Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 97
“Important as they may be, they do not reach the heart of the problem. Religion, therefore, with its demands and vision is not a luxury but a matter of life and death. True, its message is often diluted and distorted by pedantry, externalization, ceremonialism, and superstition. But, this precisely is our task: to recall the urgencies, the perpetual emergencies of human existence, the rare cravings of the spirit, the eternal voice of God, to which the demands of religion are an answer.” (God in Search of Man pg. 372)
Rabbi Heschel is reminding that, while technology, efficiency, and social engineering are important, “they do not reach the heart of the problem.” We, humans, have substituted our minds, our inventiveness for our need for solutions to the problem of evil, to the confusion of good and evil, to be able to discern one from the other and to tell the difference between the holy and the good. We have substituted and come to worship our intellects, our inventiveness, even using our intuition to serve technology, efficiency, and social engineering. Darwin’s survival of the fittest came to mean strength and power, we have dismissed the spiritual power that keeps human beings alive. We forget about the survival of the Jewish People against all odds, against all the hatred that continues to this day. We forget that how Black people survived slavery and all the hatred spewed against them to this day. The spiritual power within these two ‘groups’ of people, within many other people like the Russians who overthrew Communism, doesn’t seem to matter to these mendacious quoters and followers of Darwin.
“Religion, therefore, with its demands and visions is not a luxury, but a matter of life and death” is as true today as it was then. The basic demands of religion are: “Choose Life”, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself”, “Do not make false images of God”, “Don’t murder, steal, commit adultery, bear false witness, don’t covet”. These and many other demands of religion, like T’Shuvah, making atonement for the holy and the evil, learning to live together and care for the needy, the poor, the stranger, having one law for both the citizen and the stranger, etc, are what will save humanity. This vision of a world where God is sovereign, where we live from our souls, where we connect with one another on a higher level than I/it or I/object cannot be accomplished through our intellects, through technology, through efficiency, through social engineering. All of these methods have gotten us to the place we are at now: unprecedented hatred, fear, disdain of anyone ‘not like us’; a move from religion which grows our spirit to intellectual superiority and rational mind being worshiped. We are proving Einstein’s quotation: “the intuitive mind is a gift and the rational mind a servant; we have come to forget the gift and worship the servant.” It is not about satisfying demands, it is about what demands are we going to satisfy; the demands of rational/intellectual thinking or the demands of spiritual knowing?
Religion has not only become a luxury, something we do for show, out of obligation to our past; it has become a weapon for some people against anyone they do not agree with. God’s name is used in vain all the time, by Clergy, by Anti-abortionists (they are not pro-life because they care nothing about the fetus upon birth, they support the death penalty, etc), by politicians who want to invoke Christian Law, Shariah Law, Jewish Law for their own power and not for the sake of the visions of Christianity, Islam or Judaism. Would these charlatans only adhere to the demands of religion and faith, would they only “turn their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” as God demands through Isaiah 2:4. The proselytizing actions do not reflect anything but the proselytizers need to have power, to make everyone the same, to create a society that is some human image, not in God’s Image, not recognizing we are all unique and equal by God’s design and any human attempt to disregard this truth leads to war, death, and ruin. Yet, people of all religions and faiths continue to regard their stature and place in the peking order as a luxury, an entitlement and an opportunity to wield power for themselves, while claiming they are serving God. In reality, they are serving their evil needs to be right, to enslave another(s), to deny rights to all, to worship their rational minds and forget about their intuitive minds, their spiritual knowledge and God’s call.
In recovery, we are acutely aware of our need to surrender to a power greater than ourselves. We have experienced the wreckage we have caused by believing in our rational minds and intellects, we have experienced the trauma we have caused and has been visited upon us because of the bastardization of God’s name. We have experienced the rejection of faith leaders and communities because of our addictive thinking and acting. We have not been welcomed in as human beings who sin, who need help, who are needy, we have been banished by the very people who claim to be servants of God! Our surrender to a power greater than ourselves is our path to serving the demands and visions of God, of our soul, of our intuitive minds which we let lie fallow and starved prior to our recovery.
Hearing the demand of God, the demand of religion, the demand of AA, the demand of my soul each and every day through prayer, meditation, Torah, and Rabbi Heschel, has caused me much angst and reflection. I am grateful for these demands, which are actually one in the same. More tomorrow. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark