A Critical Question by the Rev. Lee
Woofenden
Genesis
16 Hagar and Ishmael
Now
Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne
him no children. But she had an
Egyptian maidservant named
Hagar; so she said to Abram,
"The Lord has kept me from
having children. Go, sleep with
my maidservant; perhaps I can
build a family through
her." Abram agreed to what
Sarai said. So after Abram had
been living in Canaan ten years,
Sarai his wife took her Egyptian
maidservant Hagar and gave her
to her husband to be his wife.
He
slept with Hagar, and she
conceived. When she knew she was
pregnant, she began to despise
her mistress. Then Sarai said to
Abram, "You are responsible
for the wrong I am suffering. I
put my servant in your arms, and
now that she knows she is
pregnant, she despises me. May
the Lord judge between you and
me."
"Your
servant is in your hands,"
Abram said. "Do with her
whatever you think best."
Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so
she fled from her.
The
angel of the Lord found Hagar
near a spring in the desert; it
was the spring that is beside
the road to Shur. And he said,
"Hagar, servant of Sarai,
where have you come from, and
where are you going?"
"I'm
running away from my mistress
Sarai," she answered.
Then
the angel of the Lord told her,
"Go back to your mistress
and submit to her." The
angel added, "I will so
increase your descendants that
they will be too numerous to
count." The angel of the
Lord also said to her: "You
are now with child and you will
have a son. You shall name him
Ishmael, for the Lord has heard
of your misery. He will be a
wild donkey of a man; his hand
will be against everyone and
everyone's hand against him, and
he will live in hostility toward
all his brothers." She gave
this name to the Lord who spoke
to her: "You are the God
who sees me," for she said,
"I have now looked toward
the One who sees me." That
is why the well was called Beer
Lahai Roi; it is still there,
between Kadesh and Bered.
So
Hagar bore Abram a son, and
Abram gave the name Ishmael to
the son she had borne. Abram was
eighty-six years old when Hagar
bore him Ishmael.
Luke
4:31-37 Jesus drives out an
evil spirit
Then
he went down to Capernaum, a
town in Galilee, and on the
Sabbath began to teach the
people. They were amazed at his
teaching, because his message
had authority.
In
the synagogue there was a man
possessed by a demon, an unclean
spirit. He cried out at the top
of his voice, "Ha! What do
you want with us, Jesus of
Nazareth? Have you come to
destroy us? I know who you are:
the Holy One of God!"
"Be
quiet!" Jesus said sternly.
"Come out of him!"
Then the demon threw the man
down before them all and came
out without injuring him.
All
the people were amazed and said
to each other, "What is
this teaching? With authority
and power he gives orders to
unclean spirits and they come
out!" And the news about
him spread throughout the
surrounding area.
Arcana
Coelestia #1949.2 The
critical nature of truth alone
If
our rationality consists in
truth alone, even if it is
religious truth, and does not at
the same time consist in the
good of kindness . . .
we are quick to find fault, make
no allowances, are against all,
regard everyone as being in
error, are instantly prepared to
rebuke, chasten, and punish,
show no pity, and do not apply
ourselves nor make any effort to
redirect people's thinking--for
we view everything from the
standpoint of truth, and nothing
from the standpoint of goodness.
In short, we are harsh people.
The one thing that can soften
our harshness is the good of
kindness. Good is the soul of
truth, and when goodness draws
near and implants itself in
truth, the truth becomes so
different that it can hardly be
recognized.
The
angel of the Lord said to Hagar:
"You are now with child and
you will have a son. You shall
name him Ishmael, for the Lord
has heard of your misery. He
will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against
everyone and everyone's hand
against him, and he will live in
hostility towards all his
brothers." (Genesis
16:11-12)
What's
a future Patriarch to do?
Eighty-five years old, with a
wife long past childbearing age,
and no children to serve as his
heirs! Abram's wife Sarai had an
idea: Hagar, her female slave,
was still young. She could bear
children in Sarai's place. These
children would be considered to
be Sarai's children, so that
Sarai could "build a family
through" Hagar.
Abram
had no better idea, so he
consented to his wife's plan,
slept with Hagar, and she became
pregnant from the union. Now, in
those days, a woman's worth was
measured largely by the sons she
bore for her husband. So as soon
as she had conceived and was
pregnant, Hagar, though she was
a slave, began to look down upon
Sarai, her mistress.
This
was unbearable to Sarai, who
already bore the shame of being
childless, and could not brook
the further shame of being held
in contempt by her own slave
woman. She promptly blamed Abram
for her troubles--even though
this whole plan was hers in the
first place.
But
Abram was nobody's fool; he knew
better than to argue with his
wife and attempt to point out
the injustice and irrationality
of her accusations against him.
Instead, he put the power in her
hands to deal with Hagar as she
saw fit. This must have been
difficult and painful for him to
do, since Hagar was now to be
the mother of his first child,
and he must have felt protective
of her for that reason. Yet in
yielding discretion to Sarai in
this matter, he also wisely
avoided driving a wedge between
himself and his wife--a wedge
that could have torn apart his
household.
Ironically,
Ishmael, the son born of his
union with Hagar, turned out to
be of a very different spirit
than the wise and forbearing
Abram. His character is
described by the angel who spoke
to Hagar in the desert after she
had fled from the harsh
treatment she suffered at the
hands of Sarai. Here is how the
angel described the character of
the son to be born of her:
"He will be a wild donkey
of a man; his hand will be
against everyone and everyone's
hand against him, and he will
live in hostility toward all his
brothers." Abram looked at
things from a higher vantage
point, and chose to use
thoughtfulness and restraint in
his dealings with his family.
Ishmael, his firstborn son by
Hagar, would look at things from
a lower "me against the
world" attitude, in which
he considered himself to be
right, and everyone else to be
wrong. And so he would
"live in hostility toward
all his brothers."
This
provides the key to the
spiritual meanings involved in
the story of Hagar and Ishmael.
It's all about the perspective
from which we view things, and
the way we use our intellectual
and rational capacities in our
relationships with others.
As
I already mentioned, Abram was
nobody's fool. He showed himself
a shrewd character, able to make
pragmatic choices to save his
own skin and advance his own
interests and position. He could
also be a courageous fighter
when necessary, as shown in the
story of his heroic rescue of
his nephew Lot from the armies
of the Babylonian kings. Yet he
was also able and willing to
deal with others in a
reasonable, respectful, and
mutually beneficial way. We find
him having many contacts with
the various peoples inhabiting
the land in which he lived, and
generally getting along with
them peaceably. Abram represents
a wise love coming from within
us. This wise love is also the
Lord's presence within us.
In
the life of the Lord Jesus,
Abram is his own inner divine
self. Abram was the divine love
that carried his life forward,
and Sarai was the divine wisdom
that guided its course.
Ishmael,
on the other hand, was a
"wild donkey of a
man." His mother was Hagar,
an Egyptian. And as we have
discovered before, Egypt in
general represents outward,
worldly learning, and looking at
things from the perspective of
sensory data and the things we
learn from experience in the
world around us. If Abram is our
inner dictate, Hagar, the
Egyptian, is what our senses
tell us.
These
are often very different. Our
inner dictate tells us that the
Lord is everything, that
goodness, truth, spirit, and
compassion are the most
important things. But our senses
tell us that personal power,
reputation, money, praise,
possessions, and pleasure are
the most important things. And
our worldly nature tells us that
we ourselves are the most
important thing in this world,
and that we see things more
clearly and understand things
more accurately than anyone
else. Not only that, when we
think from what our senses tell
us, and from "just the
facts," or
"truth" alone, without
the inner compassion and
enlightenment that softens us,
we become just as Swedenborg
describes in our reading from Arcana
Coelestia:
We
are quick to find fault, make
no allowances, are against
all, regard everyone as being
in error, are instantly
prepared to rebuke, chasten,
and punish, show no pity, and
do not apply ourselves nor
make any effort to redirect
people's thinking--for we view
everything from the standpoint
of truth, and nothing from the
standpoint of goodness. In
short, we are harsh people.
This
is the character of Ishmael: a
wild donkey of a man who lived
in hostility toward all his
brothers.
I
suspect we have all encountered
such people--and some of us may
have gotten caught up in that
sort of attitude ourselves. In
fact, as teenagers we humans are
famous for thinking we have all
the answers, and that everyone
else is stupid compared to
ourselves. It can be quite
remarkable to experience the
consummate lawyerly skill of
teenagers seeking to justify
their own position and portray
any other possible way of
seeing things as utterly crazy
and foolish. And of course,
those who think differently than
they do must be crazy!
But
this attitude is in no way
confined to teenagers. We adults
are also quite capable of being
sure that we are right and
everyone else is wrong. It is
our natural inclination. It is
the Ishmael in us--the firstborn
fruit of our spirit in an early,
immature style of rationality
that desires to seek out and
discover what is right, but
still thinks it can do so based
on how things appear outwardly
rather than on the Lord's deeper
dictates coming from within.
This
can also manifest itself when we
first become religious--when we
make our first conscious
commitment and effort to change
our lives for the better
according to the teachings of
our church. One of our natural
inclinations at that time is to
start comparing ourselves to
others who have not made the
same commitment we have
made, and to condemn and
criticize them in comparison to
ourselves. Psychologically
speaking, it is really our own
remaining bad attitudes and
inclinations that we are
condemning; but we don't realize
that. We think we're pretty good
for having made that commitment
to turn over a new leaf, and
that everyone else who hasn't
done so is distinctly
second-class. And so we can
become just as Swedenborg and
the angel of the Lord describe
us in that state:
self-righteous, critical and
condemnatory towards everyone
around us, with our hand against
everyone and everyone's hand
against us. It is a lonely,
"desert" kind of a
state to be in--and the desert
to which Hagar fled from her
mistress was an emotional desert
as well as a physical one.
The
Lord Jesus, as a young boy, felt
the pull of the "wild
donkey" type of rationality
within himself. After all, he,
of all people, had a right to be
critical of others. He had far
deeper insight than any of us
into both the true nature of
things, and into the true
character of the people around
him. And he himself had never
committed any sin. It would have
been easy for him to take the
self-righteous, critical
"Ishmael" path,
blasting away at everyone around
him just because he could. And
later in his life he did at
times draw on the Ishmael in
him, when lambasting the scribes
and Pharisees for their
hypocrisy.
Yet
he saw far earlier than any of
us do that no matter how
clear-sighted he was, and no
matter how accurately he saw the
real character of those around
him, without love and
compassion, this meant nothing.
At times, harsh criticism of
others may be necessary when
nothing else will get through.
But even then, to be truly
effective, it must be done from
an underlying compassion that
hopes for the person to
genuinely change from the heart,
and to become better and happier
as a result.
Our
New Testament story gives a
brief vignette of the approach
Jesus took to others. When he
saw the man possessed by a
demon, he could have taken the
course that most of the people
and their religious leaders took
in those days. He could have
assumed that the reason that man
was possessed by a demon was
that he had sinned, and
therefore deserved everything he
got. He could have passed on by,
turning a cold shoulder to one
who was so obviously not
deserving of his respect and his
healing powers.
But
that is not what he did.
Instead, he had compassion on
the man, and confronted the
demon who possessed him. His
words to the demon were stern,
but in his heart was a warm and
burning love for the poor soul
who, for whatever reason, was in
the grip of evil, pain, and
sorrow. It was from the power
and authority of that deep
underlying love that the Lord
could command the evil spirit to
leave the man, and the spirit
had to obey.
We
face a similar choice in our own
dealings with people. Will we
yield to the Ishmael impulse to
accuse and criticize? Or will we
listen to the deeper promptings
of love, calling on us to have
compassion on others, and do
what we can to alleviate their
suffering and help them along a
path toward goodness?
Painting:
Hagar in the Wilderness
by Giovanni Lanfranco 1582-1647
Courtesy of
Web
Gallery of Art
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background design by Judy
Music: Hear My Prayer
© Bruce DeBoer
Used with Permission
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