Radiating God

Though the prophets, the greatest of whom was Moses, achieved a superior understanding of God, this understanding does not concern God as He is in Himself but His consequences or effects. In the Middle Ages, philosophers like Maimonides claimed that God's consequences or effects emanate from Him. It is as if God were like an eternal and inexhaustible source of light whose energy is so vast that it nourishes and illuminates everything around us. But even the best scientific theories cannot explain how that light is generated. All we know is that the light makes it possible everything we see and do. On the other hand, the light is so brilliant that no person can look at it directly.

Kenneth Seeskin
from Maimonides: A Guide for Today's Perplexed

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” -Exodus 33:18-20

I don't believe in philosophy. I believe in ideas that change people.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Real Ideas"
Chabad.org

Rambam (Moses ben Maimon or Maimonides) was a superb philosopher and theologian and his writings are considered classic among Jewish scholars and lay people to this very day. I recently reviewed Seeskin's book Maimonidies: A Guide for Today's Perplexed (and am posting the link here so you can be a little background about the topic of today's blog) and through Seeskin's book, gained a greater insight into how this amazing Jewish scholar perceived God.

Rambam, a consummate rationalist, did not believe people could experience God in any manner or fashion but rather, thought we could only experience the results or effects of God. This is like saying that a person cannot look at a solar eclipse with the unaided eye but instead, must use a device to see an approximation of the effects. I also previously used the analogy of experiencing a fire by the effects or results, such as ash and smoke, rather than knowing the fire as it truly is.

We see in the above-quote from Exodus 33, that Moses "knew" or "experienced" God as the Divine Presence or the Shekhinah, God's manifestation in our universe, in a manner as close as possible to experiencing God's effects without actually experiencing God (seeing His "face"). But what did God "emanate" or "radiate" that Moses could "see"?

What did Jesus radiate?

I know that making a comparison between Seeskin's description of Rambam's understanding of experiencing the "effects" of God and the life of Jesus may seem like quite a conceptual leap, but stay with me here because I think the connection exists:

And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.

“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.

When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.”

But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.” -Luke 8:43-48

Look at one small bit of this narrative recorded in verse 46:

But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.”

We generally think that when Jesus performed a healing or a miracle, there had to be some sort of intent on his part. That is, he had to want to perform a miracle and had to have an intention as to what form the miracle would take. However we see in the case of the "woman with the issue of blood", that Jesus had no intention of healing whatsoever and in fact, didn't even know about the woman until the moment when she touched the hem (tzitzit?) of his garment and "power went out of him" to heal the woman.

Maimonides believes that we can only observe and benefit from the effects of God as they radiate from Him. Here we see an example of a person benefiting from the effects of what "radiates" from Jesus. Neither effect necessarily requires a specific intent of the "radiator" and this brings up an incredibly interesting question.

Do we benefit from the good effects of God upon our lives because God intents good toward us or do we reap these benefits simply because God is good and what He radiates (unintentionally) is good?

If we answer "yes" to the latter, we have to answer an additional question such as we see illustrated in the following:

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. -Genesis 50:20

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. -Jeremiah 29:11-12

Here we see that not only does God specifically intend to do good but that good will result from our prayers to God for aid and assistance. The Master said the same thing:

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” -Luke 11:11-13

Maimonides still doesn't have to be wrong here. God can intend to "radiate" what he radiates and direct His actions along intended lines. But how does this explain what we read in Luke 8:43-48? Of course, if you discount that Jesus and God have to be identical in the "mechanics" of how they "work", then you don't have to explain it, but when I was reading Seeskin's description of how Maimonides viewed God, the comparison between God and Jesus seemed a natural one.

There may be one other factor though. Let's go back to Luke 8 for a moment and specifically verse 48:

Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

Jesus said something like this on more than one occasion. He didn't say I have healed you. He said your faith has healed you, even under circumstances where Jesus was aware of the person's request to be healed and he intended to heal them (in Matthew 12:13, he heals the withered hand of a man who hadn't asked to be healed, but presumably the man wanted his hand healed and, in the larger context of the event, the man knew Jesus was discussing healing on the Shabbat with the Pharisees).

God can do good for us even if we don't ask Him (and even if we are not aware of Him), but we know that He will respond to us (though not always as we imagine) when we ask. Yet perhaps an effect of God is that He radiates His goodness throughout Creation so that we experience His benefits, just as the rain falls on both the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). There's no reason why God can't specifically intend to do good to a person and then that good happens and that God's very existence causes beneficial effects within His creation that we experience. There's also no reason why Jesus, during his time on earth, couldn't have intended to do good to others, but that his very nature, being a Divine representation of God's on earth, couldn't also have affected his environment, even to the point of healing a woman who touched his garment and who had faith that she would be healed.

At the beginning of this blog post, I quoted Rabbi Freeman when he said, I don't believe in philosophy. I believe in ideas that change people. This seems to draw a distinction between thinking and philosophy as represented by Maimonides, and a specific intent or set of ideas that result in a demonstrable change in human beings, but there may be no difference. We tend to get a picture of Maimonides as a cold, unfeeling thinker who spent his life in an ivory tower pondering arcane thoughts about God and the Torah, but he was also a physician who healed people and who advocated for justice, kindness, and mercy. In the case of the Rambam, his thoughts, feelings, and actions were all connected to living out the life God designed him to live. There was intention of both God and Maimonides and there were observable effects of the existence of both.

I do believe, like Maimonides, that we cannot experience or observe the totality of God as He exists objectively in what mystics describe as the Ayn Sof (although some people may have mystically encountered more of God's nature than we can within the limits of Creation), but I do believe that God has an intention for us and that He demonstrates that intention on an ongoing basis in ways we can experience. I also believe that people can benefit from God's existence and intentions, both the righteous and unrighteous, but the righteous in their awareness of God through faith and trust, can struggle to draw nearer to God and to do His will and reap additional blessings. This doesn't mean that we have more money, or trouble-free lives, or are smarter and wiser than other people, but it does mean we can be deliberately aware of God and what He is doing in the world and as a result, we can be a part of what He is doing. We can have faith and learn to trust God as we "see" what He does and more over, we can be a reflection of what He "emanates" in what we say and do and in some small way, we can show the rest of the world our how we experience a real and living God.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.