Murray Haar On Religion: From Esther to Easter: Confusing Images of God

Friday, March 29, 2019

From Esther to Easter: Confusing Images of God

The Jewish and Christian scriptures have different confusing images of God. This confusion is similar to our present-day puzzlement as to, if and where and how God is at work in our world. The people who wrote the Biblical texts also got up in the morning and asked themselves: Where did we come from? Where are going? Is there any meaning to our lives? Is there really a God up there, out there, right here?

Examine the holidays of Purim, Easter and Passover. They each picture God differently. Purim celebrates the Jewish victory over the evil Haman. God is not mentioned in the book leaving commentators and believers to debate whether there are times when God is not present or unable to stop catastrophe from happening. The book celebrates human ingenuity in defeating evil.

Easter celebrates the Christian faith that God was and is incarnate in the world through Jesus. This image tells us that while life may be crazy at times, we are accompanied by a God who loves us. Through the resurrection of Jesus, believers are assured God is at work in their lives daily to bring resurrection out of death. Of course, how this happens is inconsistent and unreliable.

Then there is Passover, a time to remember and trust that God is actively at work in history to achieve justice, though again we have God’s strange methodology and problematic timeline. God delivers the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, brings them to the promised land but does so through a long circuitous route.

Each of these three holidays establishes a certain faith but they are not all the same. Purim points to the silence of God. Easter points to the love and presence of God. Passover celebrates God’s marriage to the Jewish people and God’s historical activity on behalf of justice.

My point is: No matter how sure and certain some Biblical texts sounds, those writers were as unsure and puzzled about God as we are. God has always been a puzzling, incomprehensible, mysterious actor in our world. No one knows the will of God but God, and that will is inscrutable. The Biblical stories offer us glimpses into the activity of this God. But human beings have always been caught; trusting without knowing for sure. The contemporary wonderment about God is as old as humans walking on the planet trying to stay sane from day to day.

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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, March 29, 2019

From Esther to Easter: Confusing Images of God

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