+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:

1 Samuel 20:1-23, Acts 12:18-25, Mark 2:13-22

On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat on the platform, and delivered a public address to them. The people kept shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a mortal!” And immediately, because he had not given the glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Acts 12:21-23

There are two other accounts of the death of Herod Agrippa that differ: the most logical one being an assassination by the Romans for political reasons.

But I’m not reading Acts for history now, it’s the morality play here. When the people shouted, “The voice of a god, and not of a mortal!” the speaker should have given glory to God. Instead he hogged it for himself. As a result, so the story goes, he was struck down. This for the sin that the ancient Greeks would call “hubris” or the Welsh “traha”. It’s pride for a human to assume the honours due to a deity: even when they are freely offered.

When I was studying various ancient religions, I noticed that many of them seemed to have this concept. In the one I studied the closest, that of the Mythraic Mysteries, beyond a certain level or degree of initiation, one couldn’t even wear a laurel wreath, as one might at a dinner, or be given such a wreath as a trophy in a contest. At that point they were all to be refused with the reply, “It belongs to my God.” Judaism, too, had such a concept. That is the “plot device” behind people being afraid of what seems to be Jesus taking divine powers to himself. It comes into Christianity as Pride, one of the seven deadly sins.

Our culture likes pride… gay pride, racial pride, pride in our work, in our skills, in the areas in which we excel. We look for civic pride or national pride - so much so that we have a special love for it, patriotism.

We have programmes to help you get pride (I work in one). Our schools avoid giving bad grades for fear of ruining someone’s self-image.

How many times should we be turning away the wreath saying, along with the Mythraic initiates, “It belongs to my God”? Where is the balance between “healthy self-image” an “ego the size of a large house”?