Outliers

But as for me, I will wait continually, and will praise You yet more and more.  Psalm 71:14  NASB

But as for me – The Mosaic Code seems to exhort fundamental conformity and compliance.  After all, how much freedom can a man enjoy when there are rules for everything: what to eat, what to wear, how to wash, when to offer sacrifices, how to worship, what to say or not say, etc., etc.  Where’s the freedom of expression, the sense of self-determination, the value of individualism?  Just think about the fact that there are more than 100 rules about what to do and not do on Shabbat.  That alone is an indication of the massive number of biblical restrictions.

Of course, it didn’t start that way.  In the beginning there was apparently only one simple rule: Don’t eat from that tree.  It seems that one rule was one rule too many, for them and probably for us.  We want the kind of freedom that has no rules. There’s another word for that kind of self-indulgence: chaos!  The biblical account basically outlines humanity’s incapacity to adhere to any form of governed behavior.  The Greeks proposed that truly rational men would by nature choose what is right because what is right is reasonable, but that doesn’t seem to account for human history.  Plenty of “rational” men have done terrible things.  The biblical view is that most if not all men are capable of immoral acts regardless of reason because reason isn’t the most fundamental motivator.  Desire is.  What this means is that once in a while someone comes along who doesn’t operate according to typical desires.  Those kind of people stand out from the crowd.  In fact, they make the rest of us uncomfortable—because they remind us that we aren’t committed to a higher standard.  Oh, sometimes we are—when it’s convenient—but underneath those platitudes beats a heart that wants what it wants, and loosed from social restraints, will probably find an excuse to get what it wants.  Christian doctrine chalks it up to “sinful nature,” a kind of Rousseauian excuse in religious garb.  The Bible calls it choice and holds us accountable.  When it describes those outliers, it often uses a phrase like “but as for me.”  Reading those words signals an uncomfortable difference—uncomfortable for us because it condemns our duplicitous motives, and uncomfortable for them because it causes rejection and ostracization.  But the words don’t just evaporate even if we wish they would.

“But as for me.”  The psalmist must have had Joshua in mind (Joshua 24:15).  The ultimate spiritual battle cry.  “I’m going this way whether you like it or not, whether you follow me or not.”  It seems to me that Yeshua would have said the same.  Leaders like this aren’t very popular today (have they ever been?).  Today’s leaders are really walking opinion polls, billboards for sycophants.  There aren’t many Assissi’s or Joan’s or Gandhi’s.  We could hardly tolerate the few we’ve had.  When the psalmist writes these words (actually in Hebrew only a single word, wa’ ani, recalling Joshua’s we’ʾānōkî), he sets himself up for suffering.  From the rest of us, not from God.

Do you know that?  Are you one of those “as for me” kind?  Does the opinion of the crowd matter to you?  The rabbis wrote that the man of Torah is the only free man because he is not under the mastery of his own desires.  Maybe we got it backwards.

Topical Index: wa’ ani, as for me, freedom, rules, Psalm 71:14