Stories We Tell

Hello, friends! This letter has been a while in coming. The topic is vitally important and as I've been thinking and reading about it over the past few weeks, I've been struck by how often it comes to bite us, often to disastrous consequences.

Last time, I introduced you to an extra-biblical text called Pirkei Avot, the Chapters of the Fathers, that I said would provide some context for understanding the conversation Jesus and the Disciples were part of. This week, we turn to the first saying of the Men of the Great Assembly: "Be patient in the administration of justice."

We do so with the help of Daniel Zion, a rabbi who had a personal encounter with Jesus. Zion was born in 1883 in the Salonica, Greece, a city known in the first century as Thessalonica. He became the rabbi for several synagogues in the city, always refusing to accept any salary. One day, he began praying that God would show him "the way of truth" and shortly thereafter, he heard God telling him to move to Bulgaria. A short time later, the chief rabbi of Salonica received a letter asking for a capable rabbi to send to Sophia, Bulgaria, and Daniel Zion was chosen. There, he encountered some Christians who were so faithful and sincere in their integrity that he decided to begin reading the New Testament. He began to hear someone speaking to him during his morning walks. Eventually the speaker identified himself as Jesus. Incredulous, Zion asked for a sign and saw a vision of the crucified Messiah filling the sky. Rabbi Daniel Zion eventually came to fully accept Yeshua, Jesus, as the Messiah, and it cost him dearly. After moving to Israel, he was put on trial for his "heretical beliefs" and lost his position in the synagogue. Nonetheless, he remained faithful to both Judaism and Jesus.(Lancaster, 2021)

In 1938, Daniel Zion published a paraphrase of Pirkei Avot in a book called The Way of Life. I'll be drawing on his thoughts throughout this series. Here is Lancaster's translation of Zion's paraphrase:

Be always, in all circumstances and all your deeds, cautious in your judgments; never make decisions hastily.

The idea that God judges us the way we judge others is a New Testament idea. It shouldn't surprise us to find that it is also Jewish idea. Jesus warns the crowd in Matthew 7:2 that "with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you." To understand this, let's consider our natural tendency in judgment.

We tend to over-attribute the actions of others, especially negative actions, to their character. This fact is well established in psychology and is called the fundamental attribution error. On the other hand, we tend to think of our own negative actions mostly as a result of circumstances.

It usually works something like this. First, we see or hear something. Let's say it was someone who just cut you off in traffic. Second, we tell ourselves a story to explain our observation. This often happens even before we're aware of it, and because of the fundamental attribution error, the story usually goes straight to our own insecurities and to the heart and character of the other person. That guy just cut me off in traffic because he's a selfish jerk who thinks a few seconds of his time are more important than the safety of my children in the back seat. Third, the story triggers emotions. Maybe we feel angry. How dare he endanger my kids? Maybe we feel prideful. I would never do something like that! Finally, we act. We lay on the horn and spend the next twenty minutes riding the offending driver's bumper to teach him a lesson. (Never mind the safety of the kids in the back seat.)

The stories we tell ourselves about God, about ourselves, and about the world play a huge part in driving our feelings, our actions, and the course of our lives.

All this happens in a matter of seconds and the pattern repeats itself over and over. To make matters worse, we sometime tell those stories to others, who respond by telling themselves new stories, born of their own insecurities and the snap judgments they've made based on our words. Our stories snowball. Or, to use a warmer metaphor, they're the sparks begin a fire. James doesn't mince words on this subject:

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. (James 3:6)

This pattern is a form of pride that says I'm entitled to make up stories, pass judgment on, and ultimately mistreat other human beings, made in the image of God, without so much as a thought about what the situation looked like from their perspective. To judge this way is to treat the other person as less than human.

When Jesus warns us about how we judge, he isn't asking us to call wrong right or to look the other way in the face of evil. He's asking us to break the pattern, to set aside our pride long enough really try to see things from the other person's point of view, and more fundamentally, to see the other person as human. He's asking for humility.

There's a famous story about two sages, Elizer and Akiva, that illustrates the point well. Akiva came from Galilee and agreed to work for Eliezer, a wealthy homeowner in the South, for three years. On the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Akiva said, "Pay me my wages so I can feed my wife and children before the fast."

Eliezer replied, "I have no money."

"Then give me my wages in the form of produce," Akiva suggested.

Eliezer replied, "I have no produce."

Akiva tried again. "Then pay me my wages in the form of land."

Eliezer replied, "I have no land."

Akiva thought and suggested, "Then pay me my wages in the form of animals."

Eliezer replied, "I have no animals."

Finally, Akiva said, "Then give me cushions and blankets."

Eliezer replied, "I have no cushions or blankets." So Akiva slung his tools over his shoulder went home, distraught.

A couple weeks later, after Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, Eliezer arrived at Akiva's home with his wages as well as three donkeys laden with food and drink. They ate and drank and Eliezer gave Akiva his wages.

Eliezer asked, "When you said to me, 'Give me my wages,' and I said, 'I have no money,' what did you suspect?"

Akiva answered, "I thought perhaps you had an opportunity to buy something at a good price and did so and had no money left."

Eliezer asked, "And when you asked me to pay in produce and I said I had none, what did you think then?"

Akiva answered, "I thought you must not have tithed the produce yet, so you couldn't give it to me."

Eliezer asked, "What about when you asked me to pay you in animals and I said I had none?"

Akiva answered, "I assumed you must have hired all your animals out to other people and couldn't give them to me."

Eliezer asked, "And when you asked me to pay you in land?"

Akiva answered, "I thought you must have leased the land out to others and couldn't take it away from them."

Eliezer asked, "What about when I said I didn't even have cushions or blankets?"

Akiva answered, "Then I thought you must have pledged all your property to the Temple, and that was why you had nothing to give me."

Eliezer exclaimed, "I swear by the Temple service that it was so! I had pledged everything to the Temple to disinherit my son Hyrcanus who won't engage in Torah study. After you left, I went to the sages in the South and they absolved me of the rash vow, and I came here immediately to pay you. And you, because you judged favorably, may God judge you favorably as well."

The sages of the Talmud say that Akiva judged Eliezer "in the scale of merit."

Much more could be said about Eliezer's rash vow and its annulment, but those are issues for another day. What's notable for today's subject is how Akiva interrupted the pattern of rash judgment by telling himself positive stories about Eliezer's inability to pay. He told himself that Eliezer probably had good reasons for his actions. As a result, he went away distraught, but not angry, and he didn't take rash actions or utter rash words against his employer.

This lesson is important for us all, but it is doubly so for leaders. In the days of the Great Assembly, disciples weren't just religious students. They were leaders in training. Their path was to receive the tradition and the authority from the previous generation, to live it and model it, and ultimately to pass it on to the generation that followed. Here, in the quintessential Jewish text on discipleship, we find that the first principle of leadership is judging others favorably. It may seem like an odd place to begin, but it really isn't. No quality is more important in a shepherd than the way he sees his sheep. Whether you're a pastor leading a church, a manager leading a team, or a parent leading a family, there is nothing more vital than humility and nothing more disqualifying than pride.

So how do we break the cycle of pride and judgment in our own lives? Like Akiva, we need to change the stories we tell ourselves. Consider circumstances that could have contributed to what you've observed. Perhaps there was a good reason why the other person did what they did. Maybe the person who cut you off in traffic had a genuine emergency. Even if the action can't be justified, perhaps it was an aberration, a lapse of judgment that was out of character rather than a proof of the person's bad character as a whole.

This isn't about excusing evil or ignoring established patterns of bad behavior. Seeing the world through rose colored glasses is naïve, not virtuous. The point is to recognize the limits of our own knowledge and to avoid making judgments without adequate evidence. It may not be reasonable to believe every person who behaves badly in traffic is on the way to the emergency room, but it makes no more sense to jump to conclusions about the character of a complete stranger based on the same two seconds of evidence.

When we begin to tell ourselves stories that give other people the benefit of the doubt, we realize that we often don't have enough facts to condemn them. Often, we know only a tiny part of the circumstances behind what we've seen, and acknowledging that requires humility in and of itself.

Sources

Lancaster, Daniel. Daniel Zion: Biography and Selected Writings of Rabbi Daniel Zion. Jerusalem: Vine of David, 2021