LIVING BY THE MEASURE

After the inaugural ceremonies last month, I saw a number of comments about people complaining about "all those prayers". (There were only two, folks. Invocation and benediction.) And some of the comments were specifically complaining about the use of the name "Jesus".

I couldn't help but feel that the then President-elect had a right to have the ceremonies conducted according to his faith, and that he had the right to have that faith practiced on the occasion of him beginning the most important job he's ever had, a job which is arguably the most important one in the world. And I would have felt that if the President-elect had been an atheist, it would have been within his right to dispense with any religious trappings. I did not feel in the slightest that the presence of the prayers in any way constituted an establishment of a state religion. Nor did I feel it infringed upon the separation of church and state. They both exist after all, and I see no harm of asking the one to bless the other.

But that isn't the issue that in the end started preoccupying me.

Those thoughts led me back to considering the standards by which I live and act. The standards by which I judge things around me. I'm not one of those people who thinks that because someone else does not profess the same beliefs as I, they are automatically wrong. They are living according to a different standard. Sometimes, I'm not sure what that standard is, nor am I sure they are diligent in applying whatever standard they profess. But unless I actually do know what their standard is, I'm not going to get all nit-picky about it. I'll just wonder about their reactions.

Those musings led me back to a Sunday afternoon when I was in junior high school (I think it was then, it could have been earlier). I had decided to read through the Sermon on the Mount. Just for myself. Not nudged by any Sunday school class or Bible study. Just me and the scriptures.

I came to the verse about judging, the one everyone cites as "judge not lest you be judged". Just about everyone always stops at that point, as if that's the command. "Don't be judgemental!" It was always a problem for me, because I was born with a judgemental temperament. I resented that God made me this way, and then there was this commandment not to be that way. But when I read the rest of that passage, it was a revelation. "Judge not lest you be judged, because the measure you deal out is the measure that will be dealt to you."

Oh. Now that, a different kettle of fish. A horse of a different color. A different matter altogether.

The measure I use against others is the measure that will be used against me. Not by those others, perhaps, but certainly by God.

This was something I could live with. I was willing to accept judgement of my behavior according to the standard I was applying to my own life. And it made me aware that not everyone chooses that same standard to live by. In which case, I might comment that I found their actions ineffective or harmful, but I wasn't going to weigh them more heavily than that until I knew what they professed to live by.

That became the key and heart of the Sermon on the Mount for me. Everything else in those three chapters was about the measure I was choosing to be measured by. The measure I would deal out in my own behavior - even if I did not expect others to be living by it.

So, when the musings began again following the discussions of the inauguration, I decided the time had come to begin a project I'd long thought about. I wanted to do, to write, a study of the Sermon on the Mount. For myself, mostly. But with an eye toward publication. (Hey, I'm a writer!) It seemed to me a good time to remind myself of the basics I claim to live by.

I began by copying out the first part (Matthew 5) verse by verse. Doing this makes me look at each verse closely. And I mean to do this in multiple translations - because the coloring each translation gives can be thought provoking.

It's led to an interesting start. Even just the Beatitudes have surprised me. It's not that I think about them day in and day out, but in going through them, I've been surprised to discover how much they actually have become woven into the fabric of my being. Oh... don't mistake me. I don't live up to them all the time! But when I am not, I know darned well that I am not. I know where I am failing to meet my standard.

In any case, because I mean to look at the Sermon from the perspective of personal practice, I've decided to title the work The Measure Dealt To Me. Or, The Measure, for short.

This is going to be a long term project, so I have no idea how long it will take me to complete. It will be something I work on as a break from other more immediate writing projects. But it will be there, challenging me, in the background.