Heart of Darkness

The scriptures referred to are Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

Human beings have a chronic problem separating what is essential from what is superficial. A study just came out this week that showed that how we judge people by their faces depends on whether we think that personality can be read in faces. Thus we tend to see those with roundish baby faces as harmless and agreeable. In older studies it has been shown that children tend to judge more attractive people as being better morally. And it turns out that a small sample of people can accurately predict who will win a political race somewhere else just by looking at the faces of the candidates, even if they don't know the party or the campaign promises of the people involved. Yet as Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago, “There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.” (Macbeth: Act 1, scene 4) Perhaps he realized this because as an actor as well as a playwright that was his job: to convincingly become other people despite his face.

In today's gospel Jesus is up against the common perception that one can judge a person by superficial means such as whether they perform certain religious acts. The immediate issue was the ritual washing of hands to purify oneself after having contact with something in the marketplace which may have been touched by a Gentile. This ritual was elaborate and not required by scripture. But it was shorthand for how religious a person is. And we still do this today.

We see a Jesus fish on a car and assume the owner is a devout Christian. We see a flag on a car and we assume the driver is a political conservative. We see someone kneel rather than stand during the national anthem and assume they are not patriotic. But those symbols and acts can lead us astray. We are not Sherlock Holmes, who once deduced a man's wife had ceased to love him by the state of his hat. Besides, Holmes is fictional. In real life it is not that easy to discern a person's inner state from such superficial observations.

And on some level we know this. Think of all the neighbors shocked to find out the guy next door was a serial killer. Many celebrities maintain facades that belie their true nature. Charles Dickens was a beloved writer. At age 45, he left his wife for an 18 year old actress. He took custody of all of their children but one. He never divorced his wife but blamed her for the situation. Bill Cosby was a large part of my life from childhood on. I have all of his comedy albums. My family watched his TV show. But after being accused of rape and sexual assault by more than 60 women and his recent conviction on 3 counts of aggravated indecent assault, I have to admit he is not the person I thought he was. Peter Robbins, who as a child actor voiced Charlie Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, pleaded guilty in 2015 to offering someone $50,000 to murder the sheriff of San Diego County! Again Shakespeare nailed it: “...one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” (Hamlet: Act 1, scene 5)

Jesus accurately points to the inner person as the the true source of good and bad behavior. “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come...” Today we do not see this as that blinding an insight and yet we do tend to blame external things for people's evil acts. For instance, in the wake of the Parkland shooting, a new Florida law says that schools must post in a “conspicuous place” the words “In God we trust.” Most schools are doing this by simply putting a copy of the state seal on their front desk, since it includes the state motto, “In God we trust.” But the legislator who proposed the law, and who happens to run a Christian ministry, intended that by being exposed to it children would be educated about it. And the organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State says that it is not the role of the public schools to see to it that children learn about faith. Both the legislature and the organization opposing this seem to think the words will somehow change the hearts of the children. This is magical thinking. Let's face it: few kids will notice it, fewer will read it and I doubt more than 1 in a thousand will contemplate it in any depth, much less change their life because of it. I remember after the Columbine shooting people felt one way to stop such things is to put the Ten Commandments in classrooms. I don't think the problem was that the shooters forgot the commandment against killing. The problem wasn't words on a wall but evil thoughts in their hearts.

And of course by “heart”, the ancient peoples meant “mind.” They may not have known which organ of the body was responsible but they knew that people had an inner life. And Jesus is pointing out that if that inner life is focused on the wrong things, that will come out, though not necessarily in the lack of observance of religious traditions. And the list of bad things coming from the heart which Jesus gives us is not meant to be comprehensive, but it does cover a wide variety of unethical behavior.

First, we get “fornication,” which in Greek meant not just sex outside of wedlock but all kinds of sexual immorality, including incest. It is derived from the Greek root word meaning to “sell off” so it is related to the word for “prostitute.” In addition it was used as a metaphor for idolatry. The idea was that worshiping another god was being unfaithful to Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Thefts, murder and adultery are all self-explanatory. Notice that they are acts that transgress against someone else's property or relationship or life. They are all acts that break the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. Here Jesus is speaking against acts that are matters of social morality, not personal morality, although doing these things are bound to change a person. Once you've stolen, or cheated on your spouse or killed someone it becomes easier to do it again. Maybe that's why in the Greek these are all plurals: fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries. People who do these things rarely stop at doing them just one time.

The next word is also plural in Greek. Avarice is a fancy word for “greediness,” but greedinesses is not a common word in English. Which is why one translation renders it “covetous desires or practices” But it has overtones of aggression so it could mean “extortions.” It basically means always wanting more. Bernie Madoff, one of the founders of the NASDAQ, was the guy who pioneered using computers to make stock trades and so changed Wall Street. Thus he didn't need to mastermind a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, but he wasn't satisfied with just having millions. And while he tricked a lot of smaller investors who were not financially savvy, there were also banks finding him big investors who should have been able to see that his numbers didn't add up. When people asked how he made such steady returns despite the market's ups and downs, he wouldn't tell them. And they didn't press him because if they did, he would tell them to simply take their money and leave. Greed kept them from doing so.

The word translated “wickedness” is better translated “malice.” Or it could be rendered “pain-spreading evils.” It too is plural, so maybe it should be termed “malicious plots.” In other words, we are not talking about acts that inadvertently harm others but acts designed to do just that. These mass shootings are rarely spontaneous. They are almost always planned well ahead of time. So they are not done in the heat of the moment. In fact, one shooter who was caught said he just kind of went into robot mode, methodically and without emotion seeking out and shooting victims. He did it intending to harm others.

From immoral acts Jesus shifts to moral states, and this is signaled by his switching from plurals to singular nouns. The first is deceit or guile. The Greek word could be also translated as “craftiness” and is related to the word for “trick” and “bait.” That last word recalls one major form of deceit we encounter all the time on the internet, namely, clickbait. Those are the omnipresent articles with the deceptive headlines that are hard to resist: “20 Things Nobody Know About Andy of Mayberry,” (If nobody knows them who wrote the article?) “6 Foods a Government Nutritionist Will Never Eat; Number 4 Will Blow Your Mind,” (Whenever they have a list, they always throw in a number and it's never the first one; they want to get you at least halfway into the large number of pages over which they've dribbled this list before you see it's not that shocking and give up) or “She went to the Hospital Complaining of a Headache; You Won't Believe What They Found.” (I know what the company that posted this found: morbid curiosity and hypochondria will get folks to click on this.) At best these are deceptive ways to get you to look at a tsunami of ads. At less than best, they will infect you computer with a virus. At worst, they will prey on the minds of the gullible and give them totally erroneous information that will harm them or others. I am thinking of the anti-vaccination propaganda that has led to the resurgence of childhood diseases that we thought we had eliminated. Or the false news story that led one man to go to a Washington DC pizzeria with a gun looking for a pedophile ring that didn't exist in a basement which also didn't exist. Increasingly, deceit in the form of out and out lies has become the preferred tool of certain political movements. I recently saw a photo that showed a certain senator standing next to Bin Laden. It was Photoshopped, of course. Which means the people creating it weren't ignorant or misinformed but deliberately trying to deceive. Which is what you do when you realize truth is not on your side.

The next word is variously translated as licentiousness, wantonness, sensuality, or lewdness. A look at the Greek shows it means outrageous behavior. It is related to the Greek word for “brutal.” So it is conduct calculated to shock, a gesture of “violent spite,” as one source puts it. Now there are times when an issue you are dealing with is so harmful that you have to be brutally frank to get past the niceties that are covering it up. Recently a worldwide study found that the meager health benefits conferred by alcohol are vastly outweighed by the great number of health risks it engenders. And so they just spelled it out—alcohol is a leading contributor to death and disease worldwide. As one of the researchers said, “...we found the combined health risks associated with alcohol increase with any amount.” So forget the mild admonition to “drink responsibly” tacked onto all alcohol ads. Just say “Nope.” But Jesus, who could be brutally frank with the scribes and Pharisees, is condemning people who shock for shock's sake. If you are just trying to get a rise out of people, if you are not trying to alert people to a danger, nor attempting to show complicity in what is wrong, but merely getting pleasure out of causing discomfort, that is wrong. As I've said before, there is a difference between hurting and harming but if you are hurting someone unnecessarily, if you just want to cause pain, that is harm.

Next Jesus lists, literally, the “evil eye,” which most translations properly render as “envy.” The Greek word for “evil” here is related to that word that means “pain-giving evil.” Envy hurts us by making us wish for the impossible: to be someone else. It goes beyond coveting which is wanting their stuff. Envy is wanting their life. Or, barring that, destroying the happy life they enjoy. If we can't have it, neither can they. Envious people continually snipe at those they perceive to have it better than them. But envy also destroys any happiness we could have by focusing our attention on the unattainable other life. Envy is the opposite of contentment, of counting the blessings you already have. It is obsessing over the ones you weren't granted. At its worst, it is not trusting God's plan for your life, thinking he must have mixed up you with the person whose life you wish you had.

The next Greek word is blasphemia. It's pretty obvious what English word we get from it. But many translations render it “slander” or “insults.” Both are accurate. It means any kind of abusive or scurrilous language. Oddly enough its roots are the Greek words for “slow” and “reputation.” So it is also about being slow to say anything good about a person. Or perhaps slow to see what's bad. Anyway, insulting God is bad but so is insulting others. Jesus said, “But I say to you, that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you are answerable to judgment; if you insult a brother or sister you are answerable to the council; and whoever says, 'Fool,' is answerable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:22) Vilifying others may be tempting at times but again what we do to others we do to the God in whose image they were created.

I really don't care for the way the next Greek word is usually translated. The English word “pride” has changed. Today it can mean to be justifiably appreciative of something you've accomplished. But the Greek has overtones of “disdain” and “haughtiness.” I prefer the translation “arrogance.” It is overestimating your glory and worth and looking down on others. It is the opposite of humility, which is a realistic reckoning of one's strengths and a recognition of one's weaknesses and limits. As C.S. Lewis said, arrogance is the anti-God state of mind. If you think you are totally self-sufficient, the smartest and most capable person in the room or any other room, if you have no use for others and think they can contribute nothing to your efforts, you are not going to seek help, not from those to whom God gave gifts and abilities you don't have, nor ultimately from God. Arrogant people think they are God. Arrogance is the deadliest of the sins.

Finally we come to foolishness. Being thoughtless, careless and reckless may not seem to be a choice, but they are. The decision not to pause and think, not to consider the consequences of what you are about to do, or not to get advice if you are not sure how things will turn out is foolish. Wisdom is not always having the necessary knowledge but knowing where to find that knowledge. And then, of course, heeding it.

If the cause of many of our problems are self-created and if they consist of attitudes and acts conceived in our hearts and minds, as Jesus said, what are we to do? Get Jesus in there at once. After all, the person who comes up with the correct diagnosis is normally the one to prescribe the treatment. We need Jesus' healing Spirit within us. We need a new heart and a renewed mind. Instead of this Pandora's box of ills spilling from our hearts we need to produce the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.

And finally, you are what you eat. We need a steady diet of spiritually healthy food for thought. As Paul said, “...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8) We human beings are drawn to the dark and scary and forbidden. It's very hard to find uplifting movies, TV shows, and social media posts these days. So we must make an effort to do what flowers do naturally and turn to the light, or in our case, to God, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17) Remember, if you can't see the sun, it is not because it isn't there, it's because something is blocking it. Make sure that if something is blocking the light of the Son of God, it isn't your own heart.