30 years ago
anyone walking around like that was instantly assumed to be crazy. Only someone mentally deranged would have
walked around talking out loud to himself.
Today, when we see someone behaving like that, we assume he’s on
Bluetooth.
We’ve come a
long way.
It amazes me
how advanced we have become. Bluetooth
technology allows us to talk to whoever we want with our hands free to focus on
whatever we are doing to ignore them.
Our cell phones have become little computers, allowing us to send
emails, find a restaurant nearby, catch up on the big game or our favorite TV
shows, and play Words With Friends. A
phone without texting is a dinosaur, and almost everyone texts regularly with
their friends and family. In the
movies. Oh, and they also make phone
calls. Did everyone remember to turn
their cell phone off? If you leave it on
during services, God will make someone call you at an inopportune moment.
*ring*
Wow, I
couldn’t have planned that any better.
*ring*
OK, let’s
hit the silent button, please. If you
touch one of the buttons on the side your phone will stop doing that.
*ring*
All right,
this isn’t funny anymore. Will everyone
please check to see if…….uh, oh. I think
it’s mine.
*ring*
Oh, this is
embarrassing. Hold on just a moment.
Hello?
Speaking.
Who?
What?
Really…This
is God?
Prove it….
You saw
that?!? I’m glad you’re not on speaker.
Yes, sorry,
I’ll listen.
Once the
chalk board was filled with suggestions, we voted on the top five
requirements. The professor pointed at
each one and we raised our hands if we wanted that requirement to be counted. When he came to “Belief in God,” I shot my
hand in the air like Hermione Granger. I
was so proud of my suggestion and feeling sure I was owed congratulations for
my keen observation of what had been missing from our admissions process. The teacher tallied all the votes and wrote the
number next to “Belief in God.”
One. I was the only one in my
class of 25 future rabbis to think Belief in God should be a requirement for
rabbinical school.
Perhaps my
classmates did not want to make God a requirement because of an overexposure to
Political Correctness. They didn’t want
to make belief a requirement because we cannot define belief. Or perhaps they didn’t want to offend any
proclaimed agnostics or atheists who might want to apply to rabbinical school
in the future. Maybe they just didn’t
want to feel like they were shoving God down anyone’s throat. Whatever their reasons, I then and now
respectfully disagree.
We need God
in our lives, in our homes, in our religious experiences. We don’t need God in our public schools or
political campaigns, but that’s another sermon for another time. As a Jewish people, we have long been
connected with the One we call Adonai, Elohim, Tzur, Eyhey-Asher-Ehyeh, Hashem,
Shaddai, Makom, and Avinu Malkeinu. As
we can understand from the variety of names for God, there are as many and more
ways to view God. Our understanding of
God is limited only to our imagination and how we interpret our own
experiences.
In Dr.
Harvey Karp’s book for parents, The
Happiest Toddler on the Block, he explains that children go through
millions of years of evolution in the first few years of their lives. They start out as the creatures who have
just crawled from the water onto dry land.
They eventually learn to crawl like four-legged animals, and then they
walk like bipeds. They communicate with
grunts, screams, and motions, and they become very possessive of their space
and things. Then they learn to work as a
community and begin to ask for what they need and bargain for what they want. He parallels each stage of development in a
child to a stage in development of ancient society.
A parallel
case could be made for the development of Jewish theology. Each of us goes through phases of belief as
we struggle through the development of our own view of God. Millions of years of evolution in the
theological life of every human being.
As we go through the stages of belief, some of us get to a point and
never advance from there. Happy with
where we have found our definition of God, we never move along the evolutionary
road. That’s fine, as long as we respect
each other’s path.
The first
stage is the Biblical God. This is the
God that we believe in as children.
Anthropomorphized, masculine, and acting in the world: giving tablets on
mountains and making calls on cell phones.
When someone declares to me that they do not believe in God, I often ask
the question, “Describe the God you do not believe in.” This is that God.
The Biblical
God is covenantal. God gives us
rules—commandments. If we obey them we
are guaranteed personal, familial, and national success. If we do not, we are contractually obligated
to accept God’s punishments. God of the
Bible is simultaneously a parent, teacher, ruler, lover, commander, shepherd,
comfort, judge, and more. This is the
God that people struggle with most, because there are so many contradictions in
the Biblical God. Mostly because the
Bible is written in so many voices. Once
we realize that this God is a metaphor, we can start to develop our own concept
of God, and our evolution can begin.
The rabbis
of the Talmud build off of the biblical God.
They no longer worshiped a God that physically reacted to their prayers
in this world. Instead they had a
personal God that has messengers who act in dreams and imagery. God still had a hand and a voice, still shows
justice and mercy, and still loves us and is loved in return. The trials of the Jewish community are seen
as divine retribution for sins of the past, and the job of humanity is to
please God by acting out Mitzvot, commandments, and bringing about the
Messianic Age. The concept of a Messiah
is a Talmudic construct, allowing for the notion that there will be a return to
a saved Jerusalem in the next world.
The
philosophical age of Philo and Aristotle bring us to the teenage years of
dealing with God. The conversation about
God becomes more about what God isn’t.
God has no hand or face. God’s
existence can be systematically proven but not described. Maimonides, the 12th century rabbi
and philosopher, taught that once we apply language to God, we are limiting
God, because language is limiting.
As theology
developed the God of Jewish Mysticism came to be. Rabbi Isaac Luria, born in 16th
Century Jerusalem, and his students of Tzfat envisioned God as emanations of
energy. To the Mystics, if someone could
connect with a part of that energy, they would understand that God permeates
everything. For just a moment they might
be able to sense the godliness that is within them and emanates outward to
every living thing. Then, like a drop of
water in the ocean, they lose complete sense of self and feel as if they are
part of the whole. This version of our
developmental theology makes us feel like we can do anything because we know we
are a part of the Divine.
Martin Buber
finds God in relationship, in what he refers to as the Eternal Thou. As he writes, “The relation with man is the
real simile of the relation with God; in it true address receives true
response.” It is in connection with
others that we find God.
Mordechai
Kaplan came up with the concept of Naturalism.
He believed that whatever human beings did that benefitted the world for
other people, that was God.
The 20th
and 21st Centuries brings us all kinds of different theologies, such
as feminist theology, polydoxy, humanism, ethical monotheism, and more. As we develop our own personal theologies, we
emulate the Cave-Toddlers of Harvey Karp’s world. We go through thousands of years of
theological evolution in one lifetime.
Some of us go one or two stages and stop there. Others go exploring through all kinds of
different versions of connecting with God, and never stop. Judaism teaches us that that’s ok.
We are
supposed to struggle with our theology.
That’s a good thing to do. In
fact, the name for our people, Yisrael,
means “God-strugglers.” We have come a
long way in many areas of advancement, yet continue to struggle with God.
Of course,
God might be able to call us on our cell phones, but these probably aren’t the
right tools to use to connect. They are
amazing devices. Miraculous, even. But they don’t bring us closer to God. It is possible that they bring us farther
away.
Rabbi Yehiel
Mikhael of Zlotchov taught that people have a tendency to imagine themselves as
measured by their things. They attach
themselves to earthly things and leave their Creator in pursuit of more. Then they believe they exist and they become
great and important in their own eyes.
But what happens when they are gone?
Their days pass like a shadow and their things remain behind. But the Eternal One is with us all forever. Therefore, we should instead cleave to God
and direct our thoughts to God.
A wonderful
idea, if it were possible. Life happens,
reality sets in and we have to deal with phone calls and texts and emails and
instant messages. In order to really
make connections, though, we have to decide not if we will use technology to
connect, but when.
A friend of
mine recently told me that one of her pet peeves is when women use their cell
phones in the bathroom. She finds
herself in an odd position because a) she is left out of what is often a very
vibrant conversation, and b) she wonders if she is being rude when she flushes. We are often so involved in the world within
our technology that we forget to pay attention to the world around us. We cleave to our things instead of what is
out there.
A regular
notion in the Bible is that of yisa et
eynayim, lifting the eyes. Abraham
lifted his eyes twice yesterday when we read the story of the Akeidah. He lifted his eyes and saw the mountain where
God sent him. He lifted his eyes and saw
the ram caught in the thicket. Lifting
his eyes facilitated his ability to offer a sacrifice to God, as well as not
offering up his only son.
When
characters lift their eyes, they are taking notice of the world around them,
more specifically they notice a sign from God.
Joshua lifts his eyes and sees an angel prepared to fight with the
Israelites before they march on Jericho.
The prophet Zechariah lifts his eyes before each of his prophecies. Even the wicked prophet Balaam lifts his eyes
just before his curse against the Israelites turns into a blessing. “Lifting the eyes” is more than just
looking. Anyone can look. Lifting the eyes means they really see.
As a parent
I often remind my children to look me in the eyes when we talk. It is considered good form to look someone in
the eyes when shaking hands. It has been
said that the eyes are the window to the soul.
If we do not lift our eyes, we cannot make the real connections that
caring people make when they engage with one another. If we do not lift our eyes, we cannot connect
with the Divine.
All this
technology is great. I love my computers,
my iPad, my iPhone. I write my sermons
on them. I post on Facebook. I play Words With Friends. I blog my sermons and Elul thoughts. As a youth worker I could not connect with
the children I work with without it. At
the same time, nothing drives me crazy quite like my teens with their
technology. They text in class, they
text while they talk to someone else.
They text during services, in movies, while they drive, watch TV, eat,
and probably even while they sleep! To
rephrase a commercial from the 80’s: “they learned it by watching us.”
When we look
down at our screens we often feel like we are connecting with the world. We can send messages and pictures to friends
all over the world. We can hold on line
learning sessions and conference for work or for fun. We keep track of congregants who need
pastoral care using an on line web service.
There are congregations that live-stream their weekly Shabbat as well as
their High Holy Day services. As a tool
there is no parallel to the power of our handheld devices. But that’s just it. It’s a tool.
Like Rabbi Litwak said yesterday, relying on these devices diminishes
the I within us, as their very names suggest.
When using a
tool you have to use the right tool for the job. We wouldn’t change a tire with a screwdriver,
so we don’t make real connections with our devices. Real connections can only be made when we
lift our eyes. No matter where we are in
our theological evolution, we cannot evolve through our devices. We can only do that by connecting with God
and with our community. With the people
sitting around you right now.
There is really only one way to
truly connect.
[turn off the iPad]
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