Transactions of Truth

This year’s High Holyday sermons all touch on some aspect of truth. Today we will focus on what we hold to be the true about what God is like.

What’s the truth about what God is really like? Supposedly we’ve long ago given up on trying to depict God visually, but that didn’t stop one of my religious school teachers – not in this Congregation, don’t worry – from telling me God was either a 200 foot tall red jelly bean or a middle aged woman wearing sensible shoes. She was, by the way, extremely creative but not certifiable.

My favorite has to be designer Paco Rabanne who was interviewed in 2002 in the New York Times Magazine section:
Q: Do you believe in a God?

Paco Rabanne: I have seen God three times in three different forms. I saw him first when I was 20 years old as an enormous sun while I was at a football game [I think he means what we would call soccer.]. The second time I was 40 years old. I was in a taxi at the Place de la Concorde, and I saw a huge red spiral. The last time, I was 60. I was walking down the street, and I heard a voice ask me, “Do you want to see me again?” Suddenly I saw the cosmos and the order of things. These experiences have no words to describe them or what happened to me. I am patiently waiting for when I am 80 years old to see what will happen, if I’ll see God again. It’s fabulous.

Q: So God never appeared in human form?

P R.: What a horror - no! It’s always been a collection of energy. We are so small as human beings that it is hard to understand it all.

R. A.: Do you think that you are guided by God in your work?

P R.: Not any more than you or anyone else. We are all the same. I am not a guru. I don’t belong to one sect. Well, actually, that’s not true. I do belong to the Federation of Fashion Designers of Paris!  [“Man of Steel,” by Roman Alonso and Lisa Eisner, NY Times Magazine, 3/10/02, pp. 52-54.]

           I leave it to you to decide whether or not this man should be allowed to walk the streets unsupervised. But whatever your decision, consider this: here is a man who believes he has seen God not once, but three times, and still thinks God doesn’t guide him, God doesn’t tell him what to do. The corollary  of that, of course, is that he can’t tell God what to do, either.

I have a job for you. I want you to get God to do something you want. Nothing major, just something small, like having your shoelace come untied, or making your prayerbook fall from your hands onto your lap, or keeping your children quiet for more than five minutes, or, most miraculous of all, having my sermon finish before you fall asleep. That last one might be a problem because I’m trying to get God to keep you awake.

Is God even amenable to answering such requests, and the far more important ones we have for the recovery of a loved one stricken with cancer or being able to support our family when our currently miserable economy has put us out of a job?

There’s a story about
… an economist who went for a Sunday afternoon walk, and he met none other than God Almighty, which gave him a bit of a shock, and he didn’t know what to say. He remembered that as a little boy he had been told that what is a thousand years to us is but a minute to the Lord. And he asked Him, “Is this so?” and the Lord Said, “Yes, this is quite so.”

By that time the economist had recovered his composure, and he said, “Then perhaps it may also be true that what is a million dollars to us is only a penny for you.” And the Lord said, “Yes, that’s quite true.” And the economist said, “Well, Lord, give me one of those pennies.”

The Lord said, “Certainly, my dear chap. I don’t happen to have it on me, but just wait a minute while I fetch it.” E. F. Schumacher in GOOD WORK [King Duncan, Lively Illustrations for Effective Preaching, Seven Worlds Pub.(Knoxville, Tenn., 1987),”Greed”.]

           Which, of course, is a divine way of saying: “You can ask whatever you want, but you’re not necessarily going to get it.”

Whether we’ve seen God or not, aren’t we all in the same boat as Paco Rabanne? God doesn’t make us do anything. We are free to do whatever we wish. But it sure doesn’t seem that way, especially in the Torah. We read the story of God telling Abraham to take his son Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice and Abraham does. We read how the covenant our people made with God at Mount Sinai is binding not only on us but on all our descendants as well. We read of God’s anger when twelve scouts go into Canaan and only two say conquering the land is possible, and God’s punishment of forty years of exile in the wilderness before the people can try again.

Throughout the Torah, God commands and we are supposed to obey. But notice what often comes next: if we don’t obey, if we don’t follow God’s instructions, everything from illness to death may be the punishment. Punishment for misdeeds can only be possible if there is the possibility they can occur. We must be free to disobey, or the whole system makes no sense. God could conceivably have created us without free will, created us so that we always obeyed and couldn’t disobey, but God didn’t. We were created with free will, capable of obedience and disobedience.

While I was studying for one of my Masters degrees, I was exposed to a school of sociology called “exchange theory.” It is defined as:
…a social psychological and sociological perspective and that explains social activity as a process of negotiated exchanges. It posits that all human relationships are formed by the use of a subjective cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives. For example, when a person perceives the costs of a relationship as outweighing the perceived benefits, then the theory predicts that the person will choose to leave the relationship. The theory has roots in economics, psychology and sociology. [Wikipedia, Exchange Theory].

There’s even a scholarly article titled: “Using Monte Carlo Methods in Network Exchange Theory and Research.” [by Dudley Girard, Department of Computer Science, Shippensburg University, Casey Borch, Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut.]

Huh? Without the academic gobbledygook what this means is that we expect some benefit for what we do, and if we don’t get it, or get too little, we move on and look somewhere else.

OK, back to God. God wants us to give things: obedience, mostly, often exemplified as good deeds, and prayer three times a day, and several sets of dishes, and eating kosher meat, even thought the largest kosher slaughter house in the US, located in Postville, Iowa was raided and almost four hundred illegal immigrants and nearly fifty cases of child exploitation were found.

That’s what God gets. What’s the pay-off for us in these transactions?

Says Levi Yitzchak the Berditschever Rabbi, “ Now I understand the meaning of the words: We are the servants of God, and if we are faithful servants, God protects us and is our Merciful Master. Let us remain faithful servants to God, and in the merit of this, the Almighty will surely inscribe us all in the Book of Life, for a happy New Year!”

           Lest you think that these are ancient ideas, let me share with you one from our own day:
My colleague, Rabbi Barry Block writes:

           In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, former Israeli Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef offered an explanation. Tragedy struck the United States because of our government’s support of Prime Minister Sharon's plan to disengage from the Gaza Strip. Then, he added: “There are terrible natural disasters because there isn't enough Torah study. . . . Black people reside [in New Orleans]. Blacks will study the Torah? [God said,] ‘Let's bring a tsunami and drown them.’”
Rabbi Yosef believes that God set the world straight, balancing out the scales of Justice. God meted out a punishment that fit the “crimes” of Gaza: withdrawal and the absence of Torah study, when God punished New Orleans with the winds and floods of Katrina.

           This isn’t theology, this is insanity! It is as uninformed as it is bigoted. African American church attendance far surpasses Jewish synagogue attendance. Both in absolute numbers and percentages, the black people of New Orleans, and just about everywhere in the US, study the Bible, study the Torah, with great regularity and great seriousness.

We can’t wait for God to give us justice, or riches or health, wealth, peace – anything. Being a Jew is not being part of a transaction with God. We can’t control God, and since we are reminded over and over again that we have free will, God can’t, or won’t control us either. Our transactions are only with each other.

Can we put an end to the greed in the financial system that has caused so many such great harm? Can we divert some of the billions being spent on an unjust and stupid war towards cancer research and research on the other diseases that afflict us?

God won’t do it. Only we can. And only then, if we do it well enough, will we be inscribed in the Book of Life for a Happy New Year.