Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 115
“God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance, which means a deep certainty that it is better to be defeated with Him than be victorious without Him.” (Man is Not Alone pg.92)
I am immersed and obsessed with this sentence as is my wife, Harriet Rossetto. Making God “of supreme importance” is not following any religious laws, doesn’t make the United States a ‘Christian Nation’ nor was it founded to be one! Rather, when God is “of supreme importance”, we can fully embrace the foundation of our becoming a nation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” These words of our Declaration of Independence show that making God/‘their creator” “of supreme importance” is embedded in our national DNA. Yet, we have so many charlatans like Pence, Pompeo, De Santis, Sanders, Manchin, Sienna, McConnell, McCarthy, and other politicians who want to deny these rights/blame to certain groups of Americans, whichever they are afraid will work for them to lose the ‘power’ they have, seek, are obtaining. There is not a hint of prejudice in our Declaration of Independence towards people of color, people of different faiths, etc while, there is a prejudice against women. Yet, we are a nation whose founding document, agreed upon by the 13 Colonies, is non-prejudicial and deeply spiritual.
Herein lies one of the challenges Rabbi Heschel is demanding we answer. Are we, in our lifetime going to promote the foundational spirit of our founding documents or are we, in our lifetime going to promote the foundational spirit of England and King George? Are we going to move towards the Promised Land, the basis America was founded upon or are we going back to Egypt and become slaves to bias’, authoritarianism, hatred and under the thumb of false idols and mendacity? Rabbi Heschel’s words above are calling us to respond to life through the lens of God’s “supreme importance” in everything we do, all of our affairs and in how we treat our fellow human beings. He is reminding us that life/living is not about “winning at all costs”, it is not about a “zero sum” game, rather it is about Who/what is at the core of our beingness, are we serving God in all of our affairs-which means caring for, respecting, growing and nurturing all of God’s creations, especially our fellow human beings!
Yet, as we can see over the years, these fundamental principles have been bastardized and twisted around. We see this in our politics and we see this in our religions, we see this in our ethics and we see this in the way we ignore/mistreat our fellow human beings and even our selves. As I am learning from my new friends Pastor Ed Treat and the Center for Addiction and Faith and Elder Joe Paul, as well as old friends like John Pavlovitz, Rev Mark Whitlock, Rev Najuma Smith Pollard, and others-the ‘prosperity gospel’ preached by the politicians and their co-conspirators in church and the people who put on the National Prayer Breakfast, is utter BS and not what Christ nor Paul taught, wrote, said nor would recognize as the Christianity they practiced. The Judaism that keeps being prejudicial and unwelcoming, rigid and unforgiving, static and stale is not the Judaism of the Torah nor of the Rabbis of old, it is one based in fear and need for power-which our Sages debated and wrote down the different ways of fulfilling the law so the people of the time could choose and they set the path for us to follow-never stay stuck in the past.
When God is “of supreme importance” we never stay stale, we are always promoting new and different ways to fulfill God’s call, God’s demand, the call and demands of the people around us and those around them, etc. We are blessed, as I am reading Rabbi Heschel this morning, with the opportunity to respond to this wisdom and necessary way of living by fulfilling the words written above by Rabbi Heschel. We can and must, make God “of supreme importance” in all of our ways, all of our decisions and in all of our connections-otherwise we are empty and contributing to the emptiness and despair that is so prevalent in our society today.
In recovery, we ask ourselves in the morning and throughout the day, how is this serving God, what would God have me do, which of God’s principles do I need to practice in this situation. We know that to grow in our recovery, we have to enlarge our God consciousness/Higher Consciousness. We are painfully aware that if we don’t we will fall backwards and return to selfish, inadequate, uncaring, self-centered lives we just left.
When I use the word demand in relation to Rabbi Heschel, I am speaking of the manner in which he speaks to the truth of our inner life, the cry of our souls and the prophetic voice that keeps telling us that we are not alone, God cares, God is calling and God is always searching for us. Rabbi Heschel and God let me know all the time that I am not alone and, as long as God is “of supreme importance” in my living, I will survive and thrive from every interaction and experience I have. When God is “of supreme importance” I am emboldened to be me, to not hide, to err and to forgive, to reach out to save another human being and to be rejected. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark