritual laziness to express unexamined beliefs with vehemence and passion.

When we are willing to engage in some self-examination, both of what we believe and how we behave, we can see clearly enough where the disconnections are, and we can address those disconnections.  We might revise what we believe so that our beliefs clearly line up with the decisions we want to make, or we might change our behavior so that it best reflects what we believe.  We might discover that we have some beliefs that are in conflict with one another, and we can make a clear decision about which we will strengthen and which we will jettison.  Without this level of integrity, we will always be struggling with conflict that comes from within our very being, and everything we do and experience will be to some extent impacted by this conflict.  Living a satisfying life depends upon knowing what we believe and having the integrity to make decisions based on those beliefs.

Being spiritually strong involves knowing who we are and committing to a life that reflects that identity clearly.  It doesn't mean bullying people who believe differently, and it doesn't mean being louder than anyone else.  Spiritual strength is about how well our behavior reflects what is at our core.  I am convinced that the beliefs that arise from that core will ultimately reflect the truth that human beings have value, that we are all imbued with creativity, and that we live in abundance.  A lot of the beliefs that seem contrary to those truths are actually fears that we have clung to for so long that they seem true.  Beliefs about needing to be wealthy, or needing to make people behave the way we want them to, or needing to eradicate a certain type of person in order to make our own lives better.  Fear is not great at disguises, but it's often enough for us to convince ourselves.  When we begin to examine our beliefs, though, we can start to recognize fear for what it is.  We can work to let go of irrational beliefs about ourselves and other people and the way life must be, and we can strengthen the beliefs that better allow us to create the kind of life we most want with integrity.

And this requires courage.  There will be challenges to what we believe.  Some of the challenges will arise from within us, as those irrational fears continue to crop up.  Some of the challenges will arise from outside of us, in the way that other people behave, or the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  It takes courage to stand in the face of violence and claim that all human beings have value and are worthy of respect.  It takes courage to look at a difficult situation and trust that you have the creativity and resources to find a way through to the other side with your integrity intact.  It takes courage to keep living by a certain set of principles when other people seem to be doing just fine -- even better than you perhaps -- by taking advantage of people or lying.  Fear is enticing, and it takes courage to live from the core of who we are rather than be distracted by whatever fears may seduce us away from that. 

Be strong and courageous.  Do not give fear a foothold.  Do not fall prey to discouragement.  You have within you the capability to live a satisfying and fulfilling life.  You will have an impact on the world around you, and you have the power to choose what kind of impact that will be.  Build integrity between your beliefs and your actions.  Verify that your beliefs serve you and the world around you, and be fearless in the knowledge that you embody an undeniable beauty and creativity.  Be strong and very courageous.  Fear has done enough damage in the world and in our lives.  Fear destroys our integrity.  And even though fear will always be present in our lives, we don't have to give it control of our behavior.  Be strong and courageous, and live like you mean it. 

Deuteronomy 1-3: Wanting All of the Credit and None of the Blame

The book of Deuteronomy is an interesting part of the biblical canon.  It's more or less a review of the information included in the previous three books, written as if Moses is being quoted directly.  This was supposedly what Moses spoke to the Israelites as they were leaving their period of wandering and settling in the "Promised Land," a kind of oral history of their journey in the form of sermons.  Of course, Moses didn't have a scribe writing down everything as he said it.  The book was probably actually written much later, four centuries or more after the supposed lifespan of Moses, recording stories and ideas that had grown and developed as a part of Israelite culture for some time.  The first few chapters recall the highlights of their journey before a recounting of the ten commandments and other religious laws.

What's interesting about the words put in Moses' mouth is that they reveal a distinctly different version of things than the previous books contained.  Moses takes credit for delegating authority to other leaders instead of mentioning anything about his father-in-law offering that bit of wisdom.  He does give God full credit for their military victories and losses, as the writers of the previous books in the canon.  As was described in the book of Numbers, Moses tells of the Israelites' conquest and distribution of land east of the Jordan (although he takes credit for proclaiming that God had bequeathed the land to certain tribes rather than suggest that the tribes had asked Moses for the land directly), and he announces Joshua as his successor. 

Moses doesn't openly admit any fault in himself, however.  When he briefly approaches the topic of why he won't be crossing over into the Promised Land with the rest of the Israelites, Moses blames the Israelites for making God angry: "Because of you the Lord became angry with me also and said, 'You shall not enter it, either...'"  Moses doesn't seem to recall his angry outburst at the rock at Horeb, in which he took credit for calling water from the stone instead of acknowledging God.  Instead, the burden of Moses being denied entry into the Israelites' new home is placed on the people.  It does make sense, writing after the fact about a cultural hero, to exonerate the behavior of a great man and use the opportunity to demonstrate the dire consequences of people grumbling and complaining and not trusting God.

It's hard to blame Moses for anything said in Deuteronomy (or any other bit of scripture), since it's highly unlikely that anything the man said or did was documented reliably.  Even if the figure of Moses is based on an actual person, by the time anything was written down about him, he had become more icon than historical fact.  Still, there is a profound lesson that we can draw from the first few chapters of this book, and it applies to us as a culture as well as to us as individuals.  


Recounting history is not a bad thing.  Remembering what we've done, or what other people have done, is one of the key ways we learn and grow.  If we don't remember our mistakes, we are likely to repeat them, and if we don't remember our successes, it can be very difficult to develop any consistency in our abilities.  The way we remember history is equally important, however.  If we recall that we went into a meeting with no sleep and poor preparation and lost an account over it, we can see some things to improve in the future.  We can make changes to our behavior and reasonably expect different results.  If we recall nothing about our own preparation but only know that we lost an account, and we pair that with the belief that God is in control of everything, we can write our own history to read that God didn't want us to have the account and so he took it away from us.  There is nothing practical for us to learn from this, and there is nothing for us to do differently.  We don't have to use God as a scapegoat, though.  We can blame our boss, a secretary, a computer, lots of other people or circumstances, without coming close to looking at ourselves.  We can be very creative when it comes to avoiding blame.


Our history as a people has some great moments and some disappointing moments.  Our tendency is to rewrite the facts so that our pride isn't in danger of being bruised.  We don't want a record of any mistakes or wrongdoing.  We'd rather not think of ourselves as fallible.  The truth is messier than that, though.  It's part of our nature to make mistakes.  It's one of the ways we learn and develop.  No one is immune.  If our history suggests otherwise, we've written a work of fiction, and we've lost a valuable opportunity to recognize how we can get closer to what we actually want.  


We don't just rewrite history to make mistakes go away, though.  When we actually like the outcome, we sometimes rewrite history to make ourselves look better.  When we actually get the account, we are sometimes quick to pat ourselves on the back without recognizing that there were other people involved in putting a presentation together, training us and teaching us what we need to know, getting clients warmed up to the idea of working with us, or any number of other contributions.  We want all the credit we can take when things turn out favorably, and we want none of the blame when we don't like the outcome.  Being aware of this tendency gives us the opportunity to look at things more closely, to grow and get better at creating what we want more reliably.



This is why it's hazardous to look too quickly at uncontrollable forces.  Often our desire to attribute things to God, some other supernatural intelligence, the alignment of the planets and stars, the weather, or anything else that lies outside our control, stems from self-preservation rather than any kind of honest observation.  People have all kinds of beliefs about what governs reality, but we miss something if we discredit our own ability to make a difference in our lives and the lives of people around us.  We can get closer to what we most want by being willing to recognize our responsibility in creating it.  Looking for something greater than ourselves on which we can pin responsibility can be a convenient smokescreen from honestly looking at ourselves.  Part of this is because we have become convinced that making mistakes is shameful and that we have to present ourselves in the best possible light if we are going to "succeed."


Making a mistake is not shameful.  It's important for us to realize this for ourselves and also for us to extend this awareness to how we treat other people.  Surely, some mistakes are bigger than others, and actions often have consequences.  But the act of making a mistake is a function of being human.  We don't have to write mistakes out of our history.  When we acknowledge that things didn't go the way we wanted them to, we can examine the circumstances and determine if there is something we did to contribute to that result.  If so, we can potentially improve something and get closer to what we want.  Sometimes, the outcome really has nothing to do with us.  We are only in control of our own decisions, and that's worth recognizing, too.


Likewise, there is no reason to hoard credit when things go the way we want them to.  There is value in self-recognition, but balance it out with a glance around at the other people that contributed to the outcome.  People rarely accomplish anything entirely on their own, and there is value in acknowledging the people who made a difference.  We might not be able to see completely the complex set of factors that led to a particular result, but we can do our best to have a balanced awareness of our strengths and weaknesses and the contributions of others.  There are volumes that could be written about team management and getting a group of people focused on a specific goal, but the key to accomplishing any of that is being an honest historian, accepting appropriate proportions of credit and blame.  What you want to create can guide what you do with the data at your disposal, but there's never any real value in creating false data.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Numbers 21: Cause and Effect Relationships and the Human Imagination

It's tempting to brush past some portions of the biblical narrative because they seem somewhat redundant to what has gone before.  Knowing that the archaeological record paints a different picture than the actual scriptures can also feed a dismissive attitude.  It helps to recall that the point here is to draw some spiritual truth from what is written, even if that truth is contrary to the point of the narrative.  In Numbers 21, there are some stories about how the Israelites were victorious in combat because God wanted them to be, and there is the story of the magical bronze snake.

There's a reason that we say that history is written by the victors.  Whether we're talking about one nation conquering another or someone getting fired from a job, the people who remain in control in a certain context get to decide how to frame events.  Sometimes we misremember events, and sometimes our perspective is different enough from someone else's that we interpret events completely differently.  Mixed in with that faulty memory and difference of perspective are the occasions in which we blatantly lie, usually because we believe that we need to protect ourselves somehow.  That protection may be as simple as not wanting to look foolish, but when we proclaim an altered history, we miss an opportunity to learn from the actual events.

Many times, we just become so convinced of something that we can't really see things through a different lens.  Once we completely believe that a friend has betrayed us, it's hard to shake the idea and trust that person, whether there's actually been any betrayal or not.  When we believe something, it affects the way we act and the way we see other people.  If you believe that you're ugly, you'll assume that everyone else thinks so, too.  You might be suspicious if someone asked you out on a date.  If you think you're doing a lousy job at work, you'll either assume that everyone else knows it, or you'll try to hide it.  When every comment that a co-worker makes gets filtered through that lens, it's tough to have honest and productive relationships.  If you believe that a supreme being is completely in charge of all that happens, you'll look at events differently than someone who assumes that there is a scientific explanation for everything.

A big problem with unexamined beliefs is that there is no challenge that can threaten them.  We assume that we are right, and we manage to justify everything that happens through a belief that may or may not reflect reality.  The Israelites had a belief in a god that was so powerful and vindictive that he sent plagues against anyone who did things he didn't like, but this god was also a mighty ally to those who were willing to obey.  Therefore, every good thing that happened in the life of the Israelite community was considered to be something that God caused to happen, and everything bad that happened in the life of the Israelite community was viewed as evidence of their failure to be obedient.  Later on in the Old Testament, this becomes a real concern when the Israelites are conquered and the temple is destroyed. 

For now, the Israelites trust God and their enemies fall before them, "enemies" being the word used for people who had occupied the land for generations, but whom God didn't like.  It's easy to write that history.  "God leads his people to victory against all who oppose them" makes a great headline.  Except that there are still complaints being made to Moses about the quality of the food and the lack of water.  So, there is a plague of venomous snakes that starts killing off the Israelites.  It's easy to write that headline, too.  "Complain and die."  But God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that anyone who gets bitten can look at this snake idol and be spared.  Bizarre.  The writer of Hebrews uses this scene as a clever allegorical connection to the cross, but the whole scene is a bit strange.  Golden calves are bad, but bronze healing serpents are fine.

Cause and effect are not always what we imagine them to be.  Do we believe that poison can be alleviated by looking at a particular object?  Some would say, "Well, if God wanted it to work, then it would work."  It's primitive witchcraft, but it is justified because the belief in the community is strong enough to overlook the disconnect.  Flipping the calendar forward to the 21st century, we aren't just looking back at a relatively unsophisticated people and their primitive beliefs.  We are in a world of colliding beliefs that are unexamined and basically unchallengeable. There is an incredible number of people of varying faiths who believe that their god sanctions violence against other people.  We are essentially living in a technologically advanced era with a primitive worldview when we accept violence against the people our god doesn't like.  And let's face it, we assume that our god doesn't like the people we don't like.

If we assume that a supreme being is in control of all that happens, we remove personal responsibility from the picture.  Except that we still want to convince other people to behave the way we think God wants them to behave.  If God is in control of everything, isn't he completely in control of everything we might want to complain about?  And if we're complaining about how God is handling things, aren't we at all afraid that he will send venomous serpents after us?  If God is in complete control, then God is in control of abortion, homosexuality, suicide bombers, who gets killed in the wars that God has obviously sanctioned, unemployment, the distribution or concentration of wealth, ... everything.  There is nothing to complain about.

When we start to look for other causes for the effects that we see around us, however, the simplistic answer of "God said so" becomes replaced by a complex set of circumstances that aren't always easy to address.  Rather than tell people God disapproves of their behavior and expect that to change the course of their lives, when we set aside the simplistic belief that God is the cause for every effect, we may find that there are actual human beings with needs and beliefs of their own, and that we have some opportunity to have a significant impact.  It's not easy to make a real difference in someone's life while you're looking down your nose and pointing a judgmental finger at them.  There really are people who set aside simple answers that eradicate personal responsibility, and in seeking the actual causes for the things that disappoint them about the world, create something truly meaningful. 

The good news is that we all have the power to examine our beliefs and decide if they make sense or not.  We can keep convincing ourselves that there's a supernatural reason why looking at a bronze serpent can cure snakebites, or we can reevaluate what we believe based on the evidence around us.  Even evidence is subject to our beliefs, though.  As a friend of mine often says, "Statistics don't lie... but you can lie with statistics."  What we actually know may be completely different from what we choose to assume.  We all have beliefs, and many of those beliefs are nothing more than assumptions we've chosen.  Recognizing that we have a choice in what assumptions we're alright with is where wisdom comes into the picture.

What do you believe?  Not just in the big picture, "what's the meaning of it all?" kind of beliefs.  What do you believe about yourself?  About the people around you?  Are some of your beliefs in conflict with other beliefs?  Are you happy with the assumptions you're making?  You have choices.

Numbers 18-20: Tithing as a Priestly Pyramid Scheme and the Smoke Screen of Religious Rhetoric

In between all the stories about the Israelites complaining and getting punished for it, Numbers 18-20 describes how tithes were to be distributed and tells the story of the first passing of the high-priest torch.  On the surface, it looks like a sweet deal for the Levites, who get temple-related jobs.  They get to keep everyone else's tithes, the 10% of their wealth that the Israelites were obligated to offer to their god.  And 10% of that tithe went specifically to Aaron, the high priest.  Of course, the Levites were presumably doing work for this payment, and since doing tasks for the temple didn't have as direct a source of payment as raising livestock, this was a way of making working at the temple a reasonable career.  One might even say lucrative, since 10% of the community’s wealth was being concentrated in less than 3% of the population.

The chronology of establishing the priesthood is a bit odd.  After the Israelites leave Egypt, Moses counts everyone except the members of his own tribe, the Levites, presumably because they were going to guard the tabernacle.  When the Levites were finally counted, they were tallied differently than the rest of the Israelites.  All the other tribes were looked at as warriors, so only able-bodied adult males were counted.  Of the Levites, every male one month old and older was counted, and still they wound up being the smallest tribe at 22,000 official people.  This was roughly equal to the number of first-born males in the whole Israelite community, so back in Numbers 3 a justification was made to set apart the tribe of Levi as a priesthood.  One potential priest for every first-born male, at least at that moment in Israelite history.

So, at this point, the Levites did the temple-related work, and everyone else paid them to do it.  This is essentially what the tithe was.  It was a tax.  The Israelite government was a theocracy (much like Egypt), with the dictatorial Moses at its head and the remainder of his tribe handling the management of the tabernacle, which was the central feature in Israelite life.  What went on at the tabernacle affected life and death of thousands of people through supernatural means that the average Israelite couldn't hope to understand.  Moses' brother Aaron was the high priest over all the other Levites, so they levied a tax on the other tribes.  If an American doesn't pay taxes, the worst case scenario is that the offender could be imprisoned while the IRS takes the money to which it's entitled by force.  If an Israelite didn't pay the required tithe, a hole could open up in the earth and swallow them.  Or they could die from a mysterious plague.

Later on, it will be clear that the Levites were expected to have other sources of income.  There wasn’t really enough temple-related work to occupy the entirety of the tribe.  Levites are recorded as being doctors, teachers, judges, musicians, and law enforcement officers.  A part of the tithe also went to support people in the community who were no longer able to earn a living, essentially a form of social security.  So, although the Levites were entitled to a share in the community’s wealth, they did provide important services for the community.

Even though it's not necessarily a familiar way of setting up a society, it certainly makes sense.  The one thing that seems odd is how apologetic Moses is about the whole thing.  Instead of just saying, "I'm in charge, and this is how it's going to be," he sets up God as the source for all of these proclamations.  Maybe that's something he learned from the Egyptians.  Maybe he thought it would keep people from complaining about things.  But no matter how many plagues or fires killed off groups of dissatisfied Israelites, people kept complaining.  They complained about Moses, and they complained about God.  On the surface, they may have used language that suggested they were giving a tithe "to God," but they knew at some level that they were paying what amounted to a tax to the Levites.  Just as taxpayers feel entitled to complain about their government today, the Israelites felt entitled to complain about the way they were being governed, even if it meant being irreverent to the point of risking death.

At the beginning of Numbers 20, they complain again.  Miriam dies, and in the next sentence the Israelites complain that there isn’t any water.  It’s tempting to tie this back into the purity laws of the previous chapter regarding cleaning oneself with water after handling a dead body, but it doesn’t really seem like that was the chief complaint.  They needed water to drink just to stay alive.  In this famous story, God commands Moses and Aaron to go and command a rock to provide water.  Instead, Moses takes personal credit and strikes the rock with an angry admonition toward the Israelites.  His sister had just died, so one can understand his irritability in the face of more complaints.  Water flowed forth, and everyone was satisfied for the moment.

Everyone except God.  Moses and Aaron were admonished because they took credit for the water.  In the story, God told the two leaders that they would not enter the Promised Land as a punishment for not treating him as holy in front of the Israelites.  There are plenty of lessons that could be extracted from the 12 verses that comprise this story, but you can draw spiritual lessons from nearly any source if you are looking for them.  It’s likely that tales like this were initially told to create a justification for the names of the places involved.  This particular tale also creates a reason for why the leaders of the Israelites died before the community reached its goal.

Aaron dies just a short time after that scene at the rock, and the mantle of high priest is passed on to his son, Eleazar.  Since it was no secret that this time would eventually come, Numbers 19 is essentially a training ritual for Eleazar.  It’s a special sacrifice that involves all of the things that a high priest should be able to do confidently, and it’s specified that Eleazar will preside over the ceremony.  One chapter later, Eleazar is made high priest and Aaron dies.  The "Ordinance of the Red Heifer" was his final exam, even though the text doesn’t quite put it that way.

Just before Aaron dies, Moses sends word to the Edomites, asking for safe passage through their lands.  Not surprisingly, this request is denied.  The Edomites were the descendants of Esau, whom Jacob tricked out of his inheritance.  When Jacob ran away and came back fourteen years later, Esau attempted to rekindle their brotherly relationship, but Jacob was fearful and basically avoided his brother’s lands.  Whether the story is true or not, any Edomite who identified with his forefather Esau would understandably be suspicious of any descendant of Jacob asking for any favors.  So Aaron dies on the border of Edom, with armed Edomites prepared to defend their borders against an Israelite invasion.

Religious rhetoric provided a colorful context for early Israelite society, and it didn't prevent people from being involved citizens, vocal about their concerns and disappointments.  Some people today are more cowed than the Israelites were by the idea that God has commanded something.  It has perhaps become more dangerous than a physical plague.  Certain segments of our society hear a person claim to know what God wants and they accept it without question.  This is not a thoughtful or enlightened way to participate in one’s society.  When we take away the “infallible absolute authority” as intermediary, the people who ask us to think, spend, or vote a certain way are required to explain their platform much more clearly than a simple “God said so.”  It becomes much easier to judge ideas based on their merits and their potential benefits to society when the smoke screen of religion is taken away.  The cynic in me suggests that there are some leaders who prefer having the smoke screen, for whatever reason.

Perhaps it would have gone exactly the same for Moses if he had controlled the early Israelite society through some other means.  If he had said, “We’re going to collect a 10% tax from everyone, and that tax will be used to pay for doctors, teachers, and the officials that will settle disputes in our community,” would there have been a great public outcry against that?  Abraham knew about the Mesopotamian practice of collecting a tithe, so the concept was nothing revolutionary.  Even claiming that a god (i.e., a particular priesthood) was entitled to a portion of a community’s wealth was nothing new.  Maybe I’m crediting the Israelites with more sophistication that they actually possessed, but the real revolutionary idea would have been to say, “This is what will be best for our community, so this is what we will do.”  Then again, (if the biblical account is to be believed) Moses was never really comfortable with the idea of being responsible for so many people’s well-being.

Have we matured enough as a society to be honest about our ideas?  Are we able to set smoke screens and emotional rhetoric aside to consider the actual merits of our ideas?  Can we discern between what is the best for our society and what is simply a personal preference?  And if we have that discernment, do we also possess the integrity to put personal preferences aside for the greater good?  Whatever the answer, the way to strengthen our discernment and integrity is to expect it of ourselves and of one another.  There are ways to gently invite the religious and emotional rhetoric to be put aside for a moment, to reassure an individual that ideas can be considered without resorting to personal attacks.  We don’t always have the opportunity to have such frank conversations with our leaders today, but they also don’t have the power to make the earth swallow us whole.  As often as we do share ideas with one another, though, we have the opportunity to become more discerning and honest – to be better citizens of our society, and more effective participants in our own lives.

Numbers 15: Crime and Punishment, Abundance Thinking, and Orchestrating Delayed Gratification

Tucked in the middle of the Israelites' narrative in the book of Numbers is a chapter with more about what sacrifices to offer in atonement for disobedience, followed by a couple of short anecdotes.  One of these anecdotes is about a man who was collecting wood on the Sabbath.  The Lord had just finished telling Moses that if someone sins unintentionally, they have to make a specific atonement sacrifice to be forgiven.  If someone sins intentionally, however, they are to be ostracized -- cut off from the community.  So, what happens to this man who is collecting wood on the Sabbath?  They kill him.

We aren't told of any opportunity this man is given to make any sort of atonement, and they don't just cut him off from the community.  They take him into custody because they aren't sure what should be done to him.  Although God just told Moses what to do with people who sin -- intentionally or unintentionally, native Israelite or foreigner.  So they ask God what to do with the man, and instead of repeating what he just finished telling Moses, God declared that the man should be stoned to death.  There are certainly other places in the biblical narrative where the death penalty is asserted as just punishment for nearly any law-breaking a person might commit, but this was not one of those passages.  The appearance of this story at this point is honestly a bit baffling.  It serves as another implication that there is something unpredictable and unreliable about the god the Israelites worship.

Somewhat interesting in Numbers 15, as with other passages that describe what offerings must be made, is that most of the sacrifices are food products.  The Israelites have been complaining about the lack of food, have died from disease when they ate the "gift" of quail that got blown in from the sea, and have been told that they'll have to keep wandering in a wasteland until a generation of people passes away.  And yet, all of this time, the sacrifices that they have been ordered to make for nearly everything have been things like the firstfruits of their flocks or herds or fields or orchards.  Why were they complaining about food if they had bulls and goats and doves and grain and olive oil to sacrifice?

Obviously, based on the amount of space the subject is given in the first books of the Bible, sacrificing things is an important symbolic contractual practice in Israelite culture.  It isn't at all odd that one would offer the best fruits of one's labor as a sacrifice to atone for disobeying God.  It's unthinkable, though, that the Israelites would sacrifice all of their food (which the priesthood would eat) while complaining that they had nothing to eat.  Never is the complaint voiced that they have no food because they sacrifice it all to God or because the Levites get all of it.  The only logical answer to this strangeness is that this cultural practice of the Israelites was written back into the tale of their wilderness wandering years, implying that sacrifices were a part of their spiritual identity ever since their god first gave them rules to follow.  For the orders about what should be sacrificed to make sense in the context of a food-deprived nomadic people, they wouldn't include mandates to sacrifice things to which the people had no access.

So, assuming that the prescriptions for offering various foods to God were contemporary with the Israelites having those foods to offer, there is something rather interesting imbedded in the practice.  Sacrifices have at this point been commanded for nearly anything imaginable.  Even if a good Israelite managed to go through life without breaking any actual laws, there are supplemental offerings that everyone is supposed to make.  It would be difficult to wallow in a scarcity mindset and maintain a practice of giving over a tenth of what one possesses.  When the Israelites were eating something unidentifiable from the ground in the desert, it was understandable for them to say, "we're not going to have enough."  And no amount of holy punishment could wipe away that fear.  But when you have something to give up, and you give away a fraction of it and still have enough, the fear of starvation -- or not having "enough" of something -- loses its teeth a bit.

Once we start accumulating things, it's natural to want to accumulate more things.  Or at least better things.  What we have isn't good enough for very long.  If we didn't have anything to begin with, it would be easy to slip into the mindset that we would always be struggling, that we would never have enough.  But there are a lot of people who have very little and seem to be able to appreciate what they do have without worrying about what they don't have.  If you have enough that you can give something away, you have enough.  The people who realize that, and actually practice giving a little bit away, are more likely to appreciate what they have than the people who always want more.

Our culture doesn't value sacrifice.  We are often loathe to give up things that we don't even really need, perhaps because of the irrational belief that we have to protect our possessions.  And we're not even talking about food and shelter and survival-level things here.  I'm talking about unused exercise equipment, clothes that will never fit us, books we'll never read again, that fourth television set we had to have.  The bottom line is that we are capable of examining our lives if we choose to do so.  You know whether or not your survival is realistically in jeopardy.  If you find that you normally consider yourself to have more than enough -- that you live an abundant life -- you probably also give things away on a regular basis.  Generosity and abundance thinking seem to feed into each other.

If, on the other hand, it seems like you are never satisfied with what you have, that you never believe that you have "enough", your scarcity thinking is most likely based on some irrational fear.  You can combat that by developing a practice of giving away a few things.  You don't have to sacrifice them to God the way the Israelites did, but you can if that works for you (adhering to local fire restrictions, of course).  You can also just give things away to other people.  People you know or people you don't know.  You'll quickly find that if you are honest about what you need and what you won't ever really use, your generosity will reveal that you have plenty.  More than enough.  Without imposing any household austerity measures.  You probably live in enough abundance that you wouldn't miss giving up 10% of what you possess.

Sometimes, our scarcity thinking comes from short-sighted greed that gets in the way of us acknowledging the things that matter most to us.  So many things we just want to accumulate have little real value to us in the long run.  The Israelites had a clever way of reminding themselves not to focus on fleeting, short-term satisfaction that distracted them from long-term goals as a culture.  They put symbolic tassels on their clothing to remind themselves what their culture stood for as a people.  Like permanent strings tied around their fingers.  It wouldn't be a stretch for us to create some of our own reminders about what matters most in our lives.  What would remind you that you have plenty?  What would remind you to keep things in perspective?  To make decisions that reflect what's actually important to you?  If it's tassels on your clothes, start stitching.  If it's little notes to yourself scattered around your home, start writing.  There are some things that are more important to you than just accumulating more stuff.  When you know what those things are, there is no reason not to orchestrate your life around those values.

Numbers 11: Replacing the Lesson that Complaining Will Get You Killed with Something More Useful

Chapters 7-10 of the book of Numbers recount more of the details of sacred paraphernalia, offerings made by different bloodlines, and the roles of different tribes within the Israelite community.  It may be useful to organize a society by predetermining what duties each person will have according to heredity.  All of the necessary tasks are covered and everyone knows what is expected of them.  This isn't how most civilizations work in the twenty-first century.  We've given up the idea that a deity has prescribed what our contributions to society will be based on our parentage.  Some people still believe that God has a plan for their lives.  People are just more free to individually interpret what that plan is in a well-established society which holds personal freedom as an ideal.

People still like to complain, however.  Even though our lot in life is not nearly as restrictively defined as the Israelites', we still find things to complain about.  One of the advantages of belief in an all-knowing deity who has a plan for your life is that you have someone to complain to when you don't enjoy the direction your life is taking.  In Numbers 11, when people complained to God, he took umbrage to the extent that he doled out poisonous food.  Nowadays, not many people seem to think that complaining to God will get them killed, but maybe the God in the story also had a valid point.

First, let's look at what the people were complaining about.  If we just assume the truth of the biblical story and leave archaeological research out of it, the Israelites had left what appeared to be a fairly cushy existence in slavery, with all the fish and cucumbers they could eat.  Life had been stable, even if they weren't as respected as the native Egyptians.  The human race still hasn't outgrown its propensity for looking down on foreigners, so before we think too ill of the Egyptians we might take a hard look at our modern sensibilities.  Once they left Egypt, the Israelites were not living the high life, but they also didn't take much personal responsibility for their predicament. They blamed Moses for convincing them to leave, and since Moses was God's spokesman, they blamed God too.  Never mind that they proudly looted the Egyptians as they willingly crossed the border into a barren wasteland which turned out to have no reliable food source and little water.

They discovered a substance that was edible.  It was there on the ground every morning, and they could grind it up and make little cakes out of it.  Since they didn't know what it was, they called it "what is it?", and since they didn't know where it came from, they quickly determined that it came from their god.  People trying to identify manna today have theorized various possibilities, from plant lice (what plants?) to hallucinogenic fungus.  The Israelites knew it as bread from heaven.  Their god was taking care of them.  But that's all there was.  Eating the same thing day after day, living as tent-dwelling nomads, not knowing where there would be another source of potable water -- it understandably wore on people who were used to a stable life and a stable diet.  Personal responsibility wasn't on their minds, though.  According to the biblical narrative, they didn't put their heads together and come up with viable solutions.  They complained.  Moses was the one in charge, so they complained to Moses.  God was the one responsible for guiding Moses, so they complained to God.

Moses complains to God, too.  In a mirror of an earlier passage from Exodus, Moses complains that God has made him the nurse maid of the Israelite multitude and asks how he is supposed to feed them.  Perhaps it was his way of goading God into action.  God's first response was to have Moses appoint elders to assist him.  Now, Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, had given this advice back in Exodus, and elders got appointed, so it's likely that this is simply a different version of the story about how the first elders got appointed.  God gets all the credit for the idea in this one.  Sorry, Jethro -- your part's been cut.

God's other reactions to the Israelites are quite hostile, though.  When he first hears them complaining, he gets angry.  So angry that he burns part of their community.  Then, a "wind from the Lord" brings flocks of quail to the Israelites, and "while the meat was still in their teeth" he sends a plague among them and kills off a bunch of the complainers.  What!?  He gives them meat (which was obviously within his power to provide) and then punishes them for eating it.  The underlying messages to this are manifold, but among them are: Don't make God angry.  Don't complain.  Don't trust gifts from a divine source.  Appreciate what you have...

That last one's not actually a bad thing to remember.  While we may not like the way the Israelite god taught the lesson, the lesson is still valuable.  Even when we want to see some things improve in our lives, the place to start is by appreciating what we have.  What we have may just be a fabric roof over our heads, a meager water supply, and bushels of insect residue, but that's still food and shelter.  It's worth appreciating what we have, even when we aren't willing to settle for it.  When we utterly reject our circumstances, we waste energy on denying reality.  It's hard to find a way forward if you won't even accept where you are.

The rest of the story is frankly ludicrous.  A fire gets started, maliciously or by accident, and some people get sick because they didn't cook their food properly.  Because these things happened on the heels of some rampant complaining, the events get connected.  It's understandable that the human mind works that way, but it's nonsense.  The divine characteristics we all possess are not out to get us or punish us.  More to the point, the divine is personal -- it's not capable of wiping out communities of people or burning outposts.  There may be other parts of a person's psyche that contrive punishment, but the divine is simply the sense of deep truth, beauty, and creativity that we all possess.  So, it's not going to punish us for complaining.  Our divine self may actually be the source of some complaints, especially when we are complaining about a real injustice taking place around us.  How we deal with our complaints is the real issue.

We could sit on a bar stool and tell the guy pouring us drinks all of our problems.  We may call a friend and gripe for hours.  We might write angry letters or emails just to vent our frustrations.  There are so many unproductive things we can do with our complaints.  When we have a complaint about something, though, we also have the ability to evaluate our complaint.  If we are willing to start by really appreciating what we already have, our evaluation will be more accurate.

A complaint always arises from a desire.  So, instead of just declaring the wrongness of a situation, identify what it is that you want.  This may be coming from a very shallow part of your personality, or it may be a very deep-seated need that you've been ignoring.  If all of the Israelites did this, they might come up with hundreds of different actual desires underneath their complaints.  Some of them may have just wanted to find a spice plant to add some flavor variety to their hallucinogenic fungus.  Some of them may have wanted to wander closer to a larger body of water so they could fish.  Their solutions would not be universal.  Knowing the desire underneath the complaint is crucial to creating a solution.

Once you know what it is that you actually want, you can assess that desire based on reality and your core beliefs, which emerge from that divine character we've been talking about.  If what you realize you want is a more reliable vehicle, buying a new car may not be within the reality of your current finances.  In that case, you'll need to create a plan that will be a little more involved that going down to the dealership and throwing down your credit card.  If what you realize you want is to do bodily harm to another human being, you aren't done defining what you actually want.  When you are honestly tapping into your inner sense of truth, beauty, and creativity, it affects the way you see other people.  You may be so angry that you don't want to think of another person as a vulnerable, beautiful, inspiring human being.  That anger has a deeper desire beneath it.  What is it that you actually want?

This takes practice for anyone who isn't accustomed to defining their desires so precisely.  The good news is that there is no actual punishment for complaining to yourself, and you are the only person who can ultimately determine what desire is behind the complaint.  Once you have clearly defined that desire, and it matches with your deepest sense of truth and beauty with no indignation or machismo or emotional buffers, you can use your own personal creativity to determine a course of action.  You create the solutions to your complaints, and you have a capacity to do so in a way that is honors reality and honors the other people around you.  Some solutions are simple changes in your own behavior.  Some solutions may involve organizing other people, or becoming more involved in an existing organization, in a campaign against a larger injustice.  When you keep yourself grounded in the character of the divine, you'll be able to make adjustments to your plan whenever it veers away from reality or threatens to ignore the beauty and value of other people.

So, complain away.  Your complaints are most likely valid expressions of something you truly want.  Just be sure to complain to the one person who can actually do something about your complaint.  Ultimately, you are personally responsible for defining what you want, even if thousands of other people seem to have the same complaint as you.  When you respond from a place of deep truth, beauty, and creativity often enough, you may find that you skip over the complaining and cut straight to defining what you want.  That's alright, too.

Numbers 5: Forgiveness and Communication Is Just So Much Simpler

Numbers chapter 5 brings up some issues that have already been addressed in previous books of scripture: atonement and adultery.  Unlike some previous verses dealing with adultery, we now get a formula that the priest is supposed to follow if a husband suspects that his wife has been unfaithful.  The wife really has no say in the matter, and let's face it, refusing to succumb to the priest's "faithfulness test" would probably be seen as an admission of guilt, the punishment for which is death by stoning.  The formula assumes that there is nothing wrong with a husband being so jealous that he would make a spectacle of dragging his wife before a priest to have her tested.  On top of that, as you can see, the "test" is really little more than witchcraft.

On the topic of atonement, this chapter of Numbers commands that any Israelite who has wronged another person should confess and make restitution.  Some people today still expect that if someone has wronged them, that individual should take it upon themselves to apologize and seek to make amends, but that doesn't always happen.  To make matters more complicated for modern-day Christians, the New Testament solution for these sorts of problems is for the "victim" to forgive.  That's right, when someone has committed some hurtful act against you, Jesus doesn't say that they should offer a elaborate sacrifice.  When you suspect your spouse of being unfaithful, Jesus doesn't say you should drag her before a priest so he can perform some hocus-pocus.  His answer is, when people wrong you, forgive them.

This is one of those times when the simplest answer isn't necessarily the easiest answer, but there really is no reason to complicate things.  If you have done something which has brought harm to another person, admit it and make whatever amends you are able.  It's as simple as that.  If someone else has brought harm to you, don't dwell on it, just forgive them and move on.  There's no reason to be a doormat, but there's also no reason to bear a grudge.  You can learn something from the situation and exercise more wisdom in the future, but once a deed is done, it's done.  Forgive and put the matter to rest.  People may not even realize that you think they've done something wrong, so stewing and waiting around for them to apologize is pointless.  Even should you decide to inform people of their wrongdoing, they won't always respond the way you want.  Forgive them, learn your lesson, and get on with your life.

Of course, if you have a relationship with more longevity, like what one would hope for in a marriage, it helps to cultivate open and honest communication.  Forgiveness is still key, but it's also helpful to let the person with whom you're planning to spend the rest of your life know what you're thinking.  That sort of meaningful communication requires vulnerability, not a power trip.  It certainly doesn't require a priest to perform any special magical ceremonies.  Simply communicate with the people you care about.  If they don't accept what you reveal about yourself, it's better to know that truth than to live a lie.  It's more likely that they have their own fears about being vulnerable, and they may even be grateful that you make vulnerability seem safe.

If you want to hold on to grudges and spend entire relationships protecting yourself, no one can stop you.  Imagine for a moment what kind of life that would be.  How satisfying and enjoyable is a life without vulnerability?  How satisfying and enjoyable is a life spent demanding that other people apologize for what they've done to you?  However counter-intuitive it may seem, meaningful relationships result from apologizing when you legitimately have something to apologize for, practicing forgiveness instead of holding grudges, and embracing vulnerable, honest communication in the relationships you value.   That's not overtly Christian, it's just healthy human behavior.

It may be tempting to base decisions on how we think someone will react.  In fact, we can probably come up with plenty of excuses for why we shouldn't own up to our misdeeds or forgive people who have somehow wronged us.  Any excuse we come up with is ultimately going to boil down to one word: fear.  The truth of the matter is that being honest and forgiving actually makes our own lives better.  Fear saps us of energy.  Grudges rob us of opportunities.  Trying to hide from the truth about our own actions is exhausting.  Being honest in our communication and forgiving people frees us to focus on the things that are actually important in life.  Life doesn't have to be complicated.

Rewriting Leviticus, the Little Book of Legalism that No One Really Likes

The book of Leviticus gets its name from the descendants of Levi, who had special religious and political responsibilities among the Israelites. While there are certainly spiritual lessons to be gleaned from the Bible, the book of Leviticus has a very legalistic message that largely has little bearing on modern life. There are a few verses here and there which have merit as sage advice, as we’ll see, but even within the overall context of the Bible, the legalistic approach didn’t work. That’s the whole point of the New Testament, actually.

Which is a point worth mentioning, since there are those apologists who promote the concept of biblical inerrancy and insist on using the Bible as proof of its own veracity. A large portion of the book of Leviticus deals with the appropriate way to handle blood sacrifices: which animals are appropriate for what kind of sacrifice, how the sacrificial animals are to be handled, and how soon it has to be eaten by the priests. If the Bible is absolutely true and without contradiction, then these regulations (from God, mind you) have to be addressed. Most Christians would say that all the business with sacrifices was nullified by Jesus, and that’s all well and good. Except that it means a portion of the inerrant, infallible scripture has been improved upon and rendered obsolete. Which is not to say that the New Testament has it “right” either, but merely to point out an obvious discrepancy.

Another large portion of the book of Leviticus is about cleanliness, as in what kinds of things make a person clean or unclean and what a person must do to regain purity. Among the things that make a person “unclean” are: leprosy, menstruation, having a discharge of any kind below the waist, giving birth (especially giving birth to a girl), touching certain animal carcasses, or eating a creature found dead. Ritual washing after a waiting period is typically enough to cleanse a person from those impurities. Mold is also unclean, and if washing moldy clothing or walls doesn’t get rid of it, a priest can order the moldy object to be destroyed. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. We still have issues with mold in our homes today. Some of the ideas about what makes a person “unclean” reflect a certain level of ignorance within the culture, however.

Of particular interest are the regulations about what can be eaten. Orthodox Jews today still follow many of the prescribed dietary laws of Leviticus, if not all of them. Americans will be disappointed to learn that fat is prohibited, along with pork, rabbit, shrimp, monitor lizards, and “flying insects that go about on four legs.” The laws even go so far as to dictate something of a “resting period” for fields, years in which nothing is harvested so that the land will continue to be bountiful. That part’s not actually a bad idea. Most people wouldn’t have a problem giving up bats and weasels from their diet, although they may not be keen on adding grasshoppers to the menu. The biggest problem with this whole topic (aside from the idea that what a person eats can make them innately impure) is once again with regard to the issue of inerrancy.

In the New Testament, it is proclaimed that all food is clean. Peter reportedly had a vision about it, and Paul wrote explicitly that all food is clean and people should stop getting hung up on such insignificant issues. I’ll just come out and say that I agree with this point of view. It bears noting, however, that the same Bible that declares all food to be clean also declares that, according to God, eating some things will make you unclean and could get you kicked out of the community of chosen people. Both statements cannot be true. And if God is infallible, then how can he have changed his mind on the subject? Since the Bible obviously holds contradictory information, it doesn’t make sense to cling to the concept of a completely inerrant body of scripture. And, truth be told, most self-proclaimed Christians use a certain amount of personal discernment and judgment about such things anyway.

The last big topic in Leviticus is sexual impurity. We don’t really need divine guidance to tell us that we shouldn’t sleep with our close relatives, but it’s understandable given what we know about Abraham’s family tree that this was important information for the Israelites to clarify. And it is clarified in great detail. It is spelled out exactly with whom (and what) a person should not be having sexual relations. Punishments for disobedience range from being ostracized or childless (which their god could obviously determine), to being burned or stoned to death. If nothing else, it certainly offers some insight into how the Israelites were tempted to pass the time as they were wandering in the wilderness.

Leviticus also records some very wise advice, though. For instance, it recounts the commandments about not stealing from each other, not deceiving one another, and not lying about people. It commands employers to deal with their workers honestly and justly, and it instructs people not to hold grudges. One of my favorite lines urges people to confront people directly and earnestly instead of sugar-coating things or just standing by and watching someone’s unhealthy behavior. In fact, it is here that the Bible first admonishes, “love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s a shame that these tidbits of wisdom are scattered in and amongst rules about not trimming the sides of your beard. It can be easy to lose sight of what’s important when confronted with the legalism of exactly how a purification sacrifice has to be done and exactly which of your family members you can’t sleep with.

But it isn’t all threats of punishment from on high. There is a short passage in which God expresses what the reward will be for following all of the laws. He’ll send rain to nourish the earth, and he’ll make their harvests plentiful. He’ll make the land peaceful, eradicating all the wild beasts and keeping invaders out. In fact, he’ll make the enemies of the Israelites fall by the sword before them. He’ll increase the Israelites in number, and he won’t hate them. If they just do everything properly.

These sorts of promises seem somewhat problematic. How many people have to do things right in order for the harvest to be plentiful? If it doesn’t rain, how do we know whose fault it is? And if it does rain, does that mean that we’ve been perfect? If our numbers increase, does that mean we’ve done everything right? Or right enough, at least? Or is it only the actual number of Jews that we should be keeping track of? While there are some people who still believe that natural cycles are a direct measure of God’s satisfaction with humanity, most people understand that weather patterns are not based on whether my neighbor eats fat or sleeps with his aunt. The abundance of our food supply depends on a lot of factors, but none of those factors has to do with whether we have properly put our community’s sins into a goat and set it free in the wilderness.

The book of Leviticus reminds us how ludicrous we can be sometimes when we start trying to control every detail and ensure perfection in how we orchestrate our lives. For those who are Christian, the book shows the need for a savior, since it would be impossible for anyone to do everything precisely according to the law. From another standpoint, perhaps it is worth looking at the few rays of insight that shine through the legalism. Which basically boil down to one thing. Respect people. Just respect other people. Not for any particular reason. Just because they are human beings. We don’t need magical rituals to purify us, and we don’t need to stone people or burn them when they make mistakes. We have done and will do some things that we’re not proud of. We’re all in the same boat as far as that goes. If we could just cultivate a little respect for other people, we might eventually even be able to make a few more laws obsolete.

So, the book of Leviticus rewritten? Respect people. All people. And if you fail to do so, forgive yourself and go back to respecting people again.

Exodus 19-24: The Voice of God and the Death Penalty Cannot Control a Society

Societies need laws.  Even though we all have an innate sense of right and wrong, and we have feelings like guilt and shame to guide our behavior, societies need laws.  It's important to have some ground rules about how people are allowed to treat one another, just to clarify any discrepancies.  Laws also provide a sense of repercussion for when someone's behavior is out of line: If you do this, then this will happen to you.  The punishment isn't necessarily a deterrent, but it defines the consequences for one's actions.

Exodus 19-24 is about creating laws.  We've already seen that the Israelites have the capacity for some pretty rotten behavior, just like any group of people.  It may be tempting to excuse some of that because they didn't have any guidelines written down, but I believe that people still know right from wrong.  Rather than sheer education about morality, it seems that the purpose of creating a set of laws is more likely (a) to encourage people to do what they know is right more often, and (b) to define a set of consequences for when someone decides to do something harmful to another human being.  The Moses solution to these matters is to claim that the laws originate from God, so there can be no arguing or debate about them.  He also applies the death penalty liberally, should people need additional deterrent.

The setup is brilliant.  There is a display of God's ferocious voice on Mount Sinai, with the people kept behind a boundary (because touching the holy mountain would kill them).  According to the telling in Exodus, the theatrics should have been impressive enough to make anyone think twice before disobeying the command of God.  Over the course of the chapters, it's not quite clear which elders were allowed on the mountain when, or how many times Moses went up and down the mountain, or how long the Israelites were camped out near the mountain.  It is clear that they were there for awhile and that the place was holy.  Mount Sinai is a symbolic representation of a place where the divine and the physical meet.

The laws are another matter.  First, there are the famous Ten Commandments, about which much has been written.  It's been noted that they are almost all in the negative, i.e. "You must not ..."  And later on in the biblical narrative, Jesus' commands contrast with that by telling people what to do instead of what not to do.  Neuro-linguistic programming aside, the laws of Moses are clearly an attempt at control, and some measure of control may have been completely necessary for the survival of the Jewish society.  Ultimately, though, the Jewish people didn't do any better than any other society with regard to obedience, despite the claim that the laws came from God.  The rest of the Old Testament is the record of that told through their own eyes.

Looking at the laws themselves, most of them make sense for a society and seem quite rational.  If you damage or steal someone else's property, you are responsible for paying for it along with a monetary penalty.  If you kill another person, you will be put to death.  If you harm someone without killing them, the same level of harm will be enacted upon you.  Justice.  There are even specific detailed cases that are included for the sake of clarity.

Some of these laws are not enforceable, nor are they intended to be.  In a couple of places, the command is given not to mistreat foreigners, and then God promises that the Israelites will destroy six groups of people completely.  It seems like this destruction would probably involve something those people would consider "mistreatment," not to mention killing.  There is the proclamation that witches should be put to death, and we know how that went in Salem (and much of Europe).  But then, no one claimed that these laws were on the cutting edge of women's rights.  If a man rapes a virgin, he has to marry her or at least pay for her, but if he "dishonors" his parents, he gets put to death.  Who gets to decide whether a man has "dishonored" his parents anyway?

The point is that the laws that make sense in these chapters are the same kind of laws that every successful society has established.  They don't have to carry a death penalty or be attributed to an unquestionable deity for people to understand why those kinds of laws make sense.  The laws help to clarify the wrongness of the very things we are already wired to feel shame about.  The problem with their iteration in Exodus is that the culture did not recognize all people as having equal value.  If a son strikes his violent and abusive father, the son gets put to death while the father continues to be violent and abusive, as long as he doesn't kill another man.  If he kills a slave, he just has to pay for the slave.  If he kills a foreigner, chances are that he's just doing God's work. But if he exploits a widow, then he will be put to the sword.  The "laws" then become just a concrete way of articulating who can get away with what in the society.

Our society has laws.  They are created by men, whom we know to be fallible.  For the most part, the consequences seems reasonable on paper, although in reality the punishment often seems light.  Still, few people would rationally introduce the death penalty for every crime.  The laws help to clarify how the society will respond to certain behavior, and the "justice" system is intended to carry out that response.  Laws and punishment don't really alter what people do all that much, though.  People still speed, even though they know they may get a ticket.  People still murder other people, even though they know they may get the death sentence.  People are still abuse and mistreat other people, even though there are legal consequences.

I believe that those individuals know that what they are doing is wrong, even without a law to tell them so.  I believe that when a corporation brings harm to people or the land on which they live, the people responsible for that decision know that what they have done is wrong.  I believe that when a person strikes another human being in anger, a part of him feels shame.  What he does with that shame is another matter entirely.  The greater the group of people responsible for a shameful act, the easier it is to brush past it and appreciate the perceived reward for bad behavior.  At the end of the day, we need a clear set of societal consequences for shameful behavior, because we do not have a universal respect for our fellow human beings and the world we share with them.

Moses missed the boat just like every other lawmaker.  You cannot control human behavior through laws, even with the voice of God to back you up and the most severe of penalties for disobedience.  Laws help a society hold together, but people will continue to break the laws of a society as long as the society's values are misguided.  If the society values money, people will do shameful things to get more money.  If the society values power, people will do shameful things to get more power.  Laws cannot change that.

Wouldn't it be something if the society valued its people?  Wouldn't it be something if people looked at themselves and the other people around them and saw something worth more than money and power?  Wouldn't it be something if people saw the resources of the world and felt a deep sense of respect rather than greed?  I don't know if a society can change in such a fundamental way.  I know that individuals can.  I know that it is possible for an individual to see the truth and beauty and creativity within every person.  All it requires is a willingness to see it.  There are no laws that can govern or enforce it, but if we all managed to do it, we may not need so many laws.