Interlude: Good People and Bad People

Our perusal of the gospel of John has brought us to a story in which Jesus heals a blind person. Before we get into the specifics of the story, it occurs to me that some people still wrestle with questions like, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Some people might wrestle with the complementary question, "Why do good things happen to bad people?" especially in a time that once again finds wealth and power concentrated among a very small percentage of people.

In the first century, when a person was blind or otherwise impaired, it was often interpreted as a sign that that person or the parents of the impaired individual had done something wrong. Blindness was a punishment. So was leprosy, infertility, headaches, mobility issues, dementia, and just about anything else that seemed undesirable. Some people still think like this. If something is "wrong" in a person's life, that person did something to deserve it. The Bible (and the religious writings of other faith traditions) even suggests that a good person receives rewards in life and a bad person receives punishments.

This causes a quandary, however, when such thinking is challenged by reality. Sometimes bad people seem to be rewarded, and sometimes good people seem to be punished. This was even a problem for people in ancient Israel. The Wisdom books of Hebrew scripture highlight the struggle. Even as it is asserted that wise, good, faithful, honorable people will be rewarded and foolish, wicked, malicious, people will suffer, there are books that point out that this isn't always so. Job and Ecclesiastes, for example, are writings that directly wrestle with the realization that reality doesn't line up with simple expectations. Good people don't always have an easy life; bad people don't always suffer. The conclusion of Job is that Yahweh is in charge and shouldn't be questioned. The conclusion of Ecclesiastes is that we should enjoy life while we have it and trust that all will be balanced out as Yahweh sees fit.

Over time, people started to think that maybe things wouldn't be judged and balanced in this life, but that people would receive their reward or punishment after this life was over. An eternity in heaven or an eternity in hell would be the ultimate consequence of life. Good people will be rewarded, and bad people will suffer.

The New Testament expresses that we can see who the good people and bad people are by their actions. As a typical example, Matthew 7:16-20: "You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits." Another example is 1 John, in which the author proclaims that the distinguishing characteristic of "children of light" is that they live out the commandment to love. By contrast, "children of darkness" can be clearly distinguished by their expressions of hatred.

Lots of people still believe that there are good people and bad people, and they might even agree with the idea that you can tell the difference between good people and bad people by their actions. Some people are convinced that the eternal souls of good people will go to heaven and the eternal souls of bad people will go to hell. (Incidentally, this is not the message of most Christianities, but that's another matter.) We look around us and it makes perfect sense to say, "That murderer/extortionist/ rapist/thief was just a bad apple," or to be equally impressed by what a "good person" someone is when we see them being generous or helpful. This either/or mindset makes a lot of sense to our brains, and we can often make it fit with our experience if we don't look at people too closely. And it's wrong.

There are no good people. There are no bad people. The allegory doesn't hold that "good trees" only bear "good fruit" and "bad trees" only bear "bad fruit." People make choices. People are capable of making choices that contribute to the well-being of themselves and others. People are also capable of making choices that seem to benefit themselves at the expense of others. The specific actions of people might be reasonably labeled as good or bad, but then you have to define what that means. Maybe good actions are those actions that increase well-being and bad actions are those that cause harm. Some actions would seem to be neutral. The point is that every person is capable of choosing from a whole array of potential actions.

Thus, there are no good people, and there are no bad people. There are just people. People make choices. We like some of the choices that people make. We don't like other choices. We feel badly about some choices we make, and we feel happy about other choices we make. We are people. We make choices. We are not good trees or bad trees, and the fruit of our lives is a whole array of flavors.

As we are able, may we have the confidence and courage to make choices that contribute to the genuine well-being of ourselves and the people with whom we share this planet. And when we choose otherwise, may we have the humility and perseverance to try again. You are not a good person. You are not a bad person. You are a person, and you have the capacity to choose what you will do.

Isaiah 27-28: Authentic Hope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isaiah 24: Understanding Appropriate Responsibility

The topic seems to come up over and over again, but if the authors and assemblers of Isaiah kept beating this drum, perhaps there is a little more to learn from it. Isaiah 24 extends predictions of divine wrath (presented as "justice," but we'll examine that word) to the entire world. Everyone will be treated with equal harshness, regardless of their place in society or their role in creating justice or well-being. Some people will even be praising Yahweh, but they should be mourning. The entire landscape will be a wasteland, and the few people that are left after this punishment will have no reason to celebrate.

There are a few things to address here. First, there is a problem with considering this universal punishment as "justice." Second, there are natural consequences to human actions that do not need to be explained by supernatural will or action. Finally, there are differing degrees of human responsibility that should be taken into consideration; everyone on the planet does not have equal power.

Looking first at the term "justice," it is easy from this passage to see why some people observe that the Old Testament depicts an unjust god. The powerless and the powerful will be treated equally harshly by Yahweh. According to this passage, the earth will be uninhabitable, not because of the natural consequence of human behavior, but because a supernatural will make it so. Surely, there are some who would point out that no individual is completely innocent. At the same time, is the level of wrongdoing that could be committed by a typical slave worthy of the same consequence as the wrongdoing that could be committed by a typical master? Should the misdeed of naive or gullible worshipers be treated with the same harshness as the misdirection of the priest who led them astray? One could make the case that actions have consequences, but when an intelligent deity is orchestrating the consequences, that argument is insufficient. A deity cannot be just and also punish indiscriminately. So, either there is something off about the picture of Yahweh painted by Isaiah, or there is something wrong with the idea that Yahweh is just.

There's no reason to have a supernatural in the picture at all, however. This actually makes things easier for the believer and the non-believer alike. Human actions have consequences. If one country goes to war with its neighbors, a lot of people will suffer, and they will suffer without regard to their role in society or their role in the war. If human actions result in an uninhabitable landscape, then one's personal responsibility for that result doesn't determine one's experience. Everyone suffers equally because circumstances do not have any intelligent power to discriminate between people of different levels of power or responsibility. If an intelligent deity is not behind the consequences, we have no reason to expect "justice."

Thus, when human beings clear-cut a forest and the ecosystem is disrupted, this is not indication that God loves trees and hates those who cut them down. It is an indication that irresponsible behavior will have a negative impact on our world. When an individual commits a crime and is subsequently arrested, it is not an indication that God will enforce some kind of punishment for bad behavior or that he has some kind of plan for each person's life. There are human consequences to breaking a society's laws. When a natural disaster strikes a community, it isn't necessarily anyone's fault. Although scientists are exploring how human behavior influences typhoons, tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes, these things are part of the natural world, and they have been for a long, long time. There is no divine agency behind where a storm hits or how high flood waters rise.

In fact, if one wishes to suggest (as some Christians have) that storms are God's way of punishing a population of people, one must explain the repeated tornado "attacks" on Oklahoma City, a community that is more religious (more Christian, actually) than the national average. I'm sure you could make something up. After all, 156 tornadoes since 1890 certainly seems like a message that isn't getting received. Oklahoma City has been struck 26 times by multiple tornadoes in the same day. Certainly seems like a divine message, right? For more than a century, there hasn't been a period of more than six years in which Oklahoma City was not struck by a tornado. Does someone up there just hate Oklahoma City? No. It's weather. There is no will or intelligence behind it. It's just weather. When people move from Oklahoma City to Florence, Italy, and are still plagued by tornadoes, then we'll have something to talk about.

Weather is potentially influenced by human action, but it's hard to be very specific apart from, "Widespread destruction of the ecosystem has negative results." Some consequences are much easier to discern. If you commit an act of violence, people will typically want to react with violence toward you. If you drive irresponsibly, you are more likely to hurt yourself and others. If you are caught in a lie, people will probably trust you less. And if you habitually lie, you will eventually get caught in a lie. Thoughtful consideration can provide us with some likely outcomes to our behaviors, even if we sometimes want to think of ourselves as exceptions. We shouldn't be surprised that our actions have consequences. It would be more surprising if our actions had no effect on our relationships or the world around us.

There are different degrees of responsibility, however, because everyone does not have equal power. In Isaiah's day, the leaders of nations -- the kings and emperors -- were the ones who determined the fate of their countries. The decisions of a few powerful individuals had consequences for entire populations of people. We like to think that we are no longer in a feudal society, but capitalism has its own kind of feudalism. There are still a handful of individuals who are capable of making decisions that affect entire populations of people. We have just replaced territorial/political power with financial/political power, and we have figured out ways to make powerlessness more palatable. When the board of a multinational corporation makes a decision, there are consequences. Lots of people potentially benefit from wise decisions, and lots of people potentially suffer as a result of poor decisions. The responsibility for those consequences rests with the people who have the power to make the decisions. Just like the kings of Judah were responsible for the political decisions that got their people taken into exile, there are powerful people today who have a greater burden of responsibility because their decisions affect many people who don't have much choice in those decisions.

In our personal lives, however, there are also consequences for our decisions. This is the case no matter how much influence we wield in the larger society. In our own relationships, in our own communities, our actions have consequences. We have some responsibility over the things which we have power to influence. Even though our individual actions will probably not result in "the earth being utterly laid waste and despoiled," our world -- our personal lives -- blossom or wither in large part because of our personal decisions. When we act in ways that harm others, or attempt to gain something at someone else's expense, we are more likely to suffer in some way as a result. When we act in alignment to our deeper values, our lives and our relationships reflect those values. This is not divine punishment and reward. This is just how life works. Actions have consequences.

We may not see those consequences clearly. We may think that other people are to blame for our unhappiness. We may believe that we are too weak to do anything about our situations. The reality is that, while there are limits to what we control, we do have control over our decisions and our beliefs. We can assess the accuracy of what we believe about ourselves, other people, and the world we share. We might benefit from exploring that with other people -- someone who isn't as invested in our way of seeing the world perhaps. Our journey toward emotional maturity requires us to break the habit of blaming other people or our circumstances and embrace our own personal responsibility for our actions.

Isaiah 24 suggests that every person is equally responsible for the state of the world. This simply isn't so. One person recycling does not save the ecosystem. One person treating people with respect without regard for their skin color does not end racism. One person paying employees equally does not end gender bias. What these things do, however, is set an example for others to follow. One person living with integrity can inspire other people to do the same. One person acting in alignment with deep guiding principles experiences the positive consequences of living intentionally. One person doesn't have responsibility for the whole world, but just taking responsibility for our own lives can have an incredible influence.

Isaiah 18-20: Visions of a Different World

The oracles against Ethiopia and Egypt in Isaiah 18-20 are more of the same kinds of prophecy as other proclamations against nations around Judah. The author of these passages predicts that Ethiopians will bring gifts to Yahweh's temple in Jerusalem, and that Egyptians will be plagued with infighting, drought, and eventually a harsh king. Later, the author claims, Egypt will experience mercy from the Israelites' supernatural, and several cities will be dedicated to Yahweh. Egypt and Assyria will be alongside Judah, reconciled and claimed as Yahweh's chosen people. The short passage that follows depicts Isaiah's sign-act of walking around naked for three years, interpreting that act to symbolize the captivity of Ethiopia and Egypt.

Scholars have a difficult time with these oracles, because there is no apparent place in known history that can match up with the implied events of the prophecies. Some aspects and details may seem to have relevance, but then other details would be out of place. This limits the application of the text as a historical testament of events or as an accurate forecasting of events that were yet to happen when the oracles were written. Since it's obvious that some editorial work has been done to create the existing versions of the book of Isaiah, some scholars attempt to rearrange passages to get a more accurate or sensible account. None of this work has any bearing on whether one can find meaning in the passage for life in the twenty-first century. If passages like this are about historical events, then their usefulness is exclusively past tense, since the events they describe either happened or failed to happen centuries ago. If one insists that the predictions are simply to demonstrate the power and authority of the Israelite deity, one must take into consideration that it's not clear that all of what is predicted here ever came to pass. In addition, a reader who already has a theistic bias doesn't need a passage about ancient nations to serve as evidence for God's power and authority, and a reader who doesn't have a theistic bias won't be convinced by the vague (and in some cases inaccurate) predictions of this passage.

A we've seen before, there are some problems with assuming that God is responsible for military conquests and natural disasters. Although the authors of Isaiah and other prophets had their reasons for seeing their supernatural as head over all nations' war efforts, they didn't understand the ramifications of their claims. They saw their society as unjust, with the wealthy and powerful neglecting their responsibilities toward the poor and disenfranchised. They saw their society as immoral, offering disingenuous religious sacrifices while they maintained systems of greed and self-indulgence. A foreign army at their doorstep was a clear indication to these prophets that Yahweh was unhappy, and that he was going to use whatever means were at his disposal to effect the  curses for disobedience proclaimed in the Sinai covenant. These same prophets trusted that Yahweh would also gladly bless the Israelites, if the people fulfilled the supernatural's expectations.

One cannot maintain a view of a god worth worshiping and also insist that such a deity was at the head of every military and ordaining the decisions of every government. It was fine motivation for change that the Israelites saw Yahweh behind their exiles, because in doing so they understood something about how their society had failed its own people. They also had the luxury of seeing their god behind their return from exile. In our time, we would have to see God as the one who ordained the many genocidal acts of the twentieth century, some of which continue in parts of the world today. We would have to see God as the true commander who ordered atomic bombs to be inflicted upon thousands of non-combatants in Japan. If God is the kind of deity depicted in Isaiah and other prophets of Hebrew scripture, all atrocities of war can be justified by a simple acknowledgment that the people who suffered or died did not live up to the demands placed on them by a supernatural.

The authors of Isaiah weren't necessarily off-base regarding what they wanted for their society, and even for their neighboring societies. This passage on Egypt has some pretty favorable predictions for what Yahweh will eventually do for that nation. The view of society's potential presented in Isaiah places justice, equity, and compassion high on the list of desirable qualities, and it sees these qualities as attainable by a people, particularly the people in charge. The authors may have been displaying a perspective that their supernatural was superior to every other nation's, but they were equally critical of their own people for failing to live by the standards that supernatural had set for them.

Israelite understanding of their agreement with Yahweh was not unlike other treaties between unequal powers in the Ancient Near East. The more powerful entity essentially tells the less powerful entity, "This is what you're going to do, and this is what I'm going to do." Basically, if the less powerful nation does everything that that the powerful ruler demands, then they get the benefits of the arrangement. However, if the less powerful nation fails to do everything the powerful ruler demands, then the curses of the treaty were valid responses by the ruler. There were perhaps phrased in colorful and symbolic terms, but essentially the ruler would take military action against the disobedient weaker subjects. That's how Israel and Judah saw their relationship with Yahweh. The supernatural said, "Here are my demands. Meet them and live prosperously; fail to meet them and die."

Through all of this proclamation of doom though, there is an undercurrent of hope. Isaiah 19 forecasts a future in which peaceful relations and unity exist between nations, at least between Egypt, Assyria, and Judah. This is a bit humorous, considering Judah's insignificance as a political power. Egypt was the seat of the previous empire, and Assyria was the seat of the current empire. Perhaps the prophet was hopeful that Judah would be the seat of a future empire; such a vision of the future is certainly suggested by other passages in Isaiah. Of course, that never happened, and it isn't likely to happen. The basic gist of that future alliance, though, was that justice and peace would be the rule rather than the exception. The vision of an empire ruled by Yahweh was that it would be the sort of place any person would want to live: where no one would go hungry, and no one would be afraid (Micah 4:4).

The values are a bit inspiring. The way the authors of Isaiah thought it would happen is a bit disappointing. They didn't think that people were actually capable of creating such a reality. They asserted that their god would make it so. Perhaps one could say that, just as Yahweh was seen as the primary actor when a foreign army swept in, Yahweh can also be seen as the primary actor when people make decisions that lead toward peace and justice. The tendency, however, is for people to abdicate responsibility for creating peace and justice. If we do not place the responsibility on a supernatural, perhaps we place responsibility on the government to make the kind of world we most want to live in. We may laugh at the suggestion, but that doesn't change our expectations.

There is, of course, another way of seeing the covenant promises and curses without assuming the existence of a supernatural. However the ancients thought of their world and society, they understood intuitively what characteristics and practices helped a society thrive and what characteristics and practices tore a society down. That their supernatural does not exist has no bearing on the value of justice, equity, and compassion. The view toward a world in which people are safe and have enough is still an inspiring vision. Human beings have to take responsibility for their actions in order for our reality to approach that vision.

God is not at the head of the military; human beings are. God is not in control of who has wealth and power; human beings are. God doesn't commit war atrocities; human beings do. God doesn't effect genocide; human beings do. God cannot respond compassionately to the world; human beings can. God is not capable of creating justice and equity; human beings must.

Whatever our vision of the world is, we are responsible for moving toward that, even if our only sphere of influence is our own lives. When we set aside fear, I suspect that most of us want the same kind of world, and I suspect that we value the same sorts of things that the prophets valued: justice, equity, and compassion. Aside from irrational fear, why wouldn't we all want to live in a sustainable world where no one went hungry and no one was oppressed? If that is our most noble vision for the planet, that is what we are called to create. We aren't called by some supernatural outside of ourselves; we call ourselves by the values we hold. When you set aside fear, what is your vision for the world? What will you do today to bring your life a little bit closer to that vision?

Isaiah 9-10: Vessels of Justice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isaiah 5: We Are Capable of Justice

Using the metaphor of a vineyard, Isaiah 5 denounces injustice in the kingdom of Judah, pronounces the judgment of Yahweh upon the unjust, and connects the military threat from Assyria with the behavior of the people of Judah. Yahweh will either allow or compel the foreign army to overrun Judah because he is displeased with the behavior of the people. There are some problems with this theology, but there is also a message about justice that is still important for us to hear.

First, a horticultural clarification: the vineyard metaphor claims that the owner of the vineyard expected grapes but got wild grapes. Some translations express the owner's disappointment by calling the expected grapes "good grapes" and calling the grapes that grew instead "bad grapes." Wild grapes, especially in the world of the Ancient Near East, were more acidic and bitter or sour than cultivated grapes. All sorts of animals feed on wild grapes, but they aren't of a high enough quality that they would be considered for wine production or put on a dinner table. The presence of wild grapes is very natural, but they aren't the high quality produce that one would expect after investing time and energy in process of cultivation.

So it is with people. We have natural ways of behaving without putting too much effort into it, and much of that is comprised of reactions based on irrational fears, judgments, and beliefs about ourselves and other people. When we invest in personal work -- recognizing more about how to be emotionally mature people, practicing more honesty about ourselves and others, and connecting more with people so that we learn not to fear vulnerability -- we can expect to have higher quality lives. The problem is that we sometimes expect that if we invest time and effort in other people's lives, they will be higher caliber people. Deeper satisfaction with our lives cannot be gained by other people's efforts, though, and we can't do anything ourselves to ensure that other people will dismantle their own fears, connect with their deepest, most noble selves, and engage in life with greater emotional maturity. Each person has to do this cultivation on a personal level in order for transformation to occur.

The vineyard metaphor only gets us so far, then. We can expect certain results from our efforts in a garden, but we cannot expect results from cultivating growth in other people. Our responsibility first and foremost must be how we represent our authentic selves. We can be an influence on other people, to be sure, but we can't predict such results and shouldn't be terribly upset when our influence is less than we'd like. The vineyard owner (God) decided to let the whole place go. If he didn't see the results he wanted in the people he had tried to cultivate, he was going to let the place become a wasteland until such time as those people saw fit to be high-quality produce.

One major problem is that the population of Judah included both the people who were being unjust and the people who were the victims of injustice. In casting aside the entire country to the ravages of a foreign army, Yahweh was pronouncing a universal punishment that did nothing to achieve justice for the oppressed -- in fact, those with less resources fared worse in times of military conflict. In trying to make sense of Judah's vulnerability to Assyria, Isaiah looks for a cause in the society of Judah, and he finds the rampant injustice to be worthy of reprimand. Or perhaps, the prophet saw the injustice and considered the threat from a foreign army to be something that would catch everyone's attention. Either way, the theology of a deity that punishes the oppressed just to teach the wicked a lesson does nothing for Yahweh's public image.

Of course, one may say that Yahweh knew the hearts of everyone in Judah, and thus his judgment was just. In this case, one might also inquire as to who was being treated unjustly in the first place if everybody in Judah was wicked. Trying to exonerate God's behavior is a bit silly, though. The reality  was that Assyria was a political and military threat to Israel and Judah, and whatever the kings of Israel and Judah did to provoke the leaders of Assyria, it had little to do with injustice in Israelite society. It's understandable that a people would look around and try to figure out what they had done wrong to deserve being overwhelmed by foreign forces, but military actions are rarely about the actions of a civilian population. While the encroaching Assyrians were certainly a credible threat, the injustice within Israelite society was a relatively unrelated matter.

Since injustice and threat of war are separate issues in Isaiah 5, then, we can consider the two issues separately in our own search for meaning. Most of us have no control over military decisions, so it does us little good to try to control them. We can seek to have peaceful relationships in our own lives, and we can hope to influence others toward peaceful, thoughtful, respectful interaction. We don't control other people though, least of all people in government. The issue of justice is something that we are in a better position to address.

What kind of injustice is Isaiah 5 denouncing? Justice and righteousness are paired here, and the middle of the chapter details exactly what the problems are in ancient Judah:

Some people are accumulating more and more property, beyond what they need or what is equitable, so they can have people renting and working on their property with no hope of ownership, and thus no hope of wealth or security. This is unjust.

Some people are living only for their own appetites, enjoying their lives as much as they can while at the same time numbing themselves to the work that remains to be done in the world. Ignoring the hungry or the under-served will not make the problems go away; celebrating as if there is nothing more to be done to improve people's lives is unjust.

Some people are arrogant, believing that they are entitled to property and privileges that others are not, thinking of themselves as deserving of special treatment because of their station or wealth. When people think they are worth more and others are worth less, this attitude is unjust and it leads to unjust behavior.

Some people are doing things they know to be wrong, and they are justifying it through lies. They absolve their own greed by claiming that gaining personal wealth is a positive thing, and they consider people who aren't greedy to be foolish and irresponsible. They defend expressing hatred toward others as clear-headed discernment, and berate non-judgmental people as being spineless. They indulge their own appetites, betray trust, and relish opportunities to get away with deception, and then they explain it away with a worldview that ignores the effects of their actions in other people's lives and rationalizes away remorse.

How unfortunate that our own society is devoid of such behavior, so that we are left only to imagine what a duplicitous and treacherous place ancient Judah must have been!

In truth, we have built a society on countenancing injustice. With abundant resources, we create and accept policies that concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. Sometimes those few do good, humanitarian things with their wealth, but this does not equate with a just distribution of resources. As long as there are people anywhere in the world who are sick and without the money to pay for medicine, who are hungry or thirsty and without the means to provide for their own sustenance, or who are denied adequate legal representation because they cannot pay enough to be seen as worthy of respect, our global system of distribution is unjust. Yet, we are so protective of what we have that our politicians argue like children about whether it is reasonable to provide healthcare for all the citizens of a country. We are so entrapped by our fear of scarcity that we fail to notice that there are others with even less, through no fault of their own. We are as clever in our justification as the ancient Israelites.

We extol the virtues of greed, we reward people who take unconscionable risks, we wake up in the morning thinking about what television we will numb ourselves with in the evening -- or even, as the wicked people in Isaiah 5, seeking after strong drink, wine, and music. We don't practice hospitality. We don't seek to understand people who are not like us. We practice playing the victim and demanding that our rights be respected while ignoring or even trampling on the rights of others. This is indoctrinated societal injustice and unrighteousness, but there is still a part of us that resists calling light "darkness" and darkness "light."

Not everyone plays by these rules of engagement. Some people seek a deeper connection with themselves, the people around them, and the world we all share. Some people stand up for the rights of others, even when they have nothing to gain by doing so. Some people reach out in compassion without worrying about the sacrifice of time and resources. Some people are willing to be vulnerable. Some people are unafraid.

We will not meet with any large scale punishment for our injustice. We will not face a conquering army sent by divine fiat to punish our unrighteousness. Our prejudice and protectiveness will most likely go unchallenged by any outside force. Even if there is a God, and even if she should decide to bring down wrath upon us all for our wickedness, why should we ever think that would change us? The behavior of the ancient Israelites never really changed after repeated disciplinary actions by Yahweh, or so the story goes. We are on our own with this matter of injustice. No one will come along and correct our behavior for us or cultivate us into pleasing, succulent grapes of justice against our will.

This is not to say that there are no consequences to injustice. The oppressed have, throughout history, risen up to overthrow their oppressors. Many of the bloody battles being fought today are the result of misguided attempts to possess property and control people -- lopsided values of an unjust system. Violence is sometimes the only response people can conceive to perceived oppression or threat. Moreover, our relationships suffer because of our willingness to condone injustice. Our own personal growth is stunted. Even the sustainability of our planet is threatened by the unjust levels of consumption that we have come to accept. The consequences are numerous and pervasive. There is a better way.

We are capable of more. We are capable of justice. We are capable of looking another person in the eyes and saying, "You are worthy." Even if that person has different skin coloration. Even if that person has a different gender or sexuality. Even if that person practices a different religion.

We are capable of justice. We are capable of recognizing our own personal responsibility for the decisions we make. We are capable of dismantling our fears of scarcity. We are capable of vulnerability. This is really the message of Isaiah 5: We are capable of justice, and because we are capable of justice, we must not be satisfied with injustice.

We are capable, and you are capable. You are capable of justice. In your workplace. In your family.
In your casual interactions with strangers. In the way you spend your time and resources.

You are capable of justice. In the lives of people that you stand up for. In the choices of practices that you stand up against. In the way that you vote. In the way that you live.

You are capable of justice.
How will you engage your capability a little more?

2 Kings 17: Creating Our Reality

The kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, and the Israelites were removed from the land and resettled elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire. 2 Kings 17 suggests a political reason and a spiritual reason for the event. Politically, King Hoshea thought he could extract himself from his role as vassal to the Assyrian emperor if he pledged loyalty to a king of Egypt. There's no way of knowing why he thought that would be better. Ultimately, it didn't matter, because Shalmaneser found out about the betrayal and responded with military action. He removed the Israelites from their land and moved in exiles from other places within the empire. This separation of people from their attachment to geographic sites was intended to preserve peace and limit the potential for uprisings within the empire.

Shalmaneser's actions make considerable sense. People today often behave the same way, whether it is people in certain positions of political power or people in positions of economic power. From a certain angle, multinational corporations bear some striking similarities to the empires of the Ancient Near East. The logic of the emperor's attempt to preserve power and docile compliance within his domain is enough to explain the circumstances without adding any supernatural reasons into the mix.

The Bible being a document of a superstitious time and people, however, places more emphasis on why the Israelites themselves were to blame, namely because of their spiritual infidelity. It is striking to look back at the development of their theology, from a mythology around a deity who made repeated unconditional promises to Abram about the land his descendants would occupy, to a religious construct that included unfulfilled (albeit vague) blessings for good behavior and death penalty curses for bad behavior, to a social commentary about why bad things happen to a people who are supposedly chosen and beloved by an omnipotent deity. Anything bad that happens can thus be blamed on human behavior, which as it turns out is pretty close to the truth when it's put in such general terms. There may be some disagreement about exactly which bad behavior brought about the undesirable consequences, but at least there is a bit of honesty in recognizing that the results people experience in their lives are largely consequences of their own actions.

Yet, much of what happened to the people of Israel was not so much a consequence of their actions as it was a consequence of their leader's actions. Their king did something that caused the entire country to be overthrown and displaced. It doesn't seem fair that one person's poor decision making skills wind up costing so many people so much, but that's what happens in systems of government, whether they are democracies or monarchies. We cannot control a lot of things about our circumstances, but we can control who we are in the midst of those circumstances.

What can we draw from this spiritual justification of a nation's failure, then? How can we translate this idea that we face a decision between serving a benevolent and righteous supernatural or committing destructive acts of spiritual infidelity or idolatry? With a bit of translation, it actually makes for some very useful observations. The historians of Kings are partially right when they suggest that the people of Israel created their own reality of destruction and exile. That's a truth worth exploring.

Even for the authors of this biased history, it was obvious that the people who resettled the lands of the exiled Israelites were creating their own gods. It just wasn't as easy for them to look at their own god as a human invention. We create idols, too, and more often than not those idols originate from our fears, our insecurities, the lies we believe about ourselves, other people, and reality. We look outside of ourselves for a sense of purpose and well-being, idolizing money or titles or power or significance. We create destructive habits because we fail to recognize that so many of the things we think we value are actually valueless. We spend so much time seeking after some external means of alleviating our irrational fears that forget to examine our own selves, our own deep and abiding values, our own ideals and principles that got buried beneath piles of vows about what we must and must not do, assumptions about what is possible or impossible, and lies about how we are either not enough or better than.

If we want to encounter divinity, we might want to spend some honest moments looking within ourselves. Chances are, we already know what we want our lives to be about. We already know what we actually value. Those things are sometimes challenging; they might take a lot of work and we might have to dismantle a lot of fears and false beliefs to really engage them. But when we dig into real meaningful values that engage our sense of connection with people, that tap into our true capabilities and passions, that inspire us to envision a better life and a better world characterized by justice and compassion, we are tapping into something more powerful than any idols we can set up in our lives.

We cannot honestly improve our lives, the lives of other people, or the world around us by being preoccupied with judgments about ourselves or other people, fears about scarcity or insignificance, or lies about our own brokenness or weakness. Human beings may be well practiced at escalating anxiety and reactivity, but there are other options for how we connect with our deepest, most noble, visionary selves. We have the opportunity to bring forth something inspiring by the way we live and the choices we make. We can honor a deeper truth than where our fears and assumptions lead us. We are creative by nature, and thus we are creators by nature. We choose what we create.

Hosea: The Consequences of Desperation

We've looked at the first three chapters of Hosea. The remainder of the book is almost entirely a catalogue of colorful ways to say that people have committed idolatry and Yahweh will punish them accordingly. Twice (Hos 11:8-11 and Hos 14) the author suggests that Yahweh is too compassionate to destroy Israel and Judah, perhaps suggesting that there will be hope after a time of consequence. Most of the book, however, is a single-minded poetic indictment.

It may be worth taking a moment to go over familiar ground and challenge the idea that bad things happen because God is punishing people, and good things happen because God is being merciful. In fact, the author of Hosea even detaches the religious and moral behavior of individuals from the consequences of a nation when he claims that Yahweh will concentrate his punishment on the priests and leaders that led their communities toward destruction (Hos 4:14-5:4). It's still safe to say that the author of Hosea is commenting on a perceived relationship between Yahweh and the nations of Judah and Israel, not between Yahweh and individuals living in those nations. And as we have observed before, for all of the undesirable things that happened to the nation of Israel (and eventually Judah) there are clear political, economic, and natural causes.

So, despite the lengthy pronouncement of divine disappointment and punishment in Hosea, we can realistically say that undesirable consequences sometimes follow human behavior. Perhaps it is the case that undesirable consequences more often follow behavior based on fear (including greed, oppression, and hostility). Or perhaps the undesirable occurrences in life are simply easier to work through for those individuals who are living based on something deeper and more solid than superficial and irrational fears. Perhaps living by a clear set of values and guiding principles that support justice, equity, and compassion simply offers people a way to make sense of their lives during undesirable circumstances while still maintaining a sense of personal responsibility.

The book of Hosea certainly seems to point to some degree of personal accountability on the part of at least some of the people of Israel, but he also seems to suggest that their only chance of managing crises is to hope that Yahweh will be merciful and provide supernatural aid. As history has demonstrated time and again, prayer alone -- even sincere prayer -- does not manage crises and initiate meaningful change in one's life or in the life of a community or nation. People must act in accord with their prayers or wishes or deep guiding principles if those things are to have any real value. The author of Hosea, for just a brief moment, suggests what acting in accord would look like. Obviously, he thinks that people need to stop worshiping inanimate objects and serving foreign gods in ways that are incompatible with the practices of the Yahweh cult, but in Hos 12:6-8 he also admonishes people to keep the principles of love, justice, and honesty as priorities in their lives.
 People in Hosea's day may not have been so different from individuals today in their propensity to run toward any possible source of protection or relief. Whether one melts down a bunch of silver into an idol, throws oneself into workaholic commitments, entertains reckless behavior in personal relationships, becomes obsessed with how much money one can get from others, suddenly adopts more devout or fanatical religious behaviors, or succumbs to the more easily identified addictions of alcohol or drugs, desperation is often at the root. When we feel incapable of handling the challenges we face, we have a tendency to look for something outside of ourselves that can handle it for us, or at least help us forget that the challenge exists. Desperation leads us away from our true values and principles, and toward frantic and relentless fear.


Desperation is often based on lies we have accepted as truth. Being honest about ourselves and other people is one tool we have to dismantle desperation. Taking away the mythology and the angry threats of divine vengeance, one interpretation of Hosea is simply that life is better when we treat one another (and ourselves) with respect, when we let go of the fears that can prompt us to degrade ourselves or victimize others and instead trust in principles that compel us to see human value more clearly. We are sometimes not as prepared as we would like to be for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and yet we have incredible resources within our selves and in our relationships with others. Those resources become easier for us to acknowledge when we live with integrity to meaningful guiding principles.

No doubt, giving in to fear and desperation is easier; living with intentionality requires a bit more of us. It's also more rewarding, in our lives, in the lives of people around us, and in the world.

Hosea 1-3: Retribution and Reconciliation, and Our Ability to Develop Integrity

During the span of rulers breezed through in 2 Kings 15, the authors of that history lament that people in Judah and Israel continued to worship foreign gods. A couple of those kings gained the approval of the historians, but even during the reigns of those kings who "did right in the sight of the Lord," the people they governed were doing some things of which the authors couldn't approve. Then, during the reign of Pekah, the Assyrian ruler Tiglath-Pileser conquered large swaths of Israel and carried captives back to Assyria. Hoshea (an usurper) assassinated Pekah and became the last king of ancient Israel. Hoshea's penchant for treachery led to Israel's destruction and exile in 722 BCE, at the hands of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser.

Of course, many biblical writers interpreted this destruction as the just consequence for the nation's religious behavior. People had done things that Yahweh forbade, and thus Yahweh punished them for their transgressions. Along with the historian authors of Kings, who certainly concluded that Yahweh's anger was the driving force behind Israel's destruction, the prophet Hosea came to similar conclusions. Hosea most likely lived during the last few decades of the northern kingdom of Israel, and he was possibly the first prophet to write of the relationship between Yahweh and his people using a marriage metaphor -- imagery that would influence later authors, like the writers of Jeremiah.

In the first three chapters of Hosea, the prophet tells of his marriage to a prostitute and the names given to their children. The marriage, of course, is symbolic of Yahweh's relationship to his people, who have become spiritually adulterous by adopting the religious practices of other peoples. The names of Gomer's children are also symbolic. Jezreel means "Yahweh sows," and it was the name of a valley where the kings of Israel had caused a great deal of bloodshed over the course of the nation's history. Lo-Ruhamah means "not loved" or "not pitied," symbolizing that Yahweh will not be compassionate toward Israel (although he hasn't given up on Judah at this point). Lo-Ammi means "not mine," because Yahweh (according to Hosea) is thoroughly rejecting Israel; they are no longer his people, and he is no longer their god.

The passages that follow Hosea's description of his unenviable marriage reflect his imagining of Yahweh as a scorned and enraged husband. Obviously, a husband is seen here as the victim of a wife's adultery, and with a husband like Yahweh, no holds are barred when it comes to retribution. After the utter and complete disciplining of Israel, however, Hosea suggests that Yahweh will entice Israel back and restore her to her former glory, in a kind of twisted co-dependent reconciliation. Hosea likewise purchases his wife back and forgives her betrayal.

There's more than one problem with this whole scene, obviously, but the biggest glaring issue is the assertion that the adulterous wife is going to change. If Israel lacked the ability or the will to be spiritually monogamous before, why would one ever expect different behavior? Perhaps a less kind question is, if Yahweh had been a god worthy of Israel's devotion and fidelity, why would the people have gone looking for a better deity in the first place? And what kind of wife or people, after being beaten within an inch of survival, will respond to sweet enticing words with renewed adoration and commitment? Shall we understand Yahweh to say, "I'm sorry I stripped you, made your lands parched and unable to produce food, showed hatred toward my children, and took away any reason you might have had for celebration, honey, but you know you really deserved it. Come on back, and things will be different"? If Yahweh or Hosea could control what Israel or Gomer did, things would have always gone ideally. So, there's no way that Hosea can honestly say what Israel or Gomer will do once restored, and it's a bit silly to assume that habitual behavior will change.

This is a big issue with externalizing the causes of the results in our lives. We cannot assume that because we go and purchase someone with some silver and barley that she will be faithful. We cannot assume that a wrathful episode of discipline will make a person or a people more receptive to love. We cannot assume that other people will change habitual behavior because of something that we do. When people change, it is because of a choice they make. Certainly we can understand what Hosea is envisioning, but the means by which he sees a more idealistic set of circumstances emerging is naive at best. We can influence the behavior of others, but we cannot control the behavior of anyone but ourselves. Apparently, not even Yahweh can control the behavior of anyone but himself -- otherwise Israel and Judah would never have been destroyed, if the theology of the biblical writers is followed.

Where does this leave us? If we release the Hebrew scriptures' depiction of Yahweh as an archaic bit of folklore that was useful for a particular people at a particular time trying to make sense of their world, then we are left with human behaviors to address. At some point, the people of ancient Israel started doing things that did not line up with the values that had been established for their culture. Perhaps some individuals had a different set of values that drove their behavior, or perhaps there were unaddressed fears that overrode deeper values. They spiraled out of control, failing to reconnect with those ideals that might have allowed them to thrive.

Every day, we have a multitude of chances to choose how we will align with our deepest values, our guiding principles. If we choose to react impulsively to irrational fears, we will walk a road of destruction. We do this, for instance, every time we believe that we must be defensive or retributive toward others. We also do this when we make decisions based on the belief that we are unlovable or  unworthy, or that we are superior or entitled. We don't have to believe in a god who will punish us; we are capable of destroying ourselves without any help from the supernatural.

If we choose to act in harmony with a deeper set of values -- values that recognize the merits of equity, compassion, and justice; values that foster emotional maturity and personal responsibility; values that recognize the beauty, inspiration, and worth of every person -- if we choose to act in harmony with those things, we walk a path of life. If we are willing to see the divine as an internal human characteristic rather than an external independent entity, then we might even speak of aligning with divine will. However we see it, when we act with integrity to our deepest values, it doesn't actually matter what other people do. If other people are unfaithful, their actions reflect their own choices. They do not trap us into any requisite reaction. We can respond to their choices with integrity to our own guiding principles. We can be reconciled to others as we choose, regardless of their actions. We start by being reconciled to ourselves.

2 Kings 1-4: Being Vessels of Judgment or Vessels of Grace

The stories of Elijah and Elisha are delightful bits of folklore. These two characters have much in common with magicians or sorcerers from the legends of other cultures. Even though Israelite religion forbade witchcraft and the like, simple recontextualization places the actual power in the hands of Yahweh while the men themselves are mere subservient vessels. In 2 Kings 1-4, Elijah predicts the death of an Israelite king, kills 102 soldiers, and passes on his mantle of authentic power to Elisha before catching a ride up to Heaven in a flaming chariot. Elisha sets to work purifying water, summoning bears to eat unruly children, and performing miracles large and small. He increases apparent amounts of olive oil and bread, makes stew safe to eat, and brings a boy back from the dead -- a fairly impressive resume. One significant event is the battle between the king of Moab and the united forces of Israel, Judah, and Edom, in which Elisha proclaims that Yahweh will fill in the gaps in the planning of these three kings in order to give them victory over Moab.

These stories fall into two larger categories: stories of judgment and stories of grace. The judgment stories are obvious, but the origin of the judgment isn't always clear. Ahaziah is obviously being punished by Yahweh, but in the folktale, he doesn't die until Elijah is standing there in front of him. In the meantime, Elijah is justified in calling down fire to consume dozens of soldiers, presumably because they were in the service of a wicked king. Elisha's judgment of the jeering boys is even more clearly the prophet's own decision. The boys say something he doesn't like, so the prophet curses them (in the name of Yahweh), and bears come out of the woods and eat the boys!

Life does not work like this. Even though there are people who commit what we might consider wicked acts, we cannot expect that they will be judged and removed from the world as a result. People die. Sometimes death is a result of personal decisions, but sometimes people die for reasons completely unrelated to how they lived their lives. No matter what a person does in life, death is an eventuality, not divine punishment. Even when we choose to kill someone as a society through capital punishment or military action, these are human decisions carried out by people. While we might like to curse certain people from time to time, our curses do not actually have any power over reality, even if we curse people in the name of our favorite deity.

And let's consider that for just a moment. Elisha curses these boys in the name of his god, and as a result, bears come out of the woods and eat the boys. This is slightly different from the folktale about Elijah taming the wolf, but it still suggests that these folk heroes had influence over nature. More accurately, it suggests that the prophets had influence over Yahweh, who had power over nature. What kind of deity is this, though? When I say, "Those boys are making fun of me, God! Send some bears to eat them!" I would not expect a wise and loving deity to respond, "You got it. Two hungry bears, coming up." I would expect a wise and loving deity to respond with something more like, "They're kids. It's what they do. They'll grow into responsible members of society if you teach them to be wise instead of enforcing a brutal 'one-strike' policy. And you are getting a bit thin on top, baldy."

Obviously the ancient Israelites thought about things differently, but just because they wrote their beliefs down over two millenia ago doesn't mean that their version of divinity was in any way accurate or useful. God does not punish the wicked. The wicked punish themselves. God does not respond to curses, even if the curses are pronounced "in his name," as ridiculous as that seems. This is once again witchcraft by a different name. Even if you believe in a supreme being who watches over human beings and actively responds to prayers, there has to be some limit to your god's willingness to harm people in order for you to have meaningful participation in the world. If there existed a god who was responsive and willing to go along with our momentary emotional reactivity, humanity would no longer exist; we would have cursed one another into early graves a long time ago.

No, even if there is an external divine being trying to guide human activity, the message of our reality is that we must learn the hard lesson of seeing one another more clearly as human beings worthy of respect. Our acts of greed, violence, and oppression (and fear in all its forms) only lead to more problems. We enact our own curses on one another and ourselves by failing to manage our own fearfulness and irrational beliefs. We can lift those curses, too. It just takes commitment to doing things better. Calling down a curse is a quick solution that doesn't require any real investment of our own time and energy. Dismantling our false beliefs about ourselves and other people takes a bit more work, but the end result could be far more impressive than getting a couple of hungry bears to show up and eat our problems.

Every story in these chapters wasn't about divine retribution, though. Some of them were about divine grace. A town has bad water, and the prophet makes it potable (through magic). A widow is in danger of losing her home, and the prophet works a bit of magic and makes her olive oil jar incredibly prodigious for a short time. The prophet makes a woman conceive (we won't ask how), and when the boy dies prematurely, the prophet brings him back to life. The prophet makes poisoned food safe to eat and feeds a hundred people with a little bit of bread. He also brings prediction of God's impressive provenance for a trio of armies that rode out to battle so ill prepared that they ran out of water on the way. This was a little more tricky, and it was obviously done on God's initiative in the story, even though most of the predictions were carried out by people.

We like the idea of grace. If one cannot pay one's bills, unexpected money seems like a miracle from on high. When we think we have a scarcity and reality shows us our abundance, grace makes a lot of sense. In fact, whenever we are expecting bad things to happen and our expectations are shown to be overly pessimistic, it can seem that something outside of ourselves has intervened on our behalf. Grace is the opposite of a curse. But things we don't like still happen. Tragic and devastating things even. We are sometimes woefully unprepared for the challenges we face. Sometimes it's our own irresponsibility that does us it, and sometimes events are so unexpected that we are simply caught off guard. Children (and other people we love) die, often before we are really ready to let them go. This is sad, and it is reality. Medical professionals can sometimes pull off what seems like a miracle (although it's actually human skill), but sooner or later we have to face the death of  someone we care about. It's comforting perhaps to think that there is a god who has the power to intervene and restore a dead person to life, like the Shunammite woman's son or Lazarus coming out of the grave. Yet, can we accept those stories without wondering why no one in our lives has ever been the recipient of such grace?

Despite the rabbit trails of "miraculous" stories that people may tell, the facts are clear on the matter, and my purpose here is not to refute miracles. In fact, judgment and grace are very real. They just aren't in the hands of a supreme being outside of ourselves. Judgment and grace are human endeavors, and we carry them out every day. We know how to punish people, sometimes subtly and sometimes very directly. It may not be fire from the sky or hungry bears, but we all have our ways of letting people know that they've done something wrong and we aren't going to let them get away with it. Curses. Divine retribution. Our international conflicts are no different; they are just symptoms of the same kind of thinking on a larger scale. We can be vessels for our own violent gods of vengeance, and we often are.

We also know about grace. We know how to forgive. We know the benefits of letting go of grudges. We know how to forget about a debt owed to us. We know how to show empathy and compassion, even when we aren't getting what we want from somebody. We know how to show grace. The question is: Do we? We cannot bring back anyone from the dead, but we can have compassion for people who grieve. We cannot stop conflict in the world or decide who will "win" any given battle, but we can put a stop to conflict in our own lives. Grace. Divine blessing. We can do these things just as easily as we curse. Spewing curses just may be more our habit. We can be vessels for our own gods of peace and compassion.

The thing is, whatever you happen to believe, our true beliefs show up in our actions. Whatever we may claim to think about the real nature of humanity and divinity, our behavior tells the truth about our beliefs -- especially when we aren't being particularly intentional. If one were to suggest that every moment is an act of worship, then one would have to admit that people are often idolatrous. We want to claim belief in one thing, but our lives reflect a completely different view of reality. Whether we assert the existence of any sort of god, life makes more sense when our actions line up with what we believe about ourselves, other people, and the world we share. We choose whether we want to be vessels of retribution and punishment or vessels of peace and compassion. I would like to suggest that grace is the preferable option.

A Tangent to Judges: Israelite Religious Leaders Were Spiritual Pioneers

Imagine for a moment that the Yahweh of the Israelites was not an external entity of any kind.   Imagine instead that the Yahweh of the Israelites was a representation for an inner shared truth – something inherent to everyone, yet so deeply buried in the human psyche that it could not easily be addressed or discussed.  Imagine that the religious leaders of the Israelites were pioneers in articulating how the “divine” intersected with mundane life.  They may not have gotten everything accurate in every sense of the word, but their insights created a spiritual foothold for a community.  Yes, their framework was exclusive to the Israelite people.  Yes, their perspective placed Israel’s culture and well-being higher than the rest of humanity.  But we are capable of looking past misconceptions and ethnocentrism.

Considering the Ten Commandments, we see a statement that ultimately professes that if you bear false witness against another person, or take another life, or act in a way that discounts the value of another human being, your actions are not in alignment with the divine character within you.  The truth, beauty, and creativity within you is in opposition to the anger and fear that leads to what the Israelites called “wickedness.”  When you behave in a way that is in opposition to the actual divine character within you, you do harm to yourself—you kill yourself in some sense, you ostracize yourself from your true nature and capability.  The punishment of death or exile is not truly something that a community must do to mete out justice; they are merely the internal consequences of fear-driven behavior.

The sacrifices and rituals that are prescribed then become clearly positioned as actions to benefit the people performing the sacrifices rather than obligations to a deity.  When we have done something wrong and there seems to be no way of undoing our mistakes or taking back the angry, fearful actions, our response can only be despair.  But if we know that we can do something about it, we have hope.  The sacrifices and rituals may have gotten a bit out of hand, and their value may have been diluted over time, but they were clearly a way for people to manage the guilt that accompanies behavior that is out of alignment with our deepest selves.  A way to move forward spiritually and psychologically.

How could people thousands of years ago have articulated the internal truth of who we are as human beings with precise clarity?  We don’t expect that they clearly expressed the real nature of disease, or electricity, or atomic energy.  They didn’t understand those concepts as well as we do today.  Even a few hundred years ago, civilized people with quality educations still had no clue how to vaccinate against a disease or how to create a dry cell battery.  Why would we expect them to have a profoundly sophisticated understanding of spirituality when they didn’t have a profoundly sophisticated understanding of so much of their world?

So, in the book of Judges, we have the Israelite community falling into depravity and suffering for it, then being plucked up and set straight by a competent leader, experiencing a time of peace and prosperity before falling into depravity once again.  The text suggests that their god punishes them and saves them, but what if the suffering and the prosperity are merely the natural consequences of behavior and not an intelligently conceived plan of punishment and redemption? 

The Israelites resolve to act in alignment with the truth, beauty, and creativity within them.  They respect one another.  They handle their fear and anger responsibly.  Life is good.  Over time, fear and anger build, perhaps in response to events in the world around them, and they lose sight of what is true.  They lose interest in living according to their deepest selves.  Life is not so good.  Misery and suffering prevail.  Then, along comes someone who disrupts the status quo, who restores the community’s awareness that there is a way to live in greater accord with the truth, beauty, and creativity within them.  This reminder gives the Israelites enough hope to start managing their fear and anger differently.  They start behaving differently.  Life is good again.

Of course, the Israelites are externalizing all of the good and the bad things that happen.  When good things happen, it’s because Yahweh is happy with them.  When bad things happen, it’s because Yahweh is angry with them.  They don’t recognize Yahweh as an internal manifestation of their deepest, most noble selves.  They think of Yahweh as an external, all-powerful deity.  Thus, they get the causes and effects backward.  In reality, our divine selves rejoice when we are living in alignment with our true natures.  Likewise, we are frustrated at our deepest core when we act contrary to the truth, beauty, and creativity within us. 

In the Israelites’ eyes, they were powerless.  They believed that the external deity Yahweh was all-powerful.  They believed that Yahweh was in control of whether their experience of life was positive or negative.  If they realized how much control they actually had over whether their experience of life was positive or negative, would the Israelites have behaved any differently?  I don’t know.  Do we?