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Broken

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Broken FaithA certain man was profoundly depressed. He perceived his many flaws and failings and they pained him, but he did not feel confident that he could atone for them. How could he possibly rectify such serious wrongs?

When Rav Yissachar Dov of Belz, zt”l, was asked what someone in this state of mind should do, he offered powerful words of encouragement. “You must understand that God never rejects the Jewish community, as we find in Chullin 29. The halachah is that if an individual is defiled within the community, he can bring his korban Pesach along with them. His personal sacrifice is not rejected because he is part of the community.

“By the same token, someone who takes stock of himself and finds himself riddled with faults should not give up. Although his feelings of inadequacy push him to abandon his efforts to serve God altogether, God forbid, he must take heart and do what he can. It is true that he is defiled, but if he becomes one with the Jewish community, God will enable him to rectify his many transgressions.”

The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh, zt”l, offered different advice to help fight feelings of spiritual inadequacy, however. “A person may contemplate the many mitzvos in the Torah and say, ‘How can I possibly fulfill them as required?’ Similarly, someone who has transgressed many sins should beware of what his yetzer haram (evil inclination) will surely claim: ‘How can you rectify so many evil deeds?’

“It is for this person that Moshe warns us, ‘And you should know today.’ He was alluding to Shabbos, regarding which the verse states, ‘Today is Shabbos.’ Moshe was telling us to how to answer such discouraging claims. We must say in our hearts: ‘Our sages explain that keeping Shabbos is likened to fulfilling the entire Torah. Through learning the laws of Shabbos and keeping them carefully, week after week, God will help me rectify my spiritual failings.’”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“Joining the Community”
Chullin 29

If you’re a Christian, you may find several things about this commentary that trouble you. For one, it’s addressed to the Jewish people, so how can it apply to you? It also talks about a Jewish person’s difficulty in fulfilling all of the Torah commandments, which doubtlessly, you believe don’t apply to you. Also, the vast majority of Christians either don’t see the relevance of keeping the Shabbat as Jews do, or they believe that going to church on Sunday and then doing “whatever” afterward, fulfills this requirement.

Take a closer look.

While I agree that the commentary was written specifically to apply to Jews and that the 613 commandments Jews believe they are obligated to fulfill do not apply to non-Jewish Christians (or the vast majority of them, anyway), there is a lesson to be learned here. Despite being “saved” by Jesus Christ, a Christian still can feel as if he or she is spiritually deficient. It’s not like it’s impossible for a Christian to sin or even impossible for a Christian to suffer under multiple, habitual sins. It’s hardly impossible or a Christian to feel terrible guilt over having committed many sins and to experience a profound distance from God.

Some Christians in this situation simply give up their faith and surrender to their sins and the values of a fallen world.

The message of the esteemed Ravs we see quoted above is a message of hope that we Christians can look to as well. We are grafted in to the “cultivated olive tree” and “if the root is holy, so are the branches” (Romans 11:16). But while Rav Yissachar Dov suggests that a Jew can draw strength from the larger Jewish community, and the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh states that when a Jew observes the mitzvot applying to the Shabbat, it’s as if he fulfilled all of the Torah commandments, where does that leave us? How can a Christian overcome a profound sense of guilt over committing not just a few, but many sins across a long time period while professing faith in Christ?

The answer really isn’t that different. One of the reasons we gather in groups and worship communally is to gather strength and encouragement from each other:

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. –1 Thessalonians 5:11

But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. –Hebrews 3:13

SorrowYou may not want to open up and expose the full truth of your being to your entire congregation or Sunday school class, but you can find someone on the Pastoral staff whom you feel you can trust, a compassionate Bible teacher, or a close Christian friend, and ask them for help. Yes, turn to God in prayer, repent in the name of Jesus, ask for forgiveness and the strength to stand tall under temptation, but don’t forget the kindness, grace, and support you can receive from a believing neighbor or friend. God provides us human comforters for a reason.

The other point also applies, though it may be more difficult to see.

In yesterday’s morning meditation, I suggested that it is appropriate and even beneficial for Christians to observe and keep the Shabbat in a manner similar to the Jewish people. That is, to keep an entire 24-hour period of time devoted to drawing nearer to God and to separating from the routine and stress of day-to-day life. Christians tend to see keeping a Sabbath in this manner as a list of what they can’t do (can’t go shopping, can’t go out to lunch, can’t mow the lawn), but it’s more about freedom than about restriction. It’s the freedom to put down the load you carry the other six-days of the week and to spend time focusing who you are; putting all of your attention on God, on prayer, on Bible study, on discussing the teachings of Jesus with others.

Christianity doesn’t have a tradition that says fulfilling one set of holy acts somehow fulfills all of them, but we don’t generally look at things that way. We know that Jesus atoned for our sins, so we don’t concern ourselves with all of the separate actions we would have to take to atone for all of the different sins we committed. We aren’t responsible for making the atonement ourselves, only for accepting the fact that Jesus is our atonement.

Still, as Christians, we can be overwhelmed by the amount and the depth of our sins and how we can ever manage to break the cycle of our disobedience. How can we remove all of the darkness from our souls and know that we are clean after leading sinful lives for months or even years? Wouldn’t a lifetime of sin and hypocrisy as a Christian take a lifetime to undo? How can we be forgiven if we still sin? Rather than trying to see the end result, we can take the “a journey of a thousand miles” point of view on the matter. We can start by focusing on just the first step.

Here’s the deal. Your life is a mess. You’ve really screwed up and you’ve been screwing up for a long time. Maybe your married life is worse than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s or you’ve severely “abused” Google’s image search feature on your computer to view women “inappropriately”. Perhaps your business dealings have been less than “open and above board” or you’ve been putting your hand in the boss’s till rather than helping your employer earn a profit.

Maybe you’ve been calling yourself a “Christian” and going to church on Sunday, but behaving no differently than the atheists and agnostics that populate your community, your workplace, and your neighborhood.

There’s hope. There’s always hope. You can turn it around. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. I know you’d like it to be. I know it might seem easier to just give up, but that only puts more distance between you and God and trust me, you’ll regret it in the long run. God said, “”Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:22) and please notice that He is addressing “all you ends of the earth” and not the Children of Israel exclusively.

Faith and belief in Jesus isn’t enough to help you. Knowing God exists and leaving it at that isn’t the answer. James, the brother of the Master, said that we must have faith and deeds (James 2:14-24). We must trust that when we turn from sin to God and desire return, that God will be there with open arms waiting for us, like the Father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). We must not only believe God will accept our repentance, we must actually take the “risk” of returning and abandoning the sins that keep us from Him.

The only mistake you can make that is absolutely fatal is to walk away from God and never look back. Short of that, while you’re alive, you have hope. The world may be broken, but God can heal your brokenness.

There’s no such thing as defeat. There’s always another chance. To believe in defeat is to believe that there is something, a certain point in time that did not come from Above.

Know that G-d doesn’t have failures. If things appear to worsen, it is only as part of them getting better. We only fall down in order to bounce back even higher.

From the wisdom of the Rebbe
Menachem M. Schneerson
as compiled by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman in his book
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth

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Brilliant Light

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BrillianceDescribing the joy of the Rebbe is something like describing the majesty of the Rocky Mountains to a prairie dweller. We think of happiness as all the outer trappings of smiley faces and the “having-a-good-time” look. But what we saw on the Rebbe was an inner joy – the sort you feel when a sudden, brilliant light bulb flashes inside – except continual and constant. Not a joy that dissipates and burns itself out, but a tightly contained joy of endless optimism, power and life, waiting the special moment when it would burst forth like an unexpected tsunami, sweeping up every soul in its path.

The Rebbe once confided that he himself was by nature a somber and introspective person. With hard work, he said, he was able to affect his spirit to be full of joy.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
from the wisdom of the Rebbe
Menachem M. Schreerson
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth

Last March I wrote about Failing Joy 101, mainly because I don’t go around all smiley and happy all the time. I have my moods. I can be “down”. People who are perpetually perky and “up” kind of annoy me. But that’s not what joy is all about.

Yesterday’s “morning meditation” was in part, about the murder of 8-year old Leiby Kletzky and how his death affected his parents, his Borough Park (Brooklyn) community, and ultimately, everyone with a conscience. I lamented at one point that it will be a long time or never, before Leiby’s parents, an Orthodox Jewish couple, will ever experience joy again. After all, how can they?

The words I quoted from Rabbi Freeman’s book at the beginning of this blog post are from a chapter called “From Despair to Joy”. It’s easy, under the circumstances, to imagine the despair being experienced by Nachman and Itta Kletzky, but how can any reasonable and compassionate person expect them to go from “despair to joy”? Certainly it won’t happen very quickly and only a cad would suggest that people who are in severe emotional and spiritual pain should just “pull themselves up by their boot straps” and “get on with life”.

But what can you do when soul-numbing grief steals your last crumb of joy and all you’re left with is a life in the emotional shadows of depression and loss?

Depression is not a crime. But it plummets a person into an abyss deeper than any crime could reach. -The Rebbe

If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you. -Friedrich Nietzsche

The Rebbe could easily have been talking about little Leiby’s murder and Nietzsche could have well been describing the consequences of the crime, or at least, the consequences if we allow ourselves to stare too long into that deep, dark place. The Rebbe “responded” to Nietzsche thus:

Fight depression as a blood sworn enemy. Run from it as you would run from death itself.

I don’t think the Kletzkys can run from death just yet. Death is what surrounds them as they sit shiva for their son. And yet, they can’t sit there forever staring into the darkness, and neither can we, unless we want to be consumed.

The Rebbe anticipated our question, “how can I be happy if I am not?” and suggests an answer:

True, you can’t control the way you feel, but you do have control over your conscious thought, speech, and actions. Do something simple: Think good thoughts, speak good things, behave the way a joyful person behaves – even if you don’t fully feel it inside. Eventually, the inner joy of the soul will break through.

Sounds a lot like some of the things the Apostle Paul taught:

…and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. –2 Corinthians 10:5

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. –Philippians 4:8-9

Paul suggested thinking of wholesome things and putting them into practice and the Rebbe asks that we start with our thoughts, if necessarily, set our feelings to one side temporarily, and then behave as if we are experiencing joy. The antidote of both Paul and the Rebbe to despair is to do joy.

To be healthy, a person needs to be affecting his surroundings, uplifting those about him and bringing more light.

InfiniteI’ve heard this teaching of the Rebbe more than once. Even when everything has been taken from us and we feel completely empty inside, unable to fill the void in our very being, we still have something we can offer someone else. In bringing another person light, we may discover some of that light is being nurtured within us, dispelling the darkness of the abyss.

The Rebbe tells us that God created the natural state of human beings to be one of joy. That is hardly apparent as we look around us, watch the news, drive through traffic, and otherwise co-mingle with other people, but as his proof, he says, “look at children and you will see”. He also offers us this:

People imagine a place of G-dliness as serious, awesome and intrepidating. That fact is, where G-d is, there is joy. -The Rebbe

How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!
It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore. –Psalm 133 (A song of ascents)

There are times when we feel very small, and afraid, and alone, even in the midst of our loved ones. You’ve probably felt this way in the middle of the night, when it’s quiet and dark and when everyone else is asleep, but your private pain and anguish will not give you up to rest. You may feel tormented by a world far larger than you are and you feel yourself shrinking into the night, into the abyss, and you fear in your tininess, that you will be swallowed alive and disappear altogether.

But even at that moment, when you feel as if you are about to vanish from God’s universe, there is something you own that no one can ever take away from you. It will anchor you and safeguard you. Here’s the secret:

A person is happy when he knows something worthwhile belongs to him. A person is very happy when he feels he is small and yet he owns something very great.

We are all finite owners of the Infinite.

We could argue with the Rebbe that we belong to the Infinite and not the other way around, but that’s the secret. He also belongs to us and as long as He does, we can never disappear. It’s not just that we are small and He is large. If God were only big, He would have limits, He could be eclipsed by something even bigger, God could be measured, God could be quantified. God wouldn’t be God.

But God is not big, He is Infinite. He has no limits. He cannot be measured. He does the eclipsing. In fact, being Infinite means God is not like anything or anyone we have experienced or can experience. That’s the secret. That’s the miracle. In our tininess, in our smallness, in our minuscule existence, we own something more than worthwhile, something very great, something Infinite! And belonging to Him and having Him belong to us, we can never truly be lost. Our breadcrumbs can never be consumed. We always know the way home, even in the darkest night.

Jesus answered, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify about me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” –John 10:25-30