Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 3 Day 90

“The wisdom, teaching, and counsel of the Bible are not in conflict with the ultimate attainments of the human mind, but, rather, well ahead of our attitudes. The idea of the equality of man, for example, has become commonplace in our mouths, but how far is it from being an irresistible insight or an honest ineradicable conviction? The Bible is not behind the times, it is ages ahead of our aspirations.” (God in Search of Man pg. 243)

As I read these words from Rabbi Heschel, I am in awe, wonder, consternation, embarrassment and disturbed. The people purporting to be ‘God’s messengers’ in our time, as in times past, do not adhere to what Rabbi Heschel is teaching, at least the ones who are the loudest do not seem to. The people for whom the Bible is nothing more than a myth to laugh at, to read as amusement, this teaching of Rabbi Heschel’s seems ridiculous. To the people of faith who wrestle each and every day with how to live in accordance with “the wisdom, teaching and counsel of the Bible”, these words are refreshing, confirming, daunting and true. While I do not believe that each and every story happened as it is written, I do know  “the wisdom, teaching and the counsel of the Bible” is true and valid. I am certain, in my uncertainty, of the depictions and conflicts that the Bible relates to  us as well as I know it is undeniably true the solutions the Bible gives us are right and good. Yet, I and most people, continually find ourselves in a quandary because we don’t mine the depths of the Bible’s “wisdom, teaching, and counsel” enough to be able to resolve many of our own inner conflicts, many of our ridiculous outer conflicts  with another human being, another group, another nation.

The stories in the Bible teach us what it is like to be human, what it is like to live within the duality of being “animal and angel” as Rabbi Abraham Twerski teaches. From Rabbi Twerski, in speaking about addiction, I understand him as saying  that spirituality is the vitamin C for our souls and all of us, addict and non-addict, have a spiritual disease that is in constant need of this vitamin C. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us where to find this cure for the scurvy of our souls, the Bible. We are not called upon to live the Bible as the commentators of it did, nor as the people who teach the Bible today do. Rather, I hear Rabbi Heschel calling each of us to engage with “the wisdom, teaching, and counsel of the Bible” and understand it personally, hear what it is saying to us, this day, week, year and how we are growing our spiritual life by gaining new insights into its “wisdom, teaching and counsel”.

While many of us believe our minds are our greatest gift, I am hearing Rabbi Heschel call to us and realize the Bible is “well ahead of our attitudes”. While we believe what we think we can do, we don’t always realize that, at one time or another, for a short or long period of time, we have stinking thinking! One of the ways to decipher when we are in stinking thinking is when we are focused on our false egos, on attaining power over another human being, another group, believing we are the only ones who know. When we are willing to vote for a man who summoned people to Washington DC to interrupt and, hopefully in his thinking, stop the peaceful transfer of power, we are in stinking thinking! When we are willing to engage in the “eye disease” of prejudice through racism, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, etc so we can ‘keep our nation white and christian’, we are in stinking thinking! When almost 1/2 of the people in our country are claiming God wants to keep the stranger out, exploit people who are different than we, criminalize the needy, we are witnessing stinking thinking! When the progressives engage in anti-semitism and don’t stand up for their supposed principles of caring about women who are raped, murdered, mutilated, babies killed in their beds, people taken hostage in Israel and Ukraine, this is also stinking thinking! Yet, many of the people in these groups see themselves as heroes of the ‘underdog’, claim that ‘white people’ are being discriminated against, think of Jews as ‘aggressors’, ‘deserving and causing these horrors that we committed by their heroes, Hamas-a terrorist organization that wants to annihilate Jews and Israel. Some of them clim to be “god-fearing” people who go to Church, Mosque, Temple, each week. Some of them are in Governments here in this country, in Israel, across the globe!

“The wisdom, teaching and counsel of the Bible” are the only true deterrents to stinking thinking! In recovery, the spirituality of the Big Book, the Bible, the Koran, Buddhism, Christianity, etc are the antidotes to the stinking thinking we engaged in prior to our recovery. We were lost until we began imbibing the ‘vitamin C’ of spirituality to heal our spiritual sickness, to heal our mental grandiosity, to heal our mendacious and deceptive ways of being. Recovery is all about growing our spiritual natures, our souls voice, soul’s knowledge to lead us out of the prison and slavery of self-deception, the prison and slavery of believing the lies we tell ourselves and the lies so many people spew upon us. We take “wisdom, teaching and counsel of the Bible” very seriously and we strive to live into the principles and paths of spirituality it gives to us.

In the past 35+ years I have been using “the wisdom, teaching, and counsel of the Bible” to the best of my ability. I am nowhere near perfect and each year I see progress. I continue to seek ways to serve God, to walk in God’s ways, to preach and teach a way of being that helps all of us out of our prejudices and bias’. I know I have cut down on my own stinking thinking over the years and I am grateful for the wisdom, the counsel that my spiritual guides have given me and continue to give me. Each of us needs a spiritual guide and I have been privileged to engage with some and be one to people God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark