Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 145
“It is a protection against the outburst of the inner evils, against arrogance, hybris, self-deification. The end of embarrassment would be the end of humanity.” (Who is Man pg 113)
As we watch in horror what is happening in Ukraine and immerse ourselves in Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above, we realize the reason we need to be embarrassed more and more and we need to be aware of our actions, our way of living. Putin and his thugs are invading a free country just because they believe they can, their arrogance is so strong and their embarrassment so weak they actually have deceived themselves into believing their lies, actually believe that this makes them stronger and tougher, etc.
Arrogance is a major disease in our world, as it has been throughout the millennia. Embarrassment is a protection when we use it as a ‘halter’ around our rationalizations, around our self-deceptions, etc. We do this by remembering who is in our neighborhood, God! As Rabbi Heschel teaches us we “live in the shadow of greatness” and we are “ a contemporary of God”. God/Higher Power/Higher Consciousness/morality puts a ‘halter’ around us, to lead us towards finding ways to live together with our differences and our similarities. Yet, many of us throw off this ‘halter’ and we continue to defy a higher standard of living through our arrogance. This arrogance is that we can lie with impunity, cheat and get away with it, entitled and not be responsible, above the law and force you to follow my law, live the only true path to god and this makes me immune to criticism, the one with the gold rules and the rest serve, etc.
We see this in our faith communities through their adherence to dogma rather than their response to human suffering. We see this arrogance in religious leaders who play politics rather than serve God. We see this arrogance in trying to control women’s right to choose while saying they have the right to choose to stay unvaccinated. We see this arrogance in their bastardization of Scriptures to make power more important than kindness, lies more important than truth, vilifying the pressing needs of the poor, the needy, the stranger rather than serving these needs and many more ways. We need to call our faith communities to account and demand they become embarrassed at their arrogance, demand they return to God and serve people in truth, let go of their own lies/self-deceptions, stand up for the needy, the stranger, the poor, promote freedom and understand that there are, at least, 70 ways to understand the Bible so no one way can be ‘the’ way. We need to demand our faith communities return to welcoming the stranger, the one who has strayed from God and is returning, the women who make their own choices, the people who have been assaulted by the money-hungry carpetbaggers of today, people of color who have been marginalized in subtler and subtler ways, people of different faith traditions so we can learn of our similarities and rejoice in our differences. We need to demand our faith communities let go of their arrogance, be embarrassed and rejoin God in promoting truth, love, justice, compassion, kindness, etc.
We see this arrogance in our elected officials all the time, unfortunately. Both poles, far right and far left, accuse one another of being arrogant without looking in the mirror! The arrogance is the belief by some elected officials that they are above the law, they can do anything they want, they can live double lives without any consequences, condemning in another what they do on a daily basis. Yet, when they are ‘found out’, they deny, they declare their innocence, they rail against the unfairness of the situation and they accuse their accusers of lying. Rather than be embarrassed by their inability to control themselves, they are proud of their ‘above the law’ status. Rather than admit to the evils that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021, they are proud of the ‘patriotism’ shown that day. Rather than censure and dismiss Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar for their attendance at, speaking at and agreement with a white nationalist group who chanted for Putin, applauded Hitler as a hero, Kevin McCarthy gave a weak statement, while censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their seeking of truth-can’t get much more arrogant than this, Kevin McCarthy!
In recovery, we have been shunned by so many for so long because of our past. Rabbi Heschel’s teaching is so powerful for us reminding us to not do what is hateful to us to another person. We cannot allow our hurt at being shunned by faith communities, employers, family members cause us to be arrogant towards anyone, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of believing we can be in recovery and live arrogantly.
I am arrogant at times and I am called arrogant more often than I actually am. I realize my visions, my insights and the ways I go about achieving them can be experienced as arrogant and I have to do a better job of explaining my path to another person. I have been arrogant and dismissive when I experience someone being deceptive with me and I have come across arrogant to those who do not want to be exposed. I have been arrogant in my thinking that I had earned some respect, some understanding from people because of the good deeds I had done, not realizing/accepting that 1 “Oh Shit” wipes our 100 “Atta Boys”. I am embarrassed by my awareness of my being blind to some truths and grateful that I can be embarrassed and use this ‘halter’ to lead me forward with strength, better vision, truth and love. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark