My Favorite Quotes: Joseph Epstein

Whether we are religious or not, we are all human and every day in every way we are constantly making decisions.  This quote from Joseph Epstein reminds me to pay attention to what I say and do.  Perhaps it will help you too.  Happy New Year to all and to all a sane 2018.

“We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live, courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide. What makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.”

Joseph Epstein

Do Religion Professors Hurt Faith?

I recently spoke to a friend who used to be a student in one of my courses.  He’s about fifty years old now and he told me he was finally figuring out what questions have to do with faith.  But, he added, he still meets people upset at Religion professors who hurt faith.

So, what is really going on in these religion courses?  Remember, these courses are being taught at an institution committed to the liberal arts and affiliated with the Lutheran Church.(ELCA)

First to say, all the professors teaching the courses are people of faith and members of a religious tradition.  We do not teach for the tradition, nor against the tradition; we teach within the tradition.

The introductory course is entitled Exploring the Christian Faith. We do not try to Lutheranize or Christianize students. The class is not glorified confirmation.  Our job is to excavate the Christian tradition, to examine the tradition, history and theology warts and all, to not shy away from or evade any question, to search for the truth without fear or concern.

But, you might ask, shouldn’t we be worried our young and naïve students, many of whom carry a simple faith or some with no faith, will be shocked at the questions, and thereby “lose their faith?” Every professor at our place is aware of the possible aftershocks. We care about their lives and their souls. And we realize that each student walks into the classroom with a different religious background, different faith experiences and different degrees of faith maturation.

The fact is, there is no safer place to engage the inconsistencies and questions that are part and parcel of any religious tradition.  There is no safer place to wrestle with the existence of undeserved suffering and evil along with the mystery that is God.  And if we are not honest here, where can we tell young people about the fragility of our theological constructions?  This is the class where we teach students not to fear the questions but to engage them.  This is the class where we look at Biblical texts that forewarn us that questioning God is not against faith but a specific part of having faith.

So, Religion Professors at Augustana do not hurt faith.  They inoculate students against losing faith.

A New Course in the Spring

In the Spring I will be teaching a new course entitled Different Voices: Christianity, Atheism and World Religions.  The course deals with the collision between our faith commitments and the varied ways of interpreting our existence in this world.  How do we live with such a myriad of religious interpretations swirling around us?  Some believers in each interpretation seem to trust they have acquired the truth while the rest of us have been at best mistaken and at worst deceived.  And as the world gets smaller and smaller these different voices are in our faces.

All of you will not be there for the course but all of us live with this confusing array of interpretations of reality.

This course is really about the conflict and confusion caused by so many religious interpretations.  Where do they come from and why are some of us so sure we are right?  We will think about how we are trained to look at the world through certain glasses and how these glasses allow and disallow us to consider other interpretations.

 We know there have always been different voices, different perspectives, different political opinions and different religions.  We may be more aware today of these voices, but they have always been there.  Our job, as people with brains, is not to be frightened of other interpretations.  Aggravating and difficult as it may be, we will engage these interpretations and evaluate what they are saying.

Try to avoid the extremes of interpretive absolutism and Interpretive relativism.  One says, “we have the absolute truth.”  The other says, “There is no truth.  It’s all relative.”  As in the course, we all ought to listen, engage, argue and evaluate.  Whatever else students take from the course, my hope is, we all will not escape the vulnerability of our interpretations and face up to the fragility of our cherished beliefs.  Faith is trusting without knowing for sure.  Let’s be honest about that.

Hanukah and Christmas

The word Hanukah means rededication.   In 165 B.C.E. the Maccabees were able to recapture and rededicate the temple in Jerusalem.  There was not enough oil to light the temple candles but for one night. The candles resisted the darkness and stayed lit for eight nights.

Hanukah is a holiday of lights that proclaims the darkness will not last forever.  Christians too are approaching their holiday of lights and their belief in Jesus, the light that overcomes the darkness.

For all their differences both Jewish and Christian traditions know about the reality of evil.  They know despite over two thousand years of Hanukah and Christmas celebrations, evil has not been defeated and seems to be doing quite well. The lighting of Hanukah candles and Christmas trees is very nice but insufficient.

Over two thousand years ago, the Maccabees were the Maccabees because they were not indifferent.  Jesus was Jesus because he resisted the darkness. 

Let us light our lights, Jews and Christians, and recommit ourselves to do what we can do to resist, to resist and to resist again the power of the darkness, in ourselves and wherever we live. 

Telling the Truth about Men, Women and Sexual Harassment

My students are usually surprised at how much sex is in the Bible.  From Adam and Eve running away naked, to the sexual exploits of Noah and Lot’s children, to Abraham’s various wives, to Jacobs various wives and maids, the rape of Tamar, to Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, not to mention the women who can’t get pregnant and God shows up and the babies appear.  And that’s just Genesis.  There are plenty of more stories.  The best one may be the story of David and Uriah’s wife Bathsheba.  David used his power to rape and take advantage of Bathsheba for the sake of his own pleasure.  When Bathsheba gets pregnant, David tries to cover up what he has done and finally has Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah killed.

The point is we did not invent power and sex in the 1960’s.  It has been a problem for as long as men and women have roamed the earth.  Sex is a power we all use and abuse.  So much of what happens with sex is biologically and culturally determined.  We are sexual by nature and our culture trains us to be sexual. We are taught what it means to become intimate with someone.  We are taught the purpose of sex, its relation to having babies, the role of contraception, what turns us on and what does not.  We are taught what is sexy and what is not.  We are taught who is supposed to do what and when we are permitted to do it.  But what we are seeing today is a culture that is no longer sure what is permitted and what is not.

We learn the rules of sex from parents, friends, television, movies, books and most important in our time, the internet.  And once you disconnect sex from love and marriage and turn it into a commodity, it gives some the impression that anything is permitted. When I was in India a few years ago and spoke to some Indian young men, they talked about their impressions of women in the United States after having seen “some American movies.”  They assumed all American women are eager to have sex at any moment, that American women are eager for men to grab them at will.  When I told them they were wrong, they thought I was lying. They thought of America as a place where anything was permitted.  Let’s be honest: There is a problem with the way we have or have not established sexual boundaries and limits.

So, what do we do?  First, we call people to account.  The prophet Nathan tells David God knows what you did and is not pleased.  David feels bad and says he is sorry.  David had to learn to respect women and to respect himself enough to care. Did he understand why what he had done was wrong and did he gain a new respect for women?  Did he learn that he could not do what he wanted to do just because he felt like it?  Could he be trained to be a different kind of man? 

If you study the David story, you will know the answer to the questions.

A Jewish Saying For Life

“Whoever saves one life has saved the world entire.”  You may remember this saying from the film, Schindler’s List. Yitzhak Stern also tells Oskar Schindler “the list is an absolute good.”


The Talmud, (Rabbinic commentary on the Bible) Sanhedrin 37a states:

"FOR THIS REASON ADAM WAS CREATED ALONE, TO TEACH YOU THAT WHOSOEVER DESTROYS A SINGLE SOUL... SCRIPTURE IMPUTES [GUILT] TO HIM AS THOUGH HE HAD DESTROYED A COMPLETE WORLD; AND WHOSOEVER PRESERVES A SINGLE SOUL..., SCRIPTURE ASCRIBES [MERIT] TO HIM AS THOUGH HE HAD PRESERVED A COMPLETE WORLD."

Sometimes, in these days, we feel completely ineffective and useless when we think of all the problems in the world.  There are so many people and situations we cannot fix.  It’s true.  But the Talmud explains, if you save one life, you save all the generations born from that one life.

Whatever your religion or irreligion, there is something you can do.  Write a letter.  Say a prayer.  Shed a tear.  Wherever you live, do what you can do to save one life.  All the rest we do is commentary.

A Jewish Thanksgiving

My favorite Jewish holiday is Passover.  Passover celebrates the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  This yearly event is centered on the Passover seder or meal.  It involves eating a variety of symbolic foods which reminds us of the exodus from Egypt.  This is a time when Jews remember.  We say, “In memory lies redemption.”  Remembering the Passover is not merely believing that something happened long ago.  We relive and reexperience what happened.  We assert that we ourselves have been slaves to Pharoah.  And we say, had God not acted we, all of us, would still, to this very day, be slaves. It is a corporate experience of thanksgiving.

As a boy, I remember the excitement in our small apartment in the Bronx when it came time to put away the regular dishes and take out the special Passover china from the front closet.  For a moment, our little place became a holy place where memory was celebrated.  The apartment was scoured and cleansed.  All bread and anything associated with leaven was removed.  And then came the day when the big boxes of Matzoh arrived.  We would eat unleavened bread for 10 days to remember what had happened to us when we had to run away with haste.  

We held two seders on successive nights. There were just four of us, my parents, my brother and me.  In our family my parents were the only ones to survive the Nazi madness.  There were no visitors, no grandparents, no cousins, no uncles or aunts, no one else around the table.  My father in Hebrew, Yiddish and English recited from a book called the Haggadah (the telling).  I can still hear his voice and the distinctive melodies he brought with him from Europe.  

Here is something strange though.  In all those Passover seders, the word Nazi was never mentioned. Despite what had happened to my parents, despite most of their relatives having been murdered in the camps, they continued to remember and give thanks for the exodus from slavery.  They refused to grant Hitler and his killers a posthumous victory. 

My parents were not very sophisticated when it came to religion.  But they were determined to remain Jewish despite what had happened to them, despite what had happened to the Jews and despite the silence of God. 

In so many ways, I am a Jew today because of their despite.  Bernard and Pola Haar, thank you.

Reading the Bible Without Driving Ourselves Crazy

Some of us have turned the Bible into an idol.  We think every word in the Bible was dictated by God into the ears of the writers.  But that is not true!  Jewish and Christian scripture was written by human beings inspired by God. The Bible is not inerrant or infallible. 

There is no such thing as, “The Bible says.” The Bible on its own cannot speak.  It is only when a human being picks it up and begins to interpret what it says that the scripture can begin to speak.  Even then, it is not saying anything on its own.  The words of the Bible are always being interpreted.  And when they are being interpreted they are being interpreted from a specific perspective through someone’s eyes.  The person interpreting may be an atheist, an agnostic, a member of another religion, a conservative, moderate or liberal, a Christian, A Jew or a Muslim.  We all wear glasses.  And the glasses we wear affect the way we read and interpret.  Everybody says they’re open and but everybody, at some point, is closed.  We see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear.  Our glasses enable and disable us at the same time.  As soon as you have a written text, you have the virtue and problem of interpretation.

Isn’t this all terribly confusing?  Yes.  So, what we are forced to do is argue out our interpretations in community.  We each know our interpretations are limited and could be wrong.  We ought to be eager to hear where we may have gone astray.  We need to listen to interpretations inside and outside our community.  Which parts of scripture and tradition are descriptive and which parts are prescriptive?  This is an ongoing debate. By the way, the debate is part of faith. And it is ok to disagree.

Let’s stop driving ourselves crazy with our Bible reading.   Jews, Christians, Muslims and all the rest of us are not saved or related to God because of our interpretations.  We live and breathe by the kindness or grace of God, the universe, the force or whatever you call that power at the heart of the universe, for us and not against us. All the rest is interpretation and commentary. Stay sane out there.

A Jewish View of the Reformation

The Reformation is an important event in the life of the Christian Church.  Martin Luther, the prophet of grace, altered the life of the Christian community whether he intended to or not. It was the creation of a movement in the Church Catholic to emphasize the grace of God as explicated by the apostle Paul, Augustine, and restated by Luther. Luther believed the Church had lost sight of what ought to be central to Christians:  justification by faith. 

As revolutionary as Luther was, he could not disengage himself from 16th century antisemitism.  This is well known by now and the Lutheran Church has disowned any of Luther’s statements on the Jews. All to the good.

What is not so well known is that Justification by grace through faith is a Jewish notion.  Jews have always held to the understanding that God has a special relationship with the Jewish people.  And Jews through the centuries have trusted in God despite God’s rather odd methodology. While most Jews did not adopt the Christian belief in original sin, they knew that they were not perfect and could depend on the gracious forgiveness of their God.

Think about it.  When the apostle Paul writes his letter to the Romans he asserts that Abraham himself was justified by faith.  His example is telling.  Paul says when Abraham and Sarah were unable to get pregnant, Abraham believed in the promise and kept on having sex with Sarah no matter how long it took. Abraham had faith despite what was happening.  Abraham was justified by faith.  And Paul advises the Roman gentiles to emulate Abraham’s faith.

A thousand years before the Reformation, the Jewish tradition was aware of the kindness or chesed of God. The Torah given to the Jewish people was a gift from God.  Jews knew God before Jesus, before Paul, before Augustine and before Luther. The grace of God which Luther asserted had been part of Jewish tradition for centuries.

Maybe what Jesus and Paul were up to was to make gentiles or non-Jews as Jewish as possible?!

Why We Killed the Prophets

Why do people kill the prophets?  After all, we admire prophets; prophets are fascinating people. They are usually esteemed in retrospect.  They are spoken of as being courageous truthtellers.  Books are written, monuments erected to remember their words.  Yet, most prophets were persecuted and killed.

In the scriptures, Prophets were threatening figures who did what they could to change people at the root.  Prophets were called by God to speak words they themselves found dangerous. And, prophets were not part of the religious establishment.  In fact, they were usually quite critical of religious leadership and the way people disconnected religion from justice.  Maybe, the only real prophets are the biblical prophets.

Prophets were not pastors or rabbis hired by religious institutions to transmit the tradition.  A prophet was someone who spoke the truth.  Usually, a prophet gave his or her message in the most shocking language available because the goal was not to constantly comfort pew sitters with more and more forgiveness and “cheap grace.”  Prophets were out to wake people up from their stupor. The goal was to change people, to cause them to turn around, to live their lives another way.  The religious word is repentance.

But we have romanticized and domesticated prophets after their death. We made their disturbing radical words part of our bibles and thereby defanged them.  Look what’s happened to Jesus.  Whatever else he was about, he was a prophet.  In every gospel he gets in people’s faces, gets angry and argues with religious people, calls on folks to repent of their hypocrisy and false religion.  He cares about the poor, orphans and widows and uses shocking language to wake people up.  But if you go to most Christian Churches this Sunday, you will find a kind, loving, gracious, friendly Jesus palatable to the masses.  We take out all the juice from the message of the prophets and then wonder how worship services became boring.

And why were prophets killed?

Because they know who we were behind our disguises and masks.  They forcefully ask the terrible questions that silence us.  They get close and personal in our faces.  They won’t shut up.  They don’t care for tact. They are not religious diplomats, politicians or functionaries. They are out to change us, at the root. We honor them in retrospect but we would not have listened to them.  That’s why we kill the prophets.

Religion and Thinking

Some people have an incorrect view of religion.  They assume that religious people do not think or if they think, they do not think well.  Behind this assumption is the belief that religion has primarily to do with emotion and fear.  The argument goes like this:  People are frightened of death, sickness, accidents, tornadoes, failure, being out of control, you name it. . . Since they feel frightened they invented religion so they could jettison their fears onto an imaginary being called, God.  Variations of this argument come from Spinoza, Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, Kafka, Sartre, Dostoevsky and more recently the less sophisticated modern atheists.

This assumption and its supporting arguments are wrong.  Think about it:  For all the faith people have put in God and religion, the world remains a dangerous and volatile place and many religious people know it.  God and religion do not come with any guarantees or cures for undeserved suffering and evil. Praying to God in Synagogue, Church or Mosque will not keep craziness away from your door.  Suffering and evil are part of life and prayer does not stop it. 

People are religious because they care about truth.  If I trust at the heart of the universe there’s a force that is for us and not against us, it’s because I weigh the evidence and conclude, given the amount of order amidst the chaos within our world, given the laws of nature, given all that is here, given our scriptural glimpses, trusting in God is not foolish.  Faith may be risky but such is life. And when faith is mature it knows about the precariousness of life.

Granted, there are some religious people who use their religion as a balm to avoid looking at the craziness of life.  These people have faith but not a very mature faith.  And when religion is perverted it creates atheists and agnostics.  When I read about the god in which Atheists do not believe , I say, I don’t believe in that God either. 

I am a religious person because I care about truth.  Yes, I have emotions, fears and superstitions that can cloud my better thinking.  But when it comes to faith and faithfulness, I am determined to look life in the eye and not be afraid of any question from any person, field, or source.  As a person of faith, I try to think and think well.  I know that I could be wrong.  That's why, I am always asking questions.  But, Religion and thinking are not opposites; they are inextricably linked.

The Honesty of the Book of Job

The Book of Job is arguably the most mysterious, confusing, controversial, and puzzling book in the Bible.  Over the last two thousand years, learned commentators upon commentators from a variety of religious perspectives have wrestled with this book.  There are all sorts of theories as to what is going on in these strange chapters.  Here are a few of my thoughts:

Whatever else you can say about the Book of Job, it's a story that lets us know the Biblical writers were aware of the problem of underserved suffering and evil, even if they could not resolve it. 

Job is a good man.  He is not a sinless man but he is a person of character, a religious man.  He fears God and turns away from evil.  Near as we know he is not Jewish.  He is relatively successful.  As Job is going about living his life, God is pictured having a conversation with Satan.  Remember, this is not the New Testament devil.  This Satan is a reporter.  He reports to God on how well religious people are being religious.  He raises questions with God about Job’s sincerity and God agrees some tests would be appropriate.

Suddenly, a messenger arrives: The Sabeans came and stole all your oxen and donkeys killing your servants.  I alone escaped to tell the tale.  No sooner does that occur, another messenger appears:  A fire from heaven burned up the sheep and the servants.  I alone escaped to tell the tale. No sooner does this happen then another servant appears:  The Chaldeans came and killed the servants and stole all your camels.  And I alone escaped to tell the tale. There is a crescendo of terrible news.  Messenger after messenger comes and goes until, the last messenger tells Job: Your sons and daughters were partying and while they were partying a horrific wind came, blew down the house and killed them.  I alone escaped to tell the tale.   Then, the final test:  Job himself is struck with sores all over his body. 

At first, he grieves, accepts his fate as we all must.  God gives, God takes, God be blessed.  Such is life.

Then, his friends show up, grieve with him, after which they try to convince Job he deserved what happened to him.  Job is not pleased. Enough is enough!  And so, begins a theological argument which goes on for over forty chapters. Eventually God shows up, does not explain to Job about the tests, but commends Job and not his friends.  God gives him twice as much as he had before. 

Nothing resolved here.  That’s clear.  In fact, the book does not end with God being depicted as moral or immoral or even wise.  God is amoral.  God is God and does not need to play fair.  God can do whatever God wants with no need to explain.

The Book of Job, written as a response to the Babylonian exile and the breaking of the covenants with Israel, allows the problem of innocent suffering to remain a problem.  It has no satisfactory resolution because there is no satisfying resolution.  Jews, Christians and Muslims are left to defend an unfair God who is indefensible. 

One of the odd things about the Book of Job is its impressive refusal to pull any punches.  Undeserved suffering is a problem and it remains a problem to this very day. 

Job and his wife Mrs. Job are metaphors for all human beings.   They are everyone who has ever lived.  They have no choice but to go on living, have more children, more belongings, more of everything, knowing it can all be gone in the blink of an eye.

This is our world and the Biblical text is honest about it, aware of the craziness of life.  Yet, Job remains our teacher.  The Book of Job would have us look God straight in the eye, hurl our protests and questions in his face, and refuse to accept the injustice of life.  Such is the character of our faith.  There may be no more honest piece of scripture in the Bible than the Book of Job.

Religion and Retirement

 I love teaching and it appears I am doing it well.  So, why am I wrestling with retirement and what does retirement have to do with teaching religion? 

I grew up in the 1960’s.  We knew anyone who was over thirty had sold out to “the system” and was morally corrupt.  Simon and Garfunkel sang “How terribly strange to be seventy.”  Bob Dylan told us, “The times they are a changin.” We were young then and knew we would always be young.  But, we were wrong.  We all got old and here we are looking at each other and wondering what happened?  

I have colleagues and friends who have retired.  Some tell me they are enjoying not going to work.  Retirement for them means withdrawing from their occupation for the sake of privacy, rest and recreation. 

Retirement is a state of mind. It’s only been around for a little over a hundred years.   If you think you’re getting old and if you’re tired of what you’re doing and if you have enough money, I suppose you can withdraw and do something else.  I get it.  I respect it.

But I don’t understand retirement.

My teaching isn’t a job.  It’s a vocation, a calling, a passion if not from God then from my own soul.  There are questions which haunt me, which I am compelled to pursue.  And teaching students to think well, letting them know “attention must be paid” to such questions, is vital. And the pursuit of these questions keeps me alive!

I know, retirement is a very individual matter.  It seems people know when they know, it’s time.  And I know a time will come when I will no longer be able to teach.  Some disease will come along and take my energy and desire. I hope that is some time away.  At that time, I will be able to say to myself about my teaching:  I love what I did and I did what I could do. 

In the meantime, I have tests to grade and classes to get ready for the week.

Let Faith be Faith

Faith means trusting without knowing for sure.  Everyone knows faith is an essential part of religion.  Whether you believe faith is something we conjure up in our heads, is something God creates in us, or faith is more about doing than believing, faith is central.

The problem is our religions are much too certain.  Our scriptures tell us God operates in mysterious morally ambiguous, unpredictable and strange ways.  So, we need to be careful when we think we are certain about the will of God.  The only one who knows the will of God is God. 

So, why do Synagogue/Church liturgies sound so certain?  When I attend synagogue, all kinds of prayers are chanted as if we are all certain what we are saying is true.  But we’re not certain. I cannot tell you how many Christian sermons I’ve heard where the pastor sounds like he or she is certain about the will of God.  But, some of us have questions and doubts.  Some of us know we are overstating our confidence in the verity of our respective beliefs and traditions.  So, why do we do it?

I suspect most clergy think it’s their role to proclaim the truth and encourage people to believe.  Most accentuate the positive about God and downplay the negative.  For example, religious services beseech and implore God to heal those who are ill.  Week after week, prayers are said.  Sometimes, people do get better and God is credited with the healing.  But, what about all those who only get worse, go through painful suffering and then die, despite the prayers? 

In our worship services, there is no place for lament prayers.  There are no prayers where God is questioned concerning God’s methodology.  I suspect the reason such prayers are omitted, despite the fact they are quite scriptural, is the fear they will imply God is unjust and this will cause people to not believe.

But listen, the contrary is true.  When you promise too much to people telling them that God will make sure nothing bad happens to them, that God will heal them, when you have them recite creeds and sing hymns that say the same, when you preach about the will of God as if you know that will, when you proclaim that everything that happens is God’s will, you are preparing people to give up their faith and their God.  You are creating agnostics and atheists.

So, let faith be faith.  Let it be comforting, risky, magical, superstitious, confusing, full of questions and doubts and wondering if any of it is true.  Our worship services need to be honest and not full of high sounding words that lie in the name of God.  You will never get rid of worries and doubts about God.  It’s part of faith.  So, let faith be faith!  Let it be perplexing, tentative, unsure, crazy making, and reassuring.  Let faith be faith and, in that way, we will be honest about what we trust and what we find hard to trust.

Nature has No Conscience

I am not one of those people who look at nature and conclude there is a God.  To admit, there are beautiful and amazing aspects to nature.  The vast variety of birds, fish, animals, flowers, trees, mountains, lakes, oceans can be breathtaking and their multi colors and shapes offer all sorts of opportunities for avid photographers and spirituality seekers.  I grant it all and marvel at its wonder.

But take a good look.  Nature is ambiguous, unreliable and dangerous.  Nature has no conscience.  Along with its marvels, nature produces terribly destructive hurricanes, volcanos, tornadoes, earthquakes, monsoons, avalanches, forest fires, ice storms, not to mention a host of diseases including varieties of cancer, heart and birth defects, rare infections and countless other ailments.  Nature can be gentle and kind and nature can be wild and ferocious.

Yes, we can try to accentuate the positive.  Some will say, the wildness of nature causes us to be grateful, humble and respect the fragility of our existence.  Others remind us, when natural disasters occur it gives us a chance to help.  Still others talk about how God has blessed us with science and technology to survive nature’s craziness and nurse the environment. And there are even some who talk about the innate beauty of nature’s wild ferocity.

But I remain perplexed.  Is the ferocity of nature worth the cost it exacts on human life?  Think of all the physical, psychological and emotional trauma created by natural evil; think of all the damage endured by people as they try to survive nature’s madness.

I say again, nature has no conscience.  The Jewish and Christian scriptures depict water as a symbol for chaos.  God is pictured creating the world by wrestling or struggling with the chaos of nature, separating the waters from the waters, grappling with human nature, sometimes succeeding sometimes not.  But nature is not held up as something to be worshiped. The word “nature” does not even occur in the Bible. 

Like the biblical deity, we are compelled to wrestle with nature, particularly our own nature.  We ought not worship or romanticize nature. 

We have just experienced the wild calamity and terrible damage caused by two hurricanes.  Nature has no conscience.  When we realize this, we will be better prepared to meet nature’s beautiful, fantastic, horrific and ambiguous behavior.

Why People Hate

Why do People Hate?

Hate comes from fear, anger and the belief you or your group has suffered a terrible injustice.  If you believe there’s a conspiracy going on and a certain group has it out for you, it awakens inside you the capacity to hate.

After all, the human brain can be trained.  It can be trained to be kind and caring; it can be trained to hate.  You may remember the song from South Pacific: 

You've got to be taught to hate and fear,

You've got to be taught from year to year,

It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a different shade,

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You've got to be carefully taught!

When all is said and done, hate is a faith.  Hate comes from believing that the people you hate deserve to be hated.  Unlike prejudice and racism, hatred cannot be eliminated by education alone. Bret Stephens says, “Fear is often a function of unfamiliarity.”  When we are unfamiliar with a group, we tend to stereotype that group.

But. fear and hate can be trained out of you by experience. You meet someone from the hated group and discover they are not as dangerous as you were led to believe.  By the way, one of the reasons I teach where I do is so students can meet and experience somebody Jewish and see with their own eyes, Jews are people, human beings, who do not deserve to be hated.  

Wherever you live, do what you can do to stop the hate.

All Beginnings are Hard

It's that time again.  Chaim Potok wrote, “all beginnings are hard.”  Such is the rhythm for those of us who teach.  September means beginning again.  I have walked through this beginning many times.  You would think I would have it down by now.  But there is still a nervous fearful anxious feeling in the pit of my brain, a sense that the wonderful exciting dread time is once again upon us.  Soon, I will have to stand up and talk.

And I am asking myself, what makes for such stress and nervousness?  Is it fear of failure?  Is it fear that I have lost my touch?  Do I wonder if I am getting too old to do this anymore?  Do I wonder if it is fair and right for someone who was Christian and now Jewish to teach Christians about their tradition?  I suppose all of those are factors.  But, I sense it’s something more.

The fact is I love to teach religion.  But teaching religion is not easy.  It’s not just a matter of getting up and talking or sharing information. This is necessary and this I will do.  Teaching religion is teaching young people to think about their faith.  And this kind of thinking is hard work.  Let’s face it: When it comes to religion, many people have not been trained to think. They have been trained to believe.   

And when I stare into their young and mostly innocent eyes, it scares me to have to tell them: God, Jesus, the Bible and religion are a bit more complicated then they might have thought.  My goal is not to hurt their faith but to deepen it.  I do not teach for the tradition, nor against the tradition, but within the tradition.  So, deepening the faith of students involves telling them some things they may not want to hear such as:  The Bible was not dictated by God to the writers.  Adam and Eve were not real people though their story is true.  The notion that everything happens for a reason has some problems.  Not all Christians believe Jesus died for our sins.  Sometimes the best way to express your faith is to hurl questions at the deity.  Judaism and Islam have millions of followers, who believe Christianity is wrong.   

To possess a mature faith means to trust without being afraid of the questions. It also means to think that you could be wrong.

So, here we go again.  All beginnings are hard.  I am excited and apprehensive.  Despite that, I am committed to the notion that a religious person who is not afraid to think and has his or her eyes wide open is closer to the truth.  And wherever the truth is, that’s where God is as well.

Does Geography Matter?

We have moved and are settled in a new apartment. It is very nice.  During our lives, we move in and move out many times.  We keep hoping each move will make us happier, change our perspective, give us a different view of the world, and alter our very personalities.  Moving to a new place is exciting and stress producing.  But we keep on looking for that place, that promised land, where we will feel safe and at home.  Some of us find it easier than others.  But the quest goes on and on.  We never do arrive.

This is a constant theme in the Bible as well.  Having been promised a land, the Jewish people spend most of their time getting to the land, losing the land and trying to regain it.  Eventually they are kicked out of the land completely, go into a long wandering persecuted diaspora, and finally return to the promised land.  And today, in the place that was supposed to be safe and home, they find themselves surrounded by angry people who would prefer they not be there.  So it goes and goes and goes.

There is a truth to be had in all that Jewish wandering.  You will quest for the ideal cave to keep you safe and warm.  This is what we do.  We search for the perfect place, the perfect spouse, the perfect job and the perfect friends. 

But, wherever you live, life, with all its imperfections, keeps on happening.   And there are always things about which to complain. The morning paper was not delivered today.  There is no toilet paper holder.  The towel in the second bathroom is awkwardly hung.  The neighbors seem nosy.  One faucet is not working well. 

Life is a messy business with precious little perfection.  As our culture becomes efficient at fixing things, we expect everything to be easily and quickly fixed.  We expect doctors to fix all our ailments only to be disappointed to discover they too are imperfect.  More and more we expect more and more and are easily disappointed and discontented.  We live in the richest country in the world and it seems we are constantly complaining.  Our president promises to make us great again, richer, more prosperous, give us cheaper material things, and the list goes on and on.

So, what’s the deal?  Geography does matter.  Keep wandering and searching for that place.  But the deal is that life is and has always been ambiguous and imperfect.  If, wherever you live right now, you are happy fifty percent of the time. That’s pretty good.  Have a nice day and enjoy the moment.

P.S. The Blog is on break until September. Stay sane out there.

Can Christians Question God?

For as long as I have been teaching, I have encouraged my Christian students to embrace questioning the elusive and confusing mystery that is God. 

In Jewish tradition, questioning the justice and methodology of God is part of being faithful to the covenants God has made with the Jewish people.  If you believe in the promises, you hold on to your doubts and you raise your questions.

I remember a day when I asked a Lutheran seminary professor, why Christians were so reluctant to confront God concerning his unfulfilled promises.  He explained, whereas Jews were born into a tribe and could never stop being Jewish, Christians, through too many questions and doubts, could lose their faith.  He feared Christians could stop being Christian.  Christians, he asserted, who had been saved by the “amazing grace” of God could never feel as free as Jews to question their merciful God without feeling they were betraying the deity as well as their faith.

I suppose the real question is why are we asking questions or make accusations?  If we are not going to get an answer, what is the point of asking questions?  Jews, Christians and Muslims trust they have received promises from God.  When these promises are not fulfilled, questions and accusations are an honest attempt to exhort God to act like God.  Questioning and accusing God is not against faith.  It is an essential part of faith. 

And, by the way, questioning is quite biblical.  Of the 150 psalms in the bible, over a third are laments and complaints questioning the justice of God.  Jesus’ last words on the cross were a question rooted in those psalms and directed at God.  And the Lord’s prayer is a prayer full of imperatives exhorting God to act like God.

If you trust in the promises of God and they are not happening, the faithful act is not to close your eyes and believe blindly.  Blind faith is stupid faith.  I do not believe God gave us a mind and then wants us to turn it off when it comes to our religion.   

More than anything else prayers and liturgy give us a time and place to stand naked before God, to be honest and speak without pretense.  It’s true, we may not receive a response.  But, at least, we can say, we trusted in the promises and spoke the truth.

Can Christians question God?  As an honest expression of their faith, yes!  And, questioning God needs to be part of Christian, Jewish and Muslim public worship.  We need to train people to understand that faith and questions are not opposites.  Most people going about their daily lives may not have questions.  That’s fine.  But when craziness or absurd suffering happens to them and they experience the silence of God, they need to know about the intimate relation between questions and faith. 

Four Differences about Judaism

Judaism differs from Christianity and Islam in at least four ways.  Judaism is a tribal religion.  Judaism does not seek converts.  Judaism teaches what you do is more important that what you believe. And Judaism encourages questions and questioning God.

Tribal Religion:  There are two ways to be Jewish:  either your mother is Jewish or you can convert into the religion of Judaism. (Reform Jews allow for a person to be Jewish if his or her father is Jewish and the person was brought up to be Jewish)

Not Seeking Converts:  Jews are taught not to seek converts and to discourage someone from converting.  The tradition teaches: a person desiring to convert should be sent away three times.  And the conversion process is lengthy, arduous and requires you to observe Jewish rituals. 

What You Do:  While many Jews have faith in God, faith is not a requirement for being Jewish.  There are many secular Jews who are proud of being Jewish.  There are many ways to be Jewish.  Honoring the rituals of the tradition and caring for the stranger are more important that believing.  In other words, Jewish tradition teaches God is more concerned about what you do then whether you believe.

Questions:  Jewish tradition encourages questioning of the scriptures, debating traditional interpretations, and most importantly, questioning the methodology of God. Questioning is a discipline at the heart of Jewish tradition and a covenantal obligation.

Nevertheless, I Persist

Here is the human dilemma.  We appear.  We are here.  Then, we disappear.  Is there any meaning to any of this?  Other than a few relatives and friends, does it matter that we exist for the time we are here?  How can our brains cope with all the suffering and evil we encounter in a lifetime?  Is there a God or is that something we made up and then conveniently forgot we did so?  If there is a God, is there any way we can understand how he, she, it operates in the world?  Given the absurdities of life, how should we live during the relatively brief time we are here?  Is there anything like an afterlife or do we just disappear, poof!?  As much as we try not to think about them, religious questions will not go away.

These questions persist because we have not been able to definitively answer them.  Each religion has its responses to the questions.  Over the years they each have developed sophisticated rationales and defenses created to deflect objections or doubts.  They assert what they assert with certainty but with precious little proof. 

But here is the thing, this is nothing new.  Religions have always been tentative vectors, glimpses, faith statements, creeds, hymns, prayers, hopes against hope, imaginations, mysteries, dim paradoxical visions along with questionable assertions and extrapolations.

Yet I remain a religious person because I trust there is something more going on than meets the eye.  I am aware that I could be wrong.  But, nevertheless, I persist.  I am haunted by these questions.  They will not let go of me, nor I of them.

We are all caught having to determine where we stand despite the fact there is no solid ground.  The stoics were right.  To live the way we have to live requires courage, self-control, equanimity and wisdom.  Keep working on those four, don’t give up on the religious questions, persist nevertheless.

The Man with the Feather Pillow

The Man and the Feather Pillow

There is a story in Jewish tradition about a man who loved to gossip.  He constantly spread rumors and salacious details about his neighbors. He enjoyed knowing secrets and sharing them.  In the process, he hurt many people.  One day, for whatever reason, he felt guilty for what he had done.  He went to his Rabbi and asked the Rabbi what he could to rectify his gossiping.  The Rabbi said, “Go and get a feather pillow.”  The man went and found a feather pillow.  Then the Rabbi said, “Go to the tallest building you can find, rip open the pillow and let the feathers fly.”  The man did so. He returned to Rabbi who told him, “Now go and retrieve every feather.”  The rabbi explained, “This is how hard it will be to repair all the gossip you have shared.”

I have a friend who loves to gossip.  And even though I try not to gossip, I seem to be quite open to hearing what he knows.  All of us potentially play our roles.

In Jewish tradition, gossip is considered an act of robbery.  You are robbing another person of their reputation.  When you gossip you are not just sharing information with someone else.  You are hurting three people.  You hurt the person you are gossiping about; you hurt yourself by becoming a gossip; you hurt the person to whom you are gossiping by making them an accomplice to gossip.

In Judaism talking about another person behind his or her back is only permitted if the discussion centers on how to help someone in trouble.  While some gossiping can be harmless and frivolous, many times, intentionally or not, it ends up causing injury.

What makes gossip so attractive?  We feel powerful and important to have information unavailable to anyone else.  And we love the attention we get when we share what we know.  We especially enjoy gossiping about the wealthy and powerful in our communities because it convinces us that they are just as human as we are. 

And one more thing:  You know when you tell someone something juicy and you say, “Don’t tell anyone.”  Do not assume that what you say will be kept in confidence.  People forget where they heard what they heard. And they may also enjoy spreading the news to their own confidants.

Here is the truth.  We have the capacity to help and hurt each other every day.  So, the next time you feel like gossiping or someone is sharing gossip with you, think of the man and the feather pillow.

True Believers

True believers know they are right.  There is something seductive about being certain.  Religion and politics seem to breed people who are certain.  From generation to generation, that has been the case.

I understand the seduction of certainty.  I was part of it in the 1960’s.  We knew we were right and they were wrong.  It was a kind of self-righteous arrogance to which we are all susceptible.  I have met Jews, Christians and Muslims convinced their version of their religion, theology or politics is the only one.  And there are always people on the extreme right or the left who know they know and who know you do not know.  They are not interested in having a conversation.  They want to inform or convert you.

But, when true believers become violent it is usually due to idealism, desperation and wanting power.  They picture what they think is the original intent of God or their own tradition, and decide there is no way to implement that original ideal except through violence. These true believers are usually intelligent well-off idealists; they are keenly aware of the injustices of history, and are determined to establish justice through violence and terrorism.

If you have a chance, read the small wise book by Eric Hoffer, entitled, The True Believer.  Hoffer explains what “True Believers” are all about from Nazis to Communists.  His words, written many years ago, are applicable to ISIS as well.

 And, remember for your own religious or political sanity, Whitehead’s quote, “Seek simplicity but distrust it.”

Do What You Need to Do

Some years ago, during a time of some depression, I watched the movie, Shawshank Redemption.  I loved the film but more importantly was the great saying, “Get busy livin or get busy dyin.”  The older I get the more I realize, life is short and unpredictable.  If there is something you need and want to do get to it.

By the way, it’s ok and sometimes right to be afraid, just don’t let the fear run your life.  The most often repeated command in the Biblical text is, “Do not be afraid.”  Feel your fear and resistance to do what you know you need to do, but do not let it control your decision to act.  Have a sane day.

Jews, Christians and Muslims: Can We Trust Each Other?

We have three competing monotheistic revelations in the world.  Each community trusts the revelation they possess to be the historical truth received from God.  And within each community there are different interpretations, all vying with each other to accurately articulate the revelatory truth at the heart of the tradition. This we know.

Some, inside and outside these different religions, want to emphasize what unites rather than what divides the respective believers.  Others are sure their religion is right and all the rest are wrong.  Still others say we will not know who is right until we come face to face with God, assuming there is a God, so, they argue, let’s try and get along for now.

But the goal is not to get along.  The goal is not to assert you are right and the other guy is wrong.  After all, there are theological and ethical areas where caring Jews, Christians and Muslims can agree.  Good!   Where we can work together, let us do so.  But,  there are places where we are compelled to disagree.  That’s fine as well.  We must learn to disagree, to argue respectfully without holding a grudge, to learn to ask what does the other person believe and why do they believe it?  Ultimately, the goal is to listen, engage, and when necessary, respectfully disagree. 

The reason this is so hard to do is it requires trust, trust that you really want to get to know and listen to me and are not out to convert me.  And, at the same time, you need to trust that I am not out to get you. Establishing such trust between people of different religions is not easy.  It takes, time, effort and commitment on both sides.  It is easier to disagree, distrust and dismiss the other side rather than think they have something of value to teach me. 

Invest the time to get to know and listen to someone of a different religion.  You will find that your own faith will become deeper, clearer and wiser.  I know this, because it happened to me.

Open and Closed Religious Borders

These days, people feel free to leave their birth religions to investigate, explore or join another religion.  Some have left religion all together and decided to be agnostic or atheist. Some have grown up without any religion.  Some people mix one religion with another.  There are “dones and “nones”, people who are done with the Church, synagogue or mosque and others who claim to have no religion at all.  Intermarriage between religious believers is rampant.  This wild west religious migration is happening right in front of our eyes.  The world is getting smaller.  We are learning what other people believe.  Religious borders and boundaries are open!

In my own life, I left my religion and community, explored and joined Lutheran Christianity for many years, and finally returned to the Jewish community and tradition.  This has been my religious journey.

I felt free to run away.  And by the way, running away is not always bad.  For some it is the only way to remain sane. There are so many different stories.   Sometimes, like me,  you just need to leave your religious tradition, come to feel completely empty and lost and even join another religion before you wake up. I ran away from the craziness of my family.  I ran and ran as far as I could get. I returned to Judaism when I could no longer run away from my own soul. 

We need to think about how we look at the world’s religions.  We need to avoid two extremes, religious absolutism and religious relativism. No religion has the absolute truth. Religions contain a glimpse of certain truths.  At the same time, it’s wrong to say that every religion is as good as another. Some religious interpretations endorse hatred and violence. Some religions should be avoided.  We need to listen to what others believe with wisdom and discernment. 

Members of each religion should be loyal to and defend their own tradition. That’s fine.  But, at the same time, believers need to be honest about the strengths and weaknesses of their own religious tradition. Religions are, after all, tentative, diverse, and disputatious.  Religions have much to learn from each other. And, remember, God is not a member of any religion.  God is God!

So, I am not upset by all the religious exploration and migration going on.  In its disruptive and sometimes ignorant manner, it demonstrates the importance and vitality of religious questions.  Neither science or secularity will do away with these questions.  Mistakes will be made, there will be regrets, and forgiveness necessary for doing the best you could with what you knew.  People will leave and sometimes return to their traditions.  Such is our life together.  Such is my life. 

Three Buddhist Insights

When I took students to India a few years ago, we listened to a Buddhist monk tell us what he thought were three basic insights from Buddhism:  You cannot change the past, you cannot control the future, you are alive this day.  He concluded, “Do what you can do to change the world this day.”

Sometimes, the smallest thing you do or say today can change the world.  A Lutheran pastor told me a startling story about what happened one Sunday morning.  He was walking around between services as he usually does, unconsciously shaking hands with people, greeting them, saying “good morning” or “how are you?”  He did this week in and week out with thinking too much about it.  It was his calling, routine and his job. This Sunday morning seemed no different that it had been every week. 

A few days later he received an unsigned note in the mail.  It read, “Pastor, a few days ago I decided that life was not worth living.  No one seemed to care whether I was alive or not.  I thought, I will go to Church one more time and then kill myself.  But that morning you stopped and talked to me.  You asked how I was and wished me a good day and fine week.  Thank you.  You saved my life.  You showed me that someone cared about me.   I will be going to see a therapist this week and hope to feel better.  But, you changed my world and I am grateful."

Such is life.  The smallest unconscious things you do and say this very day can change the world.  The past is the past.  The future will be the future.  Be alive today and do what you can do. If you want to know who or what God is about, God resides precisely in the doing.