2 Samuel 11-24: Pride and Gratitude (Infusing Our Thankfulness with Honesty and Recognizing the Extent of Our Abundance)

The rest of David's story as recorded in 2 Samuel is fraught with conflict befitting a soap opera, and not one you'd want to have on while the kids are in the room at that. The Chronicles version is somewhat cleaner, eliminating all of the indulgent behavior of David and his offspring and including in its place a riveting catalog of personnel. While this was likely an important account for ancient Israelite culture, such lists do not contain any more spiritual value for 21st century Westerners than any other extra-biblical lists of people. There is something realistic about the indulgent version of David in 2 Samuel, where he takes advantage of his position of authority, sleeps with another man's wife, conceives a child with her, and has her husband murdered. His household is a mess of incest, murder, revolution, and greed. In the midst of it all, there is a military adviser trying to hold things together politically and a spiritual adviser trying to hold David together morally.

As exciting as the story is, the spiritual message is somewhat odd. This immoral man is Yahweh's hope for the future of his people, despite his lack of capability when it comes to making the truly difficult decisions? Well, yes. No person can be perfect, so anyone chosen as leader will come with weaknesses and challenges. Somehow the Israelites who recorded the earlier version of their history understood that being in a position of power--even with the approval of the almighty--didn't make a person a better human being than anybody else. We might not sleep with another person's spouse and then conspire to have someone killed on a battlefield, but we are occasionally going to do things that are selfish and fail to value other people as much as we ought. We might not have children who try to usurp power and prove their superiority by sleeping with our harems in public, but from time to time we will be challenged by other people's behavior. And in spite of all of that, we have plenty of reasons to feel and express gratitude.

David expresses his gratitude in a song to Yahweh, whom he credits with victory in battle. David believes that his deity has protected him from human adversaries and has given him authority as king over foreigners. This is all well and good for a primitive society. Thousands of years later, however, we seem to still hear claims that God has protected us from harm and given us victory over adversity, even that God has made us prosperous or worked out circumstances for our benefit. In David's song, he comes close to claiming that he deserves God's blessing. The person who committed acts of adultery and murder just a couple of chapters back is claiming that:

"The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness;
    according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me.
For I have kept the ways of the Lord; I am not guilty of turning from my God.
All his laws are before me; I have not turned away from his decrees.
I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin.
The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,
    according to my cleanness in his sight." (2 Sam. 22:21-25)

Really, David? What an interestingly blameless vision of yourself you seem to have cultivated. Perhaps you think that because you had a military victory or were otherwise fortunate that your previous behavior is unimportant to the point of being forgettable? Well, that's not an unfamiliar perspective to us, after all. When we dodge a bullet, slide in just under the wire, or avoid getting caught, it's tempting to think that what we did must not have been so wrong, because God protected us--he made sure we were safe and successful, so everything must be cool. A ludicrous claim, when you think about it. Gratitude is surely an attitude worth cultivating, but so is honesty.

Rather than a Davidic claim to superhuman holiness, it's worth recognizing that we Americans did nothing to earn the privilege of being born in one of the wealthiest places on the planet. We don't live blameless lives, not a one of us. We turn our backs on people, we give in to fear, we wrestle with moral and ethical issues, and we don't always come out smelling like a rose. None of us is perfect. None of us is truly worthy of a better life than anyone else. Many of us are lucky. Many of us are fortunate. Some would even say many of us are blessed. But what we have in our lives is not the result of our utter righteousness. And here I don't just mean the number after the dollar sign in our bank accounts, I mean clean water, abundant food, access to medical care, a level of safety that is unexpected in many parts of the world.

In this time of year when we think about gratitude a little bit more and acknowledge our undeserved privileges a little more easily, let's be honest as well as grateful. We haven't done anything to deserve our lives or our relationships. Whatever we have, it isn't because we did anything to be more worthy of it than anyone else. We have more to be grateful for than we ever take the time to realize. We aren't chosen, set apart for some greater purpose--we are simply fortunate. What we do with what we have is our responsibility. We can cultivate pride, or we can do all that we can to contribute to a better world. This is what gratitude enables us to choose. Honest gratitude allows us to recognize the worthlessness of our pride and to focus instead on our opportunities to practice generosity.

So, I invite you to take a moment--without needing to be clever or funny for an audience, without needing to impress anyone with your depth or insight, and without any reason to guard a sense of dignity or pride--just take a moment to be grateful for the many undeserved gifts of life. Through gratitude we have a chance to recognize our real abundance in life. That abundance doesn't mean that we should stop striving or growing. It simply puts that growth in a context: We don't need more, although we may want more. And when we have more, it means we have more to offer, not more to guard and protect. If we are honest, most of us will see that we truly have enough. Enough time. Enough money. Enough skill. Enough to be happy. Enough to share.

Judges 9: Healthy Ambition and the Senseless Fear that Is Selfishness

So far, the book of Judges has been mostly about people who accomplished military victories for the Israelites.  After Joshua led a fairly straightforward invasion of the land to which the Israelites felt themselves entitled, it's no small wonder that they had a few enemies.  According to the writers of Judges, the oppression the Israelites experienced in the ongoing contest for power in the region is attributed to their disobedience to their god.  When the Israelites behave themselves, their god protects them.  When the Israelites are bad, their god lets them get overrun by other people who worship other gods.  Then, someone comes along and drives back the infidels -- often through some kind of subterfuge -- leading the Israelites into a period of prosperity which inevitably cycles back to their faithlessness, abandonment, and misery.

Abimilek is a bit of a detour from that formula.  Here we have a ruthless murderer who worms his way into leadership from within a tribe of Israel's own ranks -- a wicked ruler chosen by a wicked people.  He's killed by a nameless woman who drops a millstone on his head and a nameless armor-bearer who mercifully grants him an honorable death.  The writer of this tale is clear that God is the one who created the strife that led to Abimilek's downfall, but it seems like unnecessary effort on God's part.  A person who is willing to kill dozens of his own relatives just to solidify a tenuous position of political power is likely to rub a few people the wrong way.

The people under Abimilek's rule worshiped a god named or titled "Baal-Berith" (or "lord of the covenant").  It's difficult to say what sort of deity Baal-Berith was.  There simply isn't enough factual information about this particular god to know how he was different from the Israelites' other gods.  What's clear from the narrative is that the people who put Abimilek in power were motivated by selfish goals.  Not all that different from twenty-first century politics.  Their own motivations ultimately worked against them.  They focused their attention on things that ultimately had no value, and they suffered as a result.

It isn't difficult to look back through history and find people who acted out of selfish ambition, caring nothing for how much harm they did to others in order to get money or power.  Some of them passed on a legacy to their progeny that we can still see at work in the world today.  Many of them ultimately brought about their own destruction.  There are also wealthy, powerful people who act out of a deep desire to have a positive impact on the world.  The difference isn't in the value of their bank accounts or the reach of their power.  The difference is in how they attained what they have and how they make use of it.

Most of us will not be Abimileks.  Most people don't have the capacity to kill seventy siblings and lay claim to a throne.  We also aren't likely to be Ghandis or Mandelas.  Still, all of us face choices about whether we will act out of selfish ambition or act out of a deeper sense of truth.  Let's be clear: Selfishness is just another word for fear.  We become selfish when we are afraid that we won't get what we want, that we will be overlooked, that someone will take advantage of us somehow.  We believe in the scarcity of whatever it is that we want, and we set our minds so fervently toward a goal that we lost sight of what is important and true about ourselves and other people.  We get selfish about things we don't need -- about things that actually may do more harm than good to us and to the people around us.  Fear convinces us otherwise.

Here it is, as redundant as it may seem by this point: There is enough.  Whatever it is, there is enough.  We don't always see clearly how to distribute it wisely and healthily, but there is enough.  Enough land, enough water, enough fuel, enough food, enough love, enough power, enough respect, enough time.  We live in abundance when we are willing to recognize it.

This isn't to say that ambition is bad, just that the target of our ambition is often misguided.  Let us be ambitious and creative in how we can provide clean drinking water to the world, or in how we can ensure justice for all people, or any number of noble goals.  There is a place for ambition, and it can power our creativity to have a profound impact on the world.  It's the potential selfishness of our goals that warrants examination.   When our ambition justifies hurting other people for the sake of our own personal gain, we have stepped out of alignment with our deepest selves.  That's the part that is based on some kind of self-deception.

In reality, it's safe for us to acknowledge the value of other people, for us to listen to ideas that came from other people's minds, for us to respect beliefs that are different from our own.  It's safe for us to peel back the armor of fear and recognize our worth as human beings is exactly equal to everyone else's.  Our value is not based on political title or bank account or education or square footage or how much blood we have shed or what kind of car we drive.  We all possess a deep awareness of this truth that surpasses petty fears.  We all possess divine beauty and creativity.  We all have the capacity to inspire and be inspired.  We are all capable of listening and we are all capable of accepting other people's beliefs without feeling somehow threatened.

It may seem that we have a long way to go before we create a world that embraces the value of every person, but the process of creating that world has already begun.  It is up to each of us to choose how we will be in our own lives.  We don't have to be heroic.  We just have to determine how we will dismantle our own fears and create our own meaningful lives.  When we act in accord with the truth, beauty, and creativity within us, we cannot act out of selfish ambition.  When we choose to acknowledge the value of every person, we will find ways within our means to express that truth.  As Ghandi said, "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.  As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.  ... We need not wait to see what others do."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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