Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Day 263
“To be human involves the ability to appreciate as well as the ability to give expression to appreciation. For thousands of years authentic existence included both manipulation and appreciation, utilization and celebration, both work and worship. In primitive society they were interdependent; in biblical religion they were interrelated. Today we face a different situation.” (Who is Man pg. 116)
The more we immerse and encounter the phrase “both work and worship”, the more we are able to experience the importance of both in our daily lives. The question that faith, spirituality come to respond to/answer is how do we keep working and worshiping our “authentic existence” rather than mendacity, self-deception and the deception of another(s)? This is the great question for our time, for all time. Going all the way back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve engaged in the deception of hiding, when Cain engaged in the mendacity of not knowing where Able was. Abraham deceiving Pharaoh and Abimelech with the “she is my sister” lie. We have seen over and over again how easily even our greatest heroes can fall into working and worshiping at the altar of the idol of mendacity, inauthenticity, taking a stand for deception, and stunting their own coming into being. If these giants of faith fell into this trap, how can we expect ourselves to avoid it?
I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call to us to be aware of this trap, to stop putting on the cloaks of ‘holier than thou’, stop engaging in the mendacity and self-deception of ‘doing it for the greater good’ when one is only engaging in working in deception modalities and worshiping at the altar of the idol of power. It is time for all of us to stop and look at what we are working for and towards, how we are working to achieve our goals, whom we are working for as well as what altar we are worshiping at, what entity we are worshiping and how are we integrating our work and worship. deceivers like the Trump family, their racist, white supremacist friends and allies, work for themselves, first last and always. They are working towards dominance, invincibility, total protection for self, being able to do whatever they want with impunity. They are working for and worshiping their false self, trying to say that racism and faith go together. They do an excellent job of integrating their faith in themselves, their belief that they can use faith to do anything they want because faith leaders put their hands of DJT and anointed him the savior of Christianity. Talk about deception and mendacity! They have truly integrated work and worship for their own good, not for the sake of heaven. I use them as an example and they have many, many ancestors, followers, co-idolators and deceivers as well as raising up a whole lot of disciples. One of the hallmarks of great deceivers is their use of truth to create lies, use teachings to promote their deceptions and tap into the self-deception of a large group of people so they follow their lies. They have adopted a false self, a false way of being and are afraid of engaging in “authentic existence”.
Using the principles of faith and spirituality however lead us down another path. They lead us to find our own unique and individual “authentic existence”. When justice and mercy are part of our foundation of life, we can no longer turn a blind eye to the injustices we witness on a daily basis, homelessness, killing innocent/guilty of a small crime black men, price gouging, shunning the stranger, etc and we demand justice and mercy from everyone, beginning with our self. When kindness and compassion are part of our foundation of life, we can no longer ignore the sores that are festering on an individual, on our society, we can no longer make it ‘someone else’s problems because I pay my taxes’, we can no longer ignore the appeal to see the humanity in the addict, the criminal, the people we meet in a store, on the street, we can no longer ignore our own hard-heartedness and we open up our hearts to let the pain penetrate so we engage in the call to action of our souls. When truth and love are part of our foundation of life, we can no longer stay in our own self-deceptions. We can no longer just point the finger of blame towards another, towards the amorphous ‘them’, we can no longer wrap ourselves in the cloak of “I’m good and you’re bad”, we can no longer shirk our responsibility in every experience as Rabbi Heschel teaches, “in a free society, some are guilty, all are responsible”, we can no longer engage in senseless hatred and mendacity. We open our souls up to love our neighbor and everyone is a neighbor, we open our souls up to speak truth to power and to everyone else, including our self, we embrace, love and care for the stranger in our midst, we become the voice for he powerless and voiceless and we shatter the mold of racism, anti-semitism, all forms of hatred and the “cancer of the soul” called prejudice.
In recovery, we call this “turning our will and lives over to the care of God…” We are constantly seeking to root out our self-deceptions and catch our mendacious ways earlier and earlier, knowing we will probably never be free of these deeply human traits. We seek to live life based on the principles above and not with mendacity nor deception.
I smell the mendacity of another very quickly and this helps me seek out my own. I have, of course, engaged in self-deception and mendacity in my recovery, and I am able to recognize it faster because of my daily inventory and inner search. I use prayer to help me keep myself always working for the sake of heaven as well as for my sake. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark