Alive Now Extended

In my last post, I wrote about appropriating Old Testament laws by imagining the guiding principle behind the law by thinking about ways of appropriating a law in that way. Clearly, Jesus summed up that principle in two commandments: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31).

One of the unique features about human beings is that we alone can imagine or contemplate from a different perspective. In other words, we have the ability to realize that things could be different. They don’t have to be the way they are. So we can visualize different scenarios.

Being our country is in one of the worst recessions in years, the economy is a pretty hot topic right now. Now the Bible doesn’t really have a lot to say about “the economy” as a function of society. But reading these laws, we see that, again, there are certain basic principles: deal honestly with your neighbor; no dishonest weights; pay people what you owe them in a timely manner, especially if they need the money. Perhaps the most interesting (and certainly the most troubling) law, from our modern perspective, is the law banning “usury,” or the taking of interest. Simply put, the Bible outlaws banking. Using money to make more money was not an option.

Now the Bible doesn’t say a lot about this, beyond banning the practice. But we know from other ancient sources that the primary reason charging interest was taboo was that it was seen as a perversion, as a corruption of the true purpose of money in particular and of economics in general. (If this sounds Aristotelian, it’s because it is.) Simply put, economic activity, the buying and selling of goods in society, serves the purpose of making sure that people could get those things (food, clothing, shelter) that they needed to live. Money was a way that the distribution of goods could be done efficiently; if done right, everyone could live comfortably and society would prosper. Now certainly if someone worked hard and was good at his or her trade, he or she would prosper and may even get rich. But the point is that making a lot of money or getting rich was never seen as the basic goal of the economy. In the Bible, anyone who was in business solely for that reason was described as “greedy for gain,” which is roundly condemned in the law and the prophets as a form of institutionalized violence.

I think that this is one of the major flaws (though certainly not the only one) in our current debate that has contributed to the financial crisis we’re now in. I recently read a blog post that described the “free market system” (that institution that we all know and love and that some of us value with a reverence that approaches worship) as the best economic system ever developed to amass huge amounts of money, not to mention that it does so through efficient distribution. Now I’m not denying that that’s true. The fundamental problem with that line of reasoning, however, is that making money should not be the primary function of the economy. I’m not an economic expert, but I’d be willing to wager that Adam Smith never made that argument. And making money from money compounds the problem even more, because that inevitably has led to decisions that focus on what’s the best approach to increase profits and not what’s best for making sure people get the things they need to survive.

Taking this discussion one step further, we have become so focused in our society on this warped understanding of what the function of the economy is (making money), that we now use it as one of the primary criteria in how we judge the success or failure of our governments. The question, Are you better off [read, “financially”] now than you were four years ago?” has become a staple in our political discussions. Again, ancient people (and plenty of moderns) would see this a perversion, a form of violence. The purpose of government is to ensure a harmonious society. Perhaps an aspect of that might be that we all become more financially secure, but that should never be the primary concern.

I often like to joke that there seems to be an underlying assumption in the Bible that “a people get the government that they deserve.” Perhaps that’s the case.

(Part 2)

In an earlier post, I wrote about the statement made by Amy Jill Levine, a professor of New Testament at  Vanderbilt University, that the debate between Jesus and the Jewish authorities was not over whether one should fulfill “the Law,” but how one goes about fulfilling it. And that for Jesus. healing the sick on the Sabbath was not a repudiation or violation of the commandment (as it would have been seen by the Pharisees).

I also wrote that if we perceive of God primarily as a “rule giver,” we’ll probably view “the Law” as rules we are mandated to obey. But if we perceive God primarily as loving, freeing, and wanting to be in an on-going relationship with us, we will view “the Law” not as rigid rules for living but instead as a roadmap to how we can do that.

Since our current issue is devoted to “Imagination,” I want to explore (and hopefully illustrate) how our imaginations can help us to do that.

I’ve always been a little intrigued by the laws found in Exodus 20:22—23:19. Imagine the setting: The Israelites are gathered at Mount Sinai and God has just spoken the Ten Commandments to them (the written version would come later). I’m the only God, don’t worship anyone (or anything) else and don’t misuse my name; observe the Sabbath; honor your elders; and don’t murder, commit adultery, steal, give false testimony, or covet your neighbor’s things.

These are nice, neat, straightforward rules for living, and they still apply in their original form to us today. Sure, we need some breaking down to fully understand all the implications, but for the most part these ten rules stand on their own.

What follows, however, is anything but easy to understand. Three chapters of rambling, sometimes-understandable-but-sometimes-truly-arcane laws, all set in a social and religious context that is more than 3,000 years removed from our own time. They take for granted certain practices (for example, slavery) and customs that we find objectionable or strange. Sure, we can understand the law requiring restitution for stealing, or the law forbidding gossip or false testimony (23:1); but we’re left scratching our heads over laws about building altars of stamped earth or uncut stones (20:24-26). And we’re shocked at the thought that a father could sell his daughter into slavery (21:7)! The upshot is that we struggle through this maze, unable to find any coherent pattern, and tend to chuck the whole thing.

But the context of these laws makes them hard to just ignore. The Israelites, in agreeing to be God’s people and to live in covenant with God, agree to obey not only the Ten Commandments but also these laws as well. So where do we start?

On one level, it’s true that many of these laws no longer apply (at least in a literal sense) because we no longer live in the type of small, agrarian villages they presuppose. But it’s always helpful to me to remember that this collection of laws (and others like them) were probably not intended to be comprehensive or to cover every possible aspect of human interaction. Instead, ancient law codes (including the most famous, Hammurabbi’s code, to which the Covenant Code has not only some striking similarities but also some striking differences) were intended to lay down guidelines by which individuals and judges could infer how God would want us to act in certain situations. For example, worship should be simple, modest, unassuming, and center around thanking God for what we have and sharing our bounty with others who are less fortunate. Our interactions with others should be geared toward cooperation and helping those in need.

When Jesus was asked which was the greatest commandment, he responded with two commandments: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31). And that is what’s at the heart of this entire collection of laws and at the heart of the Bible as well. Imagine a society in which the true spirit of these laws is a reality and you’ll imagine a society that practices the Golden Rule.

Yesterday in my Sunday-school class we were discussing the controversy in the early church (mentioned in Acts 15 and Galatians 2) that arose regarding the question whether Gentile Christians needed to become Jewish converts in order to be fully Christian. One side, apparently led by James, the brother of Jesus, argued that yes, in order to be true followers of Christ, Gentiles had to become just like us. They had to follow the law laid down in Torah, specifically the laws regarding clean and unclean foods (and practices), the law requiring keeping the Sabbath holy, and circumcision. All of these were aspects of the covenant that God had made with the Israelites, and there were sound theological reasons for this argument. An unfortunate side effect of this belief, however, was that it links salvation to a particular nationality and its accepted way of living.

The other side of the issue, argued primarily by the Apostle Paul and which eventually won out, was that requiring Gentiles to become Jewish was a rejection not only of Jesus’ death and resurrection but also a denial of the fact that God had already accepted these Gentile converts without their conversion to Judaism. Just look at the evidence, Paul argued. Gentiles are already receiving God’s Spirit. A new reality has broken in.

This discussion got me to thinking about the Senate hearings last week to interview Judge Sonia Sotomayor and the nature of the opposition to her appointment as a Supreme Court justice. Now I don’t want to imply that I think that the grilling she underwent was totally unfair or out of bounds. In fact, in my humble opinion, it went pretty much along party lines, with mostly softballs being lobbed from one side and some pretty pointed (and in some cases, probably unfair) charges made from the other. But overall I think that Judge Sotomayor was treated with general respect by everyone involved and managed to come through the hearings relatively unblemished. (In other words, like many who came before her, she kept her answers vague, general, and non-threatening enough to ensure that she’d be confirmed. I don’t mean that as criticism, just an observation about the political reality surrounding hearings like this.)

On the other hand, it did seem a little unsettling how much of the questioning revolved around the issue of whether Judge Sotomayor, as a Hispanic woman, could “put aside” the influences of her background and be “fair” from the bench. Again, I don’t mean to imply that previous candidates have never been challenged from this perspective: they have. But it seemed to me that this was the primary basis for most of the opposition to her, based on what seems to be a comment that was clearly lifted out of context.

What troubles me most about that line of opposition is the not-so-subtle underlying assumption that there is a “norm” for judging cases and that given her background Judge Sotomayor varies from that “norm.” One doesn’t have to scratch too low below the surface to discover that the “norm” being assumed is that of a white, upper-middleclass male. How can she be unbiased if she’s not like us?

The assumption that “our way of doing things” is the right way is, unfortunately, basic human nature. We all go so easily from accepting what’s familiar to us as “the best way” to placing a moral (or religious) value on it and requiring that others be like us as well. Our way becomes the norm.

But that’s not how God works. There is a norm, stated very clearly in the Bible: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s the norm and if our way of living doesn’t align with it, then we are the one’s who need to adjust.

Just a thought.

As an Old Testament scholar, I include among my pet peeves the attitudes (whether stated or implied) that a) the Old Testament has been somehow supplanted by the New Testament, so Christians no longer need to pay any mind to it; and b) the notion that the “God of the Old Testament is a god of judgment,” whereas the “God of the New Testament is a god of forgiveness.” Anyone making these comments within earshot is spoiling for a debate. It’s understandable that so many people hold these views, since they were what we were taught in Sunday schools and Bible schools and often (unfortunately) from the pulpit itself. It often shocks people when they learn that these views are not biblical and not part of official Christian doctrine.

I was reminded of these positions this past weekend when I was preparing for Sunday school and previewed a video segment that, in a discussion of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, included a discussion comparing and contrasting how Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and the writer of the book of James all said about the relationship between faith and works.

To sum up the argument (at the risk of being sued for libel for over-simplifying it), the folks in the video all agreed that there was a basic consensus that faith and works go hand-in-hand. You simply can’t have one without the other. Most of the confusion and debate (though clearly not all of it) about whether Jesus, Paul, and James agree or disagree comes down to semantics: what Jesus and James call “works,” Paul prefers to describe as “fruit of the spirit.”

But in the midst of the discussion, one of the participants (Amy Jill Levine, a professor at Vanderbilt University) pointed out that the numerous debates between Jesus and the Jewish authorities of the time were not over whether one should fulfill “the Law.” Both sides (including Jesus) took that aspect for granted. The issue was how one goes about fulfilling the law. So, for example, with regard to the commandment, “Honor the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” no one (Jesus included) denies that everyone should obey the law. The debate enters in when you have to spell out what acts violate and what acts fulfill that law, which is where the difference of opinion arises. For example, Jesus’ penchant for healing the sick regardless of whether it was on the Sabbath or not, was in his mind neither a repudiation of the commandment nor a violation of it. Instead, it was a repudiation of the establishment’s interpretation of what it meant to “keep the Sabbath holy.” The establishment, as the narratives make clear, begged to differ. They (especially the Pharisees) had developed a huge set of rules about what a person could or could not do on the Sabbath, many of which Jesus clearly rejected. In his opinion, imposing all those rules had turned the Sabbath into a burden, which it clearly was not intended to be. “The Sabbath was given for us,” Jesus said.

I think we can see here how our imagination plays such a basic role. If we conceive of God primarily as a “rule giver,” basically (as I once read) a “motorcycle cop in the sky, sitting behind a cloud and just waiting to zoom out and pull us over if we slip up,” our attitude toward “the Law” is going to be that “we had better obey these rules or will we ever be in trouble.” But if we perceive God primarily as loving, freeing, and wanting to be in an on-going relationship with us, we will view “the Law” not as rigid rules for living but instead as a roadmap to how we can do that.

This post is already too long, but I hope to continue this theme in the next post.

I was reviewing a new textbook the other day for an introductory class in philosophy that I teach, and I read again about how Socrates believed that no one willingly chooses to do wrong. Such was his complete faith in the goodness of human nature that even when he strongly disagreed with a person (or even when someone physically attacked him), he remained charitable. In Socrates’ worldview, all human actions are motivated by the desire to produce beneficial results. If someone else interprets those actions or those desired results to be “evil” or wrong, it is only because that person does not share the same perspective. (Of course, things being what they are, Socrates would be the first to admit that many actions do not result in the beneficial results one intends, something we sometimes hear described as the “Law of unintended consequences.”)

I was reminded of the passage where someone addresses Jesus as “Good Teacher” (Mark 10:17), and Jesus rebukes him, saying, “No one is good but God alone.” A friend of mine once remarked that, in his view, this could be turned around to mean that no one is truly evil either.

I say this to introduce a topic that has troubled me a lot over the past few years: It’s not so much how we, as a nation, were so easily lured into supporting a war under such false pretenses. Granted, we could fall back on the old saying by Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time,” etc. What I really struggle to understand is how people whom I admire and respect, people who I know are dedicated Christians and deeply spiritual, continue to support not only the war itself but also the policies that our government adopted in dealing with suspected terrorists in detention. By that I mean suspension of habeas corpus, secret prison camps, and torture; in short, a concerted plan that knowingly violates the guaranteed rights and freedoms that our country supposedly stands for. How can we defend a fight “for freedom” that in effect is waged by using the tactics that freedom categorically rejects? I’m reminded of that cliché heard during the Viet Nam war: “The only way to save the village is to destroy it.” Only now it seems to be, “The only way to protect our rights and freedom is to violate them.”

I listen to arguments in favor of torturing and mistreating prisoners being given by people who profess to be Christians, and I wonder, What part of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” don’t you get? Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t think that it’s my place to say that a person can’t believe this and still be a Christian. I have to be honest that some of my beliefs and actions wouldn’t stand up against that same sort of scrutiny. (Remember that verse about not judging others.)

In the case of Socrates, he was most often in conflict with the Sophists, a group of teachers who basically taught that the world rewards the strong, that might makes right, that success should be measured in worldly terms of power, wealth, and prestige. (Doesn’t that sound familiar?) Accordingly, as per the Sophists, the good or the harm of our actions must be measured in terms of worldly benefits. But Socrates rejected that viewpoint. For him the good or the harm were judged only in terms of how it affects one’s soul.

When looking at the debate for or against the previous government’s policy, I think it’s safe to say that for a large number of people, where they stand depends on where they see the benefits or the harm falling. I also think it’s safe to say that everyone wants a safer world to live in. Many of those who want to justify treating suspected terrorists “harshly” do so because they see it as an effective means of gaining information, preventing attacks, and perhaps destroying terrorist networks. Speaking for myself (although I question the accuracy of some of those assumptions), my opposition to torturing and mistreating others grows mostly from the belief that any benefits (and I doubt seriously that there are any) are far outweighed by the harm done to the very soul of our nation and ourselves.

July 5, 2009

“Imagine there’s no heaven.” John Lennon, ex-Beatle and iconoclast extraordinaire, penned those words almost forty years ago. It’s a shocking statement (no doubt intentionally so), which led to the song being banned from some radio stations.

Now Lennon probably believed that there was no heaven. But that’s not what really strikes me about these lines. You can believe in heaven (or hell) or not. What strikes me is the implication that Lennon imagined a world absent any threat of punishment or promise of reward that nonetheless is at total peace. It’s a world where people do what is right for the sake of doing what is right, not because they’re forced to or because they are trying to gain an eternal reward. And by implication, the world as we currently experience it is one in which religion, even though it claims to be for peace, somehow ends up standing for its opposite.

Now I’m not arguing that Lennon is absolutely correct: I don’t believe for a moment that religious beliefs inevitably lead to dissension rather that peace. But you have to admit that there is often a grain of truth to what he described.

Christians are called to be witnesses to God’s mercy and grace and God’s vision. Unfortunately, too often people go beyond being witnesses and allow their religious beliefs to motivate them to conflict, whether passing judgment on others as unworthy of God’s love or forcing others to conform to one’s own view of the world. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with expressing your views and organizing to have a positive effect on society.

How do we know where to draw the line? We have been given a vision of the world as it should be, not as it is. I was reading somewhere recently that Jesus never tried to establish God’s kingdom as a political entity in the world. He was content to show through his words and his deeds what the full impact of the spiritual life can be, what God’s kingdom on earth could be like. But he never forced anyone to obey; he only invited them to come along.

Read Isaiah 65:17-25. We are not called to imagine that there is no Heaven. We are called to imagine that there is one, right here, right now, and to live as if that Heaven is a reality.