John 9: Being Willing to Have Our Perspectives Challenged

As we observed in last week's interlude, the miracle story in John 9 assumes that there are clear lines that one can draw between people. It is as if people reside in well-defined boxes, and we only want to show approval for people who live in the same box we do. However, there are no "good people" or "bad people." Rather, there are actions which contribute to greater well-being and there are actions that do harm. The same person might engage in "good" and "bad" actions. In fact, we all do.

Perhaps that's the first flaw of the Pharisee perspective. They ask how a "sinner" can offer healing. They operate under an illusion of the world as clearly divided between worthy and unworthy, clean and unclean, loved and unlovable. These are labels that people apply to other people, but they are not reflections of reality. If the same individual can contribute to harm or to well-being, then there is always possibility in human decisions. This offers one reason to recognize that every person has worth and dignity. Every person is worthy of love and respect, even though every action isn't.

Some people will read this story and walk away with the impression that it's about Jesus healing people and the Pharisees judging people. It runs the risk of becoming a "Jesus and Christianity vs the Pharisees and Judaism" debate. This is unfortunate, even though it's probably one of the goals of the authors to lift up Christianity as superior to Judaism. The reality is that physical inconveniences exist even among believers. Belief in Jesus doesn't cure blindness, deafness, epilepsy, cancer, or any other actual physical condition. We get more from this story if we set aside the miraculous backdrop and look at the actual truths involved. When we recall that Jesus can be seen as an exemplar for human beings to emulate rather than a unique superhuman, we stand to get more from the story.

The authors of John portray Jesus as a bit of a provocateur. The character does things that he knows will agitate the Pharisees, but he does some of these things purposefully. John's version of Jesus is willing to publicly acknowledge the flaws in the religious/social system, and he is willing to care for those who are written off by their society. He can't care for every one of them, of course, but he contributes to the well-being of enough people to make a point.

Something is broken about the easy categorization of people into dichotomies. People are not static entities, and we are not made worthless by a bad decision or a bad day. We don't separate easily into neat boxes. The Pharisees can't wrap their minds around someone who doesn't meet their approval performing an action that ought to meet their approval. In the story, they keep questioning the recovered man to find the loophole that will allow them to maintain a worldview that is comfortable and familiar. Instead, they are told that, since they claim to understand things, they are culpable for the harm they do.

Thus, the story says something about ignorance as well. The same harmful action might be more easily forgiven if someone is ignorant about what they're doing than if someone does harm with full knowledge and awareness. We feel no guilt when we don't know we've done something harmful. It's only when we have awareness of the harmful results of our actions that our guilt kicks in to prompt us to set things right, insofar as that's possible. The Pharisees claimed to be knowledgeable and aware, so they must also be accountable for their actions. As they perpetuated and upheld a flawed system that benefited them and harmed others, their own responsibility was magnified.

Of course, some people claim to be knowledgeable and wise when they aren't. The call to accountability might have been intended to allow people a chance to step back and evaluate their awareness. Perhaps our knowledge or wisdom is not as thorough as we believe. Perhaps our easy answers fail to take some portion of reality into consideration. The instructive piece of the story might be found in the differences between the behavior of the Pharisees and the other characters (a trope that is becoming familiar in John).

The characters of Jesus and the blind man and his family were calm, reasonable, celebratory, self-aware. While others may have asked whether the blind man was suffering because of his own sin or his parents', he wasn't perpetuating any such ideas as far as the story tells us. All we know about him was that he was simply unable to see. The Pharisees and their religious worldview tried to concoct an explanation for the blindness that would make sense to them, and in so doing, they gave themselves a reason to look down on the man. They were able to judge people who were (in the Pharisees' opinion) flawed without having to acknowledge their own flaws. That's a pretty comfortable position.

Most likely, the Pharisees said and did what they did because they were afraid. That's what "sin" is after all -- fear put into action. People in positions of power have plenty to be afraid of. They were afraid of acknowledging their own weaknesses or flaws. They were potentially afraid of change, since their system kept them comfortable. They might have been afraid of being wrong. Their way of being wouldn't make sense anymore if they couldn't trust their assumptions about reality. They may even have been afraid of being just like everyone else. Fear prompted them to keep poking at a person who had been made well, rather than celebrating his well-being.

You can probably reason what the implications of this story are for our lives. When our fear drives our behavior, our perspective becomes skewed. We can start looking for ways to protect our worldview rather than looking at the world more honestly. When we choose to live into our principles and values rather than our fear, we can be more tuned in to what we can do to contribute to the well-being of others. We can also be purposeful in our approach to injustice and prejudice, and we can recognize our own flaws and weaknesses without being ashamed of them. This last one may seem a bit odd, but when we can embrace our own humanity, we are less inclined to judge others harshly because of their humanity. When we recognize that there is more that we all share in common than there is that makes us all different and unique, we can partner more easily with one another. At the same time, when we are conscious of our own weaknesses, we can engage intentionally with people who have complementary strengths -- we can learn something from other people.

We do better for ourselves and for the world around us when we don't try to figure out whether a person is worthy or unworthy, good or bad, wise or foolish -- and instead start from the awareness that everyone has worth and everyone has the potential to contribute to a better world. This isn't as easy as pointing at people and making snap judgments based on a little bit of information, but it creates a better foundation for our lives. When we feel prompted to call out someone's beliefs or behavior, maybe we can find ways to do so calmly and without malice. We create better lives and a better world when we are honest about our strengths and weaknesses and we seek out the strengths of others before we start judging their weaknesses. It might even serve us well to keep in mind that what we think of as weaknesses, other people might think of as strengths. The bottom line is that we all still have something to learn, and if our worldview tells us something different, we need to examine that worldview very carefully.

 A Little Experiment: Be curious. When you see someone doing something well, or even doing something differently than you would do it, be curious. Observe what they do. If appropriate, ask them about their process. Don't offer advice or judge, just learn how they do what they do well.

Another Little Experiment: Catch yourself. It's easy to use short, dismissive labels for other people, especially when we want to write them off or explain away actions we don't like. This week, when you catch yourself using a dismissive label for someone, especially when you're feeling judgmental or angry, stop. Often we use the word "just" along with these labels, as in, "She's just clueless," or, "That's just what you can expect from overweight people." Stop yourself when you reduce people to a stereotype or a one-word label and consider what you might not know about them.

One More Little Experiment: You too. Sometimes we use one-word labels to self-criticize and judge ourselves too. We may not know enough about other people to honestly understand their behavior, but we can know ourselves. Be honest about who you are. Don't go overboard in either a positive or a negative self-description, but acknowledge the truth about yourself. Rather than self-critical language -- like, "I'm just stupid," or "I'm worthless" -- be honest. Maybe you didn't have all the information you would have liked when you made a decision. Say that instead of deciding that you're stupid or foolish. Just tell the truth. Try it for a week or two and see what happens.

2 Chronicles 29-31: Appearances vs Authenticity

We'll soon be turning to the books of Isaiah and Micah, which were attributed to two "prophets" or outspoken spiritual commentators (preachers) during the time of King Hezekiah, who probably came to the throne in Judah a few years after the kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians. The authors of 2 Kings actually place the fall of Samaria six years into Hezekiah's reign, but it's difficult to make the dates work out with what is known of the dates of other rulers in the Ancient Near East. Some scholars propose that a practice of co-regency accounts for any apparent discrepancies. At the very least, we know that Hezekiah's reign (and in general the conflict between Assyria and Judah), is very well attested in extra-biblical sources. Hezekiah was a heroic ruler in the eyes of the Jewish historians, and it appears that his reign saw a surge in population, literacy, and power, potentially fed by Israelites fleeing south from Assyrian forces.

The Chronicler indicates much more about Hezekiah's religious reforms than the authors of 2 Kings. He started by ordering a group of Levites (the tribe that had exclusively been assigned duties of caring for the temple) to clean up the temple and get rid of any paraphernalia that represented the encroachment of foreign religions. Then Hezekiah hosted an extravagant sacrifice and public celebration for the people in Jerusalem, followed by an invitation to all worshipers of Yahweh in the surrounding areas to celebrate Passover properly in Jerusalem. According to the biblical record, his efforts were so successful that they extended the celebration for an additional seven days. This may have been due, at least in part, to Hezekiah's contribution of eight thousand animals for the ceremonies, augmented by another eleven thousand animals from Jewish officials (who were possibly "encouraged" to do so by their king).

After all of that, Hezekiah organized task forces to go around the entire kingdom and tear apart any worship sites that would detract from the state religion, with the end result that the Temple got all of the offerings that had been dispersed among various alternative worship practices. Very clever. While Hezekiah insisted on tolerance for people with different concepts of the state religion (2 Chron 30:18-19), he oversaw profound intolerance for any other religious practices. As Micah will report, that didn't make everything perfect, but the Chronicler has only praise for Hezekiah's leadership in these efforts. By all appearances, spiritual order had been restored and the country was prospering.

Even with the controls inherent in a theocratic dictatorship, and even with a great leader like Hezekiah, there are limits to what enforced religious practice can accomplish. People can become very adept at outward appearances while still continuing to live by fear of scarcity or a sense of entitlement. In other words, changing the visible religious practices of a community does not necessarily change the inward character of the people in that community. This is a problem to which various prophets call attention. We can certainly observe the character and practices of ancient people from afar and draw some conclusions about those people. However, we get more value from looking at our own character and practices with bold honesty.

So often, we spend our time and energy on appearances. We want to appear pure, good, right, noble, strong, charitable, trustworthy, competent, lovable, or whatever package of traits it happens to be for a given individual. We want people to see admirable qualities in us. We make our temples look clean and we make our sacrifices abundant, even extravagant. Hezekiah was trying to make up for a legacy of inappropriate behavior, and he went to great lengths to make a public show that things were going to be different. For some people, things probably were different. Hezekiah certainly seems to have been acting out of sincerity. He didn't really require that people change their lives all that much, though. People could still be as ruthless in business as they were before, or as discompassionate to the alien and impoverished as they were before, as long as they worshiped the way they were "supposed to." Changing people's character would require an entirely different kind of reform.

We are often the same way. We sometimes change the outward displays without bothering to change the inward motivations. We try to hide all of the things that we are afraid of or ashamed of about ourselves and display the person we want people to see instead. It's a lot of work for some of us, and it's work that never ends, because the things we are afraid of or ashamed of about ourselves never really get addressed.

What is it for you? For me, I often do battle with the fear that I am really a selfish person at my core. On top of that, I have an "inner critic" that likes to tell me that I'm not _____ enough. I know both of those things are false, but sometimes I wind up spending energy trying to prove my own inner lies about myself wrong, instead of spending my energy proclaiming what is true about myself. It occurs to me that if I spent more time working on dismantling the lies and living out of what is true, I would have a lot less worry about what other people see when they look at me. If I live out my authentic, capable, beautiful, noble, creative self, I don't have to worry about appearances.

So, that is one challenge that emerges from this passage about Hezekiah. What are you doing just for the sake of appearances, and how does that distract you from meaningful personal development? What would be wrong with just being your authentic self? What are you afraid people are going to see if you stop worrying about appearances and just allow your own deep guiding principles to inform your actions?

I certainly don't mean that what people see in us doesn't matter. To be clear, I gain a lot of insight from what other people notice about my demeanor and behavior. The more vulnerable I am willing to be with people, the more I get from other people's observations. So, by suggesting that we worry less about appearances, I don't mean that we should abandon personal hygiene or let fly every petty judgment that pops into our brains. I mean that our outward behavior can be more authentically influenced by our own inner values than by our fear about what other people will think. I mean that our time and energy is better spent nurturing our own integrity rather than nurturing a less-than-authentic image. We have nothing to fear about how people see us if we recognize what matters most deeply to us and live out those values with authenticity and integrity. Honestly, I'd rather be an authentic person than a person with a well-rehearsed persona. Maybe you agree.

Deuteronomy 28-34: Blessings and Curses, and Putting Deuteronomistic History in Its Place

The narrative of Deuteronomy ends with Moses passing the mantle of authority to Joshua, son of Nun, and dying on a mountain overlooking the Promised Land.  The bulk of the final chapters of Deuteronomy are taken up with promises of blessings and warnings of curses: blessings for those who are obedient Israelites, and curses for those who adopt the practices of the cultures around them.  Archaeologists can trace to a certain extent the development and compilation of the actual documents that eventually became the book of Deuteronomy, but the idea of blessings and curses from something outside of ourselves seems to be as old as religion itself.

First, a brief look at why Deuteronomy exists in its current form.  King Josiah is largely responsible.  Josiah was an Israelite king who appears biblically in the second book of Kings and whose existence is supported by archaeological evidence.  During the 7th century B.C., the eight-year-old Josiah became king of a polytheistic Israel, during a time of international instability.  When he was in his mid-twenties, temple renovations led to the discovery of a scroll which was possibly the original text of the book of Deuteronomy.  Some would say that this document was not a discovered scroll at all, but was rather written by 7th-century priests to unite the kingdom under Josiah with the church as a prominent power structure.  At the very least, the original text was adapted to serve this purpose, which is understandable given a certain amount of international upheaval around Israel at the time.  Many biblical scholars believe that the Jewish history which runs from the book of Joshua to the second book of Kings was written during Josiah's time on the throne to further solidify his authority and to anchor the authority of the temple more firmly in the culture. Monotheism served this purpose better than the polytheism that had been the norm for the historical Israelite community.

In scholarly terms, this religious reform is the core contribution of the Deuteronomist source, one of three major contributors to the Old Testament.  The Deuteronomist history reflects a movement, or a philosophical school, rather than a single individual, revising or creating books of Jewish scripture over the course of a couple of centuries, based on an ideal.  In many ways, their efforts preserved Jewish culture and religion during times of occupation and captivity by foreign empires.  Still, it's important to remember that the cultural ideal preceded the writing, and that cultural ideal related to a select group of people who were special, set apart from the rest of the world because of their bloodline, and obligated to behave in a way that reflected how set apart they were from the rest of the world.  It was clearly in violent opposition to the way the rest of the world behaved.

This may seem harsh, but you're nothing special.  Sure, you have a unique personality and skill set, and you have capabilities that other people don't.  You are the only one who can create your life, and you have a unique impact on the people around you.  But that describes every single person on the planet.  We are all special.  We are all unique.  We are all worthy of respect.  We are all valuable.  One group doesn't need to proclaim why they are better than another group, because they simply aren't.  No country or culture or religion or community has any right to claim superiority.  We are all wonderfully unique, amazing people, and we benefit from connection and relationship with other wonderfully unique, amazing people.  Life is not a contest, and it doesn't have to be a battle.  Our only real competition is with ourselves.

Which is why blessings and curses are simply a matter of perspective.  There is no entity watching our actions and waiting to smite or reward us.  We do that all on our own.  The threat of being cursed may encourage some people to do what is right out of fear, but living in fear keeps us from truly engaging in life.  Whatever we do, there will be challenges.  "Bad" things happen to everyone, and "good" things happen to everyone.  Some of those blessings and curses are direct results of our behavior.  We don't like to blame ourselves when someone else is within easy pointing range, but many times it's our own behavior that directly results in the rewards and challenges we face.  Sometimes, though, it has nothing to do with us.  We just happen to be moving through the intersection when someone runs a stop sign.  We just happen to pick the winning lottery numbers.  We just happen to have been at the company for a short time when they go through a round of lay offs.  We just happen to drive a different route on the day the bridge collapses.  Some things are just out of our control.

We make our own blessings and curses, though.  When we engage in life fully, taking responsibility for our own decisions, respecting ourselves and other people, creating lives that reflect what matters most to us, the results will look like blessings.  When we ignore our own value and the value of other people, when we blame everyone and everything around us and play the victim, when we give in to fear and deny our own beauty and creativity, the results will look like curses.  Of course, a lot of people are miserable in some areas of life, but very proud of their successes in other areas.  We all have strengths and weaknesses, and from time to time we all give some goals a lot of attention while ignoring other things that matter to us.  It can look like we are always blessed and cursed if we want to think of things in those terms.

The truth is that we are alive, and as long as we are alive we have opportunity.  We can make choices and decisions about who we are going to be and what kind of life we are going to create for ourselves.  Whatever our circumstances, and however people around us behave, as long as we are alive, we have the opportunity to create beauty, the opportunity to be connected to other people, the opportunity to experience -- life.  If there is any blessing, it is that we are alive, and that trumps any curse if we want it to.

Numbers 26-36: Men Who Established an Ancient Society Don't Mandate Our Beliefs Today

The remainder of the book of Numbers essentially outlines the decisions that had to be made when the Israelites stopped wandering through the wilderness and established more permanent settlements.  There were a few legal issues to iron out, there were festivals to be established, and there were borders to be set, and every tribe needed to be given a place to settle without the whole of the Israelite community erupting into petty squabbles about who should have which plot of land.  The first step was to count everyone again, so that land could be apportioned based on a group's size.

Of course, they still had to kill the people who were inhabiting the land they were going to be handing out, but those folks really didn't count as "people" per se, since they weren't Israelites.  In fact, Numbers 35 deals specifically with murder and how to legally distinguish between actual murders and accidental deaths.  In this context, Moses (speaking for God) says, "Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it."  We must assume that this is only in reference to Israelite blood, since shedding the blood of people from whom they usurped the land didn't seem to be a concern.  In fact, the Israelites are warned that if they try to inhabit the land peacefully in community with the Canaanites, God will destroy them.  More on that in a moment.  

Two distinct legal matters arise in these final chapters.  One has to do with the preservation of wealth, and the other has to do with the value of a man's word.  There was a man named Zelophehad who died, leaving behind five unmarried daughters and no sons.  According to what had been established, this man's wealth would revert back to his tribe, leaving nothing for the daughters apart from the compassion of their relatives.  So, the daughters brought their complaint before Moses, and Moses consulted with God, and God proclaimed a legal order of inheritance which all Israelites were thenceforth to follow.  

This presented a snag, however.  Some men of Zelophehad's tribe were concerned that if these daughters were to marry men from other tribes, their father's wealth would be shifted into the coffers of these other tribes as well, and they wanted to ensure that Zelophehad's wealth stayed in his own tribe.  So Moses made another proclamation (on God's behalf) that no inheritance should pass from one Israelite tribe to another, meaning that if the daughters wanted to keep their father's wealth, they would have to marry someone from their own tribe.  Which they did.  

This is an important bit of legal precedence that needed to be established.  It is curious, though.  Aside from wondering why the Israelites needed all this wealth if they were just going to slaughter everyone they encountered and plunder the remains, one wonders why God didn't see this coming.  An omniscient god would certainly have known that this issue would arise, but there is nothing mentioned about how to handle an atypical inheritance until these daughters raise their concern.  Even then, the response is imperfect because it allows for a loophole that has to be closed by another proclamation.  While it's necessary to set these guidelines, it's apparent that it was people setting the guidelines and not an all-powerful supreme being.  Once more, the concept of God is invoked to dissuade argument and shift responsibility from a fallible human ruler to an infallible being that could send plagues if you made a fuss.

The other legal matter that is dealt with in Numbers 30 has to do with vows.  If a man makes a promise, he should keep it.  Simple enough.  We get that in one sentence.  If a woman makes a promise, it becomes more complicated.  We need three or four paragraphs to understand the consequences of a female's promise.  It makes sense in the context of a male-dominated culture, but like so much of biblical regulation, it stops making sense when translated to twenty-first century society.  Thus, the concept of the Israelite's god stops making sense.  

If God is assumed to be eternal, unchanging, and constant -- and if the Bible is assumed to be the infallible, inerrant documentation of what God thinks and wants from people -- we are confronted with the fact that whoever drew these conclusions about women thinks of them as "almost-but-not-quite people".  We also are confronted with the fact that any non-Israelite is even lower in status than women -- shedding their blood doesn't pollute the land, it secures property rights.  The New Testament addresses this conundrum, but then we face the issue of scripture being wrong or misguided about something, which is tough for some people to stomach.  

At a certain point, we have to face the obvious truth that Israelite men wrote these words in a very specific place at a very specific time for a very specific purpose.  They were trying to establish a new culture, a new society that promised for them security of power and wealth, but that also promised for all of its citizens a sense of the sacred, a life made more meaningful by participation in a holy culture.  Every decision they made was focused on preserving that ideal.  But they were imperfect human decisions of a certain place and time, not rules for all people throughout eternity. 


It is still possible to believe in a deity today, even a deity that is congruous with biblical truth, but one must distinguish where the line is between truth and cultural perspective.  So much of the Old Testament narrative is about what Israelites should believe about themselves in order to maintain a cohesive cultural identity.  So little of it thus far has been about anything approaching the divine.  It's just insecure men trying to make wise decisions and avoid the pitfalls of other cultures around them.  The further one digs into the biblical narrative, the more one sees that there is not a single, consistent depiction of God throughout.  It is not specific enough to claim belief in "the God of the Bible," because even the biblical view of God changes.  A certain kind of deity was seen as valuable to the men who were establishing Israelite culture.  They needed an unassailable authority that enforced conformity, provided for the ruling caste of priests, and condoned swift and brutal justice.  That kind of god is not necessary for us today. 

So if you're going to choose to believe in something, at least believe in something that makes sense.  If you believe in God, then accept that he gave you your brain for a reason.  Think about your beliefs and what those beliefs actually mean for the way you live your life.  You become little more than a tool when your beliefs are determined by whoever is screaming the loudest, most fear-inspiring message at the moment.  You have the capacity for more depth than that kind of impassioned reactivity.  Beliefs that denigrate women or people from different cultures are not going to help you create anything meaningful in the world.  You will be much better served by beliefs that recognize human value and inspire you to have a positive impact on the lives of those around you.  I believe that everyone has the potential to be aware of what matters most, even though that awareness can be a challenge.  I also believe meeting that challenge is the heart of human spirituality.

Numbers 1-4: Counting People and Organizing a Society

Thus far, we've looked at the first three books of the protestant Christian Bible, which are traditionally attributed to Moses, although scholars have determined that the books were authored by several different contributors over a long period of time.  Thus far, the books have largely been about the preservation of Israelite culture, primarily through belief in an external divine being who favors the Jewish people somewhat arbitrarily.  Part of the establishment of this religiously rigorous culture involved elaborate sacrifices for various things, essentially giving up something personal to make amends when one acts contrary to the culture's policies.  A special group of people were assigned to oversee the religious life of the Jewish people, and these were the Levites, those men descended from Levi, Jacob's third son.  More about the Levites in a moment.

Rather than accept the culture-specific deity suggested in the Old Testament, most Christians primarily rely on the story of Jesus and the teachings of the New Testament to bridge the gap.  Essentially this reflects the belief that over time, as culture changed and developed, spiritual truth evolved as well.  It is no longer necessary to offer elaborate animal sacrifices whenever a person does something wrong, because Jesus eliminated that requirement.  It is no longer necessary to adhere to strict dietary guidelines, because Peter had a holy vision.  And in some cases, people just assume that the Bible's earlier teachings are invalid because we have grown in our understanding of how the world works.  We don't hang twisted sticks by a water trough in order to make livestock be born with curly hair because we know that biology doesn't work that way, and we don't worry about whether a person is "clean" or "unclean" because hygienic and medical practices have become more robust in the thousands of years since these laws were written.  What's odd is that many people seem to be just fine with the idea that some "laws" can change with the culture, while other laws are immutable, even though they are all declared with the same authority in the biblical text.

In my own language, I have been suggesting a redefinition of the divine as something within us rather than something apart from us.  Rather than eliminating the idea of what people consider divine, to a certain extent I am merely repositioning those qualities in our cosmology.  I believe that there is no external intelligence watching, guiding, punishing, and rewarding humanity.  The guidance and punishment and reward comes from within us, from a part of ourselves of which we aren't always aware.  Psychologists have given different names to this piece of our psyches, but it carries the characteristics of the divine.  This part of us does not fear, and therefore it does not deceive.  It is the part of us that sees the deep truth about ourselves and the people around us, the vast similarities that lie under the superficial differences.  It is the part of us that understands the beauty and value of who we are and seeks to discover that beauty in other people and in the natural world.  It is the part of us that creates, whether it is creating works of art, practical solutions to problems, or connections with other people.  The divine is within us and it is us, and when we are in tune with it, we realize how little we actually have to do to be at peace with ourselves.

Being at peace with ourselves is important, because all of our experience hinges on whether we are accepting and loving toward ourselves.  The beginning of the book of Numbers reflects how the Israelites expected to interact with the people around them.  Their god, through Moses, had proclaimed that other nations would fall before them.  Other nations were essentially infidels, although the translators of the Christian Bible don't often choose to use that term.  The preservation of a pure Israelite culture required the prevention of intermingling, so anyone who wasn't an Israelite was an enemy of the Israelites and their god.  Thus when the first census is taken among the Israelite community, they count only the men at least twenty years old who could serve in the army.  They didn't need to know how many women or children were in each tribe because the warriors were the ones who would be driving away the non-Israelites.  At the time, women and children were essentially property, not fully recognized people.

It's interesting to note that when a command in the Bible is attributed to God, he often seems to adopt the worldview of the people through which he's speaking.  Since the men of the day saw women and children as property, God saw no point in counting women and children in the census.  There are also plenty of other examples in the previous books and in the books that follow.  Wouldn't it have made more sense for God to maintain a sense of the value of all human life, even when the people to whom he was speaking didn't?  This is the problem with relying upon any person's declaration of what God wants.

Moses meant well.  After all, he wanted to preserve his people and their culture.  The authors who wrote the Old Testament meant well.  They were striving to keep their culture sacred.  They probably actually believed the righteousness of their words.  But when a person sets out to control other people's behavior, it is usually more from an inward fear than from any sense of what is true.  Moses tapped into some divine guidance from within and sought to impose order on a people who hadn't reached any measure of spiritual awareness.  And instead of training people to look within themselves and discover the truth about how to live with one another in a productive and healthy society, Moses and the early Israelite leaders attempted to lock the culture down.  Only a select few were allowed to be in touch with the divine, and all the rest – hundreds of thousands of men, plus their women and children – were supposed to be good followers and do what the religious leaders told them to do.

These religious leaders, at the beginning of the book of Numbers and beyond, were the Levites.  The Levites were counted differently from the rest of the Israelites, because the Levites were not going to be fighting in any battles.  Instead of counting every male of twenty years and older, the Levite census included every male of one month and older.  One month out in the world was when a male Levite became a legitimate person according to God.  Not at birth.  Not at conception.  Not at some age of reckoning.  One month.  Inerrantists and militantly religious anti-abortionists, take note.

We know more now than the Israelites knew.  We know more about the natural world, we know more about how individuals behave and why, and we know more about how societies and subcultures function.  When someone tells us something intended to sound factual, we know how to check our sources and verify the truth of what we're told.  And when someone tells us something spiritual, we know how to test that within ourselves.  We are not incapable of thought.  We don't need someone else to think for us, but that often seems easier than digging into ourselves and discovering something of value.  When you allow someone else to think for you, though, you give up personal power and you make yourself vulnerable to whatever ulterior motives another person may have.  Don't just drift along on other people's assertions.  At least be aware of your own beliefs.  Think for yourself.

The Israelite leaders may have wanted what they thought was best for their society, but that doesn't mean they had the only solution.  Many people today are willing to go to war against all manner of things in order to do what they think is best for society, and many people simply want to preserve power.  It isn't always easy to tell the difference, but fortunately we don't have to.  Here is something few people realize: You cannot be at peace with yourself and at war with other people.  When you are at war with other people, you must vigilantly defend yourself against them.  And when you are vigilantly defending yourself, you are not really aware of that deep sense of truth, beauty, and creativity.  Your focus is outward, at what threats may be coming.  When you are peace with yourself, you are aware of the truth, beauty, and creativity within you and you are simultaneously able to recognize those qualities in the people around you.  This is the most powerful spiritual position a person can assume.

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.

The End of the Beginning: Concluding Genesis and Articulating Spiritual Premises to Move Beyond the Biblical Purpose of Cultural Preservation

Except for an odd tale of intrigue in Genesis 38 and a scene in which God renames Jacob "Israel" (even though the stranger Jacob wrestled with by the stream had already done so), the remainder of Genesis is about Joseph, one of Jacob's sons.  It is through Joseph that Jacob and his children wind up settling in Egypt, which is important for the cultural narrative of the Jewish people.  Basically, the story is that Joseph's brothers conspired to kill him because he was Jacob's favorite (and Joseph had prophetic dreams that his brothers would be bowing down to him), but then decided to fake his death and sell him into slavery.  These are the same men that wiped out a city because their sister had been defiled, but perhaps matters are different when it's your little brother that Daddy likes best.

Through various events, Joseph gets himself into and out of prison in Egypt and winds up as an influential overseer helping Egypt prepare for a coming famine.  Jacob's other sons go to Egypt to buy grain, and Joseph toys with them for a few trips before revealing that he is their brother, alive and well and bearing no grudge against them.  He tells them to get everyone from Canaan and come to live in Egypt, where he'll see to it that they're taken care of.  Of course, things don't turn out as well for Jacob's descendents in Egypt as the generations wear on, but through the momentary use of his influence, Joseph is able to make life a little bit easier on his father and brothers. 

The stated lesson derived from Joseph's story is that God was working in the actions of Joseph's brothers when they sold him into slavery; God took a malicious act and used it for good.  Good toward the people who had committed the malicious act and good for the victim of the malicious act.  Given the entire narrative up to this point, this benevolence may seem slightly incongruous, since the paradigm has been set that wicked people earn punishment and righteous people earn reward.  In that Genesis 38 story, God even puts one of Jacob's grandsons to death because he "spills his seed on the ground" when he's supposed to be impregnating his brother's widow. 

But actually, the bottom line in all of this is that God takes care of Abraham's descendents because he and Abraham had a deal.  Of course, Jacob's son Judah had gone off the reservation and had children with a Canaanite woman, so his children from that marriage weren't covered by the deal.  Thus, when Judah's sons do wrong by God's standards, they get instant death.  The God of the Old Testament is more of a cultural deity than a moral absolutist, and it's clear that the primary goal of the book of Genesis is cultural preservation.

If we twenty-first century people are interested in spiritual truth, in an understanding of the divine that has meaning for us in our lives, we cannot accept the Jewish deity as he is presented in the Old Testament.  This is why the New Testament is necessary for Christians, although many of them continue to look back at the culture and narrative of Genesis to determine how people and governments should behave today.  There is certainly some value in the spiritual truth conveyed in the Bible, but that truth is not always what people focus on when they look to scripture.  An abundance of cultural clutter gets in the way.

So, putting aside the cultural narrative and recognizing that people universally have much more commonality than they have difference, how can the book most Westerners turn to for spiritual guidance be re-evaluated?  There are some foundational assumptions that will guide us forward, and I've already articulated most of them through our look at Genesis:

First, spiritual truth is not the same as historical or factual accuracy.  Concern for validating the historical accuracy of what is written is a distraction from seeing spiritual truth that can be meaningfully applied in day-to-day life.


Second, people are not broken or in need of some external redemption.  Human beings have value because human beings have value.  People are capable of making decisions and taking actions without having to attribute the outcome to a deity or external spiritual entity.  When things go well, people are worthy of acknowledgment, and when things go poorly, people are strong enough to handle the criticism.

Third, that which people call the divine is a human characteristic.  The divine is the deep sense of truth, beauty, and creativity within every person.  Sometimes it is hidden, and sometimes it is more obvious.  The divine is a part of ourselves.  We are capable of ignoring it or working actively against it, and we are capable of tuning into it and trusting it.  It is the stranger we wrestle with internally when we are of two minds about something.  It is the voice that defends us to our internal critic.  It is the vision within us that connects us to the world, other people, and ourselves.

Fourth, we exist in the finite spectrum of an earthly life.  What happens after a person dies is a matter of faith, but we do know with certainty that we have an impact on the people around us.  If there is good that we are capable of doing, it is up to us to do it.  If there is any reason to seek reconciliation with someone, it is up to us to ask for and offer human forgiveness.  We have the precious resources of this world and the people around us at our disposal for only a lifetime; it is up to us to value them.