Bono – “My God isn’t short o’ cash, Mister!”

Jethro Tull – “The God I know doesn’t need to be wound up on Sunday”

I always wonder how many Christians this world would have without Christianity’s doctrine of resurrection. Wingnuttia’s obsession with the Rapture seems to point up how critical the whole concept of reward is for so many of them. Jesus’s beautiful ethics aren’t enough on their own apparently. And of course if the Rapturists recognized anything at all about Jesus, they’d recognize him as the premiere bleeding heart liberal.

He’s also reputed to have said, “By their fruits you shall know them,” which to my mind is particularly sage counsel for these dark times. Also, words that sometimes help me with my insomnia: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

I find much of my guidance in literature, and in recent years have become particularly intrigued by the ancient Greeks, mostly the poets and playwrights. Over and over, they revisit the theme of justice — how does one judge wisely? how does a city protect justice? what’s the relationship between justice, security, abundance?

They were writing in the Bronze Age, circa 800 – 500 BC, in roughly the same period as some of the Old Testament books. One of the key themes throughout Greek literature (and Biblical literature) is the notion of “justice” — what is it? What is ‘wise justice’? How is life more abundant when one lives in a ‘just’ world?

It’s my understanding that the Greek word for ‘justice’ is related to the word for ‘path’. The Greek form is “dike”. That word turns up in the 23rd Psalm:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;
He makes me lie beside still waters, he restores my soul;
He leads me in the paths [’dike’] of ‘righteousness’;
For his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;
for thou art with me; they rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”

There are decisions/paths that lead to disaster. And there are decisions/paths that are more likely to lead to abundance. They don’t guarantee it, but the odds are better if you don’t cross over into bad territory. Given an economy based on goats, sheep, figs, and olives, not a bad message for a mostly-illiterate populace.

This resonates for me, as someone who grew up in the West; in spring, my father would drive my siblings and I out to watch the lambing in canyons near our town. (”This House of Sky” by Ivan Doig best captures this sense of the American West. I mention this simply to point out that for some Americans, the Biblical imagery is still evocative; our personal histories included pastoral landscapes. To see a newborn lamb romping is to understand how vulnerable they are — if coyotes come and there is no shepherd, or watchdog, to keep the lambs and sheep safe. A lamb is utterly helpless; the iconography of the shepherd is very powerful. The association among illiterate people between ‘good shepherd’ and ‘king’ makes a great deal of sense psychologically.)
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Around time that the 23rd Psalm was being written in the Near East, across the Mediterranean to the west a ‘rhapsode’ (or ’singer’) named Hesiod also invoked the imagery of sheep. His “Works & Days” is greatly concerned with ‘justice’, or ‘right paths’ (”dike”).

“Men whose justice {”dike”] is straight know neither hunger nor ruin, but amid feasts enjoy the yield of their labors.
From them the earth brings forth a rich harvest, and for them the top of an oak teems with acorns and the middle with bees.
Fleecy sheep are weighed down with wool, and women bear children who resemble their fathers.
There is an abundance of blessings and the grainland grants such harvests that no one has to sail on the sea.
But far-seeing Zeus, son of Kronos, is the judge of wanton wrongdoers who plot deeds of harshness.
Many times one man’s wickedness ruins a whole city, if such a man breaks the law and turns his mind to recklessnses.”

One interpretation of this: “when people create laws that are reasonable, and implement them reasonably, then women aren’t raped (therefore, their children resemble their husbands), and the people are safe enough to farm their lands (therefore, there is no famine driving them to piracy along the seas).”

The poets view justice as necessary — and bad deeds need to be addressed. But kings have particular responsibility for acting ‘justly.’ Because they lived in simpler times, I think they distill a lot of life’s wisdom into their tales of sheep, bees, and pathways.

I lived several years in a place where transgressors were shunned; the village literally put them on a plane and they were not allowed back into the community. To transgress in certain ways means that one loses the protection of the community. The community decides — and once they decide, the die is cast. To be exiled is to be vulnerable in the world.

Although this may not seem ‘religious’ per se, it certainly drives me. Ancient history has repeated examples of ‘bad kings’ who dealt out ‘crooked justice’ — which led directly to the weakening and destruction of their cities and societies.

There is something about the human spirit that craves justice; this need is expressed repeatedly in religious terms. I simply don’t believe that the megachurches have as much to teach me about the importance of justice as Hesiod does.

I am not ‘religious’ per se, but I believe that to live fully requires some participation in the larger community. The notion that all you have to do is ‘look out for #1′ is foolish. To participate in that larger community means that you don’t turn a blind eye on evil things done in your name. The human spirit craves justice.

For me, it’s not about dieties; it’s about figuring out how to live wisely. And helping in measured, quiet, steady ways to restore justice in a world dangerously out of whack.

1. not having humility (and thusly believing that one [and consequently one’s religion or philosophy] is RIGHT and anyone else is WRONG).

2. being too willing to do violence, and there are so many ways to do violence.

i don’t know about other religions but i do know that both Christianity and Islam are GUILTY in these two instances. this is not to say that every Muslim or every Christian is, thusly, guilty but there are factions within both religions that are.

that said, any objective observer must admit that religions have, most of them, made very positive contributions to ethical and moral good. whether you are an atheist, an agnostic or mugwamp the good values that you have internalized may well have been nurtured by religion.

on the practical side, we at FDL would do well to not castigate religion, especially with a broad brush. we need people of all stripes in our tent.

These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, ‘How much is that?’ Oh, I’m just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? “Nowhere.”
What did you have to eat? “Nothing much.”

Even if you don’t know what you want,
buy “something,” to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

For many of us, religion is not a comfort. It brings pain as it has so many millions of people around the planet for many centuries. Millions have suffered and died for religion, for someone else’s interpretation of goodness and God(s). Religion has been loaded with guilt-trips to force unnatural conformity, misused by governments to demand obedience. I can respect the sentiments of the atheist and the agnostic as well as the adherent because religion has been both good and bad for humans.

But spirit is something that we share, whether we subscribe to a particular religion or not. It is the animus that drives us all, that archetypal power which encourages eight universal ethics by which all peoples seek to live, no matter what culture, ethnicity or even religion. It is in search of this positive, constructive universal energy that I hope all of us are united.

Camus’s hypothesis is that once we decide we are not going to commit suicide, we recognize that we have to be responsible for the world. I wish I could find a couple of his sentences to say this, but it is too late. Being a human being, an adult, means acting responsibly.

As I write this, I realize how much it sounds like the Protestant Ethic. Hmmm.

19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12:21. The absolute HARDEST idea to impliment, and goodness knows, not many Christians have been successful. But those who actually believe and impliment 12:21 have made Christianity the most successful culture in the history of humanity.

What still glows for me, all these years later, is watching my father take $5 (and we wore well-patched underwear ourselves…there were no spare pennies in our house), to a woman with two small children who had been abandoned by her husband. It was one simple man, a struggling immigrant, offering help to another human being. And then there were travelers from Mexico, whose car broke down in our town. They stayed with us for a week. And the sponsored Cambodians who lived with us. And the Vietnamese family who my parents sponsored. There was the odd, mentally unhealthy man, gentle, but definitely with a different drummer who would quietly come to the door and join us for a meal or some of Mom’s homemade bread.

No dogma can ever match the simple loving actions to all human beings. I never heard a negative bit of gossip from my mother, ever, (I, who so love snark, admit that this is far beyond my ken).

My parents lived the Sermon on the Mount, through the cold of winters and the heat of Kansas summers. They were not perfect and never even thought of perfection. They were on a journey of following the teachings of their Lord, and their active, simple respect for every single human being was and still is luminescent.

At my dad’s funeral, a man in his 30’s showed up…I’d heard of him, but my dad had befriended him long after I had moved to the Northwest so I’d never met him. He was sobbing…he’d just driven all the way from Ohio to Kansas say goodbye to “the man who was like a father, the man who had taught him everything.” He wasn’t one of society’s favorite people…not much money, not skilled or witty, not good-looking. He felt my dad had seen him, the real him, and approved of him.

So, in so many ways, my parents were God’s conduits. My mother, who often doesn’t know me now, once said, “I don’t know you.” She hesitated, then smiled and said, “But I know that I love you.” Was there ever a daughter who had such a rich inheritance?