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Losing My Faith in Religious People

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Normally, I build my blog posts around one or two interesting or inspiring quotes I’ve found during my studies, but today there’s nothing that applies, or at least nothing that applies to how I feel. “Christian marketing” is fond of advertising “Christianity: It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.” That’s bunk. It’s a religion. That’s not a bad thing, but as I read recently (albeit from a non-Christian source), “…This phrase sets up a classical logical fallacy, called a false dichotomy (more specifically, it’s black-and-white thinking, a sub-class of the false dichotomy)…The phrase implies that there are two choices. It’s either religion, or a relationship.”

There’s nothing wrong with a religion. I’ve said many times before (and I will again in tomorrow’s morning meditation) that religion is the interface by which we learn to understand God. Religion is the structure in which we comprehend the specifics of our faith, including how to interpret the Bible, the nature of prayer, and any traditions (yes, Christianity has traditions) and rituals that help us to operationalize and express our faithfulness behaviorally. The problem is, I’m losing my faith in religion.

Actually, I’m losing my faith in the human beings who are involved in religion. Well, no, not all of them. I have very high regard for most of the people I communicate with (primarily over the Internet) in the world of faith, but others can be a royal pain. Maybe it’s not their fault. I mean, we all have our moods, and our needs, and our insecurities. Whenever you add religion or “righteousness” to that mix though, you usually get something that’s bent and twisted just a little bit (and occasionally by quite a bit).

What started this rant? I was “rebuked” on an online social venue earlier today. You see, I have this thing about “experts” or maybe I have “authority issues.” It’s not that I don’t recognize and submit to authority. I have a job and I have a boss and what he says goes. There are religious authorities I respect and consider very knowledgable and wise, and I defer to their judgment. I know they know a whole lot more than I do, and more than I will probably ever know.

My problem is with the sort of person who really wants and needs to be called by a title, and who is continually telling everyone, “I’m an authority!” The interesting thing is, the person really is an authority and I can certainly recognize that, but by always saying “call me by such-and-thus title,” and “I’m an expert,” and “don’t question my judgment,” I keep getting the impression that they’ve got something to prove beyond their education and experience (I wouldn’t really care except I really do respect and like this person…otherwise, I’d just ignore him). I know that some people are insecure but not always for personality reasons. Sometimes, the person’s field of study, or where they got their education isn’t considered “mainstream,” and they aren’t always given the respect that is their due. In such cases, I suppose they need to compel the world around them to give them what they deserve.

But it still rubs me the wrong way. I’ve known too many people, particularly in the world of religion, who adopted roles, and titles, and authority that they certainly did not earn by education, experience, or temperament. They just “needed” to be a big shot and by inference, they needed everyone around them to be “little shots,” if that makes any sort of sense. So when someone who is genuine comes along and really has earned what they have, and they aren’t given respect by everyone around them, they have two choices: blow it off, or push back.

It’s the pushing back that bothers me. It’s the pushing back that seems to say, “I need to be big, and to meet my needs, you need to be little.” It’s the pushing back in a religious world where even the Master we all follow valued humility above blatant honors. It’s not like Jesus doesn’t deserve honors and it’s not like he doesn’t receive them. Yet the first time he was here, he set them aside, even to the degree that he washed the feet of his disciples. Even to the degree that he died for an unworthy humanity, including me.

The authorities who I have respected the most didn’t need to tell me they were in charge. They didn’t need to tell me to respect their knowledge. Just by being who they were, I learned to respect them. They didn’t have to make it a command. It’s ironic that people who God has given great gifts and who use those gifts in His Name, can still push back and push away those of us who are just trying to keep our heads above water. If the pushing keeps up, I’m going to be pushed out, and down, and I’ll drown in a sea of someone else’s religious authority and personal requirements.

I’m losing my faith in religion. I’m losing my faith in some of the people in religion. God is good, and great, and pure, but what human emotion does to faith and religion is anything but. It takes a great deal of energy to be patient sometimes and you know how lousy I am at keeping my (virtual) mouth shut. So I need to be able to push back as well, or let myself be pushed out of the body of faith altogether. I’m already isolated enough without someone, even a well-deserving someone, saying, “you’re not good enough.” I guess that’s what I hear when someone says, “I’m an authority,” or “you should respect me,” or “call me such-and-thus and not my first name.”

But as annoying as people like this are at times, they aren’t the real problem. I am (I suppose it always comes back to that). People like this are everywhere and sometimes they just can’t be avoided. They are in the world of religion and if I want to learn from them, I can’t avoid them…or I avoid them and avoid learning the lessons they are very good at teaching (the intentional lessons…not the unintentional one I’m talking about). Here’s what I need to learn:

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

-Robert Frost, American poet

I suppose if I had learned that lesson well, I wouldn’t be writing this “extra meditation.” I suppose if the “authority” had learned that lesson well, the event that triggered my unfortunate little missive would never have occurred. It’s not the first time I’ve wanted to push back and it won’t be the last. Maybe someday, I’ll start listening to Mr. Frost (who has my respect and my attention) and learn the lesson he teaches so well. Then I will be able to listen to almost anything…and I’ll still be fine.

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The Inaccessible Interface

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the-joy-of-torahTorah is the interface between the Infinite and creation. On the outside, it speaks the language of humankind. On the inside, it is depth without end.

Grasp either end and you have nothing.

Grasp both and you have G-d Himself.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Interface”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson of blessed memory
Chabad.org

In yesterday’s morning meditation, I suggested that the Torah functioned as a ketubah or “marriage contract” between God and the Children of Israel. This brings up many “uncomfortable” ideas if we consider that God is still “married” to the Jewish people and that the church is the “bride of Christ.”

But I’m not going to talk about that today.

I’ve previously said that religion and ritual serve as an interface between people and God. Human beings cannot directly access God, at least not most of the time, so we have a set of conditions, or faith statements, or in the case of the Jews, mitzvot that allow us to have some sort of connection to God based on what we do to worship Him. According to Rabbi Freeman, the Torah is an interface specific to the Jewish people and their interaction with the Creator. The Torah is considered to be made up of 613 individual commandments and has a sort of mystic life of its own, since the sages say it existed before creation and it was used to make the universe. This makes Torah more than a document and it becomes a sort of “force” or even a “personality.” In certain theological circles, we sometimes call Jesus “our living Torah” since nothing was made without him and he is “the Word made flesh” who once upon a time lived among his people.

But if the Torah is an interface allowing Jews access to God, what does that make Jesus? An interface allowing everyone to access God?

That could be a little confusing if the Torah is supposed to be only for the Jews but Messiah is for everyone. Or is it that Messiah is for the Jews and Jesus is for everyone? It depends on who you ask. If you believe that God doesn’t intend on abandoning anyone based on ethnicity or the exclusivity of the Sinai relationship, then somehow, He has to reconcile “the rest of us” to Him. Christianity has no problem with this part, but they experience difficulty in allowing Jews to keep their original Abrahamic and Mosaic interfaces, demanding that the Jewish people “ashcan” what they have that is special to them, and substitute it with a “one size fits all” interface. It’s sort of like asking people who habitually use a Mac to switch to a Windows PC. Just try it and see the reaction you get.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Windows when compared to a Mac (although Mac users might have a comment or two on the subject), but they are different interfaces. They present a different user experience to Mac and Windows people, even as they both allow the two different user types to perform the same tasks (writing documents, surfing the web, sending emails, and so on). Maybe that’s how we can look at the two separate interfaces used by Jews and Christians.

Or we can continue to push at each other and then push back and then push again. This happens particularly between Christians and some parts of the Messianic Jewish world (including those parts that aren’t really “Jewish” such as One Law, Two House, and Hebrew Roots). Each group says they have a better interface than all the other groups, and some people in the debate may secretly suspect that the other group’s interface works better, resulting in jealousy and a “put up your dukes” response.

So much for peace and unity within the body of Christ. I guess that’s why I’m inspired (if I’m inspired by very much anymore) by some of the Rabbinic tales.

On today’s amud we find the halachos regarding replacing the sefer Torah to the aron hakodesh.

During his last years, the Tchebiner Rav lived in Shaarei Chessed. At that time, there was a certain very broken, lonely man who would collect tzedakah in the neighborhood shuls. This person was well known—if not well liked—by all on account of his bizarre dress and strange behavior. He had his own unusual way to sing when the Torah was being replaced into the aron kodesh. Since his voice was cracked and he could not hold a tune, this was very annoying to the other people in shul. Nevertheless, if there was a chosson, he would always belt out his tune, often accompanied by bored children who immediately flocked to him and did their utmost to “help him along.”

Once, when this man was collecting in the Tchebiner Rav’s minyan, the Tchebiner Rav gave him a princely donation before they had replaced the Torah into the ark. “I am not giving you this merely as a gift,” he proclaimed. “I give this to you on condition that you make the minyan happy with your unique tune.”

The man was thrilled to his core and began to sing his special tune. But this time, since the Rav had asked for it, everyone joined him and it was actually a fitting way to replace the Torah. The broken man was overjoyed at his triumph and would tell everyone he knew about the admiration for him that the Tchebiner Rav had for him. Not only had he given him a big sum of money, he had even asked for his special nigun!

Mishna Berura Yomi Digest
Stories to Share
“How to Empathize”
Siman 148, Seif 1-4

Here, even the “oddball” in the community is given honors in spite of how most of the community doesn’t really understand him. I suppose that the church has many such heartwarming stories, but my experience with organized religion…anyone’s organized religion lately…is that even well-meaning oddballs aren’t particularly tolerated, and you either need to blend in or get out.

For the Christian, Jesus is the interface that allows us to access God. You can be an oddball and still God loves you. He even sent His only begotten Son for you…even if you’re a oddball. Jesus is the interface that provides access to God

People and religious congregations, as an interface for access to community however, are another matter.

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The Many Paths of God

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It is very difficult to fathom how two opposing opinions can both be correct. The Ritva explains this in a wondrous manner: “When Moshe received the Torah at Sinai, God provided him with forty-nine perspectives to declare a matter pure, and forty-nine to declare it impure. Moshe Rabbeinu asked, ‘Master of the universe, why are these necessary?’ God answered, ‘So that they should be transmitted to the sages of every generation, that the law will be determined by them in accordance with the needs of their time.'”

This teaches that there are many valid paths to genuine Torah observance, all of which were received by Moshe on Sinai. But of course not all statements made are the words of the living God. As we find on today’s daf, sometimes a statement thought to be a mishnah is no mishnah at all. This means that sometimes what appears to be part of the chain of tradition is actually not and needs to be clarified as such.

Rav Menachem Mendel of Rimanov, zt”l, explains how the baalei mishnah reached a state in which they could draw down an authentic mishnah. “The baalei ha’mishnah explain how the oral Torah emerges from the written Torah. They could only draw down a genuine mishnah by completely nullifying all of their physical senses and immersing themselves absolutely in learning Torah. Once they reached this state they touched the inner essence of Torah and could determine the halachah and set down various mishnayos. When the sages perceived that a certain statement was not reached through this arduous process they declared it incorrect.

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“This is Not a Mishnah!”
Bechoros 56

Ohmygosh! What did I just say?

This teaches that there are many valid paths to genuine Torah observance, all of which were received by Moshe on Sinai.

That statement is bound to cause something of a stir in various religious circles. It is doubtful that Christianity will accept that there are many valid paths to genuine obedience to God since we have the Master’s own words saying that there is only one way to the Father, and that is through the Son (John 14:6). Of course this is midrash we’re talking about, so it’s not as if we have to believe the “conversation” between Moses and God actually took place as recorded in our “story off the daf”. I seriously doubt that many people participating in the “Messianic” movement will be enthusiastic about this midrash either, since most of the arguments I see in the blogosphere are about obeying the Torah in only one possible way.

That, of course, doesn’t make a lot of sense from a Jewish perspective, because there really is more than one way to perform a mitzvah, depending on various circumstances. For instance, how Askenazi Jews perform some of the mitzvot and how Sephardic Jews perform those mitzvot may vary drastically. And while there may be some debate between those two groups, no one is suggesting that the Ashkenazi are the only ones who “do it right” and that the Sephardic Jews “do it wrong”…or vice versa. And frankly, even if that suggestion exists, it’s not enough to compel one group or the other to change their traditions. How a Jew performs the mitzvot and understands his or her duty to God is largely based on tradition.

But how can the midrash dare to quote a conversation between Moses and God that, in all likelihood, never took place? Remember what I said in The Rabbinization of Abraham. In order to carry the Torah forward with Judaism in the centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, Talmudic Judaism found it necessary to “refactor” the past, projecting the view of the Rabbis of the Common Era back onto Abraham and Moses. You and I may not find this “refactoring” to be accurate or factual, but if you understand the function and purpose of Chasidic Tales, you’ll understand that many great and important truths can and must be transmitted without necessarily being based totally on fact. Christians have a tough time understanding this, but it is also likely that not everything (hold on to your hats) in the Gospel accounts of the days of Jesus is literal fact.

Did that surprise you? If you think about it for a few minutes, it probably won’t.

(I should say that this point that when I realized this, I went into a crisis of faith and struggled a great deal with the idea that my faith was based on a book that was neither a legal document in full, or a newspaper reporter’s account of the “facts”).

If you don’t believe me, pop over to Derek Leman’s blog and read this write up, Passover, Last Supper, Crucifixion: 2011 Notes, Part 2. Leman illustrates in no-nonsense terms how the different Gospel versions of the Master’s death cannot be reconciled with each other, no matter how much literary and scriptural “slight of hand” you choose to employ.

So why shouldn’t we use midrash to understand mishnah and scripture? Perhaps they are useful tools after all.

This brings us back to the idea that there may be more than one way to obey God. This brings us back to the idea that there may be one way for a Jew to obey God relative to the Messiah and Torah, and a different but still correct way for a Gentile disciple of the Master to obey God. Are these two covenants? That suggestion is usually viewed with horror, especially if taken to the extreme and seen as “the Jews have Moses and the Gentiles have Jesus.” I’m not suggesting that (although the dynamics involving religious Jews who are not “Messianic” is certainly complex). I’m suggesting that for Jews who are disciples of Jesus and for Gentiles who are disciples of Jesus, there may be two paths to obedience based on identity and “covenant connection” (Jews were at Sinai and any Gentiles who were also present were absorbed into the Children of Israel, probably within three generations). The Jews have the Mosaic covenant connection which was not designed to accommodate non-Jews except for those Gentiles who were on the “multi-generational conversion track”. The Messianic covenant is unique in that it accommodates Jewish identity, allowing “Messianic Jews” to remain Jews (this is all heavily flavored by my opinions here) and also it allows Gentiles to enter into a covenant relationship with God, being “grafted in” as “wild branches” onto the “civilized tree” (note that the grafted in wild branches remain wild for the lifetime of the tree and don’t “morph” into civilized branches) and they can still remain Gentiles…forever.

Now we come back to the key phrase in today’s midrash.

This teaches that there are many valid paths to genuine Torah observance, all of which were received by Moshe on Sinai.

If you’re a non-Jew and you’re upset with how someone else is interpreting Gentile “Torah obedience”, figuring your way is right and their way is wrong, hold up a minute. First off, you Gentiles may not have any sort of “Torah obedience” based on the Mosaic covenant, so you may be traveling on the wrong path all together. Second, even within Judaism, as I previously mentioned, there is more than one accepted halacha to performing the mitzvot.

Hopefully, this will shake up someone’s moral certitude the next time they get into an Internet argument about how the Torah is supposed to be obeyed. If you continue to do your studying and are honest about it, you may find your assumptions challenged. The great Hillel was the master of teaching this lesson to potential converts, as recorded at SaratogaChabad.org.

Let us use the famous story of Shammai, Hillel and the three converts (Shabbos 31) to demonstrate the fusion of Halacha and Aggadah,: A gentile once came to Shammai, and wanted to convert to Judaism. But he insisted on learning the whole Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai rejected him, so he went to Hillel, who taught him: “What you dislike, do not do to your friend. That is the basis of the Torah. The rest is commentary; go and learn!” Another gentile who accepted only the Written Torah, came to convert. Shammai refused, so he went to Hillel. The first day, Hillel taught him the correct order of the Hebrew Alphabet. The next day he reversed the letters. The convert was confused:”But yesterday you said the opposite!?” Said Hillel: “You now see that the Written Word alone is insufficient. We need the Oral Tradition to explain G-d’s Word.” A third gentile wanted to convert so he could become the High Priest, and wear the Priestly garments. Shammai said no, but Hillel accepted him. After studying, he realized that even David, the King of Israel, did not qualify as a cohen, not being a descendant of Aaron

The convert was not just acting silly by standing on one foot; he was actually symbolizing his quest for true unity. This gentile had left behind a confusing plethora of pagan gods and multiple deities. He searched and finally found Monotheism, One Torah and One G-d, wanting to live by a single unifying principle, the ‘one foot’ on which all else stands. Hillel taught him that the underlying principle that unites all is Jewish Love. The second convert, had rejected the other man-made religions as human concoctions, was attracted to the Divine Torah, which consisted solely of G-d’s word. He was shocked to find that we follow a Rabbinical tradition. He wasn’t being rebellious, but sincerely asking a valid question; “I wish to observe G-d’s word alone, not any human additions.” Hillel creatively showed him that the two Torahs are not two separate systems, but are one and the same. The written word and the oral traditions complement each other. It is as basic as the Aleph Bais, where you can’t have one without the other. Indeed, the Torah itself bids us to follow the enactments of the sages. The third convert, disillusioned with pagan shallowness, aimed for a higher meaning to life. He yearned to reach the highest level, assuming that being a High Priest is the ultimate spiritual fulfillment.

Hillel didn’t just chase these would-be converts away, he (seemingly) accepted them on their own terms but allowed them to study and discover their own errors. Once they did so, they put aside their original assumptions and realized that in order to convert, they had to accept the Torah as it was within the Jewish framework of their day.

May God grant us the ability, wisdom, and will do to the same.

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Red Stew in Context

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campfire-stewOnce when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the open, famished. And Esau said to Jacob, “Give me some of that red stuff to gulp down, for I am famished”-which is why he was named Edom. Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” And Esau said, “I am at the point of death, so of what use is my birthright to me?” But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Jacob then gave Esau bread and lentil stew; he ate and drank, and he rose and went away. Thus did Esau spurn the birthright. –Genesis 25:29-34 (JPS Tanakh)

Let there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. –Hebrews 12:16-17

We usually think of right and wrong as based on some set of formal or informal standards. For religious people, there tends to be a formal code against which actions are judged morally. It’s a little more fuzzy if you are a secular person, but that amorphous entity known as political correctness seems to be the final arbiter of proper actions (I tend to think of it as the doctrine of “Thou shalt not offend anybody”) in humanistic philosophy or atheism.

The example I’ve presented, from this week’s Torah Portion Toldot may seem to be difficult to understand in terms of how right and wrong are defined. Just what did Esau do that was so wrong? If it was his birthright, why shouldn’t he sell it for a bowl of red stew or anything else?

We don’t have a concept of the “rights of the first born” in modern, western society, so the question of Esau’s “sin” is mysterious to us. It cannot be understood outside of it’s literary and religious context and it is that context that provides the actions of Esau and Jacob with meaning. The First Fruits of Zion commentary on Toldot offers some illumination.

Whenever we allow our appetites to rule us, we are following in the footsteps of Esau. How often our desire for “red, red stuff” dictates our decisions! Opportunities to honor or despise our birthright pass before us on a daily basis. We are constantly placed in positions where we must decide between what we crave and what is right. A man who lets his appetites control him is a godless man. For many men, sexual temptation is the “red, red stuff” for which they are willing to compromise their birthright. For others it may be the desire for power or control. For others it may be desire for possessions. For still others, it may lie in the realm of physical addictions. All of these are signs of Esau. They are the “red, red stuff”.

Esau accepted Jacob’s offer. The Torah artfully describes Esau’s cavalier exit with a succinct series of one-word verbs: “He ate, he drank, he rose, he left and he despised his birthright.”

In some ways, the exchange between Esau and Jacob becomes a metaphor for how people confuse their priorities and their values, choosing something quick and satisfying at the expense of what is precious and enduring. The transaction becomes a lesson and a cautionary tale for people of faith to stay the course and to cling to our principles rather than giving in to momentary stressors, challenges, and temptations.

Now let’s take one giant step backward.

Right and wrong are defined within a contextual framework. Without such a framework, morals, ethics, and values either do not exist or become highly subjective (something is good because it is good for me or I like it, regardless of its impact on you). As I previously mentioned, religion isn’t the only framework that defines right and wrong. The secular world has a set of standards and morals that guide people in “right living”, but those standards often contradict what religious people think of as proper behavior. To be fair, between different religions and even within different sects of the same religion, the standards for right and wrong vary…sometimes by quite a bit.

vandalism-in-JerusalemThe recent Sydney Morning Herald news story When women and girls are the enemy illustrates how members of the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community are seemingly “at war” with women, or at least with their appearance in photos and advertisements, which they believe is immodest and sexually “tempting”. But from an outsider’s viewpoint, it’s one thing to object to an image on moral grounds and something else entirely to commit acts of vandalism to enforce those morals. This example is uncomfortably close to a proposal in Saudi Arabia that may require women, who are normally completely covered from head to toe except for their eyes (and they have to see somehow), to cover even their eyes if these women have tempting eyes.

I suppose the philosophy behind both sets of behaviors is that these Jewish and Muslim men are incredibly concerned that they’ll be inspired to some sort of sexual attraction by women and are making the women (or the photo ads of women) responsible for the men’s feelings. I’m sure I’ll receive some sort of rebuttal about what I just said and I admit that I lack the context by which to completely understand what these Jewish and Muslim men are thinking and feeling, but like I said, right and wrong are defined contextually. For instance, seeing a little, red-headed girl as the official icon for the Wendy’s Hamburger restaurant chain is no big deal to me, but it might seem offensive to a conservative Jewish or Muslim man.

OK, to be fair, just about every guy has to deal with the struggle of objectifying women in terms of appearance, and if you are a Christian and seriously consider what Jesus taught in Matthew 5:28, then this really is a problem that men must address. In Christianity and in most forms of Judaism however, the responsibility is given to the men and not to the women since it is our eyes, and our brain, and our emotions that are at the root of obedience or disobedience, not the fact that women exist physically and visually.

I mentioned taking one giant step backward before. Let’s take another one.

Is God an Objective being? That is, does God exist independently of whatever religion and creed we happen to follow? Most of us should say “yes”. God doesn’t need us to be a Lutheran or a Catholic or a Reform Jew or an Orthodox Jew simply to exist as God. Moses said:

Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God. –Psalm 90:2

And David said:

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
the LORD is enthroned as King forever. –Psalm 29:10

If God existed before Creation and He will continue after all things have passed away, then God’s standard of morality, correctness, and justice are certainly independent of our religious orientation or lack thereof. Sure, it’s probably not as simple as that, but I have to start somewhere. The Talmud considers morality to be somewhat mutable and changeable with the needs of each generation, but there is a limit beyond which Jewish people (and Christians and Muslims) say, “this is always wrong.” God must have that limit too, only in His case, His is the ultimate limit. God is His own context. He is, in reality (however you want to define that term), is the final arbiter of right and wrong.

God didn’t really invent “religion”. A religious framework is the interface by which people define and live out the actions they believe to be the will of God. However, religion is a man-made construct designed to interpret the Divine and as something man-made, it is not perfect…probably far from perfect, as a method of interpretation and definition.

How do people choose a religion, assuming they are religious? If you are born into a religious Jewish or Christian family, there is a possibility you will continue the religion of your parents because it is what you have learned and it is a continuation of your family and culture. But that’s not an absolute assurance. Some Jews have chosen to convert to other religions, to reject the religious aspect of their Judaism, or in extreme cases, to reject being Jewish in any lived manner. Someone born into a Christian home isn’t guaranteed to grow up a Christian and many kids leave the church the minute they are old enough to effectively tell their parents, “No.”

Why do secular people choose one religion or another? I don’t want to take up time and space by describing my own experience of becoming a believer in detail, but let’s just say a series of very unlikely events occurred that resulted in me accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior and starting to attend a specific church in my community. My Jewish wife introduced me to the local Messianic Jewish (One Law) congregation and I shifted my religious orientation. Within the past year, I’ve shifted again based on my assessment of the validity of the One Law proposition, while my wife, over the past several years, transitioned into a more traditional (non-Messianic) Jewish faith.

But is my religious orientation (admittedly in a state of flux at the moment) any more or less valid than any other Christian in or out of any other church (or synagogue) or any religious Jew or any Muslim or any other spiritual or faith group?

Tough question.

My personal opinion about why we have so many different religious and spiritual traditions in the world is that we, as human beings, are wired by God to seek Him. On the other hand, as human beings, we want what we want and we want it our way. If how we perceive God’s requirements in one system doesn’t meet our personal requirements for a faith community (whatever those requirements may be), then we go shopping for another faith community until we find one that fits the bill.

I know, that’s kind of cynical, but that’s what we do as human beings. We simply tell ourselves that the religious tradition we have selected is the “true” religion and all of the others are wannabes and posers.

interfaithBut how do you know you are right in your choice? How can you be so sure? Remember, your entire understanding of what is right and what is wrong is based on the religious, spiritual, or moral context you have selected for yourself (and even secular humanism and atheism is a “moral context”). How you think of others and how you treat them is based on that context. How you think of yourself and your place in the universe is based on that context. You chose it. You live with it. If you don’t like it, you can change it. Many people have.

It’s a tough question. What makes you right and everyone else wrong? Or, turning the question around, what makes me right and everyone else wrong? How can I be so sure? What if I made a mistake. If God exists, if God cares for human beings, if God has an objective set of moral standards He wants people to understand and live by, how can we know them and how can we be sure; how can I be sure, that the values I’m living by right now are the ones He has for me?

Or for you?

If Rabbi Freeman is right, that set of standards and context is extremely important.

There is no such thing as a mitzvah done alone.

In a mitzvah, space, time and consciousness converge. You nod your consent, and a flood of generations flows through you to do the rest.

Together with you, every soul of our people, wherever they may be, are swept along in the current.

That works for Rabbi Freeman within his conceptual framework but what about the rest of us? In Judaism, the metaphor can be extended to include performing every mitzvah as a partner with God. Is God waiting to perform the mitzvot with us? Are we are living a life of enduring substance or just noshing on a pot of yummy red stew?

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The Conundrum Religion

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conundrumNo matter how much you distrust your own sincerity or question your motives, there is no trace of doubt that at your core lives a G-dly soul, pure and sincere.

You provide the actions and the deed—just do what is good.

She needs no more than a pinhole through which to break out and fill those deeds with divine power.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“The Promise Inside”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Would that it was so simple. I guess it should be that simple to serve God. Really, I outlined the basic core of it a few days ago in my blog post Being Heaven on Earth. More than anything, if we want to serve God, we have a duty to serve other people in whatever way we can, great or small. It’s a very simple concept. No wonder people get it messed up all of the time.

I sometimes contribute to the confusion. In yesterday’s morning meditation I introduced a discussion of the relationship between the laws of Noah as chronicled in Genesis 9 and how they interact with the Mosaic and Messianic covenants (Sinai and the Cross respectively). While, as my friend Derek Leman pointed out to me, the concept of being a Noahide is post-New Testament, I still think the “theme” of a non-Jew, non-Israelite, non-Hebrew being able to have a covenant relationship with God in the post-diluvian world says much about God’s compassion for humanity.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Then again, there are still those in the Christian/Messianic world who insist that Christians are grafted into Israel to the degree that they become Israel. That is, they become Jewish in all but name only and are obligated to perform the identical 613 commandments as the Jewish people. This very much takes a long stick and stirs up the muddy, murky waters of “Judeo-Christian” (I use the term in quotes because it doesn’t exist in reality) religion.

It all seems so much easier when you look at it as just dedicating your life to performing 1000 mitzvot or feeding and caring for (video) people who can’t do these things for themselves.

We make religion out to be quite a mess when it doesn’t have to be.

I recently read a review of Talya Fishman’s book Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures which describes how the Talmud became a completely integrated element in the religious life of every observant Jew. It seems that integration wasn’t as seamless as I originally thought, nor is its acceptance completely uniform across all different populations of Jews (not to mention what non-Jews think of the Talmud). However, if you look at Judaism from a fundamentally Jewish perspective, you can’t really have Jewish religion without the Talmud.

But it contains all of these mind-bending puzzles, conundrums, and debates!

Christianity doesn’t have anything to compare to the Talmud so it would seem that Christianity, if you want a “simple” religion, would be the way to go, but that’s somewhat deceptive. At least in the west, Christianity is a religion of individuals. I’m oversimplifying here to make a point, but it’s as if becoming a Christian and developing your faith is as easy as declaring Christ as Lord and Savior, praying to God to give you discernment through the Holy Spirit, and then reading the NIV Bible while “allowing the Spirit” to tell you what it all means.

I was puzzling through something about the Seven Noahide Laws when I realized that Judaism conceptualizes these requirements for non-Jews in exactly the same way as it views the Torah for Jews. The view is that the requirements are imposed on a people rather than on individuals. To be sure, a Jew responds individually to commandments such as praying with tefillin and a tallit (although praying with a minyan requires 10 Jews), giving to charity, visiting the sick, and so forth, but it is obedience to the mitzvot that identifies the individual as belonging the the Jewish people (there’s debate here since there are a lot of secular Jews who feel no attachment to the Torah, but I digress).

Gentiles in the western nations don’t identify in the same way in terms of religion. We see religion as a personal responsibility only and we just happen to be loosely associated with a church where we agree on the theology being taught. This doesn’t make sense when a Jew looks at a Gentile. Here’s an example.

One of the Noahide commandments requires establishing courts of law. An individual doesn’t do this. I can’t personally obey this commandment. Only cities, counties, states, and nations establish courts. Political entities establish courts, not individual human beings. That means being a “righteous Gentile” to some degree, requires that you belong to a nation that establishes courts. That’s the personal part of the decision, but you still have to belong to “a people” or “nation” that obeys this directive to be said to have obeyed it yourself.

But it seems so involved and so much of the governmental establishment of justice is out of our control. This may be a fallacy in the Jewish application of the Noahide concept on Gentiles. We are not a people of God the way the Jews are a people of God. The Israelites (and an assorted group of non-Israelite freed slaves) stood at Sinai “as a single man” and accepted the Law of God He had designed and established for them. While the cross of Christ stands for anyone who accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior, there is no ” nation of Christians”. Thus, in respect to the concept of “peoplehood”, Jews and Christians are fundamentally different “things”.

studying-talmudI’m getting a headache.

What was I saying again? Oh yeah. Why is worshiping God so complicated. Why are there so many disagreements? What is the problem?

Theologians and philosophers have been debating those questions since man’s first awareness of God but the easiest answer I can come up with is that people are gumming up the works. Sure, God is hard to understand, the Bible isn’t exactly like a first grade reading text, and the Talmud doesn’t add up as easily as “two plus two”, at least not to me.

While I enjoy a good challenge and I delight in digging “deeper into the text” so to speak, it is too easy to lose myself in the complexities of religion while forgetting why I am here in the first place. It should be as simple as Adam and Eve standing in the Garden.

Anxieties, worries, feelings of inadequacy and failure — all these smother and cripple the soul from doing its job. You need to find the appropriate time to deal with them. But don’t carry them around the whole day.

During the day, you are Adam or Eve before they tasted the fruit of good and evil.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Out From Under the Blanket”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

We may argue and fuss with each other until the coming of the Moshiach and we may never see eye to eye on many issues but at the end of the day, if you managed to feed one hungry person, visit one sick person in the hospital, or even smile at a stranger you pass on the sidewalk, you’ve made the world a better place. God said it all here:

And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? –Micah 6:8

“The rest is just commentary, go and study.” -Hillel