John the Baptist: Developing Eyes Willing to See Human Worth and Voices Willing to Speak Truth

The Gospel of Mark is the earliest collection of Jesus stories that made it into the Bible. In fact, other gospel writers quote directly from Mark. The Gospel of Mark doesn't begin the stories about Jesus with a census and a manger and a band of shepherds shirking their duties at the behest of a supernatural choir. Mary and Joseph are not even mentioned. Instead, this short collection of Jesus tales begins with the character of John the Baptist, herald of the messiah figure. Instead of legitimizing Jesus as divine by a special birth story, the Gospel of Mark illustrates the divine nature of Jesus by a holy proclamation when Jesus is baptized, an event which initiates the public ministry of Jesus in all of the gospels. This was quite possibly an earlier origin story about the Christ figure than the familiar Christmas tale, which may have developed as the Jesus mythology matured in the first century.

John the Baptist sets an interesting stage for Jesus. In the Gospel of Mark, he serves as a prophetic herald, baptizing people for "repentance" and the "forgiveness of sins." In other words, when people felt shame about some way that they had not lived up to their expectations of themselves, and they wished to refocus and strive to come closer to their ideal of themselves, John ceremonially gave them permission to set aside their feelings of shame and boldly move forward in their lives. He foretells the coming of a messiah figure, and when Jesus is baptized, God identifies Jesus as that messiah figure. Later gospel writers expanded on the character of John the Baptist.

The Gospel of Matthew includes a rebuke of the prominent religious authorities of the day, and John recognizes the special nature of Jesus when he approaches for baptism. Jesus tells John that his baptism is a matter of propriety, since presumably he had never missed the mark in his first three decades, being the son of God and all.

The Gospel of Luke begins with a legendary birth story for John the Baptist, and when the time comes for Jesus and John to meet as adults, John has already been preaching the same kinds of messages that Jesus will carry on after John's death: lessons like people who have more should share with people who have less, and extortion and lying are bad. Luke also includes a little more information about John's arrest by Herod, since John spoke up about some of the dictator's illegal and unsavory behavior.

The Gospel of John (named pseudonymously for a different John) is a bit more blatantly metaphysical than the "synoptic" gospels, but John the Baptist still figures prominently early in the story. In this telling of the story, John recognizes Jesus because of divine revelation, and Jesus is once again legitimized as a uniquely qualified spiritual leader.

None of these stories is particularly useful as mere historical data; there is nothing more verifiable in these tales than there is about any other mythological origin story. What is important, however, is the message behind John the Baptist's character. The Christ figure did not choose to begin his teaching within the organized Jewish religion, but rather began his public ministry outside the organized political and religious systems of the day. John the Baptist was apparently ministering primarily to people disenfranchised from established power structures. When the religious authority figures came to investigate, he chastised them for their pride and their "viperous" natures. The character of Jesus was not spiritually astute because of intense religious study or the ability to follow or understand Jewish dogma and rules; his credentials came from a deeper authority.

When the gospel writers use the character of John the Baptist to say something about Jesus, they have an obvious message to convey. Jesus serves as an idealized persona, fully in touch with his divine nature while walking around in a human body in a human world. Perhaps what John the Baptist saw was only partially correct however. Perhaps if he had been willing to look for it, John would have seen a deeper spiritual self within every person, ignored or undeveloped maybe, or covered over with lies and beliefs that were initially very well-intentioned. Perhaps if we look around intentionally, we will see something more than John saw in the multitude of people around him.

John the Baptist didn't really need to tell people not to take more money than they ought from people, or to share what they had with people who had less. We already know right from wrong. We know when we are acting out of selfishness (fear of losing what we have) or greed (fear of not having enough). And yet John got thrown in prison for saying out loud things that everyone already knew. This is, in part, because we get rather defensive when we do things out of fear. Sometimes we would rather be defiantly out of alignment with our truest, most noble selves than be told that we are wrong. We would rather lie to ourselves than honestly face our fears, even when we know at our core that we are way off base. This is one of the reasons we need one another.

We need other people to honestly remind us of the things we don't want to hear. We need other people who care when we go off the rails, who are willing to speak up when they see us careening out of control because of our irrational fears or our false beliefs. Even when we are just slightly out of alignment with the people we most want to be, an honest and loving word from someone can remind us of the things that matter most in our lives. Speaking the truth to someone is not always easy, especially when we have such a tendency to get mad when someone tells us something we don't particularly like. The character of John the Baptist gives us a model in this regard.

Without getting caught up in the intent of the gospel writers to legitimize the hero of their story as uniquely divine, there are a few things that we might glean from John the Baptist. First and foremost, we might strive to more gracefully correct our course when we recognize that we are out of alignment with the selves we most want to be. This requires being honest about our deepest selves as well as being honest about where we are potentially falling short. We might also strive to appreciate the people in our lives who are honest and caring enough to remind us who we are, to see our most noble selves in spite of our fearfulness. We can be those honest and caring people as well, willing to speak out in truth and love so that another individual might recognize that they are not entirely living as the person they want to be.

In one sense, we are all John the Baptists, surrounded by John the Baptists: people capable of seeing the intrinsic value of every person, and people capable of speaking the truth without judgment, so that together we might sharpen one another, strengthen one another, and create the kind of world we most want to live in. In our own ways, we can give people opportunities to set aside shame and irrational fear and move forward in their lives with hope and dignity. We don't need to herald a superhuman messiah who will come to save us from ourselves, we can simply proclaim one another as capable, worthy, beautiful.

This is the good news: Truth, beauty, and creativity are within you and always have been. You have value and worth because you are, and you need no further credential than that.

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?

Dinah and the Shechemites: Not a New Band, Just a Story of Senseless, Violent Retribution

The actions of Jacob and his children didn’t always reflect an awareness of any sort of divinity, except perhaps with the assumption that they could do whatever they wanted because their god was better than other gods (which may not actually be any sort of awareness at all).  Consider the tale of Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, in Genesis 34.  Once Jacob and his family were settling into their new stomping grounds, Dinah went out unescorted to meet the other local women.  Shechem, the son of the area’s ruler (Hamor) saw Dinah and was instantly smitten, so he took her and slept with her against her will.  At least that’s the story recorded in scripture.  Jacob’s sons (Dinah’s brothers) were outraged, but they played it cool, deceiving Hamor and Shechem into thinking that they approved of a marriage between Dinah and Shechem.  They insisted that all of the men under Hamor’s authority be circumcised before plans could continue, to which Hamor readily agreed.  While the men were recovering from the minor surgical operation, Jacob’s sons slaughtered all the men, stole all of their wealth, livestock, women, and children, and considered it justice.  Jacob was angry that his reputation in the area was going to take a hit from his sons’ actions, but they showed no remorse.

When people tell stories about events that have happened to them, there’s no way to tell how much of the story is truth and how much is elaboration.  Even in this day and age, when two people engage in a moment of passion, they may have completely different accounts of the incident, should the occasion to talk about it arise.  If one person winds up feeling shame about the event, or thinks there might be something to gain from playing the victim, the story could easily become radically different from reality.  Even in reading the biblical account, it seems that Hamor and Shechem have a completely different understanding of the situation than Dinah’s family.  The alleged rapist wants to marry Dinah, Hamor wants to share his land with Jacob’s family, and they are willing to have all of their men undergo circumcision as part of the agreement.  It doesn’t seem like the behavior of ruthless criminals. 

Rape does happen.  And most people would agree that rapists deserve some sort of justice.  Even though it may be difficult to get to the truth when there are conflicting accounts, people who have been raped should not have their lives, behavior, or clothing scrutinized merely because they are brave enough to come forward.  That being said, it’s important to get as close to the actual truth as one can before meting out justice. 

But perhaps evaluating the nature of intimacy between Dinah and Shechem is out of place, considering the culture of the time.  If women were considered property, then it wouldn’t really have mattered whether Dinah consented or not, Shechem’s actions would constitute theft.  Maybe a closer story in today’s culture would be slightly less emotionally charged than considering one’s only daughter or sister as the victim of a violent sexual crime.  That image could understandably provoke a person to violence.  So, let’s consider a story about a car.

Imagine you have a classic car parked in a parking lot somewhere.  This car is a real beauty, your pride and joy.  But when you get back to the car after leaving it alone in the parking lot, you realize that someone has ripped open the steering column, hotwired the car, and taken it for a spin.  You are beside yourself with anger and disbelief, when a man approaches and says, “That is a great car.  I saw it sitting there and I just had to take it for a test drive.  I’d like to buy it from you.  Name your price.”

With your best poker face masking your rage toward this man, you say, “Sure, I’d love for you to have this car.  But, you and everyone in your neighborhood have to drink a bottle of this delicious wine.”  The man agrees, goes back to his neighborhood, and proceeds to get everyone drinking wine.  When the neighborhood is recovering from the alcohol, you go on a killing spree, slaughtering everyone in close proximity to this guy like you’re filming a slasher film.  Then you steal all of the cars in the neighborhood, as well as any valuable electronic devices, jewelry, cold hard cash, …you get the picture. 

Justice?  Not by a long shot.  Of course, this modernized retelling doesn’t capture all of the nuances of the cultures involved in the original story, but it doesn’t really need to.  No matter how you look at the situation, the actions of Jacob’s sons constitute a disproportionate response out of unchecked rage.  It’s a pretty impressive feat—killing a community’s men and making off with all the women, children, and valuables—but it’s far from model behavior.

Even as the heroes of their own story, the sons of Jacob come across as barbaric and nearly amoral.  Their sister was “defiled” by one man.  Their response is to kill an entire city of men and make off with everything and everyone else in the city.  And they set the stage for the slaughter by making a mockery out of the sacred sign of a holy pact with God.  It may seem clever, but it’s hard to call it just.  It would almost seem inhuman if it weren’t so close to some beliefs held by many people in the 21st century.  Many people still seem to find the idea of wiping out those who are different so much more compelling than the idea of learning how to find common ground and share the world with fellow inhabitants.

So, if we are not going to emulate over-the-top violence as a reaction to situations and people we don’t like, what is the alternative?  There are probably many, and the best among them are going to involve seeing other people as equal partners in creation.  People are all valuable and fallible, even the person who looks back at you from the mirror.  It isn’t about permissiveness or accepting wrongdoing.  Justice still has a place, when it is actually just and stems from the acknowledgement of every person’s inherent value.  Every person has that divine essence of truth, beauty, and creativity, but every person doesn’t tap into it equally.  So, in a word, we’re talking about forgiveness.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean eliminating consequences.  Forgiveness is simply a word for letting go of the dehumanizing hostility we so often direct at people.  There is no honest assessment of spiritual truth that can lead to the conclusion that forgiveness is an inappropriate response.  It’s a wonderful image to think that an all-knowing, benevolent god handles all matters of forgiveness, that mercy is ultimately the purview of the Almighty.  The concept of a Christ dying for the world’s sins can leave some people with the impression that the issue is handled without them needing to be involved.  But the act of forgiveness is our responsibility, regardless of religious persuasion.  Moreover, the act of forgiveness itself is healing, not to the one being forgiven, but to the person doing the forgiving.

Forgiveness is crucial to human relationships on every scale.  Without it, we are in a perpetual state of war with everyone, including ourselves.  There is still a place for justice, and actions have consequences.  We don’t have to make those consequences worse for ourselves and others by embracing hatred.  It is our responsibility as human beings to act toward one another in a way that honors our mutual value.  And when someone makes a misstep on that path, it is our responsibility to forgive.  It is one way of recognizing the deep truth, beauty, and creativity within ourselves, to recognize that even in the darkest of circumstances, we are capable of letting go of hatred.

Letting Go of Shame: Genesis 4 Revisited

In response to a great suggestion about last week's entry, here is Genesis 4, which is primarily the story of Cain and Abel.  You can read it in whatever translation you prefer.  This may help to draw some lines of comparison between the original message and my revision, should you so desire.  I hope the spiritual truth I convey here stands on its own, but I also understand the value of tracing the train of thought back to the original text. 

One of the results of the fear that keeps us from honoring the truth and beauty and creativity within ourselves and other people is envy.  It may be that we fear that we won’t be taken care of, that we’ll miss out on some important experience, or that we won’t get a satisfying amount of respect and adoration.  Our fear may even seem justified when we see other people getting what we deem to be better results than we are.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of measuring people’s value by how much they own, the car they drive, the clothing they wear, the food they eat, or the house they inhabit.  These trappings don’t impact a person’s value one iota.  People have intrinsic value because of the truth, beauty, and creativity within them, not their bank account or lifestyle.  When we have wealth, we fear losing it; when we see other people with more than we have, we fear that we will not have enough.  And of course, there are plenty of other fears about wealth and lifestyle.

The frightening thing is that we sometimes do atrocious things to one another out of fears that are based on misguided nonsense.  Our fears lead us to insult, steal, and even kill.  Our fears create conflict where none needs to exist.  Once again, shame often springs up in the wake of our fear-based actions, and instead of seeing the truth and beauty and creativity in ourselves and others, instead of being inspired by the world around us, we seal ourselves off from it and suffocate our own souls from the connection upon which we thrive.

We can recover from our misdeeds.  Other people can recover from our misdeeds (and their own).  The world can recover from our misdeeds.  It may not be pleasant, and it may take time, but the possibility always exists for true connection with the natural world, with other people, and with ourselves.  It is up to us to break the spiral of fear and shame which stifles connection, and to embrace the truth and beauty and creativity that can bring us back around to satisfying relationship.  This requires being boldly honest with ourselves.