Murray Haar On Religion: Hannukah, Christmas and Covid

Monday, December 14, 2020

Hannukah, Christmas and Covid

The Hannukah and Christmas lights have begun to be lit. We humans are determined, persistent and tenacious: the darkness will not overcome the light. Well and good! But all the candles and lights in the world will not diminish the terrible effects of the Covid pandemic. Even as the promised vaccine is on its way, we continue to experience the darkness.

As for God, it is hard to say what the deity is doing. Some people assume the best. God, they say has been at work with the first responders; or God is at work on the vaccines; or God is walking with people through the craziness of the virus. I suppose all this sounds comforting and might be true. But I am not so assured.

I am puzzled how any kind of loving deity can watch almost 300,000 people in the USA and over a million throughout the world die and not be moved to act. And if there is a God who has decided free will and laws of nature are more important than any human life then I respectfully disagree. I refuse to make excuses for God. 3,000 people a day are dying in our country and all the lights in the world will not diminish the darkness, pain and graves created by those dying. I am not satisfied by theodicies and theologies, Jewish or Christian which think they can rescue the injustice of God from obvious guilt.

Having said my piece about God, I will light the candles and enjoy the lights. I will howl against the darkness and hurl my prayers at the silent sky and the leafless trees. Hannukah and Christmas belong to two communities who have continued, for millennia, to hope against hope, to yearn against yearning, to refuse to give up. They are two communities obsessed with remembering and waiting.

I say to you and to me, light the candles, bring the trees into your homes, sing the songs again and give the gifts. Repeat the old stories, tell the darkness where to go, refuse to give in. Perhaps this time God will hear the commotion and be moved to act. We shall see and then we shall know.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Notes from The Door

Whenever you care for the neighbor in pain, at that very moment, God is real. At that very moment, the Messiah has returned. In every situation where there is pain and injustice do what you can do to stop the pain. Murray Haar
Religion was not created by God but by people. What God thinks of our religions only God can say. If your religion teaches you to love God and to stand with your neighbor in pain, it is a good religion. If it teaches you to hate and to be indifferent, it is a bad religion. Murray Haar
Get Busy livin or get busy dyin (Shawshank Redemption)
The Holocaust teaches us that it is possible to be alive but no longer human. Murray Haar
I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know. Socrates
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. W. H. Auden
For the most part, Christian pastors and priests are not taught to think but to transmit. They go to a vocational school called a seminary where they are taught how to transmit and proclaim the gospel but not how to teach their people to think critically about what they believe. They do not know how to teach their parishioners that Christianity could be wrong. Pastors and Priests are not prophets; they are religious functionaries who care about people and love Jesus. They themselves are usually nice people, will visit you in the hospital and give you bread and wine but they are not, for the most part, great thinkers. So, to expect them to reform the Church is just not realistic. Occasionally though, pastors show up who can think and believe at the same time and it is in them that there is hope for a reformation. I have met them. They are real and I have hope in them. Murray Haar
We do not believe in the Bible. We believe in God. The Bible is a vector toward God and the neighbor. When the Bible points us toward God and the neighbor, it is true. Whenever it does not, it is not true. We have to learn not only to read the Bible but to argue with it. Then the text will become real. Murray Haar
“In religion, the question is more important than the answer to the question.” A Midrash
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas
“He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.” The Talmud
“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 that 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

Pages

Monday, December 14, 2020

Hannukah, Christmas and Covid

No comments:

Post a Comment