Return to Home Page Visit Rabbi's Sermon Page Rabbi Karp's Participation in the 10th Annual Interfaith Theological Symposium, delivered Sunday, March 19th and March 26th, 2000 in Davenport, Iowa ... What We Believe...How We Live I
wish to share with you one of the many stories which have come down to us
about Hillel, the Father of Modern Judaism.
It was said that Hillel was a man of infinite patience.
In fact, in his own day, he was renown for his patience.
So it should not surprise anyone that there were malicious folks,
especially pagans, who constantly wanted to test that patience.
They would devise all sorts of schemes to provoke his ire.
It was toward this goal that a pagan once approached Hillel and asked
Hillel to teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot, a seemingly
impossible task. But Hillel
didn’t fall for the bait. Calmly,
lifting one of his legs, he responded, “What is hateful to you, do not do
unto your neighbor. All the
rest is commentary. Go and
study it!” This
evening, I feel somewhat like Hillel, for I and the other panelists have
been given the gargantuan task of speaking to you about our personal beliefs
in or about God, how those beliefs have grown out of our religious
traditions, and how those beliefs influence our public actions on a daily
basis, and we are each expected to do all this in 25 minutes.
While 25 minutes is not exactly standing on one foot, then again,
I’m no Hillel! And 25 minutes
is but a small window of time to share with you a lifetime of evolving
theology. So
where do I begin to talk about my personal theology?
Perhaps the best place is by sharing with you what I do with my
Confirmation Class, my tenth graders. One
of the segments of our curriculum, the most important segment, deals
precisely with this subject - personal theology.
We start that segment with the following exercise.
I state a word - a noun - and ask the class to silently reflect on
that word for a moment, and then share the image that words evokes in their
minds. For example, I say the
word “automobile,” they reflect on that word, and then we go around the
room and each one shares what image of an automobile comes to their mind. Sometimes their images are familiar images - images of their
family car - and sometimes they are imaginative images - images of the car
which in their dreams they wish they could own. We do this exercise several times, with several different
nouns; words like “chair,” “house,” “dog,” “boat”.
As they get used to the exercise their images become sharper, more
detailed. Just as things are
really cooking, I throw in the ringer.
I say “God.” Some of
the students are stumped. Some
only speak in the vaguest of terms. Rarely
do I find a student who has even the beginnings of a developed concept. I
conduct this exercise for two reasons.
One - to demonstrate to the students how little thought we tend to
give to God in our lives. We
say the word “God” and we may even say it very often, but more often
than not, it is just a word to us; a neon sign in our brain, flashing
“G-O-D”. Granted that the
concept of God is far less tangible than the concept of an automobile.
Indeed, that was one of the great fundamental messages which Judaism
introduced to humanity - that God is not tangible, does not have a physical
form, and therefore cannot be graphically depicted in the form of an idol -
that God is spiritual, and not physical.
Still, there are many abstract concepts that we can give voluminous
verbal expression to. One only
need look at the treasure trove of love poetry as testimony to that fact.
That we cannot speak clearly and in detail about our perceptions of
God is to my way of thinking the greatest spiritual challenge we Americans
face today. We are so educated and we are so comfortable that we have
deceived ourselves into believing that we have little place for God in our
lives. The
second reason for the exercise is to impress upon the students the
significance of the “personal” in personal theology.
Just as each student had his or her own image of a car, a dog, a
house, a chair - each one being different from the other - and each one
being just as valid as the other, for a scottish terrier is as much of a dog
as a german shepherd, so each one of us can develop our own perception of
the nature of God, with each of our perceptions being different and unique,
and yet each one being as valid as the next. Does
that mean that God is different things to different people?
Perhaps. In fact there
is a midrash, a rabbinic story of explanation, concerning the giving of the
Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai which would seem to indicate that as the
case. In the Hebrew text in
Exodus, on the day of the giving of the commandments, it says that “there
were thunders and lightenings and a thick cloud upon the mountain.” The fact that the words for thunder and lightening were in
the plural troubled the rabbis. Why
the plural? Also, the Hebrew
word for “thunder” is “kol”, which is also the word for “voice.”
The author of this particular midrash latched on to that fact to
explain that the plural word, “kolot,” meant not “thunders” but
indeed “voices.” For when
God spoke at Mount Sinai, God spoke in many voices, with each person
standing at the foot of the mountain hearing their own personal voice of
God. For God spoke to each
individual personally, in a voice - in a manner - which they could best
understand. In other words,
there was not one revelation at Sinai, but as many revelations as there were
people, each one receiving their own unique revelation from God. I
like that midrash, for it tells me that each of us has to come to our own
understanding of God, and in fact that God wants us to come to our own
understandings. Does
that mean that there is a different God for each of us?
Not necessarily. Judaism
teaches that there is but one God. That
is the centerpiece of our faith. One
of the most important prayers in our worship service is a text from
DEUTERONOMY which we call the “Shema,” which is also often referred to
as the “Watchword of Our Faith.” It
goes like this: “Shema Yisraeil” - “Hear O Israel!” - “Adonai
Eloheinu” - “Adonai is our God” - “Adonai echad!” - “Adonai is
One!” Indeed, the belief in
the absolute unity of God historically has been one of the points of
theological conflict between the Jewish people and the Christians,
especially those Christians, such as Roman Catholics, who believe in the
trinitarian nature of God. So
how do you reconcile the concept of personal theology with the belief in the
absolute unity of God? I tend
to think of it in terms of the old story about the three blind men and the
elephant. These three blind men had encountered an elephant, and not
being able to examine it by sight, they attempted to explore it by touch.
One found its tail, and exclaimed, “This animal is like a snake.
It is short, cylindrical and thin.”
The second, having found its trunk, said, “What are you talking
about? Yes, it is cylindrical,
but it’s not short, but long, and it’s thick, not thin!
It’s not like a snake, but more like a sturdy branch!”
At which point, the third, having found its side, countered, “You
both are seriously mistaken. It is big, very big! It
is far bigger than a snake or a branch.
And it is not cylindrical. Rather,
it is massive, like a wall!” In
our lives, we, like the three blind men, encounter different aspects of God,
but not the whole. The whole of
God is far greater than we mere mortals are capable of grasping.
Therefore, we catch but glimpses of the nature of God, each of us
perceiving God from different perspectives.
Those perspectives mold our perceptions of God, which is, in effect,
our personal theology. Therefore, our personal theology is what we have been able to
deduce about the nature of God, based upon the various God experiences of
our lives. Since each of us has
different experiences, it is only logical that we each will arrive at
different deductions. What is
the true nature of God? While
that is beyond our knowledge, I believe that it is safe to assume that each
of our personal deductions carries within it a kernel of that truth. If
we each, in our own personal theology, carry at least a kernel of the truth
about God, then is there a place for the theological teachings of religious
tradition? I believe that there
is. I believe that personal
theology is not just a matter of personal God experience, but it is also a
matter of religious tradition. Indeed,
it is upon the foundation of our religious tradition that we can build our
personal theology, colored by our personal experiences and insights. The two must walk hand in hand, each supporting the other. The
concept of the marriage of the personal and the traditional is not new to
Jewish theology. One of the
major prayers in the Jewish worship service is the “Avot”, the
“Fathers.” It begins with
the statement, “Blessed are You, Adonai, our God and God of our Fathers,
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob.”
In one of the commentaries on this prayer, the question is asked,
“Why does it say ‘our God and God of our Fathers, God of Abraham, God of
Isaac, and God of Jacob’? Why
does it just not say ‘our God’? After
all, is not ‘our God’ also the ‘God of our Fathers, God of Abraham,
God of Isaac, and God of Jacob’?” In
answer to this question, the commentator goes on to say, “No.
Our God is not necessarily the God of our Fathers.”
As he explains it, “our God” is the aspect of God which we
discover through the experiences of our own lives, while the “God of our
Fathers” represents the aspects of God which we have come to learn through
the historical experiences of the Jewish people.
To have a fuller appreciation of God, we need both, for neither can
stand alone. While our own
experiences of God are more vibrant because they are more personal to us,
they are also more fragile, for there are times in our lives when we
experience God and times when we don’t. And when we want to or even need to experience God, such as
at times of personal crisis, and we don’t, if our belief in God was solely
founded upon our own experiences, it would be easy for us, at those times,
to deny God’s existence, based upon God’s seeming absence. It is at those times that the “God of our Fathers,” the
God of the Jewish historical experience strengthens our faith by giving us a
sense of greater perspective; by reminding us that there were many times
when our people faced challenges and suffered, but in the end, they endured,
they survived, they prevailed. In
the end, God was with them, even if it did not seem so at the time. The “God of our Fathers” reminds us that our faith must
transcend the moment. That true
belief in God is more than a momentary encounter.
It is a commitment for the bigger picture, for the long haul. On
the other hand, by itself, the “God of our Fathers” is also inadequate. Age old tradition is important.
A history of a God - Jew relationship is important.
But in the end, that was then, this is now.
If God does not play an immediate part in our lives today, then all
the rest is just history - something from the past, and not something for
the present, nonetheless for the future.
The “God of our Fathers” must give us a starting point, a
foundation, upon which to sculpt our present day relationship with God.
It helps us set the parameters.
But it is only “Our God,” the God of our personal experiences,
which has the power to breathe life into that relationship. Still,
the commentator wants to know, “Why then doesn’t the prayer stop with
‘Our God and God of our Fathers’? Why
does it go on to say ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob’?
Is that not redundant, for are not Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ‘our
Fathers’?” The answer is
both “yes” and “no.” Yes,
in that of course they are “our Fathers,” but no in that the God of
Abraham is not identical with the God of Isaac, and the God of Isaac is not
identical with the God of Jacob. For
each of those individuals found God in their own way.
And while Isaac had the benefit of learning of God from Abraham, God
for Isaac was that, and more. And
while Jacob had the benefit of learning of God from Isaac, Jacob’s God,
too, was that and more. The
perception of God for each generation is altered by the experiences of that
generation. Our beliefs about
God grow as we grow. Within
recent years, Reform Judaism has changed the very text of this prayer. We have included the “Mothers” as well. We now not only speak about “God of Abraham, God of Isaac,
and God of Jacob,” but also about “God of Sarah, God of Rebekah, God of
Leah, and God of Rachel.” While
the primary intent of our modern liturgists may have been to add these names
in the spirit of sexual equality and gender inclusiveness, I cannot help but
marvel at how their inclusion also so beautifully reflects upon the
evolution of a Jewish theology which takes into account feminist issues and
recognizes the legitimate feminine aspects of God; that the “God of Sarah,
God of Rebekah, God of Leah, and God of Rachel” are indeed very different
perspectives of God than any of the “officially” recognized perspectives
of the past; that their inclusion gives voice to and acknowledges the
legitimacy of the unique views of God as held by women.
Their inclusion gives testimony to the fact we as Jews are forever
growing in our understanding of the nature of God.
Make no mistake about it. It
is not that God has changed to be more inclusive of women, but that our
perceptions of God have evolved to the point that we are now more and more
recognizing what insights and truths women bring to this theological quest. So
far I have spoken a great deal about the importance of the perceptions of
God; the historical perceptions of God as developed by the many generations
of the Jewish people, the perceptions of God as held by the Patriarchs and
the Matriarchs, and our own personal perceptions of God.
I have dwelt upon this issue of perceptions because in Jewish
theology we human beings are as important a player in the matter as is God. Why? Because
Jewish theology is all about relationships, and in particular, the
relationship between the Jewish people and God.
And relationships, in order to be relationships, have to be two
sided. True relationships are
not monologues, but dialogues. We
have a term for this relationship which we believe exists between the Jews
and God. We call it
“Covenant,” in Hebrew “Brit.” “Covenant”
is just a fancy word for “contract.”
We as Jews live in a contractual relationship with God.
And as is true of most contractual relationships, there are
expectations that are placed upon both sides.
Jews are expected to fulfill certain requirements, and so is God. What
I find so powerful about this concept of covenant is that when you consider
it, you see that it is nothing short of an ideology of partnership.
God and the Jewish people exist in a partnership, and the
implications of a partnership are profound.
Partners are equals. They
are dependent upon each other in making their joint venture a success. For the Jews and God, what is their joint venture?
It is the very existence and perfection of this world.
It is the quality of life itself.
Jewish tradition teaches that Creation was not a one time event,
simply happening in totality during those first six days, as described in
the book of GENESIS. Rather, Creation is an on-going process.
The world is continually being created and re-created, and in that
continual creation and re-creation, ideally, it is moving slowly but surely
toward greater and greater perfection.
God may have started that process alone, in those first six days, but
since the creation of humanity, the rest of creation has been a joint
effort. We, using the gifts
that God has given us - the gifts of insight, wisdom, knowledge, creativity,
compassion - work, or at least should be working, hand in hand with God
toward the ultimate perfection of the universe. No where is this concept more graphically or beautifully
displayed than in some of the Jewish Sabbath table rituals. Among those rituals are the blessings over wine and challah,
the special Shabbat braided egg bread.
The wine blessing praises God as “borei pri hagafen” - the
“Creator of the fruit of the vine” - and the bread blessing praises God
as “Hamotsi lechem min ha-arets” - the “One who brings bread from the
earth.” But in point of fact,
wine is not the fruit of the vine - grapes are - and bread does not come
from the earth - wheat does. Wine only becomes wine when we human beings take God’s
creation of grapes and through our own creativity transform it into wine,
and bread only becomes bread when we human beings take God’s creation of
wheat and through our own creativity transform it into bread.
What we are doing when we combine the blessings with the objects -
the wine and the bread - is testifying to the important partnership between
God and us. For God provides us
with the raw materials, the knowledge and the skill, but it is up to us to
transform them into something better. What
is true of grapes and wine, and wheat and bread, is true of all creation. The
idea of working together with God as partners opens up the possibility of a
certain intimacy in our relationship. That
intimacy is born of our mutual need for each other.
For not only do we need God, but God needs us.
We cannot survive without God, but God cannot complete Creation
without us. That need creates a
yearning which is mutual. The
Jewish God can be a very personal God.
In Tractate Berachot of the Babylonian Talmud there is a fascinating
statement about the relationship between God and worship.
It says that when a Jew misses a worship service, God misses that
Jew, wondering where they are and worrying whether or not they are O.K.
That image of God missing someone truly touches me.
How much more personal can you get?
That is a God that cares, not just about the big picture, but about
each and every one of us. So
we exist in partnership with God. But
what are the terms of that partnership?
What are the expectations placed upon each of the parties? I
have to admit that the expectations placed upon God may not appear to be
very specific or exacting. God
is expected to be with our people; to maintain the relationship; to keep the
lines of communication open between us; and to take care of us, as best God
can. That may not sound like
much, and at times it may seem as though God is falling down on the job, but
in actuality that is a great deal. As
anyone who has a loving, dear friend knows, sometimes there is great healing
power in simply hearing their voice or being in their presence, or knowing
how much they care. Unfortunately
all too often today it seems that the power of God’s presence among us we
only begin to fully appreciated through the experience of God’s absence. Indeed the challenge of modern Jewish life is to effectively
open our minds, our hearts, our souls to a keener awareness of God’s
presence in our lives on a daily basis.
As an 18th century Hasidic master once so aptly put it:
“Where can God be found? Wherever
you let God in.” We American
Jews have to do a lot more work on that letting of God in. On
the other hand, the expectations placed upon the Jewish people, as outlined
in the Torah and explained more fully in our other sacred texts, are
extremely detailed and exacting. We
call these expectations “mitzvot,” which literally means
“commandments,” but which we today, especially on the liberal end of
Judaism, prefer to think of not so much as commandments but rather as
behavioral opportunities which, if we find them personally meaningful, have
the power to draw us closer to God. The
mitzvot can be divided into two major categories, ritual mitzvot and ethical
mitzvot. Each category itself
can be divided into two sections - positive mitzvot and negative mitzvot. A positive mitzvah is something that you do, and a negative
mitzvah is something that you refrain from doing. For example, a positive ritual mitzvah would be attending
worship services on Shabbat while a negative ritual mitzvah would be
refraining from working on Shabbat. A
positive ethical mitzvah would be feeding the hungry, while a negative
ethical mitzvah would be not stealing. What
all too often modern Jews forget, but what we need to always keep in mind,
is that the mitzvot are the operations manual for our relationship with God. That there are ritual mitzvot and ethical mitzvot says a lot
about that relationship. For
while ritual mitzvot are primarily between us and God - they are behaviors
which we take on to bring us closer to God - ethical mitzvot, on the other
hand, are primarily between us and our fellow human beings - they focus on
how we interact and treat each other. In
order for us to have a healthy relationship with God, we need to be active
in both these realms of mitzvot. It
is not enough for us to ritually draw closer to God if we are not concerned
with the well being of our fellow human beings.
For without the ethics, our rituals are meaningless.
How can we claim to love God if we do not love God’s children?
While on the other hand, it is also not enough for us, as Jews, to
care about our fellow human beings if we do not extend ourselves ritually to
God. Leading an ethical life makes us a good human being.
It does not make us a good Jew.
There is nothing wrong with being a good human being, but we are
Jews, and as such, we need to be more than just good human beings.
We need to be good Jews, relating to God in very Jewish ways.
It is only when we combine the two - ritual and ethics - that, as
Jews, we develop a healthy relationship with God.
For God wants us to care both about God and about our fellow human
beings. Caring about one is not
enough, especially if it is only about God. Where
does this leave non-Jews? I
can’t answer that question now because I have run out of time.
So, somebody, ask me that question later, during our Question and
Answer period. There is so much
more that needs to be said, but as I stated in the beginning of this
presentation, 25 minutes is but a small window of time to share with you a
lifetime of evolving theology. It
is like Hillel standing on one foot. Thank you.
What We Believe...How We Live Before
I begin, I have to tell you, this is hard!
Not only is tonight’s subject, the nature of evil, a hard subject
to discuss, but doing this - presenting two papers like this two weeks in a
row - is a really difficult thing to do.
For the last 9 years, we spent good money to bring into our community
each year three outside speakers, each one delivering only one paper.
This year, at no fee, we clergy are doing it ourselves, and Rev.
Saleska and I are each doing two. From
all of this, I have learned two things:
(1) That our speakers of the past really did earn their fees, and
often their presentations were worth significantly more than we paid them,
and (2) That there are really times in my life that I honest to goodness
truly wish that I was a Christian, and this is one of them, for if I were a
Christian, I would have only had to deliver one paper and not two! Now
to the nature of evil. In the Torah, in the book of DEUTERONOMY, it says, “If,
along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the
ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings
or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you
may fare well and have a long life.”[1] I
share with you that text because it is central to your understanding of the
following story: In
the second century, in Judea, there lived a rabbi by the name of Elisha ben
Abuya. He was a great scholar
and teacher. His was the type
of mind that was always questioning. And
in his day, there was a lot to question.
The Jewish people were living under the tyranny of Rome, and all
around there was suffering and persecution.
Elisha, who himself was born into a life of comfort, constantly
struggled with understanding the social realities of his people’s fate. One
day, while Elisha and some of his colleagues were walking along a road, they
spotted a peasant and his young son, by the foot of a tree.
The father said to his son, “Climb this tree and get all the eggs,
my son, but be very careful to send the mother bird away.”
And so the boy climbed the tree.
As he watched the lad, Elisha, remembering the DEUTERONOMY text,
thought to himself, “This boy is surely worthy of a long and good life,
for in one act, he is fulfilling two commandments; obeying his father and
sending the mother bird away.” Even
as Elisha ben Abuya was considering this, there was a sudden flutter of
wings above the tree, the vision of a little arm waving through the
branches, and then a sharp cry. The
scholars ran to the tree, only to find the peasant leaning over the sprawled
body of the lad. “Is he
dead?” cried the peasant. One
of the scholars examined the child and nodded.
“But Masters, he was a good boy, a good pupil - you can ask his
teachers. Oh, his mother...” As
the distraught father picked up the body of his son and carried it away, the
rabbis stared after him. Elisha
ben Abuya was overcome by the moment. He
overheard one of his colleagues say, “It is hard to understand but let us
remember that there is a better world, in which it is all day, a day that
stretches for eternity.” Even
before he knew what he was doing, Elisha blurted out, “It is all a lie!
There is no reward. There
is no Judge. There is no
Judgement. For there is no
God!”[2] I
share with you this story because I want to remind you that the struggle to
understand the existence of evil in the presence of God is not a new one.
It is as ancient as belief in God itself. At times, we are all somewhat like Elisha ben Abuya.
We look around in our lives and in our world, and we witness great
suffering, and sometimes very personal suffering - suffering that strikes
close to home - and that is especially true when we, like Elisha, witness
the suffering of innocent children. The
classical explanations, associating suffering with accountability, claiming
it as punishment for misdeeds, simply fails when little children suffer
greatly, for there is no misdeed which they could have performed deserving
of their plight. Of
course, for the Jewish people today, one of the greatest challenges
concerning this issue of evil, is understanding the Holocaust.
How can a just, loving, caring God permit 6 million Jews - 9 million
victims - men and women, the elderly and the young - to be destroyed so
brutally? Being
the last speaker this evening, I suspect that by this time, at least one of
my colleagues will have informed you that there is an entire area of
religious thought dedicated to these questions.
It is called “Theodicy”, which I prefer to define as the
understanding of God in the presence of evil.
For centuries theologians have speculated and speculated and
speculated on this matter. And
to date, no definitive answers have been found. In
the ancient world, one such attempted solution was to be found in the
philosophies of dualism. When,
in 586 B.C.E., the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and brought
the Jews into exile in Babylon, the Jews encountered such dualistic
beliefs in the faith of the Babylonians.
For the Babylonians believed that there were two forces in the
universe - the force for good and the force for evil - and that these two
forces were engaged in an eternal struggle.
Sometimes the good prevailed, and sometimes the evil.
We, as human beings, experienced the effects of that struggle as it
played out in our lives and in our world.
Therefore, when something bad happened to someone, it was because, at
least momentarily, the force of evil was predominant. The
exiled Jews encountered such thinking, and more likely than not, many were
enticed by it. But the
encounter forced the Jewish people to address some difficult issues about
their beliefs in God. We
witness such reflection in the works of the exilic prophets - the prophets
who preached during the Babylonian exile.
Probably the most telling statement of all is to be found in Second
ISAIAH (for you may not know it, but there was more than one Isaiah, at
least two if not three or more, and the book of ISAIAH as we have it in our
Bibles is actually a compendium of the works of the different Isaiahs).
Scholars generally believe that the work of the second Isaiah begins
with the 40th
chapter of the book. Now
in chapter 45, verse 7, it speaks about God as being “Yotzer or u-vorei
choshech” - “The Former of light and the Creator of darkness” -
“oseh shalom u-vorei ra” - “the Maker of peace and the Creator of
evil.” Now
that is a dramatic statement to make. God
is the Creator of evil. But
when faced with the dualism of the Babylonians, the renown Jewish commitment
to monotheism, the belief in the one, all encompassing God, found itself
challenged to either reject its fundamental belief in the absolute unity of
God or to accept that evil, like good, also emanates from that unity. For if our God is to truly be One, then our God must be the
God of evil as well as of good. That
is indeed a bitter pill to swallow, but I admire Second Isaiah for having
been willing to swallow it. Indeed,
later, the rabbis would take his statement and incorporate it into our daily
worship service, in a prayer which deals with the nature of God as Creator.
But even the rabbis found that pill too bitter to swallow, so they
changed his words and softened them. Instead
of God being “the Former of light and the Creator of darkness, the Maker
of peace and the Creator of evil,” they called God “the Former of light
and the Creator of darkness, the Maker of peace and the Creator of
everything.” Of course the
concept of “everything” includes evil, but the rabbis felt that they did
not have to put it right out there on the table for everyone to look at. While
Second Isaiah succeeded in preserving the concept of the unity of God, of
course he left us with this painful problem.
How do we continue to understand our God to be a benevolent God, yet
at the same time responsible for evil? Harold
Kushner, in his classic book, WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE, marches
his readers through a catalogue of theories that have been put forth over
the centuries to address that question.
And each of those theories, he effectively debunks.
For it is true, none, when placed under appropriate scrutiny, hold
water. In the end, God winds up
either being a game player with people’s lives, or insensitive, or
downright cruel. For instance,
the argument from the book that stands out most sharply in my mind - for
personal reasons - is the one based upon the belief that God does not give
us burdens we are unable to bear. The
story he tells is about the death of a sixteen year old girl.
When her mother is “comforted” by a well meaning person who tells
her, “God does not give us burdens that we are unable to bear,” she
bitterly responds, “Then I wish I were a weaker person, for if I were,
then my daughter would still be alive.”
I, as a parent of a child with a disability, resonate with that. I would hate to think that my son has to live his life with
autism because my wife and I are strong enough to bear that burden.
What kind of God would victimize a child because of his or her
parents’ strengths? Not the
kind of God who I would wish to call my friend, that’s for sure! As
Kushner does with that argument, so Kushner does with all the classical
arguments. Eventually, having
done that, Kushner leads us to a re-evaluation of our perspectives on God. And once again, I like what Kushner has to say - maybe
because I was actually saying it long before his book came out, but I just
never thought of writing it down, and getting on the best seller list!
Kushner says, we have to look at the qualities we attribute to God.
We say that God is all-knowing.
We say that God is all-caring. We
say that God is all-powerful. Logically,
God cannot be all of these three things, and still permit evil to exist.
It simply will not compute. Therefore,
since evil does exist, something here has to give. If
we say that God is not all-knowing, then evil is something that occurs in
God’s blind spot. Evil occurs
because God is unaware of it. However,
there is a problem with that argument.
It comes down to the question of “Just how ignorant is God?”
After all, there is a heck of a lot of evil in this world; a heck of
a lot of pain and suffering. How
can God be unaware of it, considering just how much of it there is?
For this argument to hold, God would have to be a moron.
And if God were a moron, God would no longer be God.
And besides, all the other evidence - all that God has taught us -
would seem to indicate that God is pretty bright. Then
perhaps the problem is that God is not all-caring.
That is a very viable alternative.
Indeed, that is the conclusion that many people come to in the depths
of their suffering; that God simply doesn’t care about them.
Even the psalmist surrendered to this, for do we not read in the 22nd
Psalm, “Eili, Eili, lama azavtani” - “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” If God were
all-caring, why would God ever abandon us? It
is interesting what some theologians do with this concept of abandonment. Some try to sanitize it.
One highly respected post Holocaust Jewish theologian, Emil
Fackenheim, wrote a book called GOD’S PRESENCE IN HISTORY.
In this text, he presented the idea that God, like the sun and the
moon, can go into eclipse. At
these times of eclipse, God withdraws from the world.
And in the absence of God, evil seems to hold sway.
For that is what he, and several other theologians, believe the
nature of evil to be - the absence of God.
From one perspective, such thought seems to be very God affirming.
Evil is the absence of God. Evil
is what happens when God is not in our lives.
But it doesn’t answer a very important question: “Why does God
absent Godself? Why does God
withdraw from us and desert us to the ravages of evil?”
And more pointedly, “Why does God withdraw from the innocent,
especially from the children?” Yes,
evil as the absence of God is just a cleaner way of saying, God doesn’t
care, or care enough about us. If
God doesn’t care, then what good is God?
What purpose does God serve in our lives?
Who needs such a God? One
might as well be like Elisha ben Abuya and stand up and proclaim, “It’s
a lie. There is no reward. There
is no Judge. There is no
Judgement. There is no God.”
If God doesn’t care, then life is fundamentally hopeless.
Believing it, is a viable alternative, but it is far from being a
desirable alternative. That
leaves the third alternative. God
is not all-powerful. This is
where Kushner places his bet, and this is where I place my bet as well.
God may be all-knowing and all-caring, but may not always be able to
do something about it. The
image of God sometimes standing helpless by, as we often stand helpless by,
I find to be a poignant one. If
God is not all-powerful then what are God’s limitations?
One limitation is to be found in the very natural laws that God has
already put into place. Once
those laws are established, not even God can violate them. So,
for example, let’s take a look at gravity.
If you step off the roof of a ten story building, God or no God, you
are going to go down, and when you hit the pavement below, you are going to
hit with a splat, for as Newton pointed out, every action has its equal and
opposite reaction. God can’t
change that. Another
limitation is imposed upon God by God’s own gift to humanity of free will,
for free will, by its very definition, means that God cannot exercise
controls over the choices we make in our lives.
God can offer us options. God
can instruct us in matters of right and wrong.
God can even give us direction, informing us of what are the choices
we need to make, but in the end, we, and not God, have to make those choices
for ourselves, and we have to do so without God’s intervention. There
is a wonderful Hasidic story about one of the more spiritual personalities
of early Hasidism, Rabbi Zussya. According
to this story, one day Zussya approached God and asked Him, “Would you
please make me an angel?” “Why
do you want to be an angel?” God inquired.
“Because angels spend all their time performing mitzvot, righteous
deeds. And as much as I love to perform mitzvot, I find that my life
as a mortal gets in the way. But
if I were an angel, then I, too, could spend all my time performing mitzvot,
and I would be very happy.” So
God granted Zussya his wish, and made him an angel.
However, it was not too long afterwards that Zussya reapproached God,
begging to be turned back into a human being.
“Why?” asked God.
“I thought that you wanted to be an angel so that you could spend
all your time performing mitzvot?” “That
is true,” replied Zussya, “but I was mistaken.
You see, God, that is all
angels do. They have no choice. When
I was a human, I performed mitzvot because I chose to perform them.
And that made them special. And
that made me cherish them. I
want to be a human again, so that when I perform a mitzvah, it will be
because I choose to perform it, and that will make it all the more meaningful
to me.” So God granted Zussya
his wish and made him once again a human being. As
with Zussya, free will is only meaningful if it is absolute; if God cannot
intervene when we do not exercise it as God would want us to.
It is only meaningful if the possibility for us to choose the path of
evil is just as real and the possibility for us to choose the path of good.
Indeed, I believe that power of choice is one of the main forces that
can move our world toward perfection. For
I believe that the world will be perfected when we - humanity - comes to
understand the great power that exists in our choosing good over evil;
choosing that which is in the interest of humanity over that which is in our
own self interest. But
it is a long, and twisted, and often rugged road we have traveled and have
yet to travel toward that ideal. It
can be a brutal road, for along it, there will be people, many people, who
choose evil rather than good, and God will not be able to stop them.
On the contrary. It is
God’s greatest hope that as these individuals have misused their free
will, that there will arise others who will counteract them, exercising
their free will wisely and caringly. For
me, this matter of free will plays a major role in my theological
understanding of the Holocaust. People
ask, “How could God let the Holocaust happen?”
I don’t believe that it was God who let it happen.
I believe it was us, humanity, who let it happen, in the greatest
abuse of free will in human history. The
Nazis chose to persecute and exterminate the Jews.
Millions upon millions of non-Jewish Europeans chose to permit them
to do this without opposition or protest.
Millions upon millions of non-Europeans chose to ignore or deny what
was happening, chose to close their borders to the fleeing Jews, and through
their silence and inactivity they chose to permit it to occur.
There were those who did choose otherwise. They were precious few, and we Jews call them “Righteous
Gentiles.” Those individuals
likewise testify to the power of free will.
Their actions testify to what more people could have done; to the
fact that the Holocaust need not have happened, except for the choices we -
and not God - made. Yet
another limitation is built into the process of creation.
As I spoke about last week, Judaism believes in a process of
on-going, or continual, creation. Creation
did not take place in its entirety over the period of those six days
mentioned in GENESIS. It just
began there, and has be continuing ever since, moving closer and closer
toward perfection. Well, as
GENESIS teaches us, in the beginning, everything was “tohu va-vohu” -
“formless and void.”[3]
In other words, creation began in a state of chaos.
Therefore, the creative process has been one of bringing order to
that chaos. I like that idea,
because that is precisely what we human beings do, as God’s partners.
We try to bring greater and greater order to the universe.
Where God is limited in all of this is that God has no control over
the chaos, that is until God, and we, are able grab hold of that chaos and
transform it into order. But
what is still chaotic is out of God’s control, as it is out of our
control. I like this idea also
because, among other things, it helps me understand such horrible things as
cancer. After all, chaos is
precisely what cancer is all about. Cancer
cells are chaotic. And what
medical science has been attempting has been to discover ways to bring order
to the chaos of cancer. Interestingly
enough, very often, when I have recommended Kushner’s book to someone in
grief; someone struggle with questions about why certain evils have befallen
them or their family, often they tell me that they have found the book
interesting, but somewhat empty. It
left them cold. And they, in
turn, left me wondering. Why
didn’t this book answer their needs? Over
the years, I have come to realize that in spite of the fact that Kushner
wrote his book out of his own personal grief, and in it used many excellent
stories out of the lives of other sufferers, the not-all-powerful God that
Kushner paints is not a very attractive God, and not a very comforting God.
Just as we can say, “Who needs a God that does not care?” we can
just as easily say, “Who needs a God that cannot help?” My
God is slightly different that Kushner’s.
In this matter, I go back to one of the classical biblical images of
God; God as Parent. Throughout
our lives, we have an evolving relationship with our parents. When we are infants, we depend upon them totally.
When we are young, we are still highly dependent upon them, and we
attribute to them all sorts of powers of body and mind, many of which may be
beyond them. We expect that
they are all-knowing, and therefore able to answer our every question -
“Mommy, Daddy, Why is the sky blue?”
We expect that they are all powerful, and that there is nothing they
are incapable of accomplishing. We
come to them with our cuts and scrapes and fully expect them to make it all
better. Then we become
teenagers, and discover to our dismay (or perhaps to our glee) that our
parents are indeed flawed and limited.
In our eyes, they drop from all-knowing to absolutely ignorant, and
from all-powerful to absolutely useless.
But eventually, we grow out of our teenage disdain.
As Mark Twain so wonderfully put it, “When I was sixteen, my father
was the most ignorant man in the world.
By the time I reached 21, I was surprised at how much he had learned
in five years!” We learn to
accept our parents for their limitations, and to love them, not in spite of
their limitations, but precisely because out of their love for us, they
constantly strive to transcend those limitations on our behalf.
They may not be able to take away our pain, but they wish so hard
that they could, and we find healing in our knowledge of that.
They are there for us, to their limits.
Whatever it is they are capable of doing, we know that they will do
it and do it all, and that comforts us; and that strengthens us.
Just having them there, we gain from whatever support - physical,
spiritual, emotional - they can supply.
Knowing how deeply they care for us, serves us as a great source of
additional strength and comfort; strength and comfort which bolsters us in
our times of crisis; strength and comfort that may make the difference for
us as we struggle to survive our personal crises. Our
relationship with God, especially as it relates to the problem of evil,
operates according to the same model. For
me, God is the ultimate loving parent; sometimes able to lift my burdens,
sometimes not, but always caring. When
I cry, if God cannot help me, then God cries with me, and God’s tears,
like the tears of a loving parent, contain within them a spiritual healing
balm. Knowing that God truly
cares eases my plight. Knowing that God is on my side, truly strengthens my resolve
to persevere. Like my presentation last week, these remarks have
been challenged by the necessary limit of time place upon them.
They also have been challenged by the very nature of the subject, for
my theodicy - my understanding of the God in the presence of evil - is still
very much a work in progress. I
know that I have not found all the answers, and the answers that I have
found are still far from complete; far from satisfactory.
For me, the search for a fuller understanding continues, and I pray
it does for each of you as well. Thank you. |
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