Daily Prophets
Day 98
“And when you announce all these things to the people and they ask you…what is the iniquity and the sin we have committed against the Lord, our God? And you have acted worse than your fathers, every one of you following the willfulness of your evil heart and paying no heed to Me. For I will bring them back to their land, which I gave to their fathers.”(Jeremiah 16:10,12,15).
It is depressingly wondrous that the prophet is telling us that the people will be stunned by the news that they have sinned and acted in iniquity. It is as if the people are saying: “what did I do, is God angry because I bastardized the spirit of the law, the essence of God’s teachings? I followed the rituals, isn’t this enough?”, feigning stupidity, trying to act bewildered. The depressing piece is that we humans still do it, corporations claim innocence, politicians claim they are following the letter of the law, while crushing the spirit of it, religions leaders misquote the Bible, Jesus, God, etc and say we are following the rules.
All of these instances are areas where the people in charge no better and fake bewilderment, just like the people of Judah. God’s response sends shivers up and down my spine, though. Telling the people they have acted worse than their fathers who abandoned God? What could be worse than abandonment? Willfully following one’s evil heart and mind is worse than abandonment, paying no heed to God’s call to return so calamity doesn’t befall them is worse than abandonment, entitlement and exemption from consequences is worse than abandonments as I understand the prophet’s words today. The shivers come from looking at the ways I, you, we, do the same thing as the people of Judah and wonder when will we ever learn?
Yet, with all of these calamities about to happen, Judah will fall, Jerusalem will be destroyed, the people will go into exile; God’s promise is to return us to our proper places, after we return to God. This is the greatness of God and the quality we most have to emulate, in my opinion. God’s is still calling from Mt. Sinai, when we answer with Hineni (here I am), God takes us back. We have to be open to people when they return to us, when they reach out in earnest, make tshuvah(amends) for their past and a plan for the future. This way of God reminds all of us that hope is eternal, God is waiting for us, other people are waiting for us to return. We are needed and when we are not in our proper place, the world doesn’t work well and this verse tells us that God wants us back.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “There was no sense of guilt, no feeling of shame. The Lord implored His people:…Jeremiah knew the malady was not primarily in the wickedness of deeds, but “in the stubbornness of their evil hearts”.(The Prophets pg. 128). These words are the ones that scare the hell out of me. We are living in a time, again, when men and women are not sensing their guilt nor feeling any shame for their actions. They believe their lies are truth, using God’s name to validate their cruelty and theft of our democracy, our way of being safe and secure, our healthcare, etc. The willfulness of the evil that people are perpetrating on each other is devastating and equal to what the prophet is speaking of and what Rabbi Heschel is teaching. The self-deception that we are engaging in does and will continue to cause destruction of the poor and the needy, the desecration of what is good in the world. Is the fleeting power worth our destruction?
In recovery, we don’t ask what we have done wrong, what iniquities and sins we have committed from a place of feigned innocence and bewilderment. In recovery, we do daily inventory of our actions, our thoughts, what is in our hearts and we make amends where needed and appropriate and we honor the goodness we create. Each night, we turn our lives over to God to wake up anew in the morning and each morning we turn our lives over to God so we can live one grain of sand better. Our recovery is based on our spiritual condition and we have to rid ourselves each and everyday of our “evil heart” and put goodness and God into our being and our hearts. In recovery, we are grateful each and every day for the blessings of being return to our proper places, reconnection with family and friends where and when appropriate, connecting with new people and, most of all, returning to and coming home to God.
I know that false sense of innocence that the prophet is talking about. I lived in the self-deception that allowed me to believe in my innocence and convince others of it as well. I am disgusted by this old behavior, still. I am so disgusted that I made a commitment to not engage in this behavior ever again and I haven’t. My way of delivering a message has not always been in the most couth manner, yet it has/is always from a place of caring and concern. I left “the wickedness” of my “evil heart” 32+ years ago and, while I have made many errors since then, I have not done it from the evil heart of my pre-recovery days. God has taken me back, cleansed me, placed me in my proper place. I know that God continues to allow me to stand with God, cleans me each and every day and is showing me my new normal, my new place. Where are you-wicked heart, return to God? Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark