When I first started doing some research for this post, one example that came up, in different forms, was dieting. A person who wants to lose weight has finally decided that it’s not next week, not tomorrow, but today. Now. And then he or she is confronted with a slice—in fact, a wedge—of black forest chocolate cake. The struggle ensues. It’s only a slice of cake; it won’t make that much of a difference, now, will it?
But this isn’t a major conflict. It doesn’t touch on any core beliefs. It doesn’t hurt anybody or compromise anything you hold dear. Chocolate cake is really small potatoes, in terms of conflict.
A real, deep and sleep-depriving conflict is an issue that touches—even has a stranglehold—on something you were taught to believe, on how you see yourself and how you want to be seen. It shakes the foundations of your psychic edifice.
Two ideas come to mind: your faith and your marriage or choice of friends. Let’s deal with faith, for now.
Judaism and asking questions
Those of you who have read any of my previous articles have seen many references to Jewish beliefs and learning, and they were come by honestly. I was raised in a mostly Orthodox home, and it still forms a major part of my life.
I was taught La Five Books of Moses (The Torah), I made an effort to learn The Talmud and I know most of the laws governing a Jewish life. But my learning only goes so far. As the joke has it, by many people I’m a rabbi, but by rabbis, I’m no rabbi.
To most observers, I look and sound pretty Orthodox, but those chosen few who listen to my rants regularly have had a glimpse of my turmoil. I delve into the laws, but my questions keep sprouting like mushrooms after a few days of rain. In my own mind, it’s like tossing lawn furniture at an advancing Abrams tank.
I had, and still have basic questions.
What is consciousness? Can God hear everything we think? Can He know what we plan, how we’ll act and react? What does He expect from us? Did He create us just so that we can serve Him? It seems like an exercise in Eternal frustration. There has to be another reason.
And especially, is there another way to understand the Genesis story, besides as a failure of man? Let’s back up a bit, shall we.
It isn’t about all the laws I’m expected to conform to. I see those as all sorts of ways of connecting to Him. Think of life as a major airport, with all sorts of ways to reach your destination. Maybe He isn’t all that picky that you obey the speed limit, pull over for a coffee or even get a flat. As long as you keep driving, He’s OK with that. He wants you to ask about Him, I believe, which is a good thing.
It’s when you get older and start asking questions, giving voice to your doubts, that cracks appear in the edifice of your belief. There are questions that are common, such as the age of l'univers, how long humankind has walked the Earth, when humans learned to speak and so many other questions. And if you ask around, at least in the Jewish faith, you’ll see that we’ve been asking those questions for years. Some answers are accepted, while others are considered outliers—still on the books, but very controversial.
I decided to delve into the issue, to see if I could stretch the boundaries of what is acceptable, yet still remain within bounds. If this is contradictory, well, welcome to my world. The outliers are the most fascinating.
Isaac Asimov
In an odd way, I got some inspiration from a short story by Isaac Asimov. In it, some fellow finds himself surrounded by darkness and silence. He understands that he’s dead. Then he feels a presence, a force next to him, and this force, after introducing himself, says he is known to some as God.
The man, or his spirit, or whatever is speaking, demands to know why he’s here, and why God is here (I read this story a long time ago, and a lot of the details are lost to me.).
And God then challenges him. He says that if he can solve that riddle, they can change places. The story ends with the man being stumped, but he adds, “I have all of eternity.”
No, I’m not looking to be God. But I’d like to form an explanation of what I’m supposed to believe.
Let’s begin, shall we.
The Garden of Eden
Let’s start with Genesis, especially the Garden of Eden. Christian belief holds that Adam sinned by eating the fruit (no, it wasn’t an apple, more likely a date or fig). Jewish tradition holds that it was a sin, but it wasn’t as irredeemable or as central as it is in Christian thought.
My own opinion is that this was no less than the birthing of human consciousness: the ability of humankind to think on its own, to have desires of its own, even to act against God.
In other words, He gave us leave, maybe even creating His own grand bargain, curious about what we would accomplish and how He Himself would react. The way was now open for human development in all avenues of existence; music, society, metallurgy, anything you can think of depends on the human ability to think beyond the immediate and to think independently.
And then there is the belief that God`s agents are all pure and unblemished. But Jews don’t believe in a devil, at least not one that has any power, except as a combination of God`s roving sting operation and prosecuting attorney.
Anything created, anything that happens, is laid at His doorstep. War, sickness, violence, all of it is His. All agents of change are His agents. My own input is that they aren’t necessarily saints, but they have a job to do, a role to fulfill.
My own book
I ramped that up a notch when I wrote a book. Let’s say some of those agents are a sort of angel. They have a mission, and that is the imparting of knowledge. This kind of angel, if I may be so bold, is a different version of the classic Greek muse. This muse would embody and impart the forcing obsession of the creative manic.
Their duty would be double-edged, for the people who have that type of creative focus can also dive into depression. They may take medication, but then they lose that high, and some choose to go off those medications. Some end their lives when they can’t escape that dark cloud, and the muse, as an agent of God, helps then as well. They guide, they don’t decide.
The work done by the manic is necessary for the world to progress. Only they can produce it. The world marches on, and everybody contributes in some way. Maybe with a grand bargain, a life lived intensely but with purpose.
These beings walk among us, and some try to fit in with us. They need companionship, love and understanding. Their role, however, is isolating. They do their duty and can’t abandon it, not if they want to remain alive. To know them is to have access to a certain unexplainable inspiration. But it can also mean depression, possibly death. Their duty is a harsh one.
In my story, there are two such guides (I use the word ‘muse’ only once or twice in the book.). One has been doing it for a very long time, and cares little, if at all, about the damage she causes. It’s all part of her duty, one she takes most seriously. She is a loyal soldier and has a deep knowledge of its intent.
Another woman is much younger, not as hardened to her charge. She is deeply torn with each student she dispatches, and has no one to share her burden. She isn’t fully aware of her role, only that it’s a compelling one.
The two find each other. The younger woman finds relief at last, but she’s disturbed by what her companion thinks of their shared duty, and what she herself may become. Yet, she has found a companion who understands her totally and will never judge her.
Together, they share a frenzied passion, what some would call rough sex. Due to their nature and duty, they live for the thrill, the total engagement, as harsh as it may seem to outsiders.
Then the younger one meets a man, a normal man. He is smitten with her, yet he doesn’t and can’t understand her true nature, and she faces a choice:
- Continue with her comrade-in-arms, the one who understands her totally and fulfills her emotional needs, yet has become cold and uncaring to most outsiders. In fact, she’ll be an outsider herself, if this is her choice.
- Continue and be faithful to her beau, even if he doesn’t grasp her role or truly understand her, yet embodies what is caring and loyal—and with him, become part of society at large.
I don’t know if there’s a parallel to this. Maybe a spy in enemy territory. Maybe a soldier going native. But it all developed from my idea of belonging versus separateness. Being accepted for who you are versus aspiring to something else, even if it’s against your duty. It relates to faith and to marriage, and to flawed agents of God—at least flawed in our eyes. The book, which has just undergone a major rewrite, is called Dark Muse.
Engaging with faith
Around this point, you may be wondering why I go through these mental gymnastics. Either you believe or you don’t. Good question, that.
The Jewish tradition is filled with debates, explanations, doubts of all kinds. There are also schools of thought that have long accepted the age of the universe as unimaginably ancient, into the billions of years. They’ve recognized that our universe is a very old creation (Creation). I would have good company in my private quest.
So, with my own doubts and odd questions, I set to the task of finding a religious explanation for human history. Or maybe a historical explanation for religion. My religion. Maybe an intersection. Or an overlap.
This is how I engage with my faith, by asking deep questions, looking for parallels and seeing patterns that others miss. For me, to simply abandon the entire structure would not only be to cut off my roots, which is serious enough, but to lose out on the intellectual challenge of seeing humankind’s origins in a way missed by both the religious and non-religious scholars.
I once talked with somebody who had a Ph.D. in physics, who told me that the sequence of Genesis is more or less accurate: a Big Bang, then water being separated from the earth; simple life forms, and then more complex ones. Whoever wrote it gave it a lot of thought. So I looked more closely at what was going on in that section, where man is created (and is given instructions that he disobeys) and then human history and human psychology begins.
We see God’s curse, but is He angry or sad? Or is He secretly pleased that His creation actually has a mind and will of its own?
Was the entire exercise a ploy to set in motion the machine called free will?
Framed that way, the story becomes far more engaging than a story about the fall of humanity.
In a way, it becomes the rise of humanity.
«LECTURE CONNEXE» FREE WILL: No scientific explanation can take it from us»
image 1 : image: Pixabay; image 2 : Wikimedia Commons; image 3 : image: Pixabay
