Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 110
“God is not an explanation of the world’s enigmas or a guarantee for our salvation. He is an eternal challenge, an urgent demand. He is not a problem to be solved but a question addressed to us and individuals, as nations, as mankind.” (Man is Not Alone pg. 92)
Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above certainly goes against conventional notions and the mental cliches of many people. Enigma comes from the Greek roots ‘fable’ and ‘speak allusively’. Salvation means ‘to save’ from the Latin. I hear Rabbi Heschel disturbing our sense of calmness, our inner peace, our meditative state with this teaching and the bright light he shines on truth from his own inner light. Going against popular belief and demand, Rabbi Heschel is telling us to stop bastardizing God, stop saying that our faith is based on God being the answer to all of life’s enigmas, things are not necessarily happening because God wants them to! We all hear and some of us say, ‘there must be a reason, it is God’s Will’ when it is clearly the self-will of a human being and/or a group of human beings! The abdication of Godliness and Faith by many of the Clergy in Nazi Germany is an example of this truth. Please read Dr. Susannah Heschel’s essay on this subject in the book “On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence”. The Crusades were not God’s Will, the terrorist attacks are not God’s Will, rather it is human’s will, human desires that people try and paint with the brush of God’s Will so it is acceptable to more people and the leaders can enlist many to be their foot soldiers.
Today, as in the past, some charlatans are telling us God’s Will is to hate, yet in the Bible, the Israelites are told not to hate the Egyptians, who enslaved them! How is it possible for these good leaders who claim to have “God on their side”, as Bob Dylan sings about, to preach hatred, preach violence, support the people who attacked our Capital and our Democratic Way of Life, support the people who chanted “Jews will not replace us” at Charlottesville and call them “good people”, support the racist viewpoint of denying voting rights to minorities, believe that it is right to hate/be suspicious of the immigrant/stranger in our midst? The Bible tells us to do the opposite of these actions that are being spoken about with reverence in Churches, Mosques, Temples, Synagogues across our country. We are surprised by what happened at Congregation Beth Israel last Shabbat while preaching these types of actions are good and holy when ordered by my leader/preacher in the name of the False god they are praying to. It happens because they are not good leaders, because they are not people of faith as Rabbi Heschel and Biblical tradition and teachings define faith.
Faith is not a cure all, it is not the answer to everything in life, as I am understanding Rabbi Heschel. Faith is a beginning to responding to God, not a guarantee of our being saved. We hear a lot of ‘being saved’ and many of us know we have been-yet our salvation is not guaranteed by God just because we ask for it, just because we finally surrender to the fact that God exists! Salvation occurs when we begin to respond to the demand and challenge that God confronts us with daily. We have become so focused on either denying God’s existence because of the way the world is and/or exhorting God to finally bring the “end of days” and destroy all the ‘unfaithful’-meaning anyone who doesn’t believe like I do. Rabbi Heschel is calling us to stop with our childish faith, let go of our using God to embellish our self/our reputation, and cease our willful and wanton disregard for the truth that there are many ways to hear/serve God’s call. Rabbi Heschel is not telling us what the demands of God are, what the challenges of God are, he is reminding us that faith, belief in God is not a walk in the park, it is an obligation rather than a free ride.
In recovery, we are aware that we have to find a “God of our understanding” so we have a path to follow. We pray to God for strength to carry out God’s will, not the will of our lower self, not the will of our addict self, rather the will of our soul, the will of a “power greater than ourselves” that has no beginning nor end. We want God to be the guarantor of our salvation, we want God to save us, yet we know that it is an inside job as well as a change in our actions and a partnership with God. We cannot act ungodly and think it is okay because God is on our side, our belief in God is enough. In recovery, we are painfully aware of the descent into hell and death that believing God will save us no matter what and God is the explanation for all the allusive things in life will bring.
While my belief in God is a cornerstone of my living, I also know that I believed in God prior to my recovery/transformation. The difference is that the demand and challenge of God was never taught to me in the way that Rabbi Heschel teaches me. It seemed like God was just another controller, “God says so” meant an end to questioning and delving into any deeper understanding of the demand and challenge God presents to us. This way of being left me bereft and unsatisfied, not disbelieving, just not knowing how to believe and how to hear the demands and challenges God was giving me with clarity. When God opened my heart and my hearing in a jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca in 1986, I began to clear out the wax in my ears, have angioplasty done on my spiritual arteries, and respond to the challenge and demand God gave/gives me. I don’t always respond well to the challenge, I am not always able to meet the demand, and I am constantly listening for both and to improve my responses. I hear the challenge and demand as a love song and a statement of faith in me. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark