Friday, July 26, 2019

A Leap of Faith



Faith is trusting without knowing for sure.  


Our scriptures exhort us to love God with all our heart, soul and mind.  We are commanded to love the deity with all our intellect.  We do not have faith by believing mindlessly, thoughtlessly and without questions.  I cannot believe that we have been given a brain in order to disregard its ability to analyze and question when it comes to God and religion. 


Whatever God is about and indeed if there is a God, he, she, it is invisible, complicated, mysterious, inscrutable, unpredictable and methodologically questionable.  It is not a violation of trust to have such thought or questions.  It is an inherent part of trusting without knowing for sure.

And any God worth the name would encourage such questions and doubts as an expression of our faith.


So, do not feel guilty about wondering if any of this religious stuff is true.  Count yourself as normal and alive.
  

A friend of mine who works with the poor in the inner city cautions me: There are those whose lives do not possess the privilege of sitting around, thinking and asking questions.  They are the poor whose questions have to do with whether they will have food or shelter or a bed for the coming night.  For them any small bit of good news is a blessing from God.  They do not have time to doubt or the inclination to ask God questions.


Some would say these people live a simple faith, a trust which says, “God is in control, everything happens because God wants it to happen for some mysterious plan or purpose, we are unable to decipher.  Questions and doubts are contrary to faith.   All we can do is trust that God knows best.”
  

But I wonder, is it possible, these people with the simple faith are not blind or stupid or leaping into the darkness.  Those who continue to trust despite what they see are implicitly by the nature of their faith and trust confronting and accusing God with their own implicit questions, doubts and hopes.  It takes courage and wisdom to have such a faith and to live such a life.  The simple fact is:  there are just different ways of questioning the justice of God.  Their expectations, theology and faith are their way.  And maybe that will have to be enough.  What do you think?


Have a restful rest of the summer.


P.S.  The blog will be on break for the month of August.  Thank you for reading and thinking with me.

Friday, July 19, 2019

Respectful Stubbornness


We live in a world where there are different ways of being religious.  People can decide to practice their religion or have no religion as they each see fit.


But we know, it does not mean everybody therefore gets along.  Religion has to do with truth.  It explains why we bother to get out of bed in the morning.  Our religions tell us how we got here, the meaning of our lives and deaths, the truth about God and how God has or has not been revealed to us.  Religion is not just something made up long ago; some would say it is the truth as revealed by God to each respective tradition.  So, while it sounds harmonic to say we are all part of the human family and we should agree to disagree, it’s not that easy.
  

I propose we admit that multiple religions mean multiple conflicting revelations.  The world’s major religions have been around a long time and their believers trumpet the revelation they possess and that possesses them.  So, what are we to do?   I suggest respectful stubbornness.
  

We each confess our religious beliefs, articulate them as clearly as possible, learn from each other where we can but feel free to dispute where we disagree.  This includes those who are atheist or agnostic.  The freedom to respectfully disagree comes from our necessary and inherent religious humility, the sense that we can be self-serving and could be wrong.  Absolutizing our religious beliefs is an act of idolatry. We are, after all, human beings and human beings make mistakes, believe all sorts of crazy things and are sometimes just plain wrong.


 I am a Jew.  I cannot understand myself apart from the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition.  But I have studied and am willing to listen to other religious truths because I know my religious beliefs are tentative and only a glimpse of what could be the ultimate truth.  I hope you will admit the same is true for your beliefs.


We have so much to learn from each other if we can put aside our instinct to guard and protect the purity of our beliefs.  So, I say, maintain your beliefs stubbornly but be open to learn where you could be wrong.  Respectful stubbornness can work.  By the way, this is true for politics as much as religion. 




Friday, July 5, 2019

Writing a Book about Elie Wiesel


I have decided to write a book about Elie Wiesel.  Elie Wiesel is arguably the most important theological writer in the past fifty years.  Wiesel wrote fifty-three books as a witness to what happened during the Holocaust.  In many of these books he grappled with his understanding of God.  I am planning to write a book dealing with Wiesel’s understanding of God during those days.


In his first and most celebrated book, Night, Wiesel declares his problem with the justice of God.  As he says, “I was no longer the accused.  I was the accuser.”  Wiesel wrote his many books in the name of those millions of Jews murdered during the Holocaust.  Their voices had been stilled but their questions could not be silenced.  Wiesel wrote on their behalf and asked questions about the character and methodology of God.  The strange part about Wiesel’s work is he did not see his questions as a sign of unbelief but as part of a commitment to God and God’s promises.


Whenever a writer writes, the blank page or screen stares back and makes him or her wonder if they have anything worthwhile to say.  But this book has been cooking inside me for many years.  So here it goes.