Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 55
“The Bible tells us nothing about God in Himself; all its sayings refer to His relations to man…We hear of no reflexive concern, of no passions, except a passion for justice. The only events in the life of God the Bible know are acts done for the sake of man: acts of creation, acts of redemption (from Ur, from Egypt, from Babylon) or acts of revelation.”(Man is Not Alone pg. 143/4)
Rabbi Heschel’s words stir up a frustration and a sense of love for me today. In our Greco-Roman brain and way of being, we want to understand everything about God, we want to know the inner workings of God, of the universe, of life. We want to know this in order to have control. In the Greco-Roman path of living, knowledge is for control, for power, for security. We see this over and over again throughout history and today. If we can know how something works, we can manipulate it for our benefit, we can use it to gain ‘a leg up’. Rabbi Heschel is frustrating this endeavor with his wisdom and truth that we do not, nor can we ever, truly understand God in order to manipulate God.
Some spiritual leaders and their followers claim to know God and understand God, they claim to understand the ONE WAY to God. This claim on it’s face is ridiculous as they are absolutely sure of what God wants and use a text, the Bible, which can be and, according to the Jewish Tradition, must be interpreted 70 different ways. Yet, these power-seeking, text manipulating, charlatans continue to misinterpret the words and the concerns of God for their own purposes. While they claim to love God, they actually are loving themselves and their patrons. To have some understanding of God, of how to live life well, we have to turn to Rabbi Harold Shulweis’ theology, I believe. Rabbi Shulweis, z”l, taught us to act Godly, to live Godliness. I am hearing this way of being in Rabbi Heschel’s words above.
Rabbi Heschel is reminding us to have a passion for justice, true justice, righteous justice. Throughout the Bible, God’s passion for justice comes through over and over again, yet we are still tainting justice to our way of thinking, we still use justice to ‘get our way’. We see this in the courts, we see this in elections, we see this in the way business’ deny any wrongdoing and pay a fine for the opioid crisis that killed 100,000 people in 12 months! Where are the people who claim to know God when someone is unjustly accused because of the color of their skin? Rabbi Heschel’s involvement in Civil Rights came, I believe, from his passion for God and, hence, his passion for justice for all.
God acts for the sake of humanity is how I am reading Rabbi Heschel today. God teaches us how to be creative and that we must further the creation God began as well as continue to use our skills, our talents, our souls to create anew and different to better our lives and the lives of those around us. We create anew because today is new, the situations we face, while seemingly very old, are new and different today because we are different, the day is different, and our experience has taught us what does and doesn’t work.
God has revealed to us what actions we have to take in order to live well and to live together. We have to stop murdering the souls of another human being with our prejudices and need to control. We have to stop committing adultery towards God and the people we care about and serve with our self-deceptions and the deceiving of them. We have to stop stealing from those less fortunate and from each other using the “buyer beware” attitude and instead making “the seller must disclose” attitude our mantra. We have to stop bearing false witness against each other in order to have power, prestige, control and more money. We have to stop coveting what another person has and instead be happy with what we have while growing ourselves, our spirits and our world. These and so many more are what has been revealed to us through the Bible, throughout history, yet we continue to ignore these truths because of our “eye disease” of prejudice which causes a “cancer of the soul”.
In recovery, we are constantly seeking to follow God’s revelations and we are acutely aware of God’s redemption of us. We are grateful everyday for our redemption and God’s love and care for us. We also know how insidious it is to revert back to Greco-Roman thinking by believing we know God’s will. In recovery, we are constantly turning our will over to God, knowing this is the only way to combat our self-centeredness and be human.
I have been redeemed more times than I am even aware of. In writing today, I am acutely aware of the many times I have been redeemed and, how often, I have taken redemption as an exemption. In my recovery I have done this as well. I am blessed with the knowledge of God’s intervention and I have to see the redemptive spirit in every experience of my living. I am struck today with the knowledge that my experiences have within them a redemptive quality and my job is to find what I am being redeemed from and pointed towards. I am understanding Rabbi Heschel’s call to all of us to be aware of and engaged in the acts of creation, the redemptions we have to see and participate in and to “lift up our eyes and see”! God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark