The book of Isaiah was composed in stages by different authors, and even the passages that were written earliest show signs of later editing. Still, the first portion of the book seems to directly address the Assyrian crisis, specifically indicating a spiritual reason for political and military threats. Isaiah 2-4 indicates some of the problems the prophet sees in the society of Judah as well as his vision of what Yahweh wants the world to be.
He begins by envisioning the Temple as a place of spiritual learning, where all people learn to manage their conflicts without war, essentially relying on the wisdom of Yahweh to guide their decisions. As it is, he sees pride as a major error of people everywhere. A coming judgment will clearly show how misplaced that pride is. According to the prophet, society will be turned on its head. All supernatural provision will be withheld, and insolent children will be in charge of a place where everyone seeks to profit from the suffering of neighbors. There is a karmic sense of justice in that whatever the wicked will experience the same suffering they have wrought upon others.
No one will be able to argue effectively against this judgment from God, because the evidence is in their lives: they are caught red-handed with the spoils gained from oppressing the poor, and their very posture and gait is incriminating. Even though their leaders are leading them astray, the people are responsible for their actions. The judgment will strip them of adornment and reveal their shameful and unmerited pride. Once this spiritual cleansing transpires, Yahweh will create an atmosphere of comfort and refuge. The judgment is not intended to wipe people out, but to eradicate any justifications for pride and oppressions so that the people, faced with the bare honesty of their inappropriate attitudes and actions, have no option but to change. It is as if people are incapable of change unless a higher power gives them no alternative.
However, the kind of pride the author of Isaiah is criticizing should not be mistaken for genuine acknowledgment of one's ability and accomplishments. It's healthy to be honest about one's abilities and strengths, and it's healthy to fully embrace what one can accomplish in the world. Destructive pride is the belief that you are intrinsically worth more than other people -- that you deserve wealth, comfort, and respect that other people do not deserve. When one's sense of Self become over-inflated, then it becomes easier to justify profiting from other people's suffering. An unbalanced sense of pride dismisses the inherent worth and dignity of other people and makes equitable, just relationships impossible. Isaiah challenges that kind of pride and envisions a world in which people are honest about their own value, and everyone else's value, too. The author also envisions a world in which Yahweh is active in the lives of people and is acknowledged as every nation's god.
It's nice to dream about what the world could be. It's perhaps even more pleasant to dream about what someone else is going to do to make the world better. Of course, when there are hostile armies at your doorstep, a believer must do something with beliefs about a deity. Either that deity is not as powerful as the hostile forces, or the deity is completely in charge of what's going on. If a deity is completely in charge of things, and there is an enemy army threatening to take over one's home, then the deity must be sending a very powerful message. That deity's worshipers had better shape up, or else.
This kind of situation was an ongoing struggle for ancient Judah. One of the biggest problems is that misidentifying the causes of the effects one experiences still leaves no reasonable means of improving one's situation. If you assume that bill collectors are harassing you because God is trying to teach you a lesson, you won't necessarily determine that you need to manage your finances more responsibly. Even more to the point, if one is waiting for God to cleanse the wickedness from people and establish less prideful, more peaceful, just relationships between human beings, one is going to wait a long time. Addressing human pride and oppression and violence is not the job of some extra-human authority; human relationships are the responsibility of human beings. Envisioning what an external divine being is going to do is just one way to maintain an attitude that human beings are incapable of being more just and equitable and compassionate -- and if the responsibility for a just, equitable, compassionate world is shifted to God, the people don't have to be capable.
As challenging as this may be to accept, there is no supernatural being who is just waiting for the right moment to sweep in and change the world. It's understandable if we would prefer to sit back and wait for a superhuman someone, bigger and more capable than us, to transform reality, because waiting doesn't require a whole lot of effort. If we have any real desire to see change in the world -- to see justice, or real equality, or authentic human relationships that aren't based on how much one person can take advantage of another -- creating that world is on us. It's up to us to set aside unhealthy pride that convinces us that we have more inherent value than other people, and it's up to us to maintain an honest assessment of our capability and worth. It's up to us to build just relationships with other people and to be willing to make some sacrifices when we realize that we are profiting from someone else's suffering. It's up to us to be authentic in our power and not adorn ourselves with clothing or lifestyles or honorifics that conceal who we really are behind a smoke screen of what we want people to think of us.
God is not going to change the world or punish the world. Our experiences in life are the results of human decisions. If an army attacks, we might justifiably blame that on our leaders. In our own personal lives, though, what we experience is ours to manage. If we don't like our reality, we have the power to learn from it and create something better. That kind of creation isn't always easy, but it at least has a chance of building the kind of world we want to live in. Waiting for someone else to solve our problems for us will get us nowhere. So, if you choose to pray, pray for courage. Prayer cannot in and of itself create justice or peace or equality, but human action can. We are capable of creating a better reality, if we are courageous and intentional in our actions. That creation starts with the relationships that already matter to us. That creation starts with greater awareness about the decisions that we make every day about how we treat other people (and ourselves). In other words, we engage in creating a better world by first engaging in creating and re-creating ourselves.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Monday, September 30, 2013
Mark 9: Stumbling Blocks and Concrete Overcoats
We are still mining a section of Mark 9 comprised of a string of short scenes
with a couple of overlapping themes. Having considered the theme of authentic power a couple of weeks back, we're on to this business of causing another person to sin. Although it may be tempting to write this concept off and stand on the principle that all people have personal responsibility for their own actions, there is also truth to the statement that none of our decisions take place in a vacuum. Our actions have an influence on the people around us, and part of personal responsibility includes an appreciation for how what we do affects others.
The author of the gospel of Mark places the warnings about putting stumbling blocks in front of people quickly on the heels of using a child as an example, although the final scene of this chapter goes further than just talking about how people treat children. Still, what we learn as children sticks with us for a long time. As children, we make vows about how we must be and what we must do without even realizing that we're making vows. We also develop ideas about what or who we should be afraid of (or even hate) when we are children, when we are too young to even question why. So, it is especially important for adults to be conscientious about what we teach the children in our lives. Children cannot be held responsible for their beliefs about themselves, other people, or reality, but when children grow into adults, we expect them to suddenly be able to take responsibility for themselves. If we have filled the minds of the children in our lives with fear, what kind of adults do we expect them to be?
Children are not the only people susceptible to influence, though. Influential messages bombard us all the time in the form of advertising, political commentaries on television or radio, and less blatantly through just about every form of entertainment. We are responsible for aligning our beliefs and actions with our deep guiding principles rather than the influence of a paid angry or attractive spokesperson, but that isn't always an easy feat. We are also responsible for recognizing how our beliefs and actions influence adults around us. Bullying people into agreement, arguing from a position of half-informed righteous indignation, or promoting an identity of victimhood all come from fear. When we become afraid or anxious, and we lose our connection to our deepest selves, our influence on other people can be harmful. To make matters worse, our fear or anxiety can make us less aware of the impact we're having. Even though we can hold an expectation that other people should be emotionally mature and centered, and even though we aren't ultimately responsible for other people's behavior, it's better for us to empower other people to live based on their principles than it is for us to foster fear.
One interpretation of this scene in Mark is that the afterlife was seen to involve a continued physical existence. The author of the gospel of Mark is possibly saying that it's better to enter into a blessed afterlife maimed than to suffer in one's entirety. The gospels don't actually say much about hell, though, and even this passage is lacking much of its reference to hell in the earliest copies of the text. Plus, throughout the gospel narratives, the authors suggest (through words attributed to Jesus) that the kingdom of God (or the kingdom of Heaven, depending on who's writing) are not future-tense possibilities, but are present realities. Jesus is quoted as saying, "The kingdom of God is at hand," meaning, it's right here and now. So, perhaps the author of Mark is suggesting something else when he proposes mutilating oneself and entering the kingdom of God with a few parts missing.
If the kingdom of God is at hand, presently accessible to those willing to be a part of it, then it must not be a physical location. Perhaps as some have suggested, heaven is a state of mind -- a way of being. If so, then what is sin? And how can one's hand or eye or foot cause one to sin? Many people have pointed out that sin is an old archery term that essentially means, "to miss the mark." Some people would suggest that God sets the mark, but this is problematic, given that the supposed moral bull's eye established in the Hebrew Scriptures consists of a list of prohibitions that were impossible to keep, even for the ancient Israelites who invented it. If one considers Jesus to be a divine figure, a different mark was established in the gospels: love. Jesus' one big commandment was to love, and although that may be tricky to navigate in some situations, it's not a bad bull's eye for life. For people like myself, who don't recognize any superhuman divine beings, the bull's eye comes from deep guiding principles.
Sin, then, is what shifts our focus, the action that stems from something other than our guiding principles or the noblest form of love. Various believers might point to specific behaviors that constitute sin, but the problem is not really the behaviors. The problem is what lies at the root of the behaviors. As you may already have guessed, I believe that fear is what lies at the root of what the gospel writers call sin. When we allow fear to govern us, we forget about love or guiding principles and shift away from the mark we've set for who we want to be in the world. We let fear about ourselves, other people, or reality prompt our actions rather than bringing our most authentic selves forward. I'm not keen on what the church has done with the concept of sin, because it has become a weapon of judgment and condemnation wielded by people who have no more reason than anyone else to feel righteous. Fear is something that affects all people, but we are also all capable of dismantling fear if we choose to do so.
The point, then, is that your hand can't cause you to miss the mark. If you steal something with your hand or strike someone with your fist, your hand doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your deep guiding principles fueled those actions.
Your foot can't cause you to miss the mark. If you step on someone as you ascend whatever ladder of success you're climbing or turn around when you see an opportunity to help someone less fortunate, your foot doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your compassion for and connection to other human beings fueled those actions.
Your eye can't cause you to miss the mark. If you see other people as objects to be manipulated or you remain willfully blind to how your actions harm the people around you, your eye doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your capacity for love fueled those actions.
So, if we're going to amputate the cause of our "sin," our physical body isn't what we need to operate on. We need to amputate our fear.
Since Spencer Johnson and Sheryl Sandberg made it famous, the question has often been asked, but bears repeating:
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
I don't know what you're afraid of. You may fear scarcity -- that there isn't enough _________ for you and everyone else, so you have to protect what you have and do everything you can to get what you deserve. You may fear that, deep down, you are selfish or worthless at your core -- that you have to do everything you possibly can to prove how generous and worthwhile you are, including pleasing everybody around you, even at the expense of your own well-being. You may fear people of a certain ethnicity, religion, or sexual identity. You may fear that you are insignificant. Anything you fear -- especially irrationally -- can distract you from what actually matters most to you. Fear can prompt you to behave in ways that simply don't line up with who you most want to be in the world. Staying immersed in our irrational fears and expecting to be principled or loving people is like putting on a concrete overcoat and expecting to be able to swim. Dismantling our irrational fears opens the way for our guiding principles to be lived out more intentionally.
I'll bet you just glossed over it a paragraph back. Think about it:
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
What would you create?
What would you stand for?
How would you be more authentically yourself more of the time?
The author of Mark includes a few sentences about salt at the end of this scene. Many people would suggest that salt symbolized purity for a great many ancient religions. If that's what salt means in this instance, the author of Mark is saying, "Have purity in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." When we live with integrity (or purity) to our deep guiding principles, we can be more connected with the people around us -- and even with people far away from us. Fear is not wise or just or compassionate or even honest. It's hard to live at peace with people -- even people about whom we care deeply -- if we keep fear in the driver's seat. If we recognize our ability to live with integrity by meaningful guiding principles, we can be at peace with others, because we trust our deepest, most noble selves.
So, with or without any religious convictions about Jesus' identity, the words of this section of the gospel of Mark can prompt us to have some conviction about our own identities. We do not need to be people defined by fear. We can be people defined by a deeper sense of truth, beauty, and creativity inherent to all human beings. We can be people who exhibit justice and compassion without suspicion or obligation. We can be people defined by vulnerable, authentic love. Some might call that a glimpse of the kingdom of God. Some might just call it being fully human.
What will you do as a capable, authentic, beautiful, creative human being?
The author of the gospel of Mark places the warnings about putting stumbling blocks in front of people quickly on the heels of using a child as an example, although the final scene of this chapter goes further than just talking about how people treat children. Still, what we learn as children sticks with us for a long time. As children, we make vows about how we must be and what we must do without even realizing that we're making vows. We also develop ideas about what or who we should be afraid of (or even hate) when we are children, when we are too young to even question why. So, it is especially important for adults to be conscientious about what we teach the children in our lives. Children cannot be held responsible for their beliefs about themselves, other people, or reality, but when children grow into adults, we expect them to suddenly be able to take responsibility for themselves. If we have filled the minds of the children in our lives with fear, what kind of adults do we expect them to be?
Children are not the only people susceptible to influence, though. Influential messages bombard us all the time in the form of advertising, political commentaries on television or radio, and less blatantly through just about every form of entertainment. We are responsible for aligning our beliefs and actions with our deep guiding principles rather than the influence of a paid angry or attractive spokesperson, but that isn't always an easy feat. We are also responsible for recognizing how our beliefs and actions influence adults around us. Bullying people into agreement, arguing from a position of half-informed righteous indignation, or promoting an identity of victimhood all come from fear. When we become afraid or anxious, and we lose our connection to our deepest selves, our influence on other people can be harmful. To make matters worse, our fear or anxiety can make us less aware of the impact we're having. Even though we can hold an expectation that other people should be emotionally mature and centered, and even though we aren't ultimately responsible for other people's behavior, it's better for us to empower other people to live based on their principles than it is for us to foster fear.
One interpretation of this scene in Mark is that the afterlife was seen to involve a continued physical existence. The author of the gospel of Mark is possibly saying that it's better to enter into a blessed afterlife maimed than to suffer in one's entirety. The gospels don't actually say much about hell, though, and even this passage is lacking much of its reference to hell in the earliest copies of the text. Plus, throughout the gospel narratives, the authors suggest (through words attributed to Jesus) that the kingdom of God (or the kingdom of Heaven, depending on who's writing) are not future-tense possibilities, but are present realities. Jesus is quoted as saying, "The kingdom of God is at hand," meaning, it's right here and now. So, perhaps the author of Mark is suggesting something else when he proposes mutilating oneself and entering the kingdom of God with a few parts missing.
If the kingdom of God is at hand, presently accessible to those willing to be a part of it, then it must not be a physical location. Perhaps as some have suggested, heaven is a state of mind -- a way of being. If so, then what is sin? And how can one's hand or eye or foot cause one to sin? Many people have pointed out that sin is an old archery term that essentially means, "to miss the mark." Some people would suggest that God sets the mark, but this is problematic, given that the supposed moral bull's eye established in the Hebrew Scriptures consists of a list of prohibitions that were impossible to keep, even for the ancient Israelites who invented it. If one considers Jesus to be a divine figure, a different mark was established in the gospels: love. Jesus' one big commandment was to love, and although that may be tricky to navigate in some situations, it's not a bad bull's eye for life. For people like myself, who don't recognize any superhuman divine beings, the bull's eye comes from deep guiding principles.
Sin, then, is what shifts our focus, the action that stems from something other than our guiding principles or the noblest form of love. Various believers might point to specific behaviors that constitute sin, but the problem is not really the behaviors. The problem is what lies at the root of the behaviors. As you may already have guessed, I believe that fear is what lies at the root of what the gospel writers call sin. When we allow fear to govern us, we forget about love or guiding principles and shift away from the mark we've set for who we want to be in the world. We let fear about ourselves, other people, or reality prompt our actions rather than bringing our most authentic selves forward. I'm not keen on what the church has done with the concept of sin, because it has become a weapon of judgment and condemnation wielded by people who have no more reason than anyone else to feel righteous. Fear is something that affects all people, but we are also all capable of dismantling fear if we choose to do so.
The point, then, is that your hand can't cause you to miss the mark. If you steal something with your hand or strike someone with your fist, your hand doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your deep guiding principles fueled those actions.
Your foot can't cause you to miss the mark. If you step on someone as you ascend whatever ladder of success you're climbing or turn around when you see an opportunity to help someone less fortunate, your foot doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your compassion for and connection to other human beings fueled those actions.
Your eye can't cause you to miss the mark. If you see other people as objects to be manipulated or you remain willfully blind to how your actions harm the people around you, your eye doesn't make you do those things. The fear within you that clouded over your capacity for love fueled those actions.
So, if we're going to amputate the cause of our "sin," our physical body isn't what we need to operate on. We need to amputate our fear.
Since Spencer Johnson and Sheryl Sandberg made it famous, the question has often been asked, but bears repeating:
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
I don't know what you're afraid of. You may fear scarcity -- that there isn't enough _________ for you and everyone else, so you have to protect what you have and do everything you can to get what you deserve. You may fear that, deep down, you are selfish or worthless at your core -- that you have to do everything you possibly can to prove how generous and worthwhile you are, including pleasing everybody around you, even at the expense of your own well-being. You may fear people of a certain ethnicity, religion, or sexual identity. You may fear that you are insignificant. Anything you fear -- especially irrationally -- can distract you from what actually matters most to you. Fear can prompt you to behave in ways that simply don't line up with who you most want to be in the world. Staying immersed in our irrational fears and expecting to be principled or loving people is like putting on a concrete overcoat and expecting to be able to swim. Dismantling our irrational fears opens the way for our guiding principles to be lived out more intentionally.
I'll bet you just glossed over it a paragraph back. Think about it:
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
What would you create?
What would you stand for?
How would you be more authentically yourself more of the time?
The author of Mark includes a few sentences about salt at the end of this scene. Many people would suggest that salt symbolized purity for a great many ancient religions. If that's what salt means in this instance, the author of Mark is saying, "Have purity in yourselves, and be at peace with one another." When we live with integrity (or purity) to our deep guiding principles, we can be more connected with the people around us -- and even with people far away from us. Fear is not wise or just or compassionate or even honest. It's hard to live at peace with people -- even people about whom we care deeply -- if we keep fear in the driver's seat. If we recognize our ability to live with integrity by meaningful guiding principles, we can be at peace with others, because we trust our deepest, most noble selves.
So, with or without any religious convictions about Jesus' identity, the words of this section of the gospel of Mark can prompt us to have some conviction about our own identities. We do not need to be people defined by fear. We can be people defined by a deeper sense of truth, beauty, and creativity inherent to all human beings. We can be people who exhibit justice and compassion without suspicion or obligation. We can be people defined by vulnerable, authentic love. Some might call that a glimpse of the kingdom of God. Some might just call it being fully human.
What will you do as a capable, authentic, beautiful, creative human being?
Monday, September 23, 2013
Isaiah 1: Seeking Justice
We have seen that Israel and Judah were vassals of Assyria, and that rebellious actions on the part of Israel's king Hoshea led to destruction and exile at the hands of the Assyrians. King Hezekiah will court disaster at the hands of the Assyrians as well, but Isaiah's career began before then. The book of Isaiah was written by authors in the southern kingdom of Judah, and scholars generally think it was composed during three different periods. The first portion of the book may have been written by an actual prophet named Isaiah, or it may simply have been attributed to a figure that held a prominent place in the public eye as a spokesman for Yahweh. The first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah address events during the 8th century BCE, and even within this span of the book there is evidence of editorial activity. We'll make mention of that as we go.
Isaiah 1 starts off with a bang, as the author pours invective upon Judah. He describes a situation in which the wealthy and powerful practice corruption and ignore the poor and destitute. He predicts a future time of destruction, in which the land is laid to waste because of the attitudes and actions of the people. Of course, as an Israelite, the author attributes any success or failure to Yahweh, but he is especially concerned that people are ignoring the cultural expectations regarding the treatment of other human beings. These expectations are thought to have come from Yahweh, and yet certain expectations about religious activity -- sacrifices, ceremonies, and holy days -- were also thought to come from Yahweh. The religious activities seemed to be easy for the people to pay attention to, but the care for fellow human beings was a tougher thing to accomplish. The author of Isaiah thus denounces the piety of the people who think they are doing what their god wants just because they participate in required ceremonies; in the eyes of the author, Yahweh expects more of them.
Reference is made to Sodom and Gomorrah, cities that were supposedly destroyed by Yahweh because of their unwillingness to exercise hospitality and care for the strangers in their midst. Judah is no better, according to the writer, because they are trampling the orphan and widow, the poor and oppressed, for the sake of personal gain. There is still hope, however, because the people can change their behavior. If they start practicing justice -- treating people equally and humanely -- they can turn things around. The author places the illusion of power in Yahweh's hands, but it is clearly the actions of the people that will determine the outcome of their land.
Some people in the twenty-first century still believe that God is in control of all sorts of events, and they believe that the Bible indicates a certain supremacy of a supernatural divine. This is certainly the case, but it isn't the only thing the Bible says. The ultimate authority of a biblical depiction of God is balanced with ultimate responsibility of people for their own actions. If the words of this chapter of Isaiah are valid, all is not carved in stone for the people addressed. Their default future, if they maintain their current course, is destruction. By seeking justice, they can change their future. The important thing is not that they go to church more, or pray more or better, or sacrifice more or better; the important thing is that they care for people. The important thing is justice.
History is a tricky when it comes to these sorts of writings. Assyria didn't wind up conquering Judah, but a century and a half after the fall of Israel, Judah fell to the Babylonians, with prophets of the time saying a lot of the same things about the need for justice. One thing is clear from the historical record. Every time there has been a civil war or a rebellion throughout human history, it is because one group of people perceived that intolerable injustice was being perpetrated by another group of people. The people who rebel are not always victorious, but the motivation for rebellion is nearly always the perception of injustice.
Whether one believes in God or not, the need for justice is written into the fabric of our beings. Human beings throughout time have tended toward freedom in some form or another, and inequality has consistently caused strife in human communities. The admonitions of Isaiah 1 ring as true today as they did in the 8th century BCE; our religious practices don't mean a hill of beans if we aren't tending to our society. Prayer and piety is actually offensive and blasphemous if our actions don't reflect certain values. For the ancient Israelites and for many believers today, human beings are thought to have been created in the image of God. What does it mean to mistreat someone created in the image of the divine? What must one think of the divine in order to mistreat another human being?
From a perspective that doesn't recognize supernaturalism, one can perhaps even more clearly see the value of people. There aren't a lot of religious trappings to get in the way; remove the sacrifices, prayers, and ceremonies, and you are still left with a world full of people. By now, you know that my personal perspective is that whatever we call the divine is an inherent human quality, or collection of qualities. All people have a deep self that understands truth, embodies beauty, and expresses creativity, even though they often act out of irrational fear. The humanist position is not to approve of every action a person takes under the guise of acceptance; the goal is to recognize that even people who act unjustly or discompassionately or even violently are still human beings with inherent value. Their actions have consequences, but they don't have less value as people. This isn't an easy position, but in wrestling with difficult principles, we get better at living with integrity.
It's tempting to live by a set of principles in my own personal life and let other people do as they will. I can feel good about seeking justice, treating people equally, and responding with compassion to the people I encounter, even if I don't stretch beyond the borders of my own life. I can even say that I try to model behavior for others, which suggests that I am inviting a broader impact than just the confines of my own life. Yet, people will rarely know what I am modeling if I don't tell them. I shouldn't assume that any random onlooker will know why I make the choices I make or why they might get something out of emulating the behavior I'm modeling. At some point, seeking justice draws me out from the confines of my own life.
This often seems counter-cultural for a society in which people are supposed to mind their own business and avoid offending anyone. We can complain about injustice or inequality to like-minded individuals, but it's often frowned upon to make any sort of public statement regarding unjust systems or practices. When we do take a stand, it's often couched in the form of blasting one political party or the other in an angry rant that actually does nothing to help any oppressed people, even though it may make us feel righteous. Our deepest selves call us to more than that. Whether we believe that it is God's will or we just recognize our innate connection to other human beings, there is truth to Martin Luther King Jr's statement that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Isaiah was not written as a call to the poor and destitute to rise up and claim justice for themselves. It was written as an admonition for the wealthy and privileged to exercise greater awareness and love for the human beings they tended to overlook or discount. Isaiah was not talking about being kind and just only to respectable people. This chapter is about treating the oppressed and overlooked with dignity and compassion.
For us, this means ensuring that women are not treated as second class citizens, that women are respected as equal participants in the world, that girls are not sold into slavery and treated as animals or playthings. While we tolerate sex trafficking and forced underage prostitution anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).
For us, this means listening to the interests of the homosexual, bisexual, and transgender communities, not discounting their interest in marriage and families as an affront to society, and welcoming human beings with different ways of loving and being without feeling threatened in our own ways of loving and being. While we tolerate the criminalization or persecution of homosexual, bisexual, or transgender human beings anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).
For us, this means acknowledging the persistence of racism and legitimately working to see beyond skin color, language, religion, and cultural idiosyncrasies to the actual people who share our world. It means recognizing the desire for people to make a livable wage and live in safety. It means finding ways for cooperation and partnership, so that people are empowered to be personally responsible, and it means being honest about the inequities of wealth and consumption that damage the entire world for a few to maintain an illusion of entitlement and superiority. While we tolerate hostility toward the Other anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).
This doesn't mean picketing or sending thousands of dollars overseas or marching on Washington (although it could, and there's nothing wrong with it if that's what you do). Sometimes justice is honestly a matter of how we treat people and how we speak up for people. Justice might mean letting our friends know that we won't participate in ethnic slurs or activities that demean women. Justice might mean educating ourselves about service organizations that could benefit from a few hours of our time every month or every week. Justice might mean doing everything in our power not to freak out when a friend or loved one or child comes out -- and it might mean finding a way to celebrate that person even when his or her identity becomes scarily unfamiliar to us -- to embrace people even when we don't quite understand them.
None of this is easy, but it seems to be the most honest interpretation of Isaiah 1 in the realities of global economics and communication. I believe in these words, and yet I still find myself judging other people or preferring not to get involved or speak out. I am learning and growing even as I continue to engage my beliefs thoughtfully and purposefully. None of this admonition is intended as a guilt trip; it's simply a point blank statement of the work that we have yet to do if it is important to us to create a just, equitable, and compassionate reality. We do not need the threat of destruction from on high to convince us that this is a good and noble thing, but in case that sort of threat is motivating, we see that in Isaiah as well. Rather than act nobly out of fear, though, we can act nobly because we are noble. We can act justly because we are just people. We show compassion because we are compassionate. When we act with integrity to our deepest principles, we state clearly that we are people of integrity. Our authentic identities are the only reason we need to seek justice, to treat all people with respect, and to see whatever we call divine in the face of every person.
Isaiah 1 starts off with a bang, as the author pours invective upon Judah. He describes a situation in which the wealthy and powerful practice corruption and ignore the poor and destitute. He predicts a future time of destruction, in which the land is laid to waste because of the attitudes and actions of the people. Of course, as an Israelite, the author attributes any success or failure to Yahweh, but he is especially concerned that people are ignoring the cultural expectations regarding the treatment of other human beings. These expectations are thought to have come from Yahweh, and yet certain expectations about religious activity -- sacrifices, ceremonies, and holy days -- were also thought to come from Yahweh. The religious activities seemed to be easy for the people to pay attention to, but the care for fellow human beings was a tougher thing to accomplish. The author of Isaiah thus denounces the piety of the people who think they are doing what their god wants just because they participate in required ceremonies; in the eyes of the author, Yahweh expects more of them.
Reference is made to Sodom and Gomorrah, cities that were supposedly destroyed by Yahweh because of their unwillingness to exercise hospitality and care for the strangers in their midst. Judah is no better, according to the writer, because they are trampling the orphan and widow, the poor and oppressed, for the sake of personal gain. There is still hope, however, because the people can change their behavior. If they start practicing justice -- treating people equally and humanely -- they can turn things around. The author places the illusion of power in Yahweh's hands, but it is clearly the actions of the people that will determine the outcome of their land.
Some people in the twenty-first century still believe that God is in control of all sorts of events, and they believe that the Bible indicates a certain supremacy of a supernatural divine. This is certainly the case, but it isn't the only thing the Bible says. The ultimate authority of a biblical depiction of God is balanced with ultimate responsibility of people for their own actions. If the words of this chapter of Isaiah are valid, all is not carved in stone for the people addressed. Their default future, if they maintain their current course, is destruction. By seeking justice, they can change their future. The important thing is not that they go to church more, or pray more or better, or sacrifice more or better; the important thing is that they care for people. The important thing is justice.
History is a tricky when it comes to these sorts of writings. Assyria didn't wind up conquering Judah, but a century and a half after the fall of Israel, Judah fell to the Babylonians, with prophets of the time saying a lot of the same things about the need for justice. One thing is clear from the historical record. Every time there has been a civil war or a rebellion throughout human history, it is because one group of people perceived that intolerable injustice was being perpetrated by another group of people. The people who rebel are not always victorious, but the motivation for rebellion is nearly always the perception of injustice.
Whether one believes in God or not, the need for justice is written into the fabric of our beings. Human beings throughout time have tended toward freedom in some form or another, and inequality has consistently caused strife in human communities. The admonitions of Isaiah 1 ring as true today as they did in the 8th century BCE; our religious practices don't mean a hill of beans if we aren't tending to our society. Prayer and piety is actually offensive and blasphemous if our actions don't reflect certain values. For the ancient Israelites and for many believers today, human beings are thought to have been created in the image of God. What does it mean to mistreat someone created in the image of the divine? What must one think of the divine in order to mistreat another human being?
From a perspective that doesn't recognize supernaturalism, one can perhaps even more clearly see the value of people. There aren't a lot of religious trappings to get in the way; remove the sacrifices, prayers, and ceremonies, and you are still left with a world full of people. By now, you know that my personal perspective is that whatever we call the divine is an inherent human quality, or collection of qualities. All people have a deep self that understands truth, embodies beauty, and expresses creativity, even though they often act out of irrational fear. The humanist position is not to approve of every action a person takes under the guise of acceptance; the goal is to recognize that even people who act unjustly or discompassionately or even violently are still human beings with inherent value. Their actions have consequences, but they don't have less value as people. This isn't an easy position, but in wrestling with difficult principles, we get better at living with integrity.
It's tempting to live by a set of principles in my own personal life and let other people do as they will. I can feel good about seeking justice, treating people equally, and responding with compassion to the people I encounter, even if I don't stretch beyond the borders of my own life. I can even say that I try to model behavior for others, which suggests that I am inviting a broader impact than just the confines of my own life. Yet, people will rarely know what I am modeling if I don't tell them. I shouldn't assume that any random onlooker will know why I make the choices I make or why they might get something out of emulating the behavior I'm modeling. At some point, seeking justice draws me out from the confines of my own life.
This often seems counter-cultural for a society in which people are supposed to mind their own business and avoid offending anyone. We can complain about injustice or inequality to like-minded individuals, but it's often frowned upon to make any sort of public statement regarding unjust systems or practices. When we do take a stand, it's often couched in the form of blasting one political party or the other in an angry rant that actually does nothing to help any oppressed people, even though it may make us feel righteous. Our deepest selves call us to more than that. Whether we believe that it is God's will or we just recognize our innate connection to other human beings, there is truth to Martin Luther King Jr's statement that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Isaiah was not written as a call to the poor and destitute to rise up and claim justice for themselves. It was written as an admonition for the wealthy and privileged to exercise greater awareness and love for the human beings they tended to overlook or discount. Isaiah was not talking about being kind and just only to respectable people. This chapter is about treating the oppressed and overlooked with dignity and compassion.
For us, this means ensuring that women are not treated as second class citizens, that women are respected as equal participants in the world, that girls are not sold into slavery and treated as animals or playthings. While we tolerate sex trafficking and forced underage prostitution anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).
For us, this means listening to the interests of the homosexual, bisexual, and transgender communities, not discounting their interest in marriage and families as an affront to society, and welcoming human beings with different ways of loving and being without feeling threatened in our own ways of loving and being. While we tolerate the criminalization or persecution of homosexual, bisexual, or transgender human beings anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).
For us, this means acknowledging the persistence of racism and legitimately working to see beyond skin color, language, religion, and cultural idiosyncrasies to the actual people who share our world. It means recognizing the desire for people to make a livable wage and live in safety. It means finding ways for cooperation and partnership, so that people are empowered to be personally responsible, and it means being honest about the inequities of wealth and consumption that damage the entire world for a few to maintain an illusion of entitlement and superiority. While we tolerate hostility toward the Other anywhere in the world, we deny the principle that all people have inherent worth and dignity (or that they are created in the image of God).
This doesn't mean picketing or sending thousands of dollars overseas or marching on Washington (although it could, and there's nothing wrong with it if that's what you do). Sometimes justice is honestly a matter of how we treat people and how we speak up for people. Justice might mean letting our friends know that we won't participate in ethnic slurs or activities that demean women. Justice might mean educating ourselves about service organizations that could benefit from a few hours of our time every month or every week. Justice might mean doing everything in our power not to freak out when a friend or loved one or child comes out -- and it might mean finding a way to celebrate that person even when his or her identity becomes scarily unfamiliar to us -- to embrace people even when we don't quite understand them.
None of this is easy, but it seems to be the most honest interpretation of Isaiah 1 in the realities of global economics and communication. I believe in these words, and yet I still find myself judging other people or preferring not to get involved or speak out. I am learning and growing even as I continue to engage my beliefs thoughtfully and purposefully. None of this admonition is intended as a guilt trip; it's simply a point blank statement of the work that we have yet to do if it is important to us to create a just, equitable, and compassionate reality. We do not need the threat of destruction from on high to convince us that this is a good and noble thing, but in case that sort of threat is motivating, we see that in Isaiah as well. Rather than act nobly out of fear, though, we can act nobly because we are noble. We can act justly because we are just people. We show compassion because we are compassionate. When we act with integrity to our deepest principles, we state clearly that we are people of integrity. Our authentic identities are the only reason we need to seek justice, to treat all people with respect, and to see whatever we call divine in the face of every person.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Mark 9: Authentic Power
The next portion of Mark 9 is a string of short scenes with a couple of overlapping themes. As such, they are probably best approached over two weeks rather than trying to fit everything into one entry. We'll look first at the scenes, and then at how the authors of Matthew and Luke treat them, and finally we'll consider the argument about greatness. Next week, we'll look closer at what it means to "cause another person to sin," especially in a more humanist context that doesn't grant validity to the idea of sinfulness.
Both the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke include a version of the first scene, in which the disciples argue about which of them will be in positions of authority when the Romans are overthrown and a new world order is established by their revolutionary leader. The response recorded indicates that they have some misconceptions about the new measure of leadership that is being established. This scene is followed by what appears to be a threat to Jesus' brand, as another miracle worker is seen performing some wondrous deeds without the direct approval of Jesus or his followers. The gospel of Matthew doesn't represent this scene, but the author of Luke included a truncated version of it. Once again, the response to the disciples' indignation is a revision to their assumptions about authority.
In the gospel of Matthew, the final scene in this grouping is dovetailed into the discussion of leadership, with the symbolic child being the bridge between the two passages. The author of Luke includes an abbreviated version of the teaching, separated from the scenes about leadership and authority. This scene suggests that the people who promote wrongdoing (or wrong thinking) in others will suffer for it, with symbolism suggesting that the author had an impression that individuals would have some kind of physical bodies in the afterlife.
This is also one of the passages that has given us a perspective of hell as a fiery place, but the actual word used here (Gehenna) refers to a specific place, also called the Valley of the Son of Hinnom in the Old Testament. It was here that Moloch and Ba'al worshipers (some of whom were Israelites) are said to have sacrificed their children to the fire. Since no mass graves of children's bones have been discovered anywhere in the area, many archaeologists and scholars have concluded that the symbolic sacrifices were something more akin to child dedications involving fire. Obviously, upstanding Jewish citizens would disapprove of parents dedicating children to a foreign god, and they would have had obvious reasons for equating such dedication as tantamount to sacrificing the child's spiritual future. The author of Mark puts clever words in Jesus' mouth, suggesting that anyone who is a negative spiritual influence on a child will be punished not just by being sacrificed to a fire, but by a fire that never quits consuming -- a darkly ironic Gehenna that is never quenched. We'll return to this passage next week, but it's obvious that the author of Matthew connects it with the earlier discussion of who deserves to be in positions of power.
We don't have to try very hard to find modern day parallels to the two earlier scenes in this passage. Sometimes we become quite preoccupied with what our position is, in the microcosms of our life as well as in a broader sense. We find ways to measure our level of power, whether in terms of the titles bestowed upon us, the amount of money we have, the number of friends (or "friends") we have in our networks, or some other scale that represents power to us. Some people are impressed by those who seem to have an air of authority, people who just exude self-confidence or seem to have an unshakably high opinion of themselves. The lesson expressed through Jesus in this passage suggests that all of this is valueless. These things are illusions that have no real bearing on what matters most. More important than how much apparent power one wields is how well one serves, particularly how well one serves those who are unable to do anything in terms of compensation.
A child is used as a powerful example here of the kinds of relationships that most reflect how well any of us understand what is most important. A child cannot pay us for our actions. A child cannot award titles or promotions. A child can't even vote in the next election. A child can do very little to increase our apparent power. Yet, if we are truly aware of ourselves -- if we are adept at dismantling fears about scarcity and insignificance, if we practice living with integrity by guiding principles that reflect something deeper than titles and dollar signs -- then we will likely be paying attention more to what we can do for other people than we will what other people can do for us. It won't matter that a person will be unable to offer us anything for our efforts (including a chance to have our picture in the paper and a headline with the word "Hero"). What will matter is that we have an opportunity to act with integrity to a deeply held value.
When we start thinking in terms of our role in the pecking order, or our position in a hierarchy, we can start determining personal value (of ourselves and of others) based on superficial details. Our value as human beings is not based on apparent power. It's an inherent trait that all human beings have in common. Chains of command and hierarchies of responsibility have their usefulness, but their benefits do not include knowing a person's value based on place within a hierarchy. People who wield authority have greater responsibility (as is indicated by the discussion about diving suits fitted with millstones), but they do not have greater value as human beings.
We determine how our human capability will be expressed in our lives. If we release our need to be seen as powerful, our actual capability will have more of a chance to shine through with authenticity. Our fears about there not being enough respect or love or admiration to go around can cloud our thinking on this to some extent, but we really don't know what the world would look like if everyone stopped worrying and started living out of their deepest guiding principles. If everyone stopped being afraid and just loved, we might all look pretty powerful. The truth is that we all are powerful, and we don't need to prove it to anyone. We are all capable of incredible acts of love and creativity. We are all capable of being peacemakers. We are all capable of profound feats of connection. We are all capable of seeing the inherent worth in people who seem to be doing their very best to keep it hidden.
The disciples in the story were concerned (probably even angry) because someone else was stealing their schtick. You've probably already seen through this as more fear of scarcity being expressed. There were then, as there are now, plenty of hurting people to go around. The point behind helping people was not then, as it need not be now, a chance to make a name for oneself, or an opportunity to get appointed to a position of authority, or a way to get ahead financially. The point behind helping people was and is to help people. The point behind living with integrity and intentionality was and is to live with integrity and intentionality. Being authentic and exercising one's full capability is the reward; our relationships with other people are just the context in which we get to be authentic and capable.
There was a book a while back with a title suggesting that if we do what we are passionate about -- what "feeds our soul" some might say -- then financial well being will come automatically. The content of the book revealed something different, that if we do what we love, then the satisfaction of doing what we love will follow. That's potentially a discouraging message to people who are caught up (like the disciples were in these scenes) with concerns about apparent power, market share, and personal brand management. The message of these scenes is not intended to be discouraging at all, though. The author of Mark is conveying that if we recognize what really matters to us and we intentionally live like those things really matter to us, we will be noticed by all the people we need to be noticed by and we will have all of the things we need to be happy.
Honestly, we may not have all of the wealth or apparent power that we want, or all that will allow our every whim to be entertained. The point, though, is that we don't get any closer to living by our deepest guiding principles by prioritizing wealth or wielding power over others. In other words, we've allowed our standards to become skewed toward something artificial and superficial. Most likely, we've done this because looking inward at what really matters most to us is scary at some level. Some people are afraid that they won't find much there at all if they look within, and others are afraid that if they are honest about their deepest guiding principles, their entire life will have to change. Maybe it will. The message of these scenes in Mark is that it will be worth it: Realize what really matters. Change your standards. Change your life -- and quite possibly the lives of everyone around you. It's an image of authentic power that any of us can choose to embrace.
Both the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke include a version of the first scene, in which the disciples argue about which of them will be in positions of authority when the Romans are overthrown and a new world order is established by their revolutionary leader. The response recorded indicates that they have some misconceptions about the new measure of leadership that is being established. This scene is followed by what appears to be a threat to Jesus' brand, as another miracle worker is seen performing some wondrous deeds without the direct approval of Jesus or his followers. The gospel of Matthew doesn't represent this scene, but the author of Luke included a truncated version of it. Once again, the response to the disciples' indignation is a revision to their assumptions about authority.
In the gospel of Matthew, the final scene in this grouping is dovetailed into the discussion of leadership, with the symbolic child being the bridge between the two passages. The author of Luke includes an abbreviated version of the teaching, separated from the scenes about leadership and authority. This scene suggests that the people who promote wrongdoing (or wrong thinking) in others will suffer for it, with symbolism suggesting that the author had an impression that individuals would have some kind of physical bodies in the afterlife.
This is also one of the passages that has given us a perspective of hell as a fiery place, but the actual word used here (Gehenna) refers to a specific place, also called the Valley of the Son of Hinnom in the Old Testament. It was here that Moloch and Ba'al worshipers (some of whom were Israelites) are said to have sacrificed their children to the fire. Since no mass graves of children's bones have been discovered anywhere in the area, many archaeologists and scholars have concluded that the symbolic sacrifices were something more akin to child dedications involving fire. Obviously, upstanding Jewish citizens would disapprove of parents dedicating children to a foreign god, and they would have had obvious reasons for equating such dedication as tantamount to sacrificing the child's spiritual future. The author of Mark puts clever words in Jesus' mouth, suggesting that anyone who is a negative spiritual influence on a child will be punished not just by being sacrificed to a fire, but by a fire that never quits consuming -- a darkly ironic Gehenna that is never quenched. We'll return to this passage next week, but it's obvious that the author of Matthew connects it with the earlier discussion of who deserves to be in positions of power.
We don't have to try very hard to find modern day parallels to the two earlier scenes in this passage. Sometimes we become quite preoccupied with what our position is, in the microcosms of our life as well as in a broader sense. We find ways to measure our level of power, whether in terms of the titles bestowed upon us, the amount of money we have, the number of friends (or "friends") we have in our networks, or some other scale that represents power to us. Some people are impressed by those who seem to have an air of authority, people who just exude self-confidence or seem to have an unshakably high opinion of themselves. The lesson expressed through Jesus in this passage suggests that all of this is valueless. These things are illusions that have no real bearing on what matters most. More important than how much apparent power one wields is how well one serves, particularly how well one serves those who are unable to do anything in terms of compensation.
A child is used as a powerful example here of the kinds of relationships that most reflect how well any of us understand what is most important. A child cannot pay us for our actions. A child cannot award titles or promotions. A child can't even vote in the next election. A child can do very little to increase our apparent power. Yet, if we are truly aware of ourselves -- if we are adept at dismantling fears about scarcity and insignificance, if we practice living with integrity by guiding principles that reflect something deeper than titles and dollar signs -- then we will likely be paying attention more to what we can do for other people than we will what other people can do for us. It won't matter that a person will be unable to offer us anything for our efforts (including a chance to have our picture in the paper and a headline with the word "Hero"). What will matter is that we have an opportunity to act with integrity to a deeply held value.
When we start thinking in terms of our role in the pecking order, or our position in a hierarchy, we can start determining personal value (of ourselves and of others) based on superficial details. Our value as human beings is not based on apparent power. It's an inherent trait that all human beings have in common. Chains of command and hierarchies of responsibility have their usefulness, but their benefits do not include knowing a person's value based on place within a hierarchy. People who wield authority have greater responsibility (as is indicated by the discussion about diving suits fitted with millstones), but they do not have greater value as human beings.
We determine how our human capability will be expressed in our lives. If we release our need to be seen as powerful, our actual capability will have more of a chance to shine through with authenticity. Our fears about there not being enough respect or love or admiration to go around can cloud our thinking on this to some extent, but we really don't know what the world would look like if everyone stopped worrying and started living out of their deepest guiding principles. If everyone stopped being afraid and just loved, we might all look pretty powerful. The truth is that we all are powerful, and we don't need to prove it to anyone. We are all capable of incredible acts of love and creativity. We are all capable of being peacemakers. We are all capable of profound feats of connection. We are all capable of seeing the inherent worth in people who seem to be doing their very best to keep it hidden.
The disciples in the story were concerned (probably even angry) because someone else was stealing their schtick. You've probably already seen through this as more fear of scarcity being expressed. There were then, as there are now, plenty of hurting people to go around. The point behind helping people was not then, as it need not be now, a chance to make a name for oneself, or an opportunity to get appointed to a position of authority, or a way to get ahead financially. The point behind helping people was and is to help people. The point behind living with integrity and intentionality was and is to live with integrity and intentionality. Being authentic and exercising one's full capability is the reward; our relationships with other people are just the context in which we get to be authentic and capable.
There was a book a while back with a title suggesting that if we do what we are passionate about -- what "feeds our soul" some might say -- then financial well being will come automatically. The content of the book revealed something different, that if we do what we love, then the satisfaction of doing what we love will follow. That's potentially a discouraging message to people who are caught up (like the disciples were in these scenes) with concerns about apparent power, market share, and personal brand management. The message of these scenes is not intended to be discouraging at all, though. The author of Mark is conveying that if we recognize what really matters to us and we intentionally live like those things really matter to us, we will be noticed by all the people we need to be noticed by and we will have all of the things we need to be happy.
Honestly, we may not have all of the wealth or apparent power that we want, or all that will allow our every whim to be entertained. The point, though, is that we don't get any closer to living by our deepest guiding principles by prioritizing wealth or wielding power over others. In other words, we've allowed our standards to become skewed toward something artificial and superficial. Most likely, we've done this because looking inward at what really matters most to us is scary at some level. Some people are afraid that they won't find much there at all if they look within, and others are afraid that if they are honest about their deepest guiding principles, their entire life will have to change. Maybe it will. The message of these scenes in Mark is that it will be worth it: Realize what really matters. Change your standards. Change your life -- and quite possibly the lives of everyone around you. It's an image of authentic power that any of us can choose to embrace.
Monday, September 9, 2013
2 Chronicles 29-31: Appearances vs Authenticity
We'll soon be turning to the books of Isaiah and Micah, which were attributed to two "prophets" or outspoken spiritual commentators (preachers) during the time of King Hezekiah, who probably came to the throne in Judah a few years after the kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians. The authors of 2 Kings actually place the fall of Samaria six years into Hezekiah's reign, but it's difficult to make the dates work out with what is known of the dates of other rulers in the Ancient Near East. Some scholars propose that a practice of co-regency accounts for any apparent discrepancies. At the very least, we know that Hezekiah's reign (and in general the conflict between Assyria and Judah), is very well attested in extra-biblical sources. Hezekiah was a heroic ruler in the eyes of the Jewish historians, and it appears that his reign saw a surge in population, literacy, and power, potentially fed by Israelites fleeing south from Assyrian forces.
The Chronicler indicates much more about Hezekiah's religious reforms than the authors of 2 Kings. He started by ordering a group of Levites (the tribe that had exclusively been assigned duties of caring for the temple) to clean up the temple and get rid of any paraphernalia that represented the encroachment of foreign religions. Then Hezekiah hosted an extravagant sacrifice and public celebration for the people in Jerusalem, followed by an invitation to all worshipers of Yahweh in the surrounding areas to celebrate Passover properly in Jerusalem. According to the biblical record, his efforts were so successful that they extended the celebration for an additional seven days. This may have been due, at least in part, to Hezekiah's contribution of eight thousand animals for the ceremonies, augmented by another eleven thousand animals from Jewish officials (who were possibly "encouraged" to do so by their king).
After all of that, Hezekiah organized task forces to go around the entire kingdom and tear apart any worship sites that would detract from the state religion, with the end result that the Temple got all of the offerings that had been dispersed among various alternative worship practices. Very clever. While Hezekiah insisted on tolerance for people with different concepts of the state religion (2 Chron 30:18-19), he oversaw profound intolerance for any other religious practices. As Micah will report, that didn't make everything perfect, but the Chronicler has only praise for Hezekiah's leadership in these efforts. By all appearances, spiritual order had been restored and the country was prospering.
Even with the controls inherent in a theocratic dictatorship, and even with a great leader like Hezekiah, there are limits to what enforced religious practice can accomplish. People can become very adept at outward appearances while still continuing to live by fear of scarcity or a sense of entitlement. In other words, changing the visible religious practices of a community does not necessarily change the inward character of the people in that community. This is a problem to which various prophets call attention. We can certainly observe the character and practices of ancient people from afar and draw some conclusions about those people. However, we get more value from looking at our own character and practices with bold honesty.
So often, we spend our time and energy on appearances. We want to appear pure, good, right, noble, strong, charitable, trustworthy, competent, lovable, or whatever package of traits it happens to be for a given individual. We want people to see admirable qualities in us. We make our temples look clean and we make our sacrifices abundant, even extravagant. Hezekiah was trying to make up for a legacy of inappropriate behavior, and he went to great lengths to make a public show that things were going to be different. For some people, things probably were different. Hezekiah certainly seems to have been acting out of sincerity. He didn't really require that people change their lives all that much, though. People could still be as ruthless in business as they were before, or as discompassionate to the alien and impoverished as they were before, as long as they worshiped the way they were "supposed to." Changing people's character would require an entirely different kind of reform.
We are often the same way. We sometimes change the outward displays without bothering to change the inward motivations. We try to hide all of the things that we are afraid of or ashamed of about ourselves and display the person we want people to see instead. It's a lot of work for some of us, and it's work that never ends, because the things we are afraid of or ashamed of about ourselves never really get addressed.
What is it for you? For me, I often do battle with the fear that I am really a selfish person at my core. On top of that, I have an "inner critic" that likes to tell me that I'm not _____ enough. I know both of those things are false, but sometimes I wind up spending energy trying to prove my own inner lies about myself wrong, instead of spending my energy proclaiming what is true about myself. It occurs to me that if I spent more time working on dismantling the lies and living out of what is true, I would have a lot less worry about what other people see when they look at me. If I live out my authentic, capable, beautiful, noble, creative self, I don't have to worry about appearances.
So, that is one challenge that emerges from this passage about Hezekiah. What are you doing just for the sake of appearances, and how does that distract you from meaningful personal development? What would be wrong with just being your authentic self? What are you afraid people are going to see if you stop worrying about appearances and just allow your own deep guiding principles to inform your actions?
I certainly don't mean that what people see in us doesn't matter. To be clear, I gain a lot of insight from what other people notice about my demeanor and behavior. The more vulnerable I am willing to be with people, the more I get from other people's observations. So, by suggesting that we worry less about appearances, I don't mean that we should abandon personal hygiene or let fly every petty judgment that pops into our brains. I mean that our outward behavior can be more authentically influenced by our own inner values than by our fear about what other people will think. I mean that our time and energy is better spent nurturing our own integrity rather than nurturing a less-than-authentic image. We have nothing to fear about how people see us if we recognize what matters most deeply to us and live out those values with authenticity and integrity. Honestly, I'd rather be an authentic person than a person with a well-rehearsed persona. Maybe you agree.
The Chronicler indicates much more about Hezekiah's religious reforms than the authors of 2 Kings. He started by ordering a group of Levites (the tribe that had exclusively been assigned duties of caring for the temple) to clean up the temple and get rid of any paraphernalia that represented the encroachment of foreign religions. Then Hezekiah hosted an extravagant sacrifice and public celebration for the people in Jerusalem, followed by an invitation to all worshipers of Yahweh in the surrounding areas to celebrate Passover properly in Jerusalem. According to the biblical record, his efforts were so successful that they extended the celebration for an additional seven days. This may have been due, at least in part, to Hezekiah's contribution of eight thousand animals for the ceremonies, augmented by another eleven thousand animals from Jewish officials (who were possibly "encouraged" to do so by their king).
After all of that, Hezekiah organized task forces to go around the entire kingdom and tear apart any worship sites that would detract from the state religion, with the end result that the Temple got all of the offerings that had been dispersed among various alternative worship practices. Very clever. While Hezekiah insisted on tolerance for people with different concepts of the state religion (2 Chron 30:18-19), he oversaw profound intolerance for any other religious practices. As Micah will report, that didn't make everything perfect, but the Chronicler has only praise for Hezekiah's leadership in these efforts. By all appearances, spiritual order had been restored and the country was prospering.
Even with the controls inherent in a theocratic dictatorship, and even with a great leader like Hezekiah, there are limits to what enforced religious practice can accomplish. People can become very adept at outward appearances while still continuing to live by fear of scarcity or a sense of entitlement. In other words, changing the visible religious practices of a community does not necessarily change the inward character of the people in that community. This is a problem to which various prophets call attention. We can certainly observe the character and practices of ancient people from afar and draw some conclusions about those people. However, we get more value from looking at our own character and practices with bold honesty.
So often, we spend our time and energy on appearances. We want to appear pure, good, right, noble, strong, charitable, trustworthy, competent, lovable, or whatever package of traits it happens to be for a given individual. We want people to see admirable qualities in us. We make our temples look clean and we make our sacrifices abundant, even extravagant. Hezekiah was trying to make up for a legacy of inappropriate behavior, and he went to great lengths to make a public show that things were going to be different. For some people, things probably were different. Hezekiah certainly seems to have been acting out of sincerity. He didn't really require that people change their lives all that much, though. People could still be as ruthless in business as they were before, or as discompassionate to the alien and impoverished as they were before, as long as they worshiped the way they were "supposed to." Changing people's character would require an entirely different kind of reform.
We are often the same way. We sometimes change the outward displays without bothering to change the inward motivations. We try to hide all of the things that we are afraid of or ashamed of about ourselves and display the person we want people to see instead. It's a lot of work for some of us, and it's work that never ends, because the things we are afraid of or ashamed of about ourselves never really get addressed.
What is it for you? For me, I often do battle with the fear that I am really a selfish person at my core. On top of that, I have an "inner critic" that likes to tell me that I'm not _____ enough. I know both of those things are false, but sometimes I wind up spending energy trying to prove my own inner lies about myself wrong, instead of spending my energy proclaiming what is true about myself. It occurs to me that if I spent more time working on dismantling the lies and living out of what is true, I would have a lot less worry about what other people see when they look at me. If I live out my authentic, capable, beautiful, noble, creative self, I don't have to worry about appearances.
So, that is one challenge that emerges from this passage about Hezekiah. What are you doing just for the sake of appearances, and how does that distract you from meaningful personal development? What would be wrong with just being your authentic self? What are you afraid people are going to see if you stop worrying about appearances and just allow your own deep guiding principles to inform your actions?
I certainly don't mean that what people see in us doesn't matter. To be clear, I gain a lot of insight from what other people notice about my demeanor and behavior. The more vulnerable I am willing to be with people, the more I get from other people's observations. So, by suggesting that we worry less about appearances, I don't mean that we should abandon personal hygiene or let fly every petty judgment that pops into our brains. I mean that our outward behavior can be more authentically influenced by our own inner values than by our fear about what other people will think. I mean that our time and energy is better spent nurturing our own integrity rather than nurturing a less-than-authentic image. We have nothing to fear about how people see us if we recognize what matters most deeply to us and live out those values with authenticity and integrity. Honestly, I'd rather be an authentic person than a person with a well-rehearsed persona. Maybe you agree.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Mark 9: Faith
After the scene of the mystical transfiguration, Mark 9 continues with another exorcism scene. This same scene is duplicated in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but there are some striking differences. For one things, the authors of Matthew and Luke do not include the father's famous quip, "I believe; help my unbelief." Perhaps an even more obvious omission is the apparent disagreement between authors about why Jesus was able to do something that his disciples were unable to do. The author of Mark has Jesus say that the kind of demon he exorcised from the boy can only be cast out by prayer (even though the story doesn't say anything about Jesus praying in this scene). The scene is truncated a bit in the gospel of Matthew, but when it comes to this question of why the disciples were unable to help the boy, the author takes the opportunity to have Jesus criticize the disciples' lack of faith. It is such an obviously different answer than the original version of the story recorded in the gospel of Mark that some scribe(s) at some point inserted the bit about prayer and fasting into the Matthew version. (In most translations, this inserted verse is omitted and relegated to a footnote). The author of Luke leaves out the question altogether, choosing not to include anything about the disciples' inability to help the epileptic boy, which makes it a bit awkward when the Jesus character bemoans putting up with the "faithless and perverse generation."
Some "perverse" people in the twenty-first century still consider demonic possession to be an actual thing. Considering the vast amount of research and evidence on the subject, as well as our previous critique on the abusive and manipulative practice of exorcism, we can leave that aside. It is reasonable for us to forgive people living so many centuries ago for thinking that some neurological disorders were caused by supernatural forces. Instead, there is a theme that emerges from the versions of this story in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that seems worthy of a bit of attention, namely the father's plea, "I believe; help my unbelief," and the line about a mustard seed of faith being enough to make a mountain move (which is also duplicated in Luke 17:5-6, just not in connection to this exorcism scene).
Faith is a tricky subject. It essentially means believing something that cannot be proven by available data. Faith isn't intelligent, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. It's important to realize that a statement of faith is necessarily a claim without any empirical foundation. This trips some people up. They want to believe that their statement of faith is absolutely true, that they can prove it to other people, that they can make other people agree with them, even though there is no actual evidence for the claim. If there were ample evidence to demonstrate the validity of a claim, it wouldn't need to be taken on faith.
Faith can work for us or against us. Some people flatly reject cold, hard data in order to maintain a faith-based perspective; other people manage to incorporate the available facts into a fluid faith that grows and changes as their knowledge grows and changes. There are people in the Creationist (or Intelligent Design) camp that fall into the first category, blatantly disagreeing with scientific evidence in favor of the text of an ancient religious document. Others revise their version of faith in a creator so that it remains compatible with scientific conclusions.
It isn't so dangerous when people are just engaging in fruitless arguments about the age of the planet (although it is dangerous to teach children that they can ignore actual facts in order to keep believing what they want to believe). Thoughtless faith can put people in serious danger, though. Some people have faith that their supernatural will protect them from the venom of poisonous snakes, even if they antagonize said snakes. Some people have faith that their supernatural will heal their child, provided they don't give in and seek competent medical assistance. A recent outbreak of measles within a religious community in Texas that opposes vaccination in favor of "faith healing" is just one more senseless piece of evidence that it's dangerous to rely on a supernatural to do the work of a doctor. Faith that refuses to incorporate verifiable evidence is, frankly, abusive and evil.
Blaming faith isn't really helpful. Intelligent faith helps us create meaningful lives. Insightful faith helps us connect with people and build incredible communities. Faith isn't the problem. Human egoism is. Why in the world would a spiritual leader advise his flock not to get vaccinations or professional medical attention? My guess would be either hubris or stupidity. What do you say to the parents of a 4-month-old infant who contracts measles because a spiritual community refused to take appropriate health precautions? Was the faith of the parents faulty? Or perhaps the 4-month-old had faith that was too weak? I try not to be critical of other people's beliefs, but I get angry about children suffering needlessly because of adults with nonsensical religious convictions.
Still, it's the people who are responsible for the consequences of their actions, not whatever they had faith in. The father who brought his son to Jesus' disciples in the story was looking for a solution. He wasn't committed to pursuing some tenacious assertion about the supernatural, he was trying to get help for his son wherever it might be found. By the time Jesus questioned the father's faith, the poor man was probably exasperated from trying to find someone who could do some genuine good for his boy. And yet, he couldn't just confess blind faith. Even Jesus' disciples had failed him. He had hope, but he wasn't an idiot. His son was seriously afflicted. He believed in the possibility of his son's healing enough to get him to a healer. Whatever he lacked in faith, he certainly expressed a willingness to be persuaded.
We can approach faith like that. We can stake our claim and say, "based on available evidence right now, I believe this." When further evidence presents itself, we have the freedom to adapt our statements of faith. By "evidence," I mean falsifiable data, information that can be verified by outside sources, not just another person's opinion or a slippery thread of logic. For instance, believe in God if you like, but don't ignore scientific data about vaccinations or geology in order to cling to a primitive version of that belief in God. We can allow our God to be as vast or impressive or intelligent or insightful or loving as s/he needs to be in order to accommodate the actual knowledge we have about our natural world. We cannot restrict verifiable data based on our personal beliefs. If we try to do so, we wind up with things like measles outbreaks that could easily have been prevented.
So, since our beliefs don't have the power to modify actual scientific evidence, it only makes sense to allow actual scientific evidence to modify our beliefs. This doesn't diminish our faith in any way; it makes our faith more credible. This doesn't weaken our faith; it strengthens our connection to reality, and thus increases the value of our faith. Digging in our heels and refusing to reconcile our beliefs with cold, hard facts is just another way of refusing to grow. When we refuse to grow, we stagnate. Life is not stagnant. If we are going to have faith, doesn't it make sense to have faith that is alive and able to grow?
Some "perverse" people in the twenty-first century still consider demonic possession to be an actual thing. Considering the vast amount of research and evidence on the subject, as well as our previous critique on the abusive and manipulative practice of exorcism, we can leave that aside. It is reasonable for us to forgive people living so many centuries ago for thinking that some neurological disorders were caused by supernatural forces. Instead, there is a theme that emerges from the versions of this story in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that seems worthy of a bit of attention, namely the father's plea, "I believe; help my unbelief," and the line about a mustard seed of faith being enough to make a mountain move (which is also duplicated in Luke 17:5-6, just not in connection to this exorcism scene).
Faith is a tricky subject. It essentially means believing something that cannot be proven by available data. Faith isn't intelligent, but that doesn't mean it isn't useful. It's important to realize that a statement of faith is necessarily a claim without any empirical foundation. This trips some people up. They want to believe that their statement of faith is absolutely true, that they can prove it to other people, that they can make other people agree with them, even though there is no actual evidence for the claim. If there were ample evidence to demonstrate the validity of a claim, it wouldn't need to be taken on faith.
Faith can work for us or against us. Some people flatly reject cold, hard data in order to maintain a faith-based perspective; other people manage to incorporate the available facts into a fluid faith that grows and changes as their knowledge grows and changes. There are people in the Creationist (or Intelligent Design) camp that fall into the first category, blatantly disagreeing with scientific evidence in favor of the text of an ancient religious document. Others revise their version of faith in a creator so that it remains compatible with scientific conclusions.
It isn't so dangerous when people are just engaging in fruitless arguments about the age of the planet (although it is dangerous to teach children that they can ignore actual facts in order to keep believing what they want to believe). Thoughtless faith can put people in serious danger, though. Some people have faith that their supernatural will protect them from the venom of poisonous snakes, even if they antagonize said snakes. Some people have faith that their supernatural will heal their child, provided they don't give in and seek competent medical assistance. A recent outbreak of measles within a religious community in Texas that opposes vaccination in favor of "faith healing" is just one more senseless piece of evidence that it's dangerous to rely on a supernatural to do the work of a doctor. Faith that refuses to incorporate verifiable evidence is, frankly, abusive and evil.
Blaming faith isn't really helpful. Intelligent faith helps us create meaningful lives. Insightful faith helps us connect with people and build incredible communities. Faith isn't the problem. Human egoism is. Why in the world would a spiritual leader advise his flock not to get vaccinations or professional medical attention? My guess would be either hubris or stupidity. What do you say to the parents of a 4-month-old infant who contracts measles because a spiritual community refused to take appropriate health precautions? Was the faith of the parents faulty? Or perhaps the 4-month-old had faith that was too weak? I try not to be critical of other people's beliefs, but I get angry about children suffering needlessly because of adults with nonsensical religious convictions.
Still, it's the people who are responsible for the consequences of their actions, not whatever they had faith in. The father who brought his son to Jesus' disciples in the story was looking for a solution. He wasn't committed to pursuing some tenacious assertion about the supernatural, he was trying to get help for his son wherever it might be found. By the time Jesus questioned the father's faith, the poor man was probably exasperated from trying to find someone who could do some genuine good for his boy. And yet, he couldn't just confess blind faith. Even Jesus' disciples had failed him. He had hope, but he wasn't an idiot. His son was seriously afflicted. He believed in the possibility of his son's healing enough to get him to a healer. Whatever he lacked in faith, he certainly expressed a willingness to be persuaded.
We can approach faith like that. We can stake our claim and say, "based on available evidence right now, I believe this." When further evidence presents itself, we have the freedom to adapt our statements of faith. By "evidence," I mean falsifiable data, information that can be verified by outside sources, not just another person's opinion or a slippery thread of logic. For instance, believe in God if you like, but don't ignore scientific data about vaccinations or geology in order to cling to a primitive version of that belief in God. We can allow our God to be as vast or impressive or intelligent or insightful or loving as s/he needs to be in order to accommodate the actual knowledge we have about our natural world. We cannot restrict verifiable data based on our personal beliefs. If we try to do so, we wind up with things like measles outbreaks that could easily have been prevented.
So, since our beliefs don't have the power to modify actual scientific evidence, it only makes sense to allow actual scientific evidence to modify our beliefs. This doesn't diminish our faith in any way; it makes our faith more credible. This doesn't weaken our faith; it strengthens our connection to reality, and thus increases the value of our faith. Digging in our heels and refusing to reconcile our beliefs with cold, hard facts is just another way of refusing to grow. When we refuse to grow, we stagnate. Life is not stagnant. If we are going to have faith, doesn't it make sense to have faith that is alive and able to grow?
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
2 Kings 17: Creating Our Reality
The kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BCE, and the Israelites were removed from the land and resettled elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire. 2 Kings 17 suggests a political reason and a spiritual reason for the event. Politically, King Hoshea thought he could extract himself from his role as vassal to the Assyrian emperor if he pledged loyalty to a king of Egypt. There's no way of knowing why he thought that would be better. Ultimately, it didn't matter, because Shalmaneser found out about the betrayal and responded with military action. He removed the Israelites from their land and moved in exiles from other places within the empire. This separation of people from their attachment to geographic sites was intended to preserve peace and limit the potential for uprisings within the empire.
Shalmaneser's actions make considerable sense. People today often behave the same way, whether it is people in certain positions of political power or people in positions of economic power. From a certain angle, multinational corporations bear some striking similarities to the empires of the Ancient Near East. The logic of the emperor's attempt to preserve power and docile compliance within his domain is enough to explain the circumstances without adding any supernatural reasons into the mix.
The Bible being a document of a superstitious time and people, however, places more emphasis on why the Israelites themselves were to blame, namely because of their spiritual infidelity. It is striking to look back at the development of their theology, from a mythology around a deity who made repeated unconditional promises to Abram about the land his descendants would occupy, to a religious construct that included unfulfilled (albeit vague) blessings for good behavior and death penalty curses for bad behavior, to a social commentary about why bad things happen to a people who are supposedly chosen and beloved by an omnipotent deity. Anything bad that happens can thus be blamed on human behavior, which as it turns out is pretty close to the truth when it's put in such general terms. There may be some disagreement about exactly which bad behavior brought about the undesirable consequences, but at least there is a bit of honesty in recognizing that the results people experience in their lives are largely consequences of their own actions.
Yet, much of what happened to the people of Israel was not so much a consequence of their actions as it was a consequence of their leader's actions. Their king did something that caused the entire country to be overthrown and displaced. It doesn't seem fair that one person's poor decision making skills wind up costing so many people so much, but that's what happens in systems of government, whether they are democracies or monarchies. We cannot control a lot of things about our circumstances, but we can control who we are in the midst of those circumstances.
What can we draw from this spiritual justification of a nation's failure, then? How can we translate this idea that we face a decision between serving a benevolent and righteous supernatural or committing destructive acts of spiritual infidelity or idolatry? With a bit of translation, it actually makes for some very useful observations. The historians of Kings are partially right when they suggest that the people of Israel created their own reality of destruction and exile. That's a truth worth exploring.
Even for the authors of this biased history, it was obvious that the people who resettled the lands of the exiled Israelites were creating their own gods. It just wasn't as easy for them to look at their own god as a human invention. We create idols, too, and more often than not those idols originate from our fears, our insecurities, the lies we believe about ourselves, other people, and reality. We look outside of ourselves for a sense of purpose and well-being, idolizing money or titles or power or significance. We create destructive habits because we fail to recognize that so many of the things we think we value are actually valueless. We spend so much time seeking after some external means of alleviating our irrational fears that forget to examine our own selves, our own deep and abiding values, our own ideals and principles that got buried beneath piles of vows about what we must and must not do, assumptions about what is possible or impossible, and lies about how we are either not enough or better than.
If we want to encounter divinity, we might want to spend some honest moments looking within ourselves. Chances are, we already know what we want our lives to be about. We already know what we actually value. Those things are sometimes challenging; they might take a lot of work and we might have to dismantle a lot of fears and false beliefs to really engage them. But when we dig into real meaningful values that engage our sense of connection with people, that tap into our true capabilities and passions, that inspire us to envision a better life and a better world characterized by justice and compassion, we are tapping into something more powerful than any idols we can set up in our lives.
We cannot honestly improve our lives, the lives of other people, or the world around us by being preoccupied with judgments about ourselves or other people, fears about scarcity or insignificance, or lies about our own brokenness or weakness. Human beings may be well practiced at escalating anxiety and reactivity, but there are other options for how we connect with our deepest, most noble, visionary selves. We have the opportunity to bring forth something inspiring by the way we live and the choices we make. We can honor a deeper truth than where our fears and assumptions lead us. We are creative by nature, and thus we are creators by nature. We choose what we create.
Shalmaneser's actions make considerable sense. People today often behave the same way, whether it is people in certain positions of political power or people in positions of economic power. From a certain angle, multinational corporations bear some striking similarities to the empires of the Ancient Near East. The logic of the emperor's attempt to preserve power and docile compliance within his domain is enough to explain the circumstances without adding any supernatural reasons into the mix.
The Bible being a document of a superstitious time and people, however, places more emphasis on why the Israelites themselves were to blame, namely because of their spiritual infidelity. It is striking to look back at the development of their theology, from a mythology around a deity who made repeated unconditional promises to Abram about the land his descendants would occupy, to a religious construct that included unfulfilled (albeit vague) blessings for good behavior and death penalty curses for bad behavior, to a social commentary about why bad things happen to a people who are supposedly chosen and beloved by an omnipotent deity. Anything bad that happens can thus be blamed on human behavior, which as it turns out is pretty close to the truth when it's put in such general terms. There may be some disagreement about exactly which bad behavior brought about the undesirable consequences, but at least there is a bit of honesty in recognizing that the results people experience in their lives are largely consequences of their own actions.
Yet, much of what happened to the people of Israel was not so much a consequence of their actions as it was a consequence of their leader's actions. Their king did something that caused the entire country to be overthrown and displaced. It doesn't seem fair that one person's poor decision making skills wind up costing so many people so much, but that's what happens in systems of government, whether they are democracies or monarchies. We cannot control a lot of things about our circumstances, but we can control who we are in the midst of those circumstances.
What can we draw from this spiritual justification of a nation's failure, then? How can we translate this idea that we face a decision between serving a benevolent and righteous supernatural or committing destructive acts of spiritual infidelity or idolatry? With a bit of translation, it actually makes for some very useful observations. The historians of Kings are partially right when they suggest that the people of Israel created their own reality of destruction and exile. That's a truth worth exploring.
Even for the authors of this biased history, it was obvious that the people who resettled the lands of the exiled Israelites were creating their own gods. It just wasn't as easy for them to look at their own god as a human invention. We create idols, too, and more often than not those idols originate from our fears, our insecurities, the lies we believe about ourselves, other people, and reality. We look outside of ourselves for a sense of purpose and well-being, idolizing money or titles or power or significance. We create destructive habits because we fail to recognize that so many of the things we think we value are actually valueless. We spend so much time seeking after some external means of alleviating our irrational fears that forget to examine our own selves, our own deep and abiding values, our own ideals and principles that got buried beneath piles of vows about what we must and must not do, assumptions about what is possible or impossible, and lies about how we are either not enough or better than.
If we want to encounter divinity, we might want to spend some honest moments looking within ourselves. Chances are, we already know what we want our lives to be about. We already know what we actually value. Those things are sometimes challenging; they might take a lot of work and we might have to dismantle a lot of fears and false beliefs to really engage them. But when we dig into real meaningful values that engage our sense of connection with people, that tap into our true capabilities and passions, that inspire us to envision a better life and a better world characterized by justice and compassion, we are tapping into something more powerful than any idols we can set up in our lives.
We cannot honestly improve our lives, the lives of other people, or the world around us by being preoccupied with judgments about ourselves or other people, fears about scarcity or insignificance, or lies about our own brokenness or weakness. Human beings may be well practiced at escalating anxiety and reactivity, but there are other options for how we connect with our deepest, most noble, visionary selves. We have the opportunity to bring forth something inspiring by the way we live and the choices we make. We can honor a deeper truth than where our fears and assumptions lead us. We are creative by nature, and thus we are creators by nature. We choose what we create.
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