Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 4 Day 53
“This is the most important thought: God has a stake in the life of man, of every man. But this idea cannot be imposed from without; it must be discovered by every man; it cannot be preached, it must be experienced.” (Insecurity of Freedom pgs.12-13)
This “most important thought” is found throughout Judaism and, I believe, all faiths in one way or another. Yet, too many people find this “thought” to be ridiculous either because they don’t believe in God or Higher Consciousness and/or if they do-why would God who is so exalted, so mighty, etc care about one person? This is the great conundrum for many of us, especially Clergy who want to be real and have to admit there is no “factual proof” of either God’s existence nor that God cares about every human being. What we have is the recording of the Biblical experience through the prophets of God’s immense concern with human beings, God’s sadness over our frailties and failures to be kind, loving, just and merciful with one another. For some of us, this is proof and it matches our experiences of the numerous random acts of kindness that ‘miraculously’ occur at the most needed of times. For others, it is bullshit, superstition, and “opiate for the masses”. Both view have some merit given the ways that religious people/leaders have, throughout the millennia, used religion as a club rather than a warm blanket, as a dogma rather than a path for each of us to explore and live into in our own unique way.
What passes for religion today, according to orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, Christian nationalists, ‘orthodox’ Muslims, and pre-Vatican II Catholics is not the same as what Rabbi Heschel is teaching us. Their views are different between them in some ways and they all agree that their way is the Only way, God wants obedience and if one is not obedient, one is cut off from God, maybe forever, maybe not. This insane dogmatic view and way of worship is the farthest thing from what the Bible says, what Jesus says, etc. Both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels tell the stories of people not hearing, listening to nor understanding when Moses tells us that we will whore ourselves and it will be bad because we will be so drunk with our own egotistical powers we will continue down a path of ruination until we are so low, ,we call out like our ancestors in Egypt called out and God will remember, God will deliver us because “God has a stake in the life of man, every man”.
The issue for all of us is that Rabbi Heschel is correct: “this ideal cannot be imposed from without; it must be discovered by every man; it cannot be preached, it must be experienced.” This is the rub for all of us, we have to discover God’s stake in our life and in the life of our world. I am not speaking of having one religion, nor am I speaking about following a dogma that will lead one to Nirvana. Rather, as we have been discussing, this discovery is a way station on the path to living from the inside out, it is a benefit we derive from soul to soul living and connections rather than the transactional life most people lead. Even love has become, in many cases, a transactional experience; look at the divorce rates, look at the myriad of corporate and institutional battles for control from the ‘founder syndrome’ bullshit. Gratitude lasts only as long as we are sated and then we forget it as it says in the Bible, Eat, be satisfied, bless. We humans forget to say a blessing when someone helps us, so it is easy to ignore our debt. We ignore our debt to God when we act in ways that are antithetical to the paths of the Bible, when we say in our hearts “we can do what we want, pay lip service to this bullshit, find the loopholes and drive a Mac truck through them”, which is a more common thought than most of us would like to admit to.
How do we discover and experience the truth above? We listen to the preachers who are telling us we can’t do it their way, there is no vicarious means of this precious discovery, there is no experience one can replicate to have their own experience. We can and must study the Bible, the teachers of wisdom, etc and immerse ourselves in the message, in the paths- knowing that each of us is unique and therefore we all have our own unique path of discovery and experiences. We take a journey to ‘the wild side’ the place inside each of us that we have walled off because we don’t want to hear the “still small voice” telling us what the next right action is and what wrong actions we have already engaged in. This journey to ‘the wild side’ is a spiritual cleansing exercise which allows us to clear the arteries and veins of our spiritual life in order to have real experiences of soul to soul relationships, to resign the covenant that our ancestors made and which we, upon being born, named, joined without consent and with community. This is going to take a physician of the soul, an advocate of the soul and sometimes clergy fill this job and sometimes they don’t.
Our seminaries have to do a better job of teaching spiritual counseling and helping the future ordainees learn how to deal with the questions and needs of people seeking the meaning to their lives and not “refer them out” to a shrink! People know about therapists, they come to clergy not for their mental issues, not for their psychological issues, rather for their spiritual issues. They are seeking a path of discovery for the truth stated above: “God has a stake in the life of man, of every man.” The people we refer out have their misbelief that God doesn’t care reenforced by clergy telling them they need secular help because God can’t help them! This, of course, is the exact opposite of the prophetic literature, of the prophetic experience-but the clergy of today are so much smarter than those ‘primitives’! Is it any wonder why Musk and his MuskRats are so pro alt-right, so happy with the Nazi slogans, salutes, racism? They are spiritually bankrupt in a system that functioned for 248 years on a spiritual contract with one another, democracy is a spiritual contract, hence the need for freedom of religion, speech, the press, and all the other amendments we have made.
I have been an advocate for the soul of people for these past 34+ years. I have been an outspoken, rude, impatient advocate for another human being because I know that “God has a stake in the life of man, of every man” and when we are throwing our lives away, when we are being immoral, unethical, mendacious it drives me nuts and I act out against the lies and bullshit. I cannot stand for people engaged in transactional living calling it covenantal living and when people are believing these BIG LIES, it drives to action-not always appropriate in ‘polite society’ as my friend Rabbi Ed Feinstein says, and in keeping with my inheritance as a descendant of the prophets. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark