Tag Archives: truth

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Learning God

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davening_morningIn the early period of his leadership the Alter Rebbe taught: “The footsteps of man are directed by G-d.”(Tehillim 37:23) When a Jew comes to a particular place it is for an (inner Divine) intent and purpose – to perform a mitzva, whether a mitzva between man and G-d or a mitzva between man and his fellow-man. A Jew is G-d’s messenger.

Wherever a messenger (shaliach) may be, he represents the power of the meshalei’ach, the one who sent him. The superior quality that souls possess, higher than the angels (who are also “messengers”), is that souls are messengers by virtue of Torah.

“Today’s Day”
Tuesday, Tamuz 10, 5703
Compiled by the Lubavitcher Rebbe; Translated by Yitschak Meir Kagan
Chabad.org

If you know something worthwhile, share it. By reaching others, you will reach yourself.

Whatever you learn – from books, lectures, or life experience – do so with the goal of sharing with others. If it was fascinating, how did it change you? What did it teach you about living? And how can you transfer that insight to others?

-Rabbi Noah Weinberg
“Way #46: Learn In Order To Teach”s
Aish.com

Sharing life experiences? Rabbi Weinberg is talking my language.

The past two “morning meditations” were my commentary on a teaching given by First Fruits of Zion (FFOZ) President and Founder Boaz Michael called Moses in Matthew. One of the essential points I tried to get across is that not all of the information “encoded” in the gospels (or the rest of the Bible for that matter) can be accessed and understood apart from a Jewish context. That context includes not only understanding the original languages and the cultural and historical framework of the time in which the Bible writers were operating, but the philosophical, religious, and midrashic material that would have been in the minds of those writers and their immediate audiences.

While the Bible is truly the inspired word of God, the Bible writers most likely had no idea that what they penned would be translated into hundreds of languages and consumed by nations and cultures all over the planet, two-thousand or more years into the future. In their intent, they were writing to people like them, people they knew or knew about, a specific and contemporary  readership.

Localization, when applied to language, is the process of writing a document in one language with the specific purpose that it be (more or less) easily translated into other languages. That requires the original document be written as “generically” as possible, employing no slang, idiom, or other language forms that are difficult to translate literally into other languages.

But one of the things we know or should know, is that the Bible writers used a lot of word play, symbolism, imagery, idiom, slang, and nicknames that were extremely specific to not only the original languages but to the time and culture in which these writers were living. To make matters worse, the Greek of the New Testament can seem extremely awkward at communicating thoughts and ideas that the Hebrew thinking/speaking writers were attempting to communicate.

My Pastor, who is fluent in Hebrew, agrees that some of the New Testament phrases written in Greek are worded in a very difficult manner, but they become much clearer when “retro-translated” into Hebrew (which is one of the reasons why the Delitzsch Hebrew Gospels are extremely helpful).

man_risingThe quote from “Today’s Day” at the top of this blog post says in part that “A Jew is G-d’s messenger. Wherever a messenger (shaliach) may be, he represents the power of the meshalei’ach, the one who sent him.” That’s quite true but as disciples of the Jewish Messiah, even we Gentiles are messengers of God and we also represent the one who sent us.

Rabbi Weinberg says that the purpose of learning is to teach, not that we must all take on the role of a formal teacher, but any time we communicate something we have learned to another, we are teaching them what we learned. That’s what I’m doing with this blog.

The interesting thing is that, based on everything I’ve written over the past several days (and long before that), as Christians, we can’t really learn the Bible beyond a certain point until we learn to read it “Jewishly.” Therefore, we can’t really teach what we’ve learned about the Bible beyond a particular limit until we’ve learned to teach it “Jewishly.”

This isn’t to say that we Gentile Christians will ever learn to conceptualize the world in the same way as someone who was born into a Jewish home, raised and educated within a fully cultural and religious Jewish context, and as someone who lives a life that is halachically Jewish. I live with a Jewish wife and have three Jewish children and I don’t come anywhere near understanding my world from the Jewish perspective, let alone writing from that perspective.

But hopefully I’ve learned enough to add a bit of an “accent” to my language…to communicate from a different perspective, presenting my understanding of the Bible (limited though it may be) in a way that appears new or at least different from what most Christians teach and comprehend.

According to Rabbi Weinberg, you don’t have to be perfect to teach. That’s a lesson I know all too well:

The best teachers make mistakes; more at the beginning, less later on. It’s like riding a bike or driving a car – the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Nobody ever became a great teacher without flopping a few times.

The first time, you’ll probably be laughed at. But don’t be discouraged. (Be glad they didn’t curse you!) Try again. The second time they’ll argue with you. That’s a good sign already; you’ve got them engaged. The third time they’ll thank you. That makes all the previous efforts worth it.

The same way a budding artist needs to study under the masters, a teacher needs to study the methods of great educators. If you have a favorite teacher (or journalist, actor, etc.) be conscious of their techniques for communicating the message.

But don’t wait until you’re perfect – because that’s a long way off! Just get started and teach as best you can. It will do wonders to help clarify your own viewpoint.

Of course, no one will ever become a perfect teacher and some people are more naturally gifted in that role than others. One of the reasons I write is to clarify what I’m learning within myself. Sometimes presenting that to others helps me learn as well. If the Jewish people were called to be a light to the nations, then Messiah has taught us that we need to be a light, too. We are learning things from our Master that are well worth sharing, but as he said, a light cannot shine if it is hidden under a basket.

GardeningLearning and teaching is a living, organic process. We know we’re alive when we are interacting, not only with other human beings, but with God. We are fulfilling the purpose of our existence. We are exercising the reason for our design.

We don’t have to be perfect and we don’t even always have to be all that good. We do have to do, though. If we are sincere, and motivated, and acting in His Name, we will move forward, we will learn, we will teach, and with the help of God, a few people will actually understand, then learn, and then teach too.

People think that to attain truth you have to pulverize boulders, move mountains and turn the world upside-down. It’s not so. Truth is found in the little things.

On the other hand, to move a mountain takes some dynamite and a few bulldozers. To do one of those little things can take a lifetime of working on yourself.

You do what you can: Learn and meditate and pray and improve yourself in the ways you know how—and He will help that what you do will be with Truth.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Small Truths”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe, Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

-Helen Keller, American writer and political activist

The Master said (Luke 21:15), “…for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” While that may not always seem true given the amount of ridicule believers receive from various members of our society, we are not abandoned and alone, either. Learn and keep on learning, but information kept to yourself only helps you. You are only serving God when you share it and Him.

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The Unsimple Truth

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einstein_simplyIf you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

-attributed to Albert Einstein

According to Rashi, the question is directed against Rav Yirmiyah who had said that the basket in the tree does not actually have to be within ten tefachim of the ground to be valid. We are dealing with a long basket where it could be tilted and emptied even without being brought below into the reshus harabim. In contrast to this, Rav bar Sh’va brings a Baraisa where an eiruv is not valid unless it is actually brought to where it must be situated. Here, we do not take into consideration the fact that the eiruv should be valid due to the potential that it could
theoretically be brought during bein hashemashos to its destination.

Daf Yomi Digest
Distinctive Insight
from “Rabbinic injunctions and Bein HaShemashos
Eruvin 33

I’m a failure. More to the point, I don’t understand God, Jesus, faith, and spirituality well enough. I can’t explain it simply. I’m not sure I can explain it at all. Certainly the fact that I have posted nearly eight-hundred articles in this “morning meditations” blog (not to mention other blogs) about these subjects and have hardly scratched the surface must mean I don’t understand all this well enough. I can’t explain what I believe simply. I certainly can’t explain it briefly.

I quoted from a commentary on an excerpt from Talmud above to illustrate the level of complexity of the halachot related to Orthodox Judaism. Although I read from the Daf Yomi Digest daily, I scarcely comprehend what I’m reading and what I understand most clearly is that the Talmud is an enormously complex set of works. I don’t know how observant Orthodox Jews manage to obey all of the minute details involved in daily living. I can only imagine that Einstein would have contended with the sages based on his above-quoted statement (though it is unsure if Einstein or Richard Feynman actually said those words).

I can hardly be said to live anything close to an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle in my “observance” as a Christian, but as I write and write and write, and then read back what I’ve written, I realize that I am no closer to truly comprehending God and faith than I was when I first accepted Jesus Christ as Lord. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve even gone that far.

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

–Romans 7:15-19

If we’re honest with ourselves as Christians, then I suppose we all have to admit that this statement of Paul’s is also true of us. How can we live a life we call “holy” and yet still struggle with the mundane, the common, and even the evil within us? If God’s Word is written on our hearts, how can we defy that word and pursue what we know isn’t right? I can only imagine that atheists have moral struggles as well, though as I recall myself from before I came to faith, they didn’t seem as dire.

Is a life of faith really that hard or that hard to explain? It certainly seems that hard to live. But then again, is Einstein’s quote the litmus test we should be using against ourselves? After all, he also said this:

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel Prize.

Einstein made that statement in response to being asked to give a brief quote on why he won the Nobel Prize. That’s the problem with taking quotes out of context. It’s easy to make a person seem completely inconsistent. How much more difficult it is to analyze “chunks” of the Bible and find consistency and comprehension?

My conversations with Pastor Randy (which are on hiatus for the month of April and for several weeks in May) about D.T. Lancaster’s book The Holy Epistle to the Galatians aren’t hugely complex, but they do get detailed…and we’ve barely covered one chapter in Galatians! How about the book of Romans?

mystery-in-midtownI know that Mark Nanos is popular in Messianic circles, but some years ago, when I tried to read his book The Mystery of Romans, I gave up, not getting very far in his book. Maybe I’d be better able to comprehend his writing now, but Paul’s letter to the Roman church is extremely dense with meaning that I wonder if I’ll ever truly understand either Paul or Nanos. I know the Nanos books on Romans and Galatians should be on my “required reading” list, but who knows if they’ll do me any good? I’m tasked to understand a scholar and author in order to understand the mystery of “letter writer.” Are these reasonable goals?

In some ways, trying to comprehend a life of faith is a fool’s errand. While the concept of Christian salvation is supposed to be simple enough for a small child to understand, the fact remains that the Bible contains depths that if plumbed, would make even explorers such as Jacques Cousteau bolt for the surface as if hotly pursued by Leviathan.

Maybe it’s not quite that bad, but I feel that way sometimes.

Of course there’s a difference between understanding a life of faith and living it. Well, maybe not for the Orthodox Jews since behavior and conceptualization are largely interwoven, but certainly for Christianity, where one can live a basic Christian life without having to know much of the Bible at all. You can feed the hungry, visit the sick, remain faithful to your spouse, give to charity, pray to God, and fellowship with other believers without having to spend even a single day in seminary. Of course studying the Bible gives such a life context and meaning, but you don’t really have to know all of the arcane debates about the doctrine of Divine Election, for example.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy reading. I enjoy studying. I enjoy discussing all of these little details. But at what point do you turn it all off and just spend time with God? What’s the point of all of our debates on the web? Why do you try to convince me you’re right about something and why do I try to convince you that I’m right about something? What difference does it make? OK, probably a pretty big one, depending on what we’re talking about, but we can’t all be right? Can we all be wrong? That seems far more likely.

If we believe God exists, then He must exist separately from what we believe and from the web of theology and doctrine we’ve spun for ourselves. God must be an “objective” God. If the world’s population stopped believing in God totally and completely, God would continue to exist and His plan for the universe would continue to move forward toward its ultimate conclusion. We spend all our lives examining the Bible trying to uncover the clues to that plan and what it means in our lives, but we only get bits and pieces, and much of the time, we can’t really be sure we understand what we think we’ve got in our hands.

This theologian espouses one particular theory and another theologian opposes him or her. More theories spring up, more debates occur. But God is God. Our theories and debates don’t affect him in the slightest. He exists as He exists regardless of our “religious orientation.”

We’re all seeking truth but even with the help of the Holy Spirit, who is supposed to guide us in all truth (John 16:13), we all come up with different conclusions. You’d think if there were one Spirit and He was guiding us to One truth, we’d all arrive at the same conclusion.

But we don’t.

I’m most of the way through Carlos Castaneda’s book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. It’s not really what I expected, but I appreciate Castaneda’s honesty in saying that he didn’t quite succeed either in his field study or as a disciple of don Juan. I decided to read this book because I hadn’t read any Castaneda before and felt I owed it to myself to have the experience.

letting-goMaybe I should just let go and move away from religious and spiritual reading altogether and just read for pleasure (not that reading books on religion and spirituality aren’t pleasurable). I used to read a lot of science fiction and mystery back in the day, with a few of the classics thrown in just for giggles. Maybe that would be more satisfying. Nothing I know or don’t know affects God. I’m not sure it even affects me. I can probably explain simply Castaneda’s book, but how could I possibly explain even one letter of Paul’s? Many have tried, including Nanos and Lancaster, but what does it matter if you end up with a body of work about the Bible that is fraught with disagreement?

I guess there’s a reason people pursue truth all their lives but either never find it or find only what some people (but not all) call “truth.” Maybe we never find it at all. Maybe we just delude ourselves and say what we have is “truth” because living a life of existential uncertainty is too difficult to bear.

Maybe that’s why there are so many atheists. There are no mysteries to the universe beyond what they can see. It’s all nuts and bolts with no colors, textures, or moods. There’s only light and darkness. More’s the pity.

One who returns from the darkness must bring of it with him and convert it to light. He must exploit his experience to surge higher and higher with greater strength.

Therefore, the one who returns from a distance is greater than the one who was always close. What matters is not so much where you stand, but with what force you are moving in which direction.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Exploiting the Darkness”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

So which direction should I move in next in pursuing truth or God or whatever?

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Easter, Passover, and Myriad Truths

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When our universe as we know it first emerged, the soil of the earth was imbued with a wondrous power—the power to generate life.

Place a tiny seed in the ground and it converts the carbon of the air into a mighty redwood—a decomposing seed awakens the power of the infinite.

Yet another miracle, even more wondrous: A quiet act of kindness buried in humility ignites an explosion of G‑dly light.

Infinite power is hidden in the humblest of places.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Seeding Miracles”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Depending on your religious orientation, we are entering a “season of miracles” in a few days. If you’re Christian, then you are certainly looking forward to Holy Week, culminating with the festivities of Easter and the celebration of the risen Christ this coming Sunday. If you’re Jewish, then you are busy preparing your home and your soul for the Passover season, which begins with Erev Shabbat this coming Friday evening.

Or you have another sort of religious tradition that has no holidays at this time of year, or a tradition that contains no wonders or miracles at all.

I haven’t celebrated Easter for many, many years but I usually look forward to Passover. My wife and I haven’t discussed plans for Pesach this  year, and there are years when we don’t have a personal Pesach seder in our home. Life gets hectic and my spouse isn’t always up to the challenge of preparing an elaborate meal along with the many other preparations and tasks she performs. I suggested yesterday morning, that my sons and I take a turn this year at preparing the Passover meal, but my daughter (who knows what it all entails) just rolled her eyes (mercifully, my wife wasn’t present when I “shot off my big mouth”).

I’ve been avoiding the obligatory Passover blog posts so far due to the uncertainty of the season and, like corporate fellowship, I may have to admit that there will be no personal Passover for me this year. I suppose because I’m not Jewish that it shouldn’t apply to me anyway, so in that, there is no loss if one less Christian isn’t available to attend a purely Jewish commemoration of freedom from slavery and bonding with God.

While, as Rabbi Freeman says, “infinite power is hidden in the humblest of places,” sometimes only humility is to be found in such places as well. There is a time to rise up, to attempt to exceed your limitations, and strive to touch the hem of the garment of God. There are other times that it’s best to step aside and make room for others to achieve that purpose by making yourself small and still. The latter is what’s best for me.

I used to think that so much time had passed since I initiated this “experiment” that my “alternate path” should be apparent to me by now. However, I realize that only an instant has elapsed and it is my place to sit in the shadows and wait. If there is a “miracle” for me, it will be the silence and the muted shades and the stillness of the abyss as I contemplate my existence and ponder on the wonder of God and His unique, radical Oneness.

And I contemplate my path and consider the fork in the road. I can hardly say that it’s either Judaism or Christianity that presents themselves before me, since my options are not two but rather nearly infinite. Within Christianity, there are a myriad of possibilities, both “formal” and idiosyncratic. Judaism, as an option, really doesn’t present itself to me for the simple reason that I am not Jewish. Yet some part of that voice speaks to me and incorporates itself in the other, more “appropriate” options that I still find available to me. Rabbi Freeman presents the transcendent path of truth as containing two paths, but indeed, it contains so much more.

If you find yourself affixed to a single path to truth—

the path of prayer and praise,

or the path of kindness and love,

or the path of wisdom and meditation,

or any other path of a singular mode

—you are on the wrong path.

Truth is not at the end of a path.

Truth transcends all paths.

Choose a path. But when you must, take the opposite path as well.

But if “truth transcends all paths,” then how do you tell truth from its opposite? If choosing truth means choosing opposite paths, when how can I make a choice? If I can’t make a choice, I can then walk no particular path in seeking God.

That leaves me with an impossible decision and no way to make that decision. How can I choose truth if truth is transcendent but I am only human?

If, for me, there is no Easter and there is no Passover, then my choice is to choose no option. That may be the only choice in relation to truth as well. Is it Jacob’s ladder of prayer that sits in front of me, shimmering faintly in the darkness and taunting me in the twilight, or is it the point at which a billion, billion paths converge all demanding I choose the truth and all demanding I choose all truths?

Hypothetical indecision must give way to practical living. I still must wake up each morning, must acknowledge God as the author of my life, such as it is, must get dressed, go to work, labor, go home, be a husband, and father, and grandfather, and walk all the different paths that my life requires, as my tiny march of days on this earth continues to elapse.

All of Judaism will be reading from the seder in a few days, and in a week, Christianity will turn to the end of the Gospels and the resurrection of Jesus. But I will wait and by the dim light of a candle or my soul (I can’t always tell which), I’ll thumb through the pages of Lamentations:

My transgressions were bound into a yoke;
by his hand they were fastened together;
they were set upon my neck;
he caused my strength to fail;
the Lord gave me into the hands
of those whom I cannot withstand.

–Lamentations 1:14

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The Resolute and Supple Reed

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“Who is wise? One who learns from every person.”
-Ben Zoma, Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers 4:1)

Throughout the existence of the Jewish people, we have long been enamored with intelligence. Just look at the disproportionate amount of Jews who have been awarded the Nobel Prize. However, intelligence by itself is not a supreme value; it can be used for either good or evil. Thus, the Talmud tells us, “The purpose of wisdom is to bring about repentance and good deeds” (Berachot 17a). In other words, if we’re not using our minds to try to become better people, our intelligence really doesn’t amount to much at all. Furthermore, Ben Zoma’s excerpt from Pirkei Avot alludes to the fact that while a person’s intellectual capacity is innately limited, wisdom can be attained by anyone. A wise person is not someone who graduated first in their class, but rather someone who is constantly trying to learn.

-Asher
“Who is Wise”
Lev Echad blog

I didn’t create this “morning meditation” blog to simply spew out answers but rather to ask hard questions. I don’t pretend to have some special insight into God or religion or faith. I only have my experience as I continue and grow in my relationship with God. I chronicle the developments of that relationship here in a variety of forms, including commentary on the Bible and occasionally reviews of related publications. I’m not really here to teach but to learn, and I learn from every person who talks to me in this blog. I think that’s how we all learn…by communicating.

It’s not always easy. As I’m sure you’ve discovered by participating in or just reading the comments on this blog, a lot of disagreement and sometimes heated debate happens. Occasionally, tempers flare, though I do my best to try and contain the “emotionalism” of our debates. The goal, as I see it, is not to try to prove who is right and who is wrong, but to pursue realization and truth. Truth, as I’ve said before, is not the same as fact, and thus truth can take on more than one form.

As Asher said in the quote I posted above, “A wise person is not someone who graduated first in their class, but rather someone who is constantly trying to learn.” He also said this:

Thus, the Talmud tells us, “The purpose of wisdom is to bring about repentance and good deeds” (Berachot 17a). In other words, if we’re not using our minds to try to become better people, our intelligence really doesn’t amount to much at all.

The goal Asher describes is similar to mine. The point of being intelligent isn’t to “be right” but to “bring about repentance and good deeds.” We’re supposed to study and explore and debate and discuss, not to exalt ourselves and to prove we’re the “smarter guy,” but to become better people through a greater understanding of our relationship with God. From a Jewish point of view, that also involves doing and not just thinking or saying, so “good deeds” are a vital part of that process as is repentance of our sins before man and God.

Does that mean a truly wise person is always a doormat who never takes a strong stand on a moral principle? Not at all.

On today’s daf we find that the Beis HaMikdash was purposely destroyed either before or after Shemittah, since bad things happen during times that are already difficult.

Keeping Shemittah in Israel was a big conflict not too long ago. Hardly anyone was doing it—even otherwise religious farmers—and those who were willing were often intimidated by their peers. The Chazon Ish, zt”l, wrote a beautiful letter of encouragement to those farmers who were willing to consider sacrificing what appeared to be their advantage in order to keep the letter of the law.

“I am a farmer who makes his living through the work of my hands. It is now almost Shemittah and a riveting thought has gotten into my head: I want to keep the laws of Shemittah with courage and boldness. I am alone and unaided, a joke to all of my neighbors. ‘How could it be?’ they asked when I began. ‘You won’t plant and you won’t harvest? You can’t fight against reality!’

“But my chutzpah stood me well and despite the indisputable fact that anyone with intelligence knows that it is physically impossible to keep these halachos unless one has a silo filled with grain for three years—since Shemittah is obviously impossible to fulfill in our times without enough grain before the seventh year. Now isn’t like it used to be, they say; you cannot rely on miracles. Yet the year is already halfway over and it looks like one can keep Shemittah after all. I planted everything before Rosh Hashannah, while it was still the sixth year, and during the seventh year I have not worked my field. I am careful to treat the produce which overlaps from the sixth year to the seventh with holiness and I hope to make peace with reality—or that reality should mete out what is good for me.

“My neighbors mock me—yet the weather mocks them. It works out to be good for one who planted early, but not for their crops planted during Shemittah. Only my early-planted crops have survived!”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“A Time of Challenge”
Arachin 12

It seems obvious that if we are in the right in an argument or dispute, we should stand our ground, even against overwhelming odds, including that of “popular public opinion.” The question is, how can you know that you are always right? If you are a reasonable person and honest with yourself, you’ll have to admit that you can never be “always right”. That’s where learning from others comes in. Even a genius cannot know everything if that genius is in isolation. Only by discourse with the rest of the world, including a world that is fundamentally different from you, can real learning ever take place. The trick is to differentiate between being resolute in your principles and being mule-headed stubborn, even in the face of great evidence that discounts the validity of your arguments.

OK, I say that with the understanding that most people don’t change once they’ve made up their minds. But if change were impossible, then no one would come to realize that the God of Abraham is the Maker of the Universe. If we could not humble ourselves and admit that we were wrong, no one would come to faith in the Jewish Messiah, our Lord, Savior, and King.

But our greatest adversary doesn’t exist outside of us in some other group or church or synagogue or even in the supernatural realm. Our greatest enemy is who we are.

There are times you must be like a reed in the wind. And there are times you must face it like an iron wall.

When it comes to matters that lie at the surface, then “I hold like this” and “my opinion is like this” stand in the way of harmony and peace. Every such “I” is the very root and source of evil.

But when it comes to matters that touch your essence and core, the purpose for which you were placed in this world, then you must be an iron wall. Then you must say, “On this, I cannot budge.”

Liberated from its thick shell of ego, empowered and emboldened, the essential self breaks through the concrete, blossoms and flourishes.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“I Versus I”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Although “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17), we must not “dull” ourselves by always seeking resistance. To “sharpen” a human being requires debate, disagreement, and discourse, and then an experience of contrition before God to help us understand when it is time to stand our ground like an iron wall, and when it is time to be supple like the reed before the wind.

In the midst of our human storms, we must never forget that what matters most is to seek His Face.

My heart, O God, is steadfast;
I will sing and make music with all my soul.
Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.
I will praise you, LORD, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples. –Psalm 108:1-3

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The Difference Between Night and Day

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In creating the whole of existence, G-d made forces that reveal Him and forces that oppose Him –He made light and He made darkness. One who does good brings in more light. One who fails, feeds the darkness.

But the one who fails and then returns transcends that entire scheme. He reaches out directly to the Essential Creator. Beyond darkness and light.

And so, his darkness becomes light.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Returning Light”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

How do you tell the difference between night and day? In a literal sense, all you have to do is look outside to see if it is light or dark. You can also check any of the devices that tell us what time it is on a 24-hour clock, usually available through the Internet, so that you know not only whether it is day or night, but the precise time as well.

How do you tell the difference between fact and fiction? Well, we know that the things we see on TV shows and movies such as Star Trek are pretty much fiction. No one can really visit other planets, “beam” to destination from tens of thousands of miles away, or diagnose complex medical ailments with a wave of a “tricorder”. We do know that we can only barely visit the moon, which we haven’t done in manned-exploration in decades, launch rockets to an orbiting space station on a semi-regular basis, and that while modern medical technology can diagnose many illnesses, much of what people suffer from remains a mystery.

How do you tell the difference between truth and falsehood? I don’t mean whether or not a used car salesman is trying to cheat you by lying about the condition of a car you are thinking of purchasing, but what about God’s truth? How do you know what is true about God and what is not? You may think you know the answer to that question in some canned way (“the truth is in the Bible”) but it’s not that easy.

Yesterday, Messianic blogger Derek Leman published a missive called Mainstream vs. Crackpot Scholarship, and I enthusiastically congratulate him on this effort. In virtually every established religious tradition, there is solid, well-researched information that acts as the basis for the beliefs and faith of the adherents of said-religious traditions. There is also a bunch of “junk scholarship” which is based on bad interpretation of holy writings, wishful thinking, and outright lies. Before continuing here, please visit Derek’s blog via the link above and see what he has to say in detail.

Learning in the “information age” has become exponentially confusing. Anyone can create a website, blog, or YouTube video in minutes spouting off their particular brand of theology, philosophy, or teaching on “truth”. The proponents of “black helicopters” are no longer confined to “fringie” TV or radio broadcasts. Now they are available via Google and for the many who lack formal training in Biblical scholarship, it can be very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.

How does one tell the difference between junk and quality teaching? Besides consulting reliable sources, which Derek has offered to provide, you might want to start by examining your “wishful thinking”. We all have a “theological ax to grind” so to speak. We all have our sacred cows that we are unwilling to slaughter on the altar of established Biblical reality. There are things that we don’t want to give up in our belief system, not necessarily because they are solid religious truth, but because they make us feel better and they sound just so “cool”.

However “cool” is not necessarily “truth”.

In an absolute sense, we search for truth all of our lives. This isn’t just a statement applied to religious people but to all people. We want to find the meaning and purpose of our lives so that we have some sort of context for our existence and our actions. We want a direction. We want a moral and ethical compass. Where do we find it? Some find their reality in secular humanism and the established scientific facts (and I remind you that facts and truth are not the same thing). Some find it among the plethora of religious disciples that exist in the world today. Some find it in sex, drugs, booze, entertainment venues, or whatever distractions and pleasures we find in the society around us. In the latter case, they don’t concern themselves with a “truth” outside of their personal existence, they just hide in a cocoon of unreality and hope for the best.

Some, as Derek pointed out, seek their truth in the fantastic, the amazing, the “gee whiz” junk scholarship that exists at the far edges of more legitimate religions, as if a faith in the One, Supreme, Creative, God were not “fantastic” enough for their imaginations.

What are we looking for? Truth? Not exactly.

We’re looking for a truth that fits who we think we are. We want a truth that we can easily accept without having to turn ourselves inside out and anguish over having possibly been wrong about our existence and about God for all of our lives up to this point. We want a truth that we have control over. To do that, we have to take truth away from God.

OK, to be fair, there is no one person or one denomination or sect that can say they have absolute ownership of total and untainted truth from God. There are plenty of traditions that make this claim, but none of those claims can be established without question. Within Judaism and within Christianity, there are many different traditions and ways to understand truth but they are not truth in and of themselves. We cannot access “pure truth” from God. Perhaps no person has, not even Abraham or Moses, though they certainly came closer than we have today. I would say that Jesus knew that truth first hand, but the Messiah is unique and though we Christians aspire to be like him, we can only travel up the path but not fully achieve the destination, at least not this side of paradise.

Some people just settle for less and after a time, they pretend that they have discovered what they want. Then they truly believe the illusion is real. Here’s what I mean.

The Midrash Tanchuma in Shemini tells a very striking story about how overindulgence in wine can warp one’s understanding: “When a drunk is inebriated he sits joyfully as though in Gan Eden. There was a pious man whose father drank publicly, much to the humiliation of his son. The pious man said, ‘Father, I will purchase fine wine and bring it to your house if you will only stop frequenting taverns. When you go to such places you shame me and yourself.’ Each day he would bring his father spirits to drink in the morning and the evening. When his father would pass out, the son would place him in bed to sleep it off.

‘One rainy day, as the upstanding man walked through the market on his way to shul, he noticed a drunk lying in the middle of the marketplace. Water was streaming over him as children hit him and threw dirt in his face and stuffed it in his mouth. The son thought, ‘I will bring my father here. Seeing the shame of this drunk will finally cure him of his obsession to drink wine.’ When his elderly father witnessed this spectacle, he bent down to the drunk and whispered in his ear. His son was horrified to over hear his father ask, ‘Tell me, my friend. In which pub did you procure such potent liquor?’ The mortified son cried, ‘Father is that what I brought you here for? Do you not see the incredible embarrassment this man suffers because of his habit?’

“The elderly father replied, ‘My son, I have no pleasure in life besides drinking. This is my Gan Eden!’”

Mishnah Berura Yomi Digest
Stories to Share
“The Drunkenness of Lot”
Siman 128 Seif 37-38

I know a secular person could read what I’ve written so far and say to me that by accepting my religious convictions as truth, I have given up and am pretending that my “fiction” is real. I don’t blame that secular individual, because what any person who has faith and trust in God believes certainly seems fictional to one who is not so oriented. Paul even spoke to this person.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. –1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV)

Unfortunately, a person that subscribes to what I consider beliefs based on junk scholarship may also say that the “spirit” revealed these “truths” to him. Some months ago, I wrote a blog post called The Irrelevant Drunkard which addressed many of the issues I bring up today. In that “meditation”, I urged my readers not to judge other variants of our faith too harshly, for how indeed to we know in absolute terms that they are always wrong and we are always right? How do we know that there is only one way to pray and it is the way that we pray? How do we know that there is only one way to conduct a worship service and it is the way we conduct a worship service? How do we know that we have our facts and particularly our truth lined up with God and that only we have the inside scoop to those facts and that truth?

We don’t. But we have a place to start.

We have a way to tell the difference between night and day, but to use it, we have to do something we don’t want to do. We have to temporarily suspend our beliefs and our assumptions, then access established and reliable sources of information about our faith. That means, no matter how attractive and fanciful a source may seem, we have to discard it, if it is on the list marked “junk scholarship”. I said before that no person or tradition has unfettered and unfiltered access to God’s truth and the same goes for God’s Bible. It is interpreted. In Judaism, it is impossible to understand the Bible apart from established tradition. You don’t just get to shoot from the hip and call it “spiritual exegesis”.

When you pray to God for wisdom and truth, try very hard not to imagine how God will answer that prayer. In fact, expect God to answer you in a way that you totally didn’t anticipate. If God responds to you in exactly the manner in which you envisioned, perhaps it’s not the Spirit of God speaking but the “spirit” of your own wants, needs, and desires. God rarely gives us what we want in exactly the way we want it, only speaking to confirm that our human imagination was “right” all along.

What is the difference between day and night? In a way, we spend all of our time looking out the window, going outside, moistening our finger and testing the wind, just to try to find out. There is truth. God is truth. I believe that. I trust that very much. But it is not something that once established, can be safely locked inside a drawer in a cabinet after being filed under “T” for truth. It is something that we examine and pour over every minute of every day, like trying to decipher a code written by men separated from us by thousands of miles and tens of centuries. It’s like attempting to loosen an infinite knot looped and tied within the fabric of an endless and inscrutable reality.

Rabbi Jerome Epstein once wrote:

As a Jew, I believe that the coming of the Messiah does not depend on my belief that he will come, nor does it rest solely in God’s hands. I believe it remains our task to bring the Messiah — that he will arrive only when we are in a state of readiness to bring him, to welcome him, to appreciate him. Salvation must be earned. And thus it is what we do, as Jews, that will determine the time of the Messianic arrival.

Rabbi Epstein’s belief is based partly on the fact that he is a Jew. It’s not as if all Jews believe as he does, but he allows his Jewish identity to define his truth. It is not the same truth as other Jews have and certainly not the same truth people who are not Jewish have. A Christian would not typically accept this truth because the Rabbi says that “salvation must be earned” which goes against the church’s belief that salvation through Jesus Christ is a free gift, as if our relationship with God were a completely passive experience for us.

Truth is something of an active choice. I believe there is an absolute truth in God, but no man can access it. We use our religion and our holy books as a kind of “interface” to allow us access to God, but that interface is somewhat symbolic. It’s like the operating system on your computer provides a “graphical user interface” that allows you come control over the hardware and software of your machine, but not direct and complete access. There are interfaces that are better than others. There are interfaces where the code is better written and that perform better and with fewer errors. Like the wise consumer looking for the best computer with the most useful interface, we go shopping. Pursuing the truth is the same. Even once we have “purchased”, we continue to explore our device by accessing and exploring the interface. We discover errors in the user’s manual on occasion. We locate a bug or two. Most of all, if we’re honest, we differentiate between a bug in the program and our own misunderstanding. We admit that how we thought the interface would work wasn’t actually how is actually supposed to work, according to the manufacturer.

The problem isn’t with the interfaces or the truths or the Bibles or the religions, the problem is with our choices; which ones we make and why we make them. The problem is that, having once made a choice, we stop checking in on the purchase. We stop making sure we understand how it works and what our part is in investigating new “truths” about the interface and what lies beneath. We cannot settle. We cannot arrive at the belief that lying drunk in a gutter is Gan Eden. We have to keep searching for God everyday along our path and we have to choose reliable markers on that path rather than fog and illusion. We have not yet arrived at total truth and we will never arrive until the say of the blowing of the great Shofar that announces the Messiah’s return.

But we have a traveling companion along the path and he urges us everyday to be honest with ourselves. The path to truth begins with sometimes brutal honesty, not in satisfying our dreams and wants. God is truth. We just have to want to listen to Him more than we listen to ourselves.

Then our eyes will be able to see when it is day and when it is night, at least as through a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12).