Don’t succumb to your fear of being powerful

Photo by Tomas Sobek

I usually don’t just write in this blog unless it is about a chapter from the bible. But an inspiring post I read today in an unrelated blog had a passage that resonated with me so strongly and reminded of things I have written in my e-book and on this blog so vividly, I had to bring the quote.

Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God; your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Elad

If you love someone, set them free

Photo by Polina Sergeeva

Like Genesis 12, Genesis 13 first seemed  to me a very technical description of an unimportant issue. Abram comes back from Egypt a very rich man and his nephew Lot, is also very rich. And then they run into a problem. They cannot live together any more as the earth cannot sustain both of them and their workers start fighting.  Seriously. This is what one of the most important religious books ever written deals with. Read:

And the land was not able to bear them, that they might dwell together: for their substance was great, so that they could not dwell together. And there was a strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelt then in the land.

Then, as always, I reminded myself, that it is not the story itself I am looking at, but the question if there is something more here that the story is trying to tell us. And I think that then I got it.

Think about it, two very successful men with a lot of property and many helpers live richly and happily. But then, suddenly, trouble appears. They start fighting over small things. Their tent dwellers start bickering over small issues and instead of enjoying each other’s company; they find themselves fighting all the time.

Sounds familiar? I think there are a number of situations that might come to your minds right now. Bigger and smaller. Personal or national. However, when I imagine that situation, the first thing that comes to my mind is two prideful people who cannot let go and of a conflict escalating to a point where no one even knows how it started. But it doesn’t. They find another way:

And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we are brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? separate thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right. Or if thou take the right hand, then I will go to the left.

Because sometimes when you love somebody, you have to set them free. And sometimes, when you love yourself, you have to set your pride free. Because sometime the best way is to compromise and find the best mutual solution. And I am intentionally not using the term “win-win” because I believe it implies a competition where there should not be one. In our over competitive life style, we sometime forget the power of a mutual compromise and fall prey to a fallacy of short-term wins.

I will walk to the right, you will walk to left. Will see each other during the holidays.

Isn’t that a world you sometimes want to live in?

Elad

Just say it!

Photo by Circo De Invierno

The second part of Genesis 12 is a story that baffled me for some time. Abram goes down to Egypt, and because he was afraid for his life, he tells his beautiful wife to say she is his sister. When Pharaoh takes her to his house-hold, God punishes him and then Pharaoh discovers she was his wife and is angry with Abram he tells him to go away. I read and heard several times that this is a representation of the costumes of that time and a representation of God’s attitude towards marriage. But, I was not convinced. If that was the case, there are better ways to show and explain this.

I was thinking about this story a lot. What was the point here? It seems like an irrelevant detour in Abram’s way to become the forefather of a great nation. However, the more I thought about it the more I realized there was a lot in this story.

Let me ask you this – how many times in your life did you go into a situation you were afraid of but it ended up being nothing at all? More importantly, how many times a small lie or just not revealing all the information you knew, ended up with terrible consequences?

I think it happens to us a lot. We all have these internal defense mechanisms that try to intimidate us. We all assume the worse about the other side and his reaction to the information we hold. But usually, not only our assumption about the other side’s reaction is wrong, holding the information is what really gets them going… because if you just spoke out loud, it could have been corrected or prevented.

How many times did you know something that you did not say because you were afraid of the consequences? Just like Abram fearing for his life, we are afraid of unknown consequences, make assumptions about what is going to happen and we hide facts or worse, lie about them. And many times, like in the case of Abram – the lie comes out eventually (don’t they always?) and then we discover that not only if we talked about it to begin with it would not have been so bad, but that the fact the we hid it has actually worse consequences than if we had originally revealed it.

I think this is the message of the second part of Genesis 12. It is better to just say it. Small actions today have big consequences tomorrow. Our assumptions about the other side reaction, is usually only in our heads.

Just say it.

Elad

Just say it!

The second part of Genesis 12 is a story that baffled me for some time. Abram goes down to Egypt, and because he was afraid for his life, he tells his beautiful wife to say she is his sister. When Pharaoh takes her to his house-hold, God punishes him and then Pharaoh discovers she was his wife and is angry with Abram he tells him to go away. I read and heard a number of times that this is a representation of the costumes of that time and a representation of God’s attitude toward marriage. But, I was not convinced. If that was the case, there are better ways to show and explain this.

I was thinking about this story a lot. What was the point here? It seems like an irrelevant detour in Abram’s way to be the forefather of a great nation. However, the more I thought about it the more I realized there was a lot in this story.

Let me ask you this – how many times in your life did you go into a situation you were afraid of but it ended up being nothing at all? More importantly, how many times a small lie or just not revealing all the information you knew, ended up with terrible consequences?

I think it happens to us a lot. We all have these internal defense mechanisms that try to intimidate us. We all assume the worse about the other side and his reaction to the information we hold. But usually, not only our assumption about the other side’s reaction is wrong, holding the information is what really gets them going… because if you just spoke out loud, it could have been corrected or prevented.

How many times did you know something that you did not say because you were afraid of the consequences? Just like Abram fearing for his life, we are afraid of unknown consequences, make assumptions about what is going to happen and we hide facts or worse, lie about them. And many times, like in the case of Abram – the lie comes out eventually (don’t they always?) and then we discover that not only if we talked about it to begin with it would not have been so bad, but that the fact the we hid it has actually worse consequences than if we had originally revealed it.

I think this is the message of the second part of Genesis 12. It is better to just say it. Small actions today have big consequences tomorrow. Our assumptions about the other side reaction, is usually only in our heads.

Just say it.

Elad

Truth, transparency, talking, communicating, Genesis 12, Genesis, Abram, resistance.

The little-big nudge

Photo by xJasonRogersx

In the end of Genesis 11 and the beginning of Genesis 12 we are introduced to one of the most interesting characters in the bible, one that has prominent importance not only in Judaism but also in Islam. Abraham (or at this stage Abram). In my e-book I write about the fact that it surprised me to find that it is not the famous stories in the bible that are not the most interesting or profound but the unknown stories just before or after the famous stories…

And I remembered that realization while I was reading the beginning of the story of Abram. With my limited knowledge of the bible I always thought that Abram was living with his father, Terah, in the land of Ur of the Chaldees and then God came to him to tell him to leave his family and go to the Promised Land, the land of Canaan.

However, when you read the end of Genesis 11 carefully, you see that Terah was the one who took his family to leave to Canaan for a reason we are unaware of:

And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there

So, the beginning of the journey of Abram to Canaan was not initiated by God, but by his father Terah. We also notice that the family did not finish the journey, but stooped in Haran. What happened that stopped this family from reaching their destination we don’t know. But here the interesting story can be found.

Doesn’t this happen to all of us? We set out to do something and get stopped along the way? Maybe it is our commitment to go to the gym, or to find another job, or to be a better person, or to visit someplace new. Then we come home and it is warm and nice and there is a TV and a good book, or the job is known and profitable and easy and going somewhere new means we will have to leave our comfortable soundings.

What we sometimes need to fulfill a really big (or a really small) goal or ambition, is a little nudge. A universal God or a small voice inside of us (or a good friend) to tell us it is time to leave and go after the promised land. Abram had God as his nudge. We are not all so lucky. Most of us will have to find or create that nudge ourselves.

What (or who) is your nudge to do great things?

Elad

The challenge of diversity

Photo by Pardeshi

Genesis 11 tells us the story of the Tower of Babylon. I wrote what I think this story means in my e-book:

The stories of the Bible try to teach us that lack of diversity can lead to disasters. One such is the story of the story of the Tower of Babylon. Everybody spoke the same language and did the same things and put the importance of the tower above the importance of people. And then God created differences. Because if we try to cancel the difference we create something that is not only boring to death (everybody is the same) but that is actually dangerous. We create Totalitarianism. Some say that even the most famous verse in the bible Leviticus 19:18, “Love your neighbor as yourself” is actually about how the importance of differences in life.

However, when I read it again, I think there is another twist to the same idea. This is a story about the difficulties of cooperation despite differences. When you think about it, why did the fact that people spoke different languages prevented them from completing the tower?

Differences are a fact of life. Diversity should be celebrated and we should remember that different does not necessarily mean wrong. But as human beings we have a challenge. We need to overcome these hurdles. We need to make sure that the fact that we speak different languages does not mean that we cannot cooperate and learn from each other and build great things.

When I say different languages I don’t necessarily mean English or Hebrew or Mandarin Chinese. Because you and I could seem to be speaking the same language in the regular sense of the word, but actually be speaking about totally different things due to different world perceptions.

In his new book, Linchpin, Seth Godin, writes:

If you accept that human beings are difficult to change, and embrace (rather than curse) the uniqueness that everyone brings to table, you’ll navigate the world with more bliss and effectiveness. And make better decisions, too.

Building something out of diversity is a challenge, but it has much better chances of succeeding than just staying in the confines of what we know and understand.

Elad

Do you have a rainbow in your life?

Photo by Cessna 206

In Genesis 9, God does something that struck me as a little strange. He promises Noah’s sons that he will never again flood the earth. Then he shows a rainbow in the clouds as a symbol of the covenant between Him and the Earth. All this makes sense, even if it is a little melodramatic. However, at this point, God says the following things:

And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

Why does God need to create a symbol as a reminder not to flood the earth once more? I don’t know. My guess is that is an attempt by the story to remind us of two important lessons about human behavior.

The first lesson is that we learn more from failure than from success. As Jonah Lehrer writes in How We Decide? Our brain uses mistakes as signposts to remind us how to make decisions in the future. Or as Paul Hebert nicely summrized it:

…If you’ve always been right, how can you make a good decision in a unique and different scenario?  You can’t.  Mistakes allow you to have an inventory of options to bounce around to help you narrow down choices and make better decisions in unfamiliar and unconventional situations.  Something we’re seeing more and more of in the business world today

The story is about what we can learn from failure and that we sometimes need to fail in order to learn and these failures should be celebrated. Is there a better way to celebrate a failure than a rainbow?

The second lesson is an that we should not make our decision under extreme condition. When we are angry or emotinal we act differently then in other circumstances. Chapter 5 of Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational,  is called The influence of arousal – why hot is much hotter than we realize. In short, it describes the effect that feelings and extreme emotions have on our decision making processes. It is like each and every one of us contains a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A rational, calculating persona and an emotional, less sophisticated side. And it happens to us all the time even if we are not aware of the effects. The lesson is that we sometimes need to set up, in advance, mechanisms that will allow us to wait and re-evaluate in order to make better decisions. The rainbow is just that, a visual reminder that will sway us from the Mr Hyde state to the Dr. Jekyll state. After all, if God needs it, who are we to do without it?

What is the equvilent of a rainbow if your life? You are welcome to leave a comment with examples…

Elad

A short vacation

Due to personal reasons (a trip to Singapore and India) there will be no more Secular Bible posts during the month of December.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already done it, I urge you to read my e-book: Humanism, Liberalism, Education and the Bible – The Ravings of a Secular Israeli Jew.

I will continue exploring the secular stories of the bible in 2010! See you then.

Elad

Starting over

Photo by SantaRosa OLD SKOOL

The first post I wrote about the story of Noah (Genesis 6) attracted an interesting comment by my good friend Noaa. This is what she wrote:

Should we demolish everything evil which stands in our way of correcting our mistakes? Is this how we should deal with failure? Can’t evil correct its ways? Doesn’t it deserve a chance? – to me it sounds like god chose the easy way out: a clean cut, instead of actually facing her failure and trying to correct it.

Noaa is right. Sometimes, starting over is the easy way out. Sometimes starting over means that you gave up. But sometimes it is not. There are times in life where we need to admit that we failed, and to start over instead of keep fighting it. Times when we need to go back to the drawing board (mental or actual).

There are different types of failures and there are different ways to deal with them. Keeping at it until you make it is one. And I am usually a supporter of the fail better approach. However, I truly believe that there are times when the solution is leaving the world, secluding yourself, immersing yourself in a flood, and trying again afresh.

I don’t think the bible tries to teach us that demolishing everything is the only choice in life. Later in the bible you encounter stories in which God considers this option again, and decides against it. Actually, in the preceding chapter, Genesis 8, straight after the flood, God promises himself, never again:

and Jehovah said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake, for that the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more everything living, as I have done.

I do not think that we should forgo giving second chances in all cases. People sometimes change and as I said, we should never lose hope. Nevertheless, there are times when the only solution is start over using a clean slate.

Elad

Big dreams

Photo by Jack Duval

God decided to start over. And he decided to put his trust in Noah.

Imagine it for a moment. Noah, who, according to the bible, was 600 years old at the time, is living his life haply as a righteous man doing righteous things. And then God comes to him and tells him to build an ark. Which would be surprising enough. But God did not just as for an ark. A asked him to bulid a very (very) big ark.

The length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits

For those of you who don’t know (I had to check it to be reminded), a cubit is approximately half a meter. So, the Ark was supposed to be 150 meters long, 25 meters wide and 10 meters high. A very big ark.

How was Noah supposed to feel about this task? Well, he was after all a righteous man, so he must have been happy doing the Lord’s work. However, there is one thing the bible does not tell us, and as every good story teller knows, you need to leave some things for the readers’ imagination.

As we remember, the reason for the building of the ark was that almost all the people of the world were evil. Now, 600 years old Noah starts building this huge ark, believing the world is going to end. How do you think the people around him acted? Did they come up to him and asked how they can help? Did they show appreciation for his dedication? Of course not! They probably mocked him. I can almost hear them laughing at him. We have all been there…

But Noah did it anyway. Not only because God told him to, but because some time in life, you just need to dream big, and ignore everybody. The world is not changed by cynics. It is also not changed by people who do only what other people think it reasonable and rationale. The easiest thing in the world is to say something is not possible.

The world is changed for the better by people who can dream big and defy conventional wisdoms. Who can do the impossible and who try to do the impossible not because everybody tells them they should and could, but in spite the fact that people tell them they should or could not.

A dream differs less from an act than most people think. All men’s acts were once dreams; all their acts will one day be a dream (Theodore Herzl, “Altneuland”, 1902).

Elad

 

Big dreams

God decided to start over. And he decided to put his trust in Noah.

Imagine it for a moment. Noah, who, according to the bible, was 600 years old at the time, is living his life haply as a righteous man doing righteous things. And then God comes to him and tells him to build an ark. Which would be surprising enough. But God did not just as for an ark. A asked him to bulid a very (very) big ark.

The length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits

For those of you who don’t know (I had to check it to be reminded), a cubit is approximately half a meter. So, the Ark was supposed to be 150 meters long, 25 meters wide and 10 meters high. A very big ark.

How was Noah supposed to feel about this task? Well, he was after all a righteous man, so he must have been happy doing the Lord’s work. However, there is one thing the bible does not tell us, and as every good story teller knows, you need to leave some things for the readers’ imagination.

As we remember, the reason for the building of the ark was that almost all the people of the world were evil. Now, 600 years old Noah starts building this huge ark, believing the world is going to end. How do you think the people around him acted? Did they come up to him and asked how they can help? Did they show appreciation for his dedication? Of course not! They probably mocked him. I can almost hear them laughing at him. We have all been there…

But Noah did it anyway. Not only because God told him to, but because some time in life, you just need to dream big, and ignore everybody. The world is not changed by cynics. It is also not changed by people who do only what other people think it reasonable and rationale. The easiest thing in the world is to say something is not possible.

The world is changed for the better by people who can dream big and defy conventional wisdoms. Who can do the impossible and who try to do the impossible not because everybody tells them they should and could, but in spite the fact that people tell them they should or could not.

A dream differs less from an act than most people think. All men’s acts were once dreams; all their acts will one day be a dream (Theodore Herzl, “Altneuland”, 1902).

Elad

Genesis 6, Dream, Noah, Big, Ignore everybody, Theodore Herzl, imagination, left out, story telling

There is always hope

Photo by Helico

Well, I read Genesis 5. All this begetting did not make much sense to me. While it is interesting to ask why this part is included in the bible at all, I am more interested in stories, so, I jumped to Genesis 6.

Genesis 6 is the beginning of the story of Noah’s Ark. But the story starts with a dark twist:

And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And Jehovah said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the ground; both man, and beast, and creeping things, and birds of the heavens; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of Jehovah. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, and perfect in his generations: Noah walked with God.

Don’t we all feel sometimes like men can only imagine evil continually? Every morning we open the newspaper and see all the horrible things that are happening around us. It is so easy to think that this is a true representation of the world. We are bombarded with bad news, with the extremes. It would not be a very interesting news reports if the news started with: “today, 5 billion people did nothing evil; most of them actually helped their friends”. Nevertheless, The fact that we only see and hear about bad things does not mean that only bad things are happening.

And what does that have to do with Noah’s story? Well, even God, who is not swayed by the new-age media and news reports, first assumed that everybody is evil. However, when he looked deeper, he found good. True, it was only one man I a world of evil, but it means that there is always hope. And that  the search for good is always worthwhile. If we look deep enough and continue to believe, we will find good in the world. We will find the people who are willing to help and sacrifice and change the world for the better.

It is easy to find (and to practice) evil. It is much harder to find (and practice good).

Elad