Murray Haar On Religion: Seven Questions For God

Friday, January 19, 2018

Seven Questions For God

Some years ago, in another life, I heard a sermon by a Lutheran theologian named George Aus at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. Dr. Aus talked about a list of questions he had assembled that he would take with him when he died to present to the Divine authorities in the heavenly realms.

Recalling his sermon reminded me of an old Jewish tradition which says, when you arrive in the next world, they will not ask you whether you had faith or not; they will not ask you if you were good or bad; they will say to you, “You were alive all those years, what questions do you have?” And woe to the person who has no questions.

In that spirit, I have been thinking about my own evolving questions. I ask them not from pride or wanting to know what is none of my business, but merely things I wonder about as one religious human being going about his daily routines. The questions are addressed directly to God, in no particular order, addressed with humility, awe and respect for the inscrutable mystery that is God.

1. Why all the secrecy and mystery? Why make it so hard to see you and what you are doing?

2. Are you actually at work in human history or is what happens every day what appears to happen, a combination of capricious laws of nature, ambiguous human decisions and chance?

3. Do you favor one of the religions on earth or are each of the major religions a vehicle for addressing you and you addressing them?

4. I understand giving people a measure of free will and all that, but why create human beings with the capacity for such horrific evil?

5. As you forgive us for our sins, omissions and commissions, with all due respect, are we to forgive you for your ineffective, problematic or ambiguous ways of working in the world?

6. If there is an afterlife, why must it be so mysterious and unknowable?

7. Where were you during the Holocaust and where are you whenever and wherever people unjustly suffer absurd suffering, evil and death?

Those of you who know me know I have been wrestling with these questions most of my life. I have developed some responses, but they are all quite tentative.

These questions are “in, with and under” faith. People of faith cannot escape questioning what God is doing in this crazy, wonderful, problematic, mysterious planet floating and rotating in dark space.

Btw, how do your questions differ from mine?

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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

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Friday, January 19, 2018

Seven Questions For God

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