Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 3 Day 363
“Little does contemporary religion ask of man. It is ready to offer comfort; it has no courage to challenge.It is ready to offer edification; it has no courage to break the idols, to shatter callousness. The trouble is that religion has become “religion”-institution, dogma, ritual. It is no longer an event. Its acceptance involves neither risk nor strain.” (Insecurity of Freedom pg. 3)
I am into the last days of Year 3 of “Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel- I will be switching to the writings of Pirke Avot, Chapters of our Ancestors on Dec. 17.
It is hard to conceptualize that the words above were written and delivered in 1958, 76 years ago Rabbi Heschel saw what was happening and, OY, how it has gotten worse. “Come to me and Jesus/God/Allah/the Law will solve all of your problems” is an oft heard phrase. “Just pray harder, do better, and everything will work out as God has planned”, “What have you done to make God not love you” and other such bullshit is spewed about in Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, and it is disgusting, idolatrous, mendacious, and wrong. The “challenges” of “religion” today are about towing the party line, voting the ‘right’ way, hating those with whom we disagree, seeing anyone who is not like us as an enemy who has to be defeated, either vanquished or enslaved. These are not the “challenges” Rabbi Heschel deems to be the essence of “religion”, these are the ones that humans have bastardized for their own power. Just as the Rabbis were afraid of the prophets, afraid the people would actually imbue, embrace, and emulate the words and deeds of the prophets and get Rome upset, today’s religious leaders are afraid of the government, their Boards of Directors, their flock.
Instead of the “courage to break the idols”, today’s “religion” is in the idol manufacturing business. When we make our spiritual leaders into gurus, when we hold up political candidates as the one to vote for, when we speak politically rather than spiritually, when our political choices have to be in line with what the ‘religion’ wants rather than what God wants, rather than what the Bible teaches and preaches, rather than what Jesus spoke about, rather than helping the poor and the needy, welcoming and loving the stranger and our neighbor, it is all BULLSHIT- hence one of the reasons people are staying home rather than tend to their spiritual needs, hence one of the reasons people are going to therapists, to psychedelics for their spiritual problems and not going to their clergy. It is time for We, the People to demand our clergy tend to their own spiritual crisis’ and then help us with ours, it is time for us to demand of our seminaries that the people they ordain have a strong spiritual core and practice-“institution, dogma, ritual” are not enough because they do not lead us to “shatter callousness” as we witness in the history of the Church, in what is going on in the Churches, Temples, Mosques today, what is happening in countries across the globe who claim to be ‘guided by their “religion”, when in fact they are guided by their greed, their need for power, their desire to have dominion over everyone else, - in other words to practice more “callousness” in the name of God not shatter their own.
We are at a point in our existence as a nation, once again, where we have a battle to wage because “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and dedicated can long endure”. These words of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg ring in my ears and I am calling to account the Religious Leaders of all faiths to uphold what “religion” is: a revolution, a “breaking away”, an answer to the call/demand that each of us has within us, and so much more. We have to demand that our “institutions” stop trying to serve the egos and needs of the Board Members and they return/begin to serve the spiritual, moral, and physical needs of the people and return to a loyalty and practice of what our Bible teaches us-whether it is the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Koran, etc- it is time for We, the People to demand our our Boards of Directors transparency, truth, compassion rather than hiding, ‘half-truths’, and callousness. The bottom line is not the profit/loss statement, yes it is important, the bottom line is the concern, care, compassion, the breaking of idols, the shattering of callousness, etc.
Rabbi Heschel is speaking directly to all of us, challenging all of us to engage in our “religion” in a serious manner, to immerse ourselves in the Books of the Bible so we can stop repeating the errors of our ancestors, including the Rabbis who try to make our heroes perfect rather than human. When our heroes, gurus, are perfect and we know we can’t be nor are it is easy to pray to them for compassion and forgiveness while not taking the steps necessary to improve, to do what they do, to not do what they don’t and to discern their errors so we don’t repeat them. We, the People have to return to the “risk and strain” that “religion” puts upon us. We have to risk the ridicule of so many when we demand to live the words of the prophets, when we point to the actions we are engaging in are reflective of the actions of previous eras that led to ruin, we have to stop trying to “make America great again” and instead make ourselves one grain of sand better today than yesterday. This is the “challenge” of “religion”, this is the pathway to “break the idols, to shatter callousness”, this is how we connect with another soul and see them as fellow travelers on the journey, rather than enemies we have to eradicate. It is the pathway for the law to enhance life, to live into “justice justice, righteousness, righteousness you shall pursue”, knowing we will never get it completely ‘right’ and we are on the path. These are some of the ways to return “religion” to its rightful and necessary place in our lives and the life of the world.
I believe these words, I smash idols when and where I see them, I am blunt and not political in my ways-more like a bull in a china shop. After being mendacious and a deceiver prior to my recovery, I have a bullshit detector that is around 80+% correct and when I detect it and my warnings are ignored and I see the danger, the disrespect, I am uncontrollable and this gets me a bad reputation, it gets me into ‘trouble’. Yet, it is “good trouble” to me by virtue of fulfilling the commandments to “rebuke your neighbor and don’t bear guilt because of him” and “don’t stand idly by the blood of your neighbors”. It is lonely and it is worth it. I beg of all of you to make your clergy and yourself responsible for “good trouble” in these times of religious mendacity. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark