Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 245
“Everyone knows that out of suffering goes a way that leads to Him. Judaism is a reminder that joy is a way to God. The mitsvah and the holy spirit are incompatible with grief or despair.” God in Search of Man (385).
Rabbi Heschel’s teaching above is so very important for all of us, especially in times of trouble, times of inequality, times of authoritarianism, etc. While “suffering goes a way that leads to Him” is accepted by all, it is also used as a weapon and way to deceive people into accepting ‘their lot in life’. Some religious leaders and followers use this truth to ‘keep people in their place’, maintain control, ‘keep the masses down’ and, even, convince people to accept their being controlled, used, abused as something good and ‘what God wants’. People in power have used this saying to remain indifferent to the suffering of another(s), make the ills and troubles the fault of the people who are suffering, even go as far as to say God must not love you and/or ‘you suffer here to enjoy the benefits in the afterlife’! What poppycock!!
It is true that for many of us, when suffering occurs we call out to God, asking: “God why is this happening to me?”. It is also true that suffering is a wake-up call to/for many of us to look inside of ourselves and see how we have accepted ‘the norm’ for far too long, how we have ‘been in the ether’ of societal mendacity and come to engage in self-deception to our detriment. Every life has suffering in it, the question is what we do with this suffering, are we going to be defeated by it, are we going to just accept it and live with it, or are we going to follow the pathway it opens to a higher consciousness, to God, to a better sense of self, to a growing of our inner life, to using the “evil drive” to endow the “good drive” with more power to change, to improve self, another(s), and the world around us? For far too long, we have allowed the essential sufferings of life to defeat us, to enslave us, to bring us under the thumb of mendacious people, to surrender our freedom, our will, our thoughts, and create false gods and worship idols instead of God.
We are witnessing this in today’s world as we have witnessed this phenomenon throughout history. Be it the authoritarian leader, the Clergy in our Houses of Worship, the parents, the teachers, we are being subjected to a bombardment of how “suffering” will make us stronger, how our “suffering” is for what we must have done, our “suffering” is God’s will, etc. These deceptions allow us to be lazy, they allow us to not seek the path to God that our “suffering” leads us to. We have become so accustomed to our “suffering” that we are not even aware of the harms they are causing, the ways they cut us off from God rather than lead us to God, and have enslaved us. We have become idolators at the altar of societal lies, societal power, believing that our shared “sufferings” create community, seeking a ‘bad guy’ as the source of our “sufferings”, and worshiping the ‘strongman/woman’ who will save us from ‘those bad people’ while seeing those of our community as ‘the good ones’, the ‘kind ones’, the ‘hospitable ones’ as David French writes in his Op-Ed piece in the NY Times on July 8, 2023.
What is the solution? We have to seek truth instead of settling for lies, we have to remember to learn each day, to grow our spiritual condition each day, to seek God rather than blame God for our plight, remember that “out of suffering goes a way that leads to Him”. As I write this, I am realizing that “suffering” could be another call from God to wake up, to hear God’s call to be human, to stop wallowing in despair and grief instead see the joy of living, honor the joy of living, attach ourselves to our inner life, our souls so we can be free and joyous no matter what the outer circumstances of our lives may be. Seek a different path of being present, a path that leads us to experience and rejoice in our being alive, being able to change, being able to resist, rising above the grief and despair that society and just living brings by connecting to the love, the friendship, of God and another(s).
I was freer in prison during the last prison term I ‘suffered’, than I had been in years. Many formerly incarcerated people find freedom from suffering, a path to God through their suffering and a new vision/way of living and being for themselves while they were incarcerated. People with life-threatening diseases, after they ask the “why me” questions, find a spiritual life that brings them peace and acceptance. Those of us in recovery find “a new freedom” through our surrender to God rather than the surrender to suffering we had done in the past. We are testaments to “out of suffering goes a way that leads to Him.” God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark