Judges 13-16: Samson, Bruce Banner, and Finding Where the Spiritual Rubber Hits the Road

It's one thing to speak in the abstract about spirituality and divinity -- to have an academic or philosophical conversation about God and belief and the biblical narrative.  It is sometimes more challenging to recognize where belief impacts how we live.  While we may not always realize it, our actual beliefs are more clearly expressed in our actions than we ever consciously state in an abstract conversation.  Whether a person claims to believe in a loving god who saves people from harm, a vengeful god who punishes the wicked, or something else altogether, those claims don't really have a lot of meaning until they impact daily life.

One can draw all sorts of clever lessons from the story of Samson.  The bottom line is that Samson is a man who gets very violent when he gets angry.  In today's terms, he has an anger management problem.  Of course, because he's an Israelite from the tribe of Dan and the people he kills are Philistines, Samson is a hero.  Today, when someone from one culture commits suicide while killing thousands of people from another culture, we have a different name for that.  Whatever we call him, Samson was obviously a powerful man who was reviled by people because he demonstrated his power in uncontrolled fits of violence.  Conveniently, the writers of Judges attribute Samson's strength to God.  I would submit that the divine character is not the source of rage, vengeance, and hatred.

Several years ago, a close friend of mine in a large church endured horrific treatment by a coworker for a series of months.  Instead of handling the problem professionally, senior staff treated my friend as if he were culpable for the abuse he endured.  Eventually, things came to a head and my friend was essentially asked to resign.  Although it was a traumatic experience for months, it was the best thing that could have happened to him.  The environment wasn't going to change.  The only thing that could change was his role in the system.  In the end, he won by getting out of the abusive situation.

No doubt, people at the church thought they had won as well: The abuser got to keep his position, the pastor didn't have to handle the messy issue, and other people could go about their business without getting caught up in the drama of the conflict.  It's easy to think of ourselves as winners when we get what we want.  But what we think will make us happy in the short term is not always what will satisfy us in the long term.  The things we want in the moment are not always the things that connect us more deeply with ourselves and other people.  Sometimes we want it easy, but we don't grow much through easy situations.  We grow when we recognize the decisions that are in greatest alignment with the core of who we are, and choose to do those things even when they are challenging.

From the outside, it was very easy for me to side with my friend.  I know him better than I knew anyone else in the situation, and I care about his well being.  It was easy for me to value him over the anonymous people that had "made his life miserable."  And yet, I have this belief (at least I claim to) that every human being has value, that every person holds within them a divine self -- a deep core of truth, beauty, and creativity.  How do I reconcile that belief with a person or a group of people who seem to have a very different character?  This is where the rubber hits the road in terms of spiritual belief.  What do we do with situations that challenge the way we want to see the world?

In the midst of an abusive situation, a person might feel justified in feeling hatred, seeking vengeance, and looking for ways to bring the building down around his enemies, even if he gets hurt in the process.  When we start thinking and acting based on what we fear, we lose our sense of who we are.  Feeling threatened can lead us to sever our connection to our values.  We even have the Samson story telling us that God approves of rage and vengeance if it's directed toward the right people.  But does that ring true with what you honestly believe?  It doesn't ring true for me.  I know that rage and vengeance and hatred are the exact opposite of what I want to express to other people, and those uncontrolled and unquestioned emotions separate me from who I most want to be in the world.

Rage, vengeance, and hatred all stem from fear.  In Samson's situation, it might be seen as fear that the Israelites would always be subjected to Philistine authority.  In my friend's situation, there were plenty of things for him to fear, too: that more people might get hurt if he didn't do something, that he might not find another job, that he might be embarrassed, that his relationships would suffer... a lot of understandable fears.  The other people in the system may have had some fears as well: The abuser in the situation may have had some legitimate anger issues that he feared would never be controllable.  The pastor may have feared the ramifications of some difficult and unpleasant decisions.  Other people in the system may have feared for their jobs if they don't cooperate.  Everyone may have feared instability in relationships that mattered to them.  And fear leads us to do some pretty inhuman things sometimes.

We don't have to take that path, though.  When we see fear for what it is and recognize how easily it escalates into irrationality, we can stop our legitimate anger from building into uncontrolled rage or hatred.  Anger is useful.  It helps us to see what we want to change in our lives.  When we use it to determine how we want to control or manipulate other people, we've missed the gift in the anger.  Samson hurt a lot of Philistines, but did his actions really accomplish anything for his family or his people?  Our fear separates us from our truest, most noble selves and we can easily slip into hostile reactivity when we don't manage that fear.

Seeing our fear for what it is and disarming it can also help us see how other people's actions are based on fear and not their truest, most noble selves.  We can have compassion for people who are caught up in hostile reactivity, because we know what it's like.  We know how easy it is to let fear rule our thoughts and actions.  We can't change those people, but we can be willing to see them more fully -- their humanity and their divinity, even in times when they don't see it in themselves.  Everyone has value, even people whose behavior we find deplorable.  The behavior is not the person.  The fear that fuels the behavior is not the person.  The person we are tempted to hate is honestly just like us: a beautiful and creative being who sometimes lets fear get in the way of deep connection to themselves and other people.  

Within us all is the character of the divine, even in the times when we lose sight of it.  We can always reclaim it and reconnect to it when we are willing.  If there is anything of value in the Samson story, it is that possibility of reconnection to the divine.  It is through that connection that we have a chance of seeing our way past irrational fear and into honest hope.  It is through that connection that we have a chance of personal responsibility and meaningful awareness of ourselves and other people and the world we share.  It is through that connection that our deepest truths can be made manifest in the way we live moment to moment, where the rubber hits the road. 

Religious Faith Is Often Just a Synonym for Fear

One sometimes hears the argument that morality cannot exist without a god.  There is an often aggressive and even belligerent claim among believers that religion is necessary for society to keep on existing.  They claim that religion does more good than harm.  Many people have enumerated the horrific acts of violence that were fueled by religious fervor throughout humanity's history, and such acts continue today.  While the homosexual lifestyle is mostly verbally attacked in the United States, there are places in the world where suspected homosexuals are being killed, largely because of faith-based prejudice.  Women may be killed or mutilated without consequence in some parts of the twenty-first-century world because of the religious beliefs of the society into which they are born.  Moral behavior does not follow from religious belief.

Despite massive evidence against it, the mythical link between religion and morality remains so strong that many Americans would have a problem voting for an atheist president.  Presumably, they would prefer a leader who believes that he answers to a higher power, who embraces a responsibility to lead righteously.  And yet, faith has justified wars, excused oppressive laws, and masked hatred and bigotry.  Rather than ask whether there can be morality without religion, one must question why the two were ever rationally linked to begin with.  Religious belief may allow for unquestioned forgiveness, but it doesn't prevent abominable behavior.  Some people would also claim that religion provides a number of services as well, that faith motivates people to do good, and that good outweighs the evil that is done in the name of religion.

Fear is in some way the motivator for most claims of faith, however.  People believe in salvation because they fear damnation.  People believe in faith healing because they fear dying.  People believe in prayer because they fear all sorts of things: personal responsibility, medical procedures, collection agencies.  Groups who become targeted by religious leaders are actually the groups those leaders fear.  Homosexuals are denied the right to marry out of fear.  Women are denied the right to make decisions about their own bodies because of fear.  National healthcare is opposed because of fear.  Dire predictions are made about "what will happen if...", and a segment of the population trembles.

Some of the fear gets expressed as righteous indignation or moral outrage.  Fervent believers fear that their faith will be marginalized in society, so they have to fight.  Religious leaders fear that they will have control over a smaller sector of the population, so they have to pronounce judgment loudly and foster more fear in those who still cling to their words.  In turn, believers are infused with a fear that the Others (homosexuals, atheists, Muslims, etc.) will somehow harm them just by existing.  They become afraid of letting their children be taught science by an atheist.  They become afraid of allowing a homosexual couple to move in on their street.  They become afraid of doing yoga because it is somehow connected with worshiping Hindu gods.  They become afraid of anyone with different clothing or accent or skin color, because different is somehow threatening.

But fear doesn't really convince anyone to change.  Yanking your child out of the atheist teacher's biology class won't ultimately keep your child from learning science, and it won't change the teacher's beliefs.  Denying a young single mother the opportunity to decide for herself whether she can realistically take care of an unwanted child doesn't guarantee that either person's life will be improved.  Prohibiting the homosexual couple from attending neighborhood social events won't convince them to change their lifestyle, although perhaps the belief is that your spot in heaven will be secure because you have refrained from socializing with heathens.  Look around!  Churches are full of people doing deplorable things.  Sinful things.  Immoral things.  Why don't they warrant a little fear?

Ah, but if we had to admit that immorality co-exists with faith, we'd have less of a reason to judge those scary Others who believe and behave differently from us.  Fear can make people just a little bit crazy.  Fearful people can fire a weapon without thinking.  Fearful people can start a hate campaign against someone without letting the truth get in the way of juicy accusations.  Fearful people can act without worrying about the consequences in someone else's life.  Fear is a very selfish emotion.  It doesn't allow room for much else, even though a person may believe that they are being compassionate or loving in some twisted way while doing something entirely motivated by fear. 

Fear is not exclusive to people of faith, however.  The wealthy are afraid of being impoverished.  The employed are afraid of being jobless.  Everyone has to deal with fears.  When the fears are justified by belief in a perfect higher power, however, there is little one can do to combat those fears.  If one realizes that the fears are all a product of one's own mind, they can be much more easily dispelled.  In many ways, religion relies on people being afraid.  The more conservative a sect is, the more fear is fostered in its faithful.  It's particularly strange for believers in an all-powerful deity to be so fearful.  Their fear suggests that perhaps their god is not powerful enough to handle the existence of atheists and homosexuals, that they somehow have to take matters into their own hands.  Or perhaps their fear is that their god will turn on them in wrath and judgment if they don't take action.  Either way, people who live with such fear paint a very strange and primitive picture of their god.

What about compassionate and loving acts done by people of faith, though?  Isn't there some counterbalance to the fear?  Of course there is, because people who are not overwhelmed by fear can relax and be nurturing to others.  Some people can be very compassionate in feeding the homeless people that they don't fear at a shelter and then turn around and be profoundly dispassionate toward one of those homeless people when they walk into a religious service.  In one instance, the person isn't at all threatening, and in the other, the person is threatening to upset comfortable norms.  But when fear is put aside, we can see the humanity in other people much more clearly.  We don't actually need a god to tell us to clothe people and feed them and treat people like human beings.  The absence of fear leaves room for compassionate behavior.

We have the ability and the responsibility to question our fear.  When you find yourself in judgment over someone else, what is it you're honestly fearing?  When you feel violently toward a person, or a group of people, what are you afraid they will do to upset the norms of your life?  When you become indignant or outraged about something, what are you really afraid of?  And is that fear in any way reasonable?  It is rational in that instance to be afraid?  Is it possible to set aside irrational fear -- no matter where that fear comes from -- to see another person's humanity?

Unfounded fear won't lead you to do anything good.  Believe instead in your ability to see that the people you're tempted to fear are just like you in so many ways, and believe in your ability to treat them with love and compassion.  You don't have to agree with everything about another person in order to treat him with love and compassion.  There's really nothing threatening about someone being different from you in some small ways.  Without fear, there is no cause for violence or oppression -- although it's important to realize that the whole world will not become rational and fearless all at once.  In the end, though, violence and hatred work against faith, even when they seem to be fueled by it.  You could be a vanguard for rational fearlessness, even if you believe in a higher power.  After all, wouldn't a reasonable god want you to be fearless in your faith?