The Mysteries of Truth and Faith

There is no Truth without Faith. There is no Truth unless first there be a Faith on which it may be based.

-Milton Steinberg
As a Driven Leaf

The Torah was given to us in the barren, ownerless desert to emphasize that no man may claim any superior right to the word of G-d. It is equally the heritage of every Jew, man, woman, and child, equally accessible to the accomplished scholar and the most simple of Jews.

-Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory
As related by Rabbi Yanki Tauber at Chabad.org

Ben Hei Hei would say: According to the pain is the gain.

-Pirkei Avot 5:21

What is truth and where do you find it? I suppose the answer to that depends on the individual. In Yossi Halevi's book At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, we learn that holiness can be found in many unexpected places. It was certainly surprising to Halevi, the son of Holocaust survivors and an Israeli (he made Aliyah from New York in 1982) journalist to find holiness equally displayed among Muslim sages and Christian monks. Each of us, in our own way, searches for the Divine, some by gazing into the cosmos and others by searching the core of our souls.

I am seeking the part of God that dwells in me. Each person is created in the image of God and encapsulates a mystic spark from beyond the limits of Creation. It's as if that spark is continually trying to return to its Source. Jewish mystics believe that when we die, the animal or earthly part of our souls dies with us but the spark of the Divine flies upward and rejoins God.

Milton Steinberg says that we can find no truth unless it is based on faith. This crashes head-on into the typical secular understanding of "truth" based on facts and the belief that faith is irrelevant (or at least unspoken), but there can be no relationship with God without faith. Only God holds the truth of our existence in His hands.

When Rabbi Schneerson says that the Torah was given to us in the barren, ownerless desert to emphasize that no man may claim any superior right to the word of G-d, he is specifically speaking of the Jewish nation and that the Torah belongs equally to the Prince and the pauper; to the Priest and the woodcutter, yet it is also said:

Many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. -Isaiah 2:3

Listen to me, my people;
hear me, my nation:
Instruction will go out from me;
my justice will become a light to the nations. -Isaiah 51:4

If we can believe the words of God as related through the prophet Isaiah, then we can add another meaning to Rabbi Schneerson's comments and say that the giving of the Torah in the desert may apply also to all of humanity. I'm not contradicting my position on how the Torah applies in a different manner to the Jew and the non-Jew, but I am saying that God is One and His Word is One. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and He is the God of Adam and Noah, too. He is the God of the Jewish Messiah, of the Apostle Paul, and of all the Jews and non-Jews to whom the Apostle taught the way of salvation and the path of Jesus.

How the Torah is applied to the Jewish people may seem obvious, depending on your viewpoint and tradition, but how the nations are supposed to understand the Torah as it "goes forth from Zion" isn't always clear. Certainly not all of you reading this blog will agree on how or perhaps even if the Law or any part of it is accessible to the non-Jewish nations:

Any dispute that is for the sake of Heaven is destined to endure; one that is not for the sake of Heaven is not destined to endure. Which is a dispute that is for the sake of Heaven? The dispute(s) between Hillel and Shammai. Which is a dispute that is not for the sake of Heaven? The dispute of Korach and all his company. -Pirkei Avot 5:17

While discussions between Jews and non-Jews over matters of Torah may not be accurately compared to the debates between Hillel and Shammai, I will be so bold as to say that our exchanges are still "for the sake of Heaven". While many Jews will agree that Hashem is the God of both Jews and Gentiles, they will apply the Noahide Laws as the obligation the nations are bound to in relation to God. Yet as I confirmed recently, from the teachings of the Jewish Messiah, we can allow the non-Jewish disciples to access more. How much more is a point of conjecture, but part of my personal journey is to pursue these questions and to attempt to live out the answers.

To paraphrase Ben Hei Hei, "it won't be easy".

Yet I don't believe my interest in the wisdom of the sages or the teachings of the man some have called "the Maggid of Nazeret" is the result of a random collision of interests. God is purposeful and His Creation is designed; nothing is truly irrelevant.

You ask me, “Why did G-d allow it to happen?”

You recognize that everything in this world has purpose and meaning. Examine any aspect of His vast Creation, from the cosmos to the workings of the atom, and you will see there must be a plan.

And so you ask, where does this fit into the plan?
How could it?

I can only answer, painfully, G-d alone knows.

But what I cannot know, I need not know.

I need not know in order to fulfill
that which my Creator has created me to do.

And that is, to change the world
so this could never happen again.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Chabad.org

Tragic events, such as the horrible effects of the recent storms in the midwest, the ongoing nuclear reactor crisis in Japan, and the struggle to serve the needy in Haiti are all a part of God's plan that completely eludes us. We live in a broken world where people are scared and hurt and dying.

My modest seeking of God's "face", so to speak, from the writings of such men as Maimonides and Steinberg and Schneerson is just as much a part of God's plan, perhaps just as mysterious, and completely purposeful. I live a human life in a broken world, but I'm seeking the means by which I can repair my small corner of it.

Soon, I will launch a new blog (I'll provide a link) and begin a new journey. I invite you all to join me.

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought." -Matsuo Basho, Japanese poet

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

Descent

I say to God my Rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?” My bones suffer mortal agony as my foes taunt me, saying to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. -Psalm 42:9-11

There is only one thing that can put you further ahead than success, and that is surviving failure.

When you are successful, you are whole and complete. That is wonderful, but you cannot break out beyond your own universe.

When you fail, you are broken. You look at the pieces of yourself lying on the ground and say, “This is worthless.”

Now you can escape. The shell is broken, the shell of a created being. Now you can grow to join the Infinite.

-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Getting Ahead with Failure"
Chabad.org

I admit to struggling with seeing the glass as half-full as opposed to half-empty. In part, the search for God is the search for significance and meaning in life. Who am I? What am I doing here? Does my life mean anything beyond the immediate needs I fill? Is there nothing more than this?

The Psalmist says to put your hope in God when your soul is downcast, but it's not always that easy. There's sometimes a difference between faith in God and trust in God. I realize that's a horrible thing to say. After all, who doesn't trust God? Who is afraid that God won't take care of us in all of the troubles in the world?

Both the Master and Paul commented on this:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? -Matthew 6:25-26

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. -Philippians 4:6-7

So, you never worry, right?

Right. Sure.

And yet, when our lives are the biggest mess is the time when we call upon God the most. When everything we do turns to mud and all of our circumstances and problems threaten to overwhelm us, is when we manage to crawl up to our hand and knees and call upon the Name of the Lord with fear and trembling.

After one of his greatest failures, David poured out his heart, "Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice" (Psalm 51:9). But sometimes, after we have an encounter with God, we still feel crushed. Relying upon God doesn't always mean God will make you "feel better", as if you are a small child who fell down, scraped your knee, and went running to Mommy so she can make it all better.

Sometimes God makes it all better but sometimes he does not.

In the Jewish mystic tradition, it is said that God created the universe in a dark void from which He had withdrawn, and then sent in ten vessels containing a "primordial light" (Let there be light -Genesis 1:3), but the vessels could not contain such a Holy light and they shattered. Divine sparks scattered across the entire cosmos like sand thrown across a glass table, falling all over our world.

It is said that our mission as human beings is to gather the sparks and repair the broken vessels, restoring the brokenness of the universe. This is a mystic meaning to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam or "repairing the world". Yet in repairing the world, we also repair our broken selves:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. -2 Corinthians 4:6-12

In our pain, despair, and brokenness, Rabbi Freeman says there is a unique opportunity to become more than who we are. Our vulnerability is also our openness to greater intimacy with God. In shattering our souls, we also shatter the wall between our world and the presence of the Divine.

When dining on ashes, we can dine with the Creator. If God goes down into exile with Israel (Genesis 46:3-4), then He goes down with us into our darkest abyss as well. The taste of the meal is bitter, but in that bitterness, we do not dine on the bread of our affliction alone.

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

Mystic Wonder

People were also bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” -Luke 18:15-17

This can probably be misunderstood. For some folks out there, this can be considered something of a justification that you don't really have to "study" the Bible, since it's simple enough for a child to understand. After all, Jesus said that anyone who is not "childlike" cannot enter the kingdom of God. This verse can even be used as a non-so-subtle criticism against the Jewish tradition to study Torah and to honor such study.

Of course, there's more than one way to look at the Master's teaching:

If you want to understand something to its depths, first approach it with the mind of a five-year-old. Ask the innocent and obvious questions and make things clear and simple. Through that clarity, you will perceive the depths.
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Start Simple"
Chabad.org

That's certainly one way to interpret this teaching of the Jewish Messiah and it fits with the theme of studying the Word and approaching it as a small child would. You start at the surface or in the shallow end of the pool, like a child first learning how to swim. Eventually, depending on the amount of time and effort you put into your swimming though, you could end up in the Olympics or as an oceanographer exploring the ocean's depths.

However, there's yet another perspective to consider:

Amazement never ceases for the enlightened mind. At every moment it views with amazement the wonder of an entire world renewed out of the void, and asks, "Why is there anything at all and not just nothing?"
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Wonder"
Chabad.org

This is how I tend to understand the words of Jesus (Yeshua). He wasn't necessarily saying that only the young and unsophisticated mind can approach the wisdom of God, but rather, that we should continually strive to see the world around us with fresh eyes, as if experiencing all of Creation for the first time.

The world, indeed the whole universe, is a beautiful, astonishing, wondrous place. -Derek K. Miller (1969-2011)

Derek Miller died after a long struggle with cancer, just a few days ago at the age of 41.He leaves behind a wife and two young daughters. He didn't have faith in God and expected, when he died, that would be the end of all things for him. Blackness. Emptiness. Non-existence. No meeting with God.

Yet, in the face of suffering and anguish, he was able to write those incredible words and to see his environment with the eyes of wonder; the eyes of a child. These are the eyes and the heart that Jesus speaks of when he asked that the children be brought to him. If Derek Miller can see the world this way and yet seemingly not know God, how much more should we experience God's Creation as a child, seeing it every day through the lens of faith?

You cannot separate the mystical from the practical. Each thing has both a body and a soul, and they act as one. Neither can contradict the other, and in each the other can be found.
-Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
"Mystical and Practical"
Chabad.org

Very young children unreservedly believe in the mystical, the magical, the impossible, in just the same way as they believe in the existence of their parents, their favorite breakfast, and the bed in which they sleep. They accept God and His mercy in exactly the same manner as they accept their father's and mother's love.

That kind of experience gets lost somewhere along the way, but it doesn't have to stay lost. The mystery of the universe is the fabric by which God weaves our very existence. What we experience with our senses and what we experience as a matter of faith are the same thing. There is no difference, nor should there be a difference.

We can enter a mystical perception of the Creation of God at any time. All we have to do is open our eyes and our hearts the same way a two-year old opens his arms for a hug.

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

Dust and Genesis

To those who curse me, let my soul be silent; and let my soul be like dust to everyone.

Those words are part of the final paragraph an individual says at the end of the Shemoneh Esrei prayers as found in the Artscroll Siddur: Nusach Sefard. They speak of a deep humility, not only in the presence of God but in the presence of all other human beings. I suppose by virtue of the fact that I'm blogging here, I'm not allowing my soul to be silent and in expressing opinions, can I, or any other blogger in the realm of faith, be said to have our souls be like dust to everyone?

Probably not. And yet, something inside of me won't let me be silent. Vanity? Ego? The American need to "have my say?" I can't dismiss those possibilities and remain honest with myself, with anyone who may stumble across this blog, or with God. Therefore, I'll continue to chronicle my personal journey on the path, looking for illumination, and trust that there's a higher purpose for the words I'm posting to the web. I can't promise that everyone will agree with what I say here or that I'll completely avoid offending someone, however this blog isn't an exercise in political correctness. Remember, you were warned.

I suppose I should say here that there are those who may consider it inappropriate for me as a Gentile to quote from or reference in any way a Jewish siddur. I am sorry if this disturbs anyone, but despite the fact that I’m not Jewish, I find myself drawn to the beauty of these prayers.

I also need to say that I'm not writing the blog "at" anyone, although I do admit that recent conversations with members of particular factions within the Messianic Jewish movement have inspired my personal re-evaluation of my faith and how it's expressed. At the risk of sounding egotistical, this really is about me, however, I suspect, it's also about a lot of other non-Jews who are trying to find answers to the questions I'm posing here. In other words, try not to take anything I say personally.

Now let's continue.

I'm taking this opportunity to re-examine my faith beginning at a fundamental level. To turn a phrase, I'm taking it "back to formula". I'm not quite going to the basement level though. I'm willing to keep a few assumptions.

I'll assume that the Bible containing the Old and New Testament texts (or Tanakh and Apostolic Scriptures, if you prefer) is indeed the inspired Word of God and that, as it was originally given, those texts were and are the documented history of God in relation to people.

I'll also accept from those texts, that the Jewish people, the nation of Israel collectively and individually, are the chosen people of God and that they have a unique, covenental relationship with God that is not shared by the rest of humanity. This relationship is well documented in the Bible and in fact, the vast majority of the Bible speaks to the relationship between God and the Jewish people.

For me then, the question is, do non-Jewish people have a relationship with God or can we in some sense, request such a relationship, albeit one that is outside the covenant between God and Israel? More basically, does God only care about what happens to people who are Jewish or does he care about humanity as a whole as well? More personally, do I matter to God in even the smallest degree?

Let's look at some details. Has God ever had a relationship of any sort with people who aren't Jewish? If you go far enough back in the Bible, the answer is "yes".

No one will argue that the oldest members of Judaism are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There were no Jews before them. That means the first people God created, Adam and Eve, weren't Jewish. This is important because God had a personal relationship with Adam and Eve. They talked to God and God talked back...one to one.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." -Genesis 3:8-12

While this passage from Genesis doesn't describe the highest point in the lives of Adam and Eve, it certainly shows that a direct conversation was taking place between God and Adam and further more, that it mattered to God what Adam and Eve did and didn't do. They weren't irrelevant to God as living beings and in fact, they were special among all of the other living creations of God. Only human beings could disobey God and disappoint God.

I know what you're thinking. Things didn't work out so well for the non-Jewish creations of God prior to the days of Abraham and in fact, God brought a flood to the earth to destroy all living beings because their sin was so great. Only Noah and a few others were spared, along with just enough animals to repopulate the planet once the flood subsided. But let's consider Noah for a moment.

This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. -Genesis 6:9

Noah was a righteous man. By definition, he wasn't Jewish. God talked to him and he talked to God. He obeyed God and in that obedience, he was responsible for all living land and air creatures (as far as I'm aware, he didn't have huge aquarium on board the Ark) surviving the flood.

God can have a relationship with non-Jews. Non-Jews can be righteous. Non-Jews can obey God and walk with God. As it says in Genesis 6:22, Noah did everything just as God commanded him. After the flood subsided and Noah, his family, and all living things could come out of the Ark again, Noah did something interesting.

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. -Genesis 8:20-21

Noah built an altar and sacrificed clean animals and birds as burnt offerings on it. We usually associate that sort of behavior with the Children of Israel in the days of the Tabernacle and later the First and Second Temples. Interesting.

This isn't the first time the Bible records non-Jewish people offering sacrifices to God. Genesis 4:1-4 describes the sacrifices offered by Adam and Eve's sons Cain and Abel (and subsequently, the world's first murder, unfortunately). Thus Gentiles were able to talk to God, have God talk back to them, listen to God, obey God, be considered righteous by God, and to offer animal sacrifices to God which God could then accept or reject, depending on the motivation of the person offering the sacrifice.

In other words, Gentiles, before and at least right after the flood, had a relationship with God...at least some Gentiles did. This means that Gentiles who choose to listen to God and obey God are not insignificant to God and in fact are noticed and may even be considered important to God. Certainly the sins of Gentiles were significant to God since they resulted in the flooding of the whole Earth (or just the populated areas of the Earth, depending on whose theology you consider).

So far, so good. If God can have a relationship with Adam and Noah, maybe He'll be willing to have a relationship with Gentiles today, too, including me.

Looks like God is even willing to bless Gentiles:

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. -Genesis 9:1-3

It was from Noah's immediate family that the human population of the Earth was restored. Among Noah's children, Shem would be the ancestor of the Semitic peoples including the Jews. All the peoples of the Earth would come from Noah's line.

God "chose" Adam in the sense that He created Him. I don't know the process God used to create human life and if God "chose" Adam as a personality or if Adam was a generic "anyman". God did choose Noah specifically in response to Noah's righteous walk with God. Now God chooses Abram.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him. -Genesis 12:6-7

This is the first time God makes a promise that will ultimately result in the Land of Canaan being the sacred inheritance of the Children of Israel (Abram's offspring through Isaac). Remember, Abram who subsequently is called Abraham by God, did not start out life as a Jew nor were all of his children considered Jewish. Yet he did establish a relationship with God as the One God of the Universe. He's also a model, like Noah, of righteousness through faith.

Then the word of the LORD came to him: "This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars — if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be."

Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. -Genesis 15:4-6

Paul references this moment in Abraham's life in Romans 4:3 to illustrate that man is justified by faith, not by actions. Of course, Paul also referred to Abraham as "our forefather", so was he only talking to a Jewish audience and not including the Gentile believers? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Or am I?

Is this blessedness only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. -Romans 4:9-12

There's at least a hint here that justification by faith is available to both Jewish and Gentile believers, according to Paul. To recap, up until the time of Abraham, it was possible for non-Jewish people to have a relationship, even a relatively close relationship with God. Did that change with the ascent of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Jacob's children? Did God so love the Jewish nation that He stopped considering everyone else? Were the Gentile nations relegated to being only "the bad guys" in the larger Biblical saga?

I don't believe so, but I'm forced to follow the Biblical narrative, step by step, tracing the lives of the Jews and Gentiles recorded there, trying to see where the relationship of Gentiles with God came from and what eventually happened to it. Did the covenant promises of God to the Jewish nation result in only Jews being loved, considered, and cared for by God? Is the rest of humanity just an exceptionally large field of dry grass that will eventually be thrown on the fire as the Jews enter the life of the world to come when Messiah returns?

So far, there are indications that it doesn't have to be this way particularly if you consider Paul's words in Romans, but I don't want my first "dusty" article on this topic to be overly long. I'll end my own narrative and analysis here at Genesis 15 and at Romans 4, but there's more to come. I hope to understand that the existence of non-Jewish humanity isn't completely irrelevant to God and that my own existence in the world and my worship of God isn't in vain. Will I succeed and can I find evidence for this in the Bible? We'll see shortly.

Stay tuned.