It Really is Your Choice
13 Feb 2011 3 Comments
in Bible Essays, Corinthians, Divorce, Ecclesiasticus, Genesis, God, Holy Spirit, Marriage, Matthew Tags: bible essays, God, good and evil, Jesus, morality, right and wrong
I’m not a good poker player.
Technically I’m a great poker player. I can compute odds with ease in my head, and I never lost a penny playing poker in the long run. But I suck, because I am emotionally unfit for the game.
Translation: I get very mad when other people play stupidly.
I’ve asked God to help me stop this behavior. Lots of people ask God for help. And they tend to use the phrase, “I cannot do it without your help Lord, but only your help will give me the strength.” Or words to that effect.
Well, suddenly when I was saying those words, it came to me: (God spoke to me as I see it), “NO! You have all you need to stop your anger. I AM you. I am here to love you no matter what. I witness your failures. But YOU choose how to behave.”
Well, you can say what you will about my “encounter” of course. But it seems to me that in reading the Mass for today, I maybe got the message correctly.
Ecclesiasticus 15:16-21 2Corinthians 2:6-10 Matthew 5:17-37Ben Sira states:
“If you wish, you can keep the commandments, to behave faithfully is within your power.” (emphasis mine)
Paul states:
(The hidden wisdom of God) “. . .are the things that God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit reaches the depths of everything, even the depths of God.”
And Jesus says in Matthew:
“For I tell you, if your virtue goes no deeper than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.”
What is being said here?
Ecclesiasticus seems most straightforward. Remember the words of Genesis:
God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. (Gen 1: 27)Now, I have never taken this to mean that we are like God in a physical sense. Rather, being sentient, I believe it means that our minds work as God’s does. B follows A, and 2+ 2 = 4. While we have limits to the capacity of our minds, we see the universe as God sees it. Thus we can communicate.
Thus to me, having the power, means I have all the requisite mind to discern good and evil. I don’t need any collection of writings (however much they aid me from not having to duplicate work) for within myself, I know right from wrong.
Further along in the reading from Ecclesiasticus Ben Sira continues:
He has set fire and water before you; put out your hand to whichever you prefer. Man has life and death before him; whichever a man likes better will be given him.
Indeed, choose the fire if you wish, but don’t blame God if you get burned.
Paul of course, is explaining that the Spirit of God naturally guides us to the depths of God meaning I believe that we can easily discern what God wants from us: to do good. We need no special education or teaching from wise men and women. This is never to say that such things are not useful, in making our tasks easier, but they are not necessary to our being good people. Being good is natural to sentient beings created in the image (mind) of their Creator.
What to make of all the wise sayings of Jesus in Matthew? Well, some churches, mine included, seem to think that these are special “rules of the road.” Thus Catholics are “supposedly” forbidden divorce, since Jesus, taken literally does seem to say that. Some take the “taking of oaths” quite literally.
But I don’t think this laundry list of dos and don’ts is what Jesus had in mind.
Recall the quoted part: if your virtue goes no deeper than that of the scribes. . .
What were they noted for?
Specifically they were noted for studying the laws of Torah so minutely that they had created a million little laws, nitpicking the teachings to death. This and that were clean, unclean, not to be done on this day or that.
Jesus here is saying is that if you do that, you are missing the real virtue of the law, the real depth of meaning. Jesus illustrates with some of those deeper meanings, not as “new” laws, but meaning that you will discern right and wrong, truth and falsity if you look within at the point of the commandments. What is God asking of us?
Jesus completes the Law by bringing the message of love and compassion and caring for each other. Remember he taught that our first commandment was to love God, and then to love our neighbors. All the law is summed up in these two things. As one rabbi said, all else in the Torah is commentary.
To those who feel that there is no moral compass without a inerrant book to guide you, I can only say, then you have missed the point of the book. For plenty of the writers alluded to the fact that it is “written in our hearts.”
Blessings. AMEN.
The Feast of the Holy Family
26 Dec 2010 2 Comments
in Bible Essays, Christmas, Colossians, Ecclesiasticus, Matthew, Seasons Tags: bible, bible essays, Christmas, Colossians, Ecclesiasticus, Holy Family, Matthew
Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family:
Matthew tells the story of how Joseph in a dream is told to take the child Jesus and make haste for Egypt to protect him from Herod who has designs to kill the child. After Herod’s death, Joseph is informed again in a dream to return home. He does so but finds that Herod’s son, Archelaus, is now ruler so he journeys not home but to the neighboring region of Galilee, in Nazareth.
We learn that Joseph is the epitome of fatherhood, taking his son and wife to new lands to protect them and then being cautious upon return, keeping a “low profile” in a small backwater town, called Nazareth (can anything good come of Nazareth? indeed!).
Most of us can relate, knowing that our parents too would have done whatever was necessary to protect us and keep us safe.
The other readings are more problematical.
In Ecclesiasticus, we are told that the offspring should honor father and mother, indeed our sins are forgiven as we do so. We will have a long life if we respect and serve our parents. Even if they suffer from a failing mind, we are to be sympathetic and kind.
These are fine words of course. The readings leave out the end of this chapter which accords one who does not honor parents as no better than a blasphemer and one who will be accursed. These are harsh and punishing.
Yet what of those who have suffered at the hands of parents. Many people have not been given the benefit of parents. Many have been raised with only one, and that one hard pressed to do an adequate job when circumstances may require multiple jobs just to keep the family afloat. Many have never had contact with the absent parent, and may not even know who they are.
Of equal trauma, if not worse are those who have suffered at the hands of physically abusive parents. Whether sexual or not, deep scars psychological and otherwise take a lifetime to heal. And though not given as much press, those who have been psychologically abused by verbal and more insidious mind games, also suffer life-long wounds.
What of these? So many of us are the product of dysfunctional families. When you expand to grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, the opportunity for abusive treatment are magnified. Are those who are victims of such families to simply forgive, forget, and honor?
They would find it hard to do so, and plenty of experts say that asking is unfair. Victims need to confront the hard facts of their torturers and need to confront them and make them face themselves. So the experts say. Where do these victims find solace? How can they read these admonitions to “be respectful” and be anything more than even more hurt and discouraged?
I think the pathway can be found by enlarging the concept of “parent.” All of us parent when we interact with another human. We pattern behavior, we offer advice, we commiserate, we empathize. All these are human responses of the same nature as traditional parenting.
This idea becomes more apparent when we look at Paul’s (or pseudo Paul) advice to the Colossian community. Paul tells us to “clothe ourselves in compassion, kindness, humility and gentleness and patience.” We are to “forgive when a quarrel begins”. Over all this we are to drape a cloak of “love.” We are to be at peace. Teach each other, advise each other.
All this Paul exhorts us to do as a community of believers. As parents, if you will, to each other.
While we may not find purchase in our own immediate families with which to relate, we can look to our broader “family of humanity” and realize these same attributes. We can honor and respect our fellow humans. We can care for others in their infirmities and failing minds. We can be gentle and kind to their errors.
We can protect our greater family against the errors and dangers they are pursuing by speaking truth with compassion; we can admonish with love, knowing that we too are prone to err ourselves.
Paul in the end reminds parents, “never drive your children to resentment” for that will “frustrate” them, inhibiting their ability to honor and respect, as they are called to do.
Many in this world live alone. This was not the norm in the times when the writer of Ecclesiasticus, or Colossians wrote. In fact, it was highly abnormal. Large family units of parents, grandparents, sometimes children with spouses and young children inhabited the same household.
Yet, we can all respond to the words by seeing ourselves rightly in the family of humanity. No one is alone, we are all interconnected, and the Trinity, though deeply mysterious, at least seems to suggest that God expects for us to live in community, as God does. As Emmanuel (God with us) did and still does.
Amen.
