Shabbat Shalom!--Elul 14

Shabbat shalom!

Don’t Condemn, Forgive —Elul 13

The Days of Awe focus on teshuvah, turning, repentance and forgiveness, for our sins and for the sins of others against us.

One of the stories of Jesus that I always loved as a child was the story of the woman taken into adultery. I didn’t know what adultery was. I just knew that it was something so bad people could kill you for doing it, and that Jesus responded to it in a wholly different way.

Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.
2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.
3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more. John 8: 1-11

Let’s put John’s polemics against the Jews (the “Pharisees,” whom he sees a law-bound and devoid of all forgiveness, which is not at all an historically accurate view of the movement of the Pharisees) aside for a moment and return to it later.

What does this story mean? And the related teaching of Jesus, “Judge not lest ye be not judged”? (Matthew 7:1)

We are so ready to pass judgment because we are so sure we are right, because we see so clearly from within the confines of our limited perspective. It all looks so clear to us because we are looking at one small corner or section of the painting, not at the whole composition in all its glorious beauty. We confuse the part we see with the whole, not understanding that what may look one way in a small section is actually something totally different when seen as part of the whole. Our judgment may be and probably is a spiritual optical illusion. So better not to judge. And instead open our hearts to see wider and wider, that we might understand more and forgive more.

When others judge our full and rich lives from their limited external perspectives, we cry, “Foul!” We protest, “They don’t understand, they don’t see the big picture, they don’t see where we have come from or where we are in our life’s journey, or we are or where we are going.” Hillel teaches: “That which is hateful to you do not do to others.” Or in Jesus’ version of the teaching in the Hebrew scriptures: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Don’t judge others from your limited perspective. Don’t condemn them from within your limited awareness of the justice and mercy of the One. Instead, open your heart to a larger justice, a larger mercy, a larger humility that acknowledges how limited our perception is.

This does not mean we should not fight to bring about justice in the world for our sisters and brothers wherever they may be. But we can do this without condemning persons. For what do we know of that justice? When we speak of condemnation and judgment, Hazrat Inayat Khan suggests we remember this: “There is only one thing that is truly just ,and that is to say, ‘I must not do this.’” (The Art of Being and Becoming, p. 208) Instead of condemning an action by another, use their action to confirm in your own heart the strength of will not to commit that act yourself. That is more powerful and will bring about greater change than any condemnation ever could.

So what about John and those Pharisees? Why does he find it necessary to condemn them, to judge them wrong to make himself and the fledgling Christian communities right? Because in his day the Jewish and Christian communities were so close, so entangled, that he could not step back far enough to see them both in a wider perspective—two spiritual traditions, one ancient, one just beginning, that came into being to help people follow the path of righteousness and mercy and glorify the One.

So when I read those portions of the Christian scriptures that are part of the anti-Jewish polemic, I try not to explain them away or merely condemn them. I try to say, I must not condemn another religious or spiritual tradition to reinforce my own.

By Their Fruits You Will Know Them, Sign 3—Elul 12

This is the final sign Edwards brings forward as a way to discern if we are holy or not. In essence he is echoing the New Testament, “By your fruits ye shall know them.” It reminds me of a famous article that S. Y. Agnon wrote, “Halakah and Aggadah,” in which he insists that both halakah, law, and aggadah, narrative, are essential, for to flower is never the goal; one must bear fruit in one’s life.

Here are some excerpts from the wise Edwards on why it is important to look at one’s actions when one is reflecting on one’s holiness (all emphases in original):

“What makes men partial in religion is, is that they seek themselves, and not God, in their religion, and close with religion, not for its own excellent nature, but only to serve a turn. He that closes with a religion only to serve a turn, will close with no more of it than he imagines serves that turn: but he that closes with religion for its own excellent and lovely nature, closes with all that has that natures: he that embraces religion for its own sake, embraces the whole of religion.”

“True grace is not an inactive thing; there is nothing in heaven or earth of a more active nature; for it is life itself, the most active kind, even spiritual and divine life. It si no barren thing; there is nothing in the universe that in its nature has a greater tendency to fruit. Godliness in the heart has as direct a relation to practice as a fountain has to a stream, or as the luminous nature of the sun has to beams sent forth, or as life has to breathing, or the beating of the pulse, or any other vital act; or as a habit or principle of action has to action : for it is the very nature and notion of grace, that it is a principle of holy action or practice: for it is the very end of it, th a viewi to which the whole work is wrought.“

“Passing affections easily produce words; and words are cheap; and godliness is more easily feigned in words than in actions. Christian practice is a costly, laborious thing. The self-denial that is required of Christians, the narrowness of the way that leads to life, does not consist in words, but in practice. Hypocrites may much more easily be brought to talk like saints than to act like saints.

“Thus it is plain, that Christian practice is the best sign or manifestation of the true godliness of a professing Christian, to the eye of his neighbors.”

After insisting that even this sign is a sign that we show to or see in others, he goes on to say that we must take care in using this sign to discern because there are many varieties of practice and things that are external are limited and cannot be known with certainty; hence they cannot be judged or condemned.

”[N}o external appearances whatsoever , that are visible to the world, are infallible evidenes of grace. The manifestations that have nee mentioned are the best that mankind can have; and they are such as oblige Christians entirely to embrace professors [of Christian religious experiences]as saints, to love and rejoice in them a s the children of God... But nothing that appears to them in their neighbor, can be sufficient to beget an absolute certainty governing the state of his soul. They see not his heart nor can they see all his external behavior for much of it is in secret and hid from the eye of the world: and it I s impossible certainly to determine, how far a man may go in many external appearances and imitations of grace, from other principles.“

So what does Edwards conclude? Since you can’t know about your neighbors actions and what they say about the state of his or her holiness or relationship with God, don’t worry about your neighbor; worry about your self. What is your heart? What is your practice? What are your fruits?

His reason for tending to your own actions and not those of your neighbor is instructive: the goal is for all to let their light shine in their practice “before men, that others seeing their good works, would glorify their Father which is in heaven!” This is the last sentence of Treatise on Religious Affections.
So what can we learn from these three signs in Edwards’s response to the religious awakening in his day?
Instead of condemning others verbally or attacking them violently, physically and otherwise, for not feeling, thinking, or acting as we believe they should, we should look at our own lives and ask these questions with Edwards:
1. Does my life reflect genuine humility?
2. Is my heart a heart hardened by judgment into stone or a heart softened by the love of God into tenderness, a heart of flesh?
3. Do my actions blot out or desecrate the name of God or shine a light in the world that illumines the glory of the One?
If we would just take a moment to ask ourselves these questions before we leap to righteous indignation, judgment, and condemnation of others, the world would be a far, far different place.

Thank you, Jonathon Edwards.

By Their Fruits You Will Know Them, Sign 2—Elul 11

Here’s another sign that Jonathon offers in his Treatise on Religious Affections that may help us put aside condemnation.

2. “Gracious affections soften the heart, and are attended with a Christian tenderness of spirit… [Gracious affections] turn a heart of stone more and more into a heart of flesh.” (IX)

In interpreting this sign he counsels that one must banish “servile fear,” the fear of punishment for wrongdoing, and let it be transformed into “reverential fear,” the awe and love of God for God’s own sake, not for sake of fear of punishment for sin or hope of reward for right doing. As Edwards explains, the person who lives for the sake of God is not afraid of evil, in himself or others, for he trusts in God.
When one trusts in God, one lives in and for God, and is not selfishly concerned for one’s own salvation or morbidly concerned with controlling the beliefs, affections, practices, and salvation of others. This reminds me of the ninth-century mystic Rabi’a, who prayed God to chastise her if she lived out of fear of hell or hope or paradise and not out of love for God alone.

We’ll look at a third sign from Edwards tomorrow.

By Their Fruits You Will Know Them—Elul 10

Hatred and condemnation, even of one’s own people, is an equal opportunity disease.

Anti-women violence by Haredi Jews: In the past years, chairs have been thrown at Jewish women praying in the women’s section of the wall in Jerusalem (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrvxaT6QIw0), screams of rage and insults have been hurled at the women, as I myself experienced in the fall of 2011, and fecal matter has been poured on Torah scrolls carried by women (http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/119/wailing-at-the-wall). (Read about Women of the Wall http://womenofthewall.org.il/.)

Anti-abortion and anti-women violence by Christians: On May 31, 2009 Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed by Scott Roeder as Tiller served as an usher at church in Wichita, Kansas; recently in the Roman Catholic church, the pope and the bishops have been trying to muzzle and chain the women religious because they do not parrot the “church’s” teaching as they go about their works of compassion.

Anti-Sufi-inspired Islam by Moslems: Recently in Mali, Al Qaeda and Al-Qaeda in the Magrebh and other Moslem fundamentalists transplanted from other countries have physically attacked Moslems in Mali who follow a gentler path of Islam, forcing over 90,000 people over the border into refugee camps in Mauritania, to escape violence at the hands of their own people. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/world/africa/fear-stalks-malis-refugees-despite-escape-to-mauritania.html)

I write this not to condemn the condemners, but to reflect on what makes a person pious—pious Jew, pious Christian, pious Moslem—and to consider what repentance and forgiveness mean in our world today, especially during these Days of Awe.

In what may seem to many to be a great irony, I take as my guide Jonathan Edwards, the Calvinist whom people love to condemn for his fire and brimstone sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

Jonathon Edwards lived during the time of the Great Awakening, the great mystical revival in New England, and he himself was a mystic. In a time of so much religious fervor and division, with so many people claiming to have had religious experiences and to have become “true” Christians, superior to others who had not had their same experience, and condemning those who had not had them, he wrestled with the question of how one can know with certainty whether one’s neighbor’s or ones’ own religious experience was holy. The result is one of the finest treatises ever written, Treatise on Religious Affections (The Works of Jonathon Edwards. Volume 1. Banner of Truth, 1974, pp. 234-364.), in which he argues the following.

There is no guarantee that a person is saved, is holy, is chosen, is spiritual because of what visions or spiritual experiences they have had, or because of what beliefs or doctrines they hold. If this is the case, then what are the signs by which we can distinguish what are true and what may be false religious affections?

Edwards mentions many signs. Here are three that seem to speak to our situation today.

1. “Gracious affections are attended with evangelical humility” … [or] “holy humility.” (VI)

“And this may be laid down as an infallible thing, That the person who is apt to think that he, as compared with others, is a very eminent saint, much distinguished in christian experience, in whom this is a first thought, that rises of itself, and naturally offers itself; he is certainly mistaken; he is no eminent saint; but under the great prevailing of a proud and self-righteous spirit. And if this be habitual with the man, and is statedly the prevailing temper of his mind, he is no saint at all; he has not the least degree of any true christian experience; so surely as the word of God is true.”

This is a daring, radical conclusion: To believe oneself above others, and so certain in own’s superiority and the rightness of one’s judgment that one can condemn others and compel them to believe or feel or behave as one does is a sign that one is not as pious as one imagines.

This sign is well worth considering today in our stormy atmosphere or religion between, among, and within religious traditions: to judge another as unworthy is not to act in humility. In almost every religion, ancient and contemporary, true humility is a mark of communion with God or the sacred.

Tomorrow we’ll look at another sign Edwards mentions.

The Fourth C: Don’t Condemn —Elul 9

Don’t complain. Don’t criticize. Don’t compare. We’ve reflected on these three. What about that last one, Don’t condemn?

Condemnation, too, comes all too easily to us, especially if you grow up in a household of condemnation and blame. Someone is unhappy? There must be something wrong and there must be someone to blame for that wrong causing the unhappiness, that sense of not-rightness. Once blame is assigned, a sense of “rightness,” “all’s well with our world” is restored.

The process here is similar to that when people criticize others. They feel insecure in their lives, their possessions, their choices, their being, so they put others down to give themselves a sense of security that comes from a feeling of superiority: My life, my possession, my choice, my being is better than theirs. When people condemn or judge or blame others, they often do so out of insecurity and a fear of their own unworthiness or fear of being condemned as wrong themselves. By condemning others they shift their insecurity and fear into the false certainty of superiority in their goodness: That one is not holding fast to the right order of things, not playing by the rules, not living or thinking or believing right, but I am!

An example: I’ve often been struck by how quickly people leap to blame the victim, myself included. Once, a student of mine reported she had been attacked on a summer day by a man running toward her on a jogging path, wearing a ski mask. When she ran past them, they turned and attacked her with a knife. My first response was horror and sympathy mixed with this thought: She should have known that a man wearing a ski mask in the summer was up to no good. Within seconds I realized my error born of my fear. Hearing her story made me aware of how vulnerable I was as a woman, every day, doing everyday things. To push aside this fear, I blamed her for the attack, which is to say, I constructed a world in which I would never be attacked in this way; for I would never have but myself in that position; I would have known right away this man was trouble and run.

I was reminded of this recently when I read my neighborhood blog. A man tried to rob another man of his iPad in broad daylight at a bus stop, the man gave chase, and the would-be robber beat him, but never got the iPad. People were quick to weigh in with their opinions on what the man should have or could have done to avoid this. What was he doing reading his iPad in public? many asked. Blaming the victim. Why? Because they are afraid this will happen to them when they are waiting for the bus on walking down the street. They want to reassure themselves that it won’t, so they tell themselves this story: that man was attacked because he was waving his iPad around in the face of a bull, but I would never do that, therefore I won’t be attacked, therefore I am safe in my neighborhood. This is similar to the way we used to (and still do, unfortunately) blame women who were raped on the street or date-raped: she was wearing provocative clothing, but I dress modestly; she gave her date confusing signals or she was drunk, but I’m always clear about what I want and I don’t drink.

We do this with people who are poor or homeless also. (By the way, William Ryan’s study of poverty in America, Blaming the Victim, is still a good read.) Blaming the victim is the story we tell ourselves to give ourselves the illusion of security and safety in what is a very uncertain world. I, I, I, we say, I am not her, I am not him, I am different, I am wiser, more savvy, more street smart, more aware, thinking that this incantation will protect us from all harm.

Before we blame or condemn, we should ask ourselves, Why am I telling myself this story? What do I fear so much that I am willing to throw away my understanding of and compassion for another and cast blame on them? Where does our true safety lie?

Another challenge—Don’t complain, Give Thanks—Elul 8

We complain even more readily than we compare and criticize, it seems. Go to the grocery store or anywhere in public and someone will complain about the weather. Too cold, too hot, too humid, too dry. Too too. The only time people say “What a beautiful day” is when the weather is perfect. Anything less than perfect we feel free to complain about and justified in doing so.

We complain about our bodies. We have a little cold. We’re just getting over a cold. We think we might be getting a cold. If our health isn’t perfect we complain.

As if we are owed perfection. As if we know what perfection is.

Maybe it’s harmless, all this friendly complaining, a way to connect with strangers and others. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s a mindless habit that blocks our recognition of how much beauty and vitality we are surrounded by and given and depend on every moment of every day. What if we made a habit of recognizing the good instead of complaining about what is less than perfect?

And for many of us, certainly not all, what do we have to complain about? Often, when I feel irritated or disappointed, these words of St. Paul come to mind: “I have learned in whatever state I am to be content.” Paul, once Saul of Tarsus, whatever you may think of him, a great Christian or a faithless Jew, was imprisoned for his politically dangerous religious views.It was because he was a mystic, a person with radical trust in, absolute dependence upon the One, that he was able to reach this place of acceptance and to say these words in witness of that, “I have learned in whatever state I am to be content.”

Neither did Bahá'u'lláh, another mystic, the founder of the Bahá'í community, complain when he was imprisoned, first by the Persians in the Black Pit, and later by the Ottoman Empire for 24 years, for his politically dangerous religious views. He, too, trusted in the One, in whatever state he was. He taught a similar, equally difficult and deep truth: ”Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity.”

That’s what trust will do, to enable one to say, no matter where one is, “I have learned in whatever state I am to be content” and to give thanks in adversity.