Isaiah 23: The Lenses through Which We Look

Should one decide that there is little in Isaiah's "oracles against the nations" to be translated into a twenty-first century life, that conclusion would be understandable. Aside from placing these writings in a historical context, some biblical scholars don't seem to know what to do with them either, and they don't all agree on the historical context. Isaiah 23 is the last specific pronouncement against a foreign power, however, before the book of Isaiah turns to focus more on the nation of Judah. After this passage, Yahweh's destruction is reported as being global, and his devotion to humanity is focused specifically on Jerusalem (which is profoundly problematic, but we'll wait to delve into that).

Isaiah 23 contains commentary on the cities of Tyre and Sidon, both situated in present-day Lebanon, about 40 miles apart. These cities were located in a coastal area along the Mediterranean that was important for commerce, so every major empire that came along found value in claiming them. Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Ottoman Turks, Crusaders -- whoever was in power at the time controlled Tyre and Sidon. Now, the cities are more Muslim than the United States is Christian, so one might draw some interesting conclusions if one puts stock in the prophecy, "Her merchandise and her wages will be dedicated to the Lord; ...her merchandise will supply abundant food and fine clothing for those who live in the presence of the Lord."

It's interesting to note that people throughout history have read the words of their scriptures and interpreted them however they saw fit, and people frequently criticize interpretations and perspectives that differ from their own, even when there is not necessarily greater support for one view over the other. We often hold our own perspectives in rather high esteem. Authors can only write from their own perspective, though, and the authors of Isaiah reveal some things about their perspective. Historically, it would have been unsurprising for a growing empire to take control of Tyre and Sidon, and Assyria controlled not only Tyre and Sidon, but also Babylon for a time (which could have been the land of the Chaldeans referred to in verse 13). 

The coastal cities were too useful to simply be destroyed, however. Isaiah 23 suggests that the cities will be like prostitutes, which is an interesting pre-Capitalist view toward international trade. An honest look at "free" economy in the twenty-first century might warrant the same criticism, that people are made to prostitute themselves to those who hold the power. For the authors of this passage, Yahweh is eventually going to make use of and benefit from the prostitute Tyre. Try convincing your preacher to speak about that on Sunday morning. Interestingly, the authors throw in a reference to a folk song in verse 16, which might make one wonder how many other poetic turns of phrase in scripture are taken from unacknowledged vernacular entertainment of the day. Perhaps even more interesting is that Sanchuniathon, a Phoenecian historian, seems to have cast Sidon as a daughter of gods and the originator of melodic singing. Could this mythology have influenced the authors of this oracle?

We can't know the complete cultural or historical perspective that influenced the writing of Isaiah 23 (or any other bit of scripture). What we can see clearly is that the authors began with a particular understanding of the world and interpreted events through that lens. For the writers of Isaiah, the clear assumption is that Yahweh is in control, that their god is powerful enough to orchestrate events on a global scale, and that human actions prompt divine response. If a nation or a city is besieged, Yahweh is interpreted as the commander of the attacking forces if they win, and he is interpreted as the protector of the defending community if the attackers withdraw. In order to preserve their view of the divine, they cast a vision of the future in which all people understand the power and righteousness of their god -- in which everyone sees the world as they do.

Human beings have adopted a strange stance with regard to our beliefs. We think that other people agreeing with us somehow legitimizes our beliefs. If others see the world as we do, then our perspective must be accurate, right? Not necessarily. Yet, when our beliefs are challenged by people who disagree with us, we don't reconsider our beliefs; we don't think, "Hmmm, maybe I was wrong about this. Let me consider this other perspective carefully." Instead, we often become belligerent, insisting that other people see things as we do. We are often just afraid of being wrong about what we believe; we won't allow our perspective of reality to grow into something new. 

So, we interpret everything through a particular lens, to the point that we are often willing to dismiss or ignore those things that do not fit cleanly with our perspective. The argument of Isaiah seems to go something like: Yahweh is in control of everything. Thus, every military action is approved by him, and he uses military forces to jealously punish people who worship other gods. Thus, when our own communities are overrun by foreign powers, Yahweh is ultimately behind it. Thus, rather than looking at political or military weaknesses, we should figure out why Yahweh would want this to happen to us and fix that problem. Then, we will have success against foreign military forces, because Yahweh will protect us.

Some people today look through a similar lens, making some assumptions before considering any facts. Just as the authors of Isaiah made some assumptions about their god before interpreting events around them, many people today assume first of all that their beliefs about the world are accurate, then they look at the world and fit what they see into their assumptions. We could go into the multitude of problems that arise from the assumption that God is in control, but it might be more constructive to consider starting from a different set of assumptions. We will always have beliefs that create a lens through which we see the world, but we could embrace the possibility that our lens grows and develops as we encounter the world. In other words, we could start with the assumption that we don't know everything. When we claim that God is in control, we pretend to know something that we can't know. There is no way to grow from that perspective. The only option is to force our experience into a particular box -- and to discard or ignore whatever doesn't fit in that box. A bit of honesty about the limits of human knowledge would suggest that we can grow in our perspective. That's one really useful assumption to make: We don't yet know all that we could know.

Here's another assumption we might make, another lens through which we might choose to see the world: Human hands can solve human problems. When we recognize that our current reality doesn't match our hopes for the world, we have an opportunity to create a better world. We aren't necessarily in charge of military decisions or international politics, but when we acknowledge that human beings make those decisions, and not an omniscient supernatural, we look through a lens of human responsibility. Once we are able to acknowledge that human beings are responsible for their decisions, we can be empowered in our own lives to be personally responsible for the things we do get to decide. If a supernatural is in control of everything that will happen in the world, there isn't much for human beings to do except sit back and watch. When we accept our own role in creating a better world, we might catch a glimpse of the kind of world we most want to live in.

Through what lens are you looking? Is there room for that perspective to grow? Does your lens empower and inspire you to live toward a best possible version of yourself? To contribute somehow to a better world? How you look at the world determines how you are in the world, and you have some choice in the lens you look through.

Deuteronomy 7-11: Provisions and Punishments, and Valuing Personal Insights without Insisting on Agreement

I've said that in Deuteronomy 7-11, there are three basic themes aside from the recounting of the business with the Ten Commandments and the golden calf.  The Israelites are told to abhor and destroy all of the spiritual paraphernalia of the cultures they displace or slaughter.  They are told that everything they have of value (including the displacement and slaughtering of other people) is not by their own merit, but is something that their god provides.  It is also asserted that they will be punished if their god gets angry with them; all of those blessings will be taken away if the Israelites don't behave themselves.  We've looked at that first theme, so we can turn our attention to the other two themes for a moment.

If you get the feeling that we've already talked about whether God punishes people with natural disasters or whether people can legitimately take credit for the accomplishments in their lives, it's because the theme of God's sovereignty is understandably prevalent in the Old Testament.  Hopefully, we can continue to deepen our understanding of personal responsibility, gratitude, tolerance, and insight as we bump up against the Israelites' beliefs again.  It's worth noting once more that, although there is no evidence that an external divine being is pulling strings or orchestrating events, there is also no way to disprove such a thing.  The point is to recognize the legitimacy of other personal beliefs while still coming to agreement on how those beliefs can play out to honor ourselves and the people around us.

It's easy to disagree when we insist other people agree with our personal beliefs.  One person may say, "I'm so glad I got a new car... I earned it."  And a friend may interject, "Actually, God provided that car, so you should recognize it as a gift."
"I bought this car with my own money."
"God provided the money."
"No, I earned the money at my job."
"God provided the job."
"No, I got hired out a pool of applicants because I was the most qualified for the position."
"God opened all the doors that led to that moment."

This could go on and on as far back in time as the two people are willing to argue about it.  There's no way for either of them to be right, and there is some amount of personal insight in both positions.  One person wants to acknowledge the personal decisions and choices that defined his personal journey to that point, and this is a very valid perspective.  Even if there is a divine being opening doors for us, we still have the personal responsibility to cross the threshold.  Everything we have in life can be attributed to personal decisions to some extent.

It's also a valid perspective that external events have an impact on us.  Some people may see it as a god influencing other people's decisions, and others may see it as karma or luck or any number of other things.  Any way you slice it, it's true that there are some things in life that are beyond our control.  The confusion begins when we start trying to connect the external events to things that we have done -- suggesting that we actually do control things outside of our own decisions.  "If I am obedient to God, then I will be rewarded in life with a house and a satisfying career and a healthy family and..."  Or the flip side, "If I displease God, then I will experience misfortune, disease, poverty,..."  Even the writers of the Bible had a hard time with this, not only because they saw people around them suffering without having committed any apparent acts of disobedience, but also because they saw people around them blatantly living impious lives and experiencing success and satisfaction by all outward appearances.  Their response (as we'll see later on) was convoluted because they were committed to the premise of a god capable of rewarding and punishing people with immediacy.  My conclusion is a bit more direct.

Things outside of our control are actually outside of our control.  Events outside of our personal responsibility are not determined by our actions.  We can influence other people by our choices, to be sure.  If I decide to fly through every stop sign and red light at 90 miles per hour, you can bet that there will be consequences, maybe even some really big ones.  But the lines between my actions and those consequences are directly observable.  There isn't a similarly observable connection between speaking harshly to a parent and having locusts consume my crops, for instance.  Or making a sacrifice and experiencing rain.  I don't care what kind of animal you kill, killing an animal cannot bring about a change in the weather.  There is no directly observable line of consequence, even though there may be coincidence from time to time.

So, it's valuable for us to both acknowledge our personal responsibility and to recognize the limits of our control.  It's valuable to be grateful for what we have and to see how other people have also made contributions to our lives.  Sometimes we can gain personal insights when we are honest about these things -- insights that are not possible when we automatically assume that everything unquestionably traces back to a single infallible source.  If we are experiencing drought, we may have some insights about what we need to change in our lives to thrive, or we may have some insight about how to better manage our resources.  Those kinds of conclusions aren't possible when we immediately assume that a drought means that our god is angry and wants us to sacrifice something to appease him.  We may have a personal insight about a mildly abusive relationship and come up with all sorts of things that we can legitimately control about our contact with that individual.  And yet, I have seen people remain in obviously toxic situations because they saw them as tests that God was putting them through for some reason they didn't yet understand.  The threshold between the things for which we are responsible and the things over which we have no control becomes blurred when we insist on lines of consequence that don't exist in any observable reality.

Rather than looking at the circumstances of our lives in terms of provisions and punishments, there is so much we can gain by looking at how we can grow from the experiences of our lives.  It requires a bit more work, because legitimate lessons will recognize our personal responsibility and how we can improve our ability to create lives that reflect what matters most to us.  And legitimate lessons will also recognize that there are limits to our control without assuming malice from something outside of ourselves whenever things don't go the way we want them to.  On top of that, the conclusions we draw about how we can grow may be entirely different from the conclusions that other people draw.  This doesn't mean that anyone is wrong or right necessarily, it just means that different people reach different conclusions.

There does need to be a measuring stick of some kind, but I think that measuring stick already exists within the core of our being.  For instance, we know that bringing harm to someone else for the sake of our own personal gain is wrong, and yet we go against that truth as individuals and as a society time and again.  We are the people we often harm the most in these situations, because we act in conflict with who we are at the core of our being.  In truth, we are capable of devising some other way of creating the lives we want without bringing harm to other people.  It isn't always as easy, but it honors who we truly are in a way that doesn't put us into conflict with ourselves.  When we rely on that deep sense of human value... when we are willing to see our own merit, our own beauty, and our own creativity... when we are willing to see the value and beauty and inspiration in other people... it doesn't matter whether our personal beliefs are the same or different from someone else's.  What matters is that whatever our personal beliefs are, they create a foundation of responsibility for our own lives and respect for the lives of others. 

Numbers 12-14: Trusting in Divine Inspiration

These chapters of the book of Numbers once more reflect a supreme being with menacing and punitive tendencies.  It's a view of God that still exists in many ways today, perhaps because it's easier for us to notice our struggles and mistakes than it is for us to take delight in our accomplishments.  Chapter 12 begins with an accusation against Moses, brought by his brother and sister.  Speaking for the Israelite god, Moses had commanded that the people remain pure by not intermarrying with the "unclean" people of the land around them.  And yet, Moses himself had married a Cushite.  This wife may have been Zipporah, whom Moses married before he became the leader of the Israelites, or this may refer to a second wife.  The important part of the story is the response to the accusation.

According to the tale, Miriam's lack of respect for Moses got her cursed with leprosy, and she was confined outside of the Israelite camp for a week.  She wasn't punished for noticing that Moses' own marriage broke orders everyone else was supposed to live by.  The punishment came because of her lack of respect for Moses.  The ability to curse people with leprosy seems a bit of an unfair advantage, though.  Coming from a perspective that rejects the existence of a supreme being, particularly one who would feel the need to get angry and punish someone for insulting Moses, the simplest explanation is that Moses himself had a few tricks up his sleeve. 

Leadership is tough to begin with.  When you're trying to tell people to behave one way while you are behaving differently, it becomes even tougher.  Aaron and Miriam weren't really making an astounding observation, but the way they went about their accusation was to grumble and gossip behind Moses' back.  Had they gone to him and pointed out the discrepancy with a modicum of concern for his own well-being, the story might have gone differently.  Sooner or later, the issue of living differently than what you're demanding of other people has to be addressed.  You can't just afflict everyone with leprosy after all, and Moses quickly had his hands full with more complaining from people.  Quite simply, people are better leaders when they are open to criticism without stooping to petty retaliations, and their followers are more likely to get what they want when they approach the person in charge with love and respect.

Once again, in Numbers 14, the Israelites cry out that they should have stayed in Egypt instead of following Moses out into the wilderness to die.  A special team of spies had gone to investigate the land of Canaan, the "promised land" where the Israelites were headed.  They came back with a report that the place was indeed bountiful, but it was also inhabited by peoples who were stronger and more numerous than the Israelite forces, willing and able to defend their lands against invasion.  So, the people were understandably demoralized.  The response from some of the spies was, "If we trust God, there is nothing to fear."

The Israelite god spends a lot of time being angry in this book.  He threatens to unleash his wrath on the Israelites, and Moses appeals to his sense of pride, suggesting that if the Egyptians were to hear about all the Israelites dying in the wilderness, they would think that the Israelite god was unreliable and weak.  As if The One True God would actually care what the Egyptians think.  So God relented and decided that he wouldn't kill the Israelites outright, he'd just deny them access to the land of milk and honey and force them to wander for forty years until they died of natural causes in the wilderness.  Because that would look good to the Egyptians.  God does strike down the spies who brought back doom-and-gloom reports about the Canaanites, and when the Israelites attempt a foray into Canaan the next day despite the proclamation of divine punishment, they are chased off by the local denizens.

There's a big problem with the whole "God is on our side" philosophy that still infects international politics today.  Every military and paramilitary force in existence seems to claim in one way or another that they are in the right, that God is on their side.  Can God really be on everyone's side in a war?  I suppose betting on all the horses in a race would guarantee that you pick a winner, but it seems ludicrous to assume that a perfect divine being is hedging his bets.  Do people actually believe they're going to win in combat because of divine intervention?  Or is the whole thing just intended as morale-boosting rhetoric?  If taken seriously, false belief can lead people to take some otherwise ill-advised actions, purely on faith that their god will work out the details in their favor.  I would like to believe that if there was an intelligent higher power that took an interest in humanity, our ability to reason and work out diplomatic solutions peacefully would be more impressive than our ability to effectively slaughter one another.  From the right perspective, a god that promises military victory in this day and age seems like a brutal, bloodthirsty primitive compared to a god that promises the ability to reach a satisfying compromise with minimal bloodshed.  Honestly, which seems like more of a miracle?

But the issue for the Israelites boiled down to trust.  When the odds seemed against them, were they willing to trust divine guidance, or were they going to doubt every step of the way?  Trust eventually led some of them to their destination.  Doubt prevented others from realizing the divine promise.  The underlying spiritual truth of the story really has nothing to do with plagues and punishments, it has to do with trust.

Within each of us, there is a spark of inspiration that grants us a vision of what we could accomplish.  For some people, it's just a momentary glimpse, seemingly little more than wishful thinking.  For other people, it becomes a detailed goal, a lifelong aspiration.  Sometimes, people create goals that are motivated by greed, that take advantage of other people, that capitalize on loopholes in an unfair system.  These kinds of goals reflect a lack of faith in oneself to actually do good in the world.  When you believe that it's unrealistic to actually achieve your dreams, it's easy to settle for the next best thing.  There are a lot of unhappy, dissatisfied wealthy people in the world who lost sight of their vision of what really mattered to them.  Some people manage to accomplish impressive feats without ever realizing the goal that truly inspires them. 

It all has to do with how we respond to that "divine" inspiration within us.  When we glimpse that inspiration that matches with our most noble intentions for ourselves and other people, we can either trust it or doubt it.  When we doubt it, we wind up punishing ourselves, in a way.  Denying ourselves the thing that we most deeply desire for ourselves and the world.  Settling for less.  Sometimes we convince ourselves that we are just being realistic.  But when we trust that spark of inspiration and feed it, we can start to see ways to move closer to it.  The initial idea may seem out of reach, but when we trust ourselves to create a path toward that inspired target, the very process nourishes the vision.

The feedback we get along the way may not always be what we would like it to be.  We may have to adjust our path to fit with reality, but that doesn't necessarily mean setting our sights lower in the long run.  It may mean changing the benchmarks along the way, not the ultimate goal.  New information may lead us to conclude that what we initially envisioned actually isn't a beneficial target for ourselves and others, in which case we have an opportunity to fine tune our target based on that new information.  But we have to first trust our inspiration in order to get to the point of clarifying or fine tuning targets and benchmarks.  The journey is rarely a straight line, but the first step is always to trust the inspiration. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exodus 34: The Fear of Being Weak Makes Everyone Look Threatening

It's no wonder that some modern-day Christians seem so militantly closed-minded about any ideas that didn't come straight from their home church's pulpit.  The words of Exodus 34 are directed exclusively to the Israelites and refer specifically to groups of people who existed thousands of years ago, so if one is inclined to take the Bible completely literally, it would seem that at least some of the information is obsolete.  Still, the passage reveals something about the nature of the Israelite god, and it grants some insight into how beliefs about our essential nature impacts how we see the world around us.

As a brief tangent, there is one little phrase in this passage that bears pointing out to those who want to take the entirety of Christian scripture as accurate and infallible.  The Israelite god commands, "No one is to appear before me empty-handed."  It's one of those things that Jesus never directly contradicts in the New Testament.  How many Christians take this to heart, I wonder?  And how many of them justify their empty-handedness by claiming that their devotion is worth more than anything else they could bring before God?  How many people believe that they're not appearing before God empty-handed if they've contributed to a radio station or a pregnancy crisis center or an organization that delivers Bibles to China?  The meaning is pretty clear here: God expects your wealth.  If you want to take the Bible as perfectly literal and true, you don't get to decide how he uses it.

Alright, now take a look at the image of God established by the Israelites.  After Moses spends a long time chiseling new stone tablets (since he broke the first ones in a fit of rage), God is described as being compassionate and gracious, "slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness," and although he forgives wickedness, rebellion and sin, "he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation."  This is the perfect description of a scapegoat god, the kind of deity that can be blamed for any misfortune, because he's just punishing some wickedness.  Some wickedness that he has presumably also forgiven.  It's a bit odd, come to think of it. 

Taking this belief to its ultimate corollaries, if something bad happens in life, God may just be punishing you for what you've done.  Or he may be punishing you for what your father or mother did.  Or your grandparent or great-grandparent.  For anyone who buys into this completely, there is no reason to try to help the poor, the sick, the abused, or anyone else who is suffering.  They are just getting their punishment from God for something someone did, and why would a believer get in the way of God's just consequences.  It's also a great belief for those who are wealthy, healthy, and happy in every way.  God is obviously blessing them because their family has managed to go four generations without doing anything wicked or sinful.  Right?

If that strikes you as slightly off, it's because our minds reject the nihilism of the concept that God is punishing everyone and there's nothing that can be done, because he punishes even those he has forgiven.  No one can go through their lives without doing something worth being punished for, and our definition of forgiveness conflicts with the idea of punishing a person for what her father's mother's mother did.  Fortunately, Jesus came along and turned a lot of this business on its head, but then, how can one claim that the entire Bible is true?  What people believe about the character and behavior of God becomes filtered through what makes sense to them, and how we think God should treat us personally is often very different from how we think God should treat other people.  It's fine for God to punish that other person, but we want forgiveness for ourselves to be absolute and pain-free.

The Israelites in the Exodus story wanted the same thing.  Their god promised to wipe out the neighboring cultures (whom the exiled Israelites were technically invading), provided the Israelites had nothing to do with them.  Don't even entertain the thought of learning about their beliefs or culture, and don't even consider the concept of a treaty with them.  Why?  They'll corrupt you.  In fact, the Israelite god is named Jealousy in this passage.  Jealousy is the same thing as "envy," right?  So their god is defined as being one of the seven deadly sins, but they consider themselves to be the righteous people in this situation.

Unfortunately, they also consider themselves to be the weak people in the situation.  They are afraid to make treaties with people, to participate in the culture or religious observance of the Other, because they believe they will be turned from their own faith.  That level of small-mindedness isn't actually faith, though.  It's ignorance.  Why in the world would God suggest that his people remain ignorant about every other belief system around them?  In order for those alternate beliefs to be a threat, the commitment of the Israelites would have to be pretty insubstantial.  I've heard about many different cultures and religious belief systems over the course of my life, and I've only rarely been tempted to adopt any of them into my own perspective.  My beliefs are strong enough to come into contact with other people's beliefs and remain intact.  What was wrong with the Israelites that they would be so threatened by other cultures that their god would warn them not to even make treaties with those other people?

This type of passage from the Old Testament still informs the Conservative Christian worldview in the twenty-first century to some extent.  There is no interest in learning about other cultures or faith systems.  We just need to send our troops and wipe them out.  We need to crack down on how many of Them are allowed into our country.  They are out to kill us, and we need to kill them first.  Even with regard to other belief systems in America, there is hostility based on assumption.  Fear.  Small-mindedness.  Ignorance.  These are not healthy lenses through which one should look at the world.  I know there are Christians who sincerely believe that they are under constant threat from people with different beliefs, but it is simply not true.  The only way it can be true is if the Christian in question is so weak in his or her faith that any other suggestion is going to create some crisis of belief, and I would suggest that that isn't faith at all.

Whatever we believe about ourselves, we are simply not that weak.  People are not so vulnerable to external ideas that they cannot establish a set of criteria for themselves to determine what they are and aren't willing to believe.  Different ideas are not a threat, they are simply other people's ways of viewing the world.  We are capable of deciding what makes sense to us, regardless of our chosen belief system, and we are capable of interacting with other people without being "corrupted" or "led astray."  When we encounter a belief that seems to be a challenge, it's just possible that we are experiencing growth at a certain level.  We don't necessarily figure out all that there is to figure out about the world and human spirituality in grade school Sunday school classes. 

There may be ideas that make a great deal of sense to us that we don't have a chance to explore until after we have traveled a bit down a particular belief path.  If we view those other ideas as threats, we are essentially stagnating our own growth.  We are claiming a desire to remain immature and ignorant in our beliefs.  We would find it somewhat disturbing for a child to determine at age 10 that he isn't going to grow any taller and force his body to remain stunted.  And yet, we are comfortable doing that with our own spiritual selves.  If a belief is worth maintaining and nurturing, it will stand up to scrutiny.  If our beliefs are shattered the moment they come into contact with a different way of seeing the world, what good were those beliefs really doing us?  The only way our beliefs can be altered is for us to encounter a perspective that makes more sense than what we previously held to be true.  This is growth, plain and simple.  And there is nothing really threatening about growth, even though it may seem a little bit scary and unsettling.

Whether it is in the realm of politics, religion, personal relationships, business practices, or whatever, encountering new ideas is beneficial.  When our beliefs are challenged by a new perspective, we either walk away from that with our old beliefs strengthened or we walk away with beliefs that make more sense to us.  It may be a radical change, or it may be a subtle refinement, but either way we grow.  We are strong enough to accept that other people will believe different things from us.  They aren't a threat to us at all.  They are simply different.  Let's stop worshiping Jealousy and Ignorance and Fear as if they had any true power.  The only thing those gods do is lie to us about ourselves and other people.  And we are strong enough to let go of those lies.