Facing God Means Facing that God Has Many Faces
D'var Torah from Riverway Unplugged, 4/18/12
Perhaps you've
heard the story that tells of God sitting in heaven one day when a scientist
comes up and says, “You know, God, we don’t need You anymore. Science has
solved the mystery of DNA. And we’ve finally figured out how to create
new life. In other words, we can now do what, in the beginning, You did.”
“Is that so?”
replied God, truly delighted by this turn of events. “Tell Me more.”
“Well,” said
the scientist, “we’ve figured out how to take dirt, form it into a likeness of
You, then breathe life into it and, voila, a human being!”
“Well,
that is interesting,” said God. “Why don’t you show Me a
demonstration.” So the scientist bent down and began scooping up soil from
which to mold the shape of a man.
“No, no, no,”
interrupted God. “Get your own dirt!”
Beneath the veil of
subtle humor within this tale is a loaded question. Perhaps several. And their age-old questions, which
nowadays is no less compelling and divisive that it was for the ancients who
crafted the Hebrew Bible. How was the universe created? How does mankind make sense of God—or,
to phrase that question humanistically, how do we make or find ultimate meaning
in this universe?
In our Torah portion
this week, Parashat Shmini, amid the nuts and bolts of the maintenance for the
sacrificial cult we find a theological gleaning. In chapter 9, Moses says to the people, "This is what
the Eternal has commanded that you do, so that the Presence of God will appear
to you." There are two instances in fact within this portion in which
Moses tells the Israelites that their sacrificial actions can result on God’s
appearance. No further description, just “God or God’s Presence will
appear.” I read this and wonder: really?
What will God look like? The Hebrew here clues us in: the term we find
for God’s presence is k'vod Adonai, often translated as the "Presence
of God" but it literally means "glory" of God. It's an
expression found mainly in priestly writings, and it denotes a visible manifestation
of God. This is the God we can see.
In Exodus 24, this k'vod Adonai appears as a consuming fire,
often accompanied by a hovering cloud that protects that Israelites in the
wilderness. K'vod Adonai: This is the kind of God that
actually appears. We can engage
this kind of God in space, and perhaps imagine this God saying to us, “get your
own dirt.”
But the Bible's not
monolithic, and if you look at the text as a whole it's not even monotheistic.
The book of Exodus is in fact more monolotrous than monotheistic. The
difference between monolatry and monotheism? Monolatry = Different
peoples have different gods; my God is bigger than your god. Monotheism = there’s only one God. It’s monotheism that wins the day
throughout Jewish history (as we find in the Shema), but that’s not to suggest
that this dominantly monotheistic tradition has one thing to say about this one
God.
Unfortunately, many
popular, influential writers, when critiquing religion, fail to understand this
aspect of Judaism. Consider the late writer Christopher Hitchens, in the
title of his immensely popular bestseller: God is Not Great. In
this polemic against religion, Hitchens responds to the God-image of a literal
dictator, who cares for, or neglects, his subjects at will.
Similarly, Richard
Dawkins, in his bestseller, The God Delusion, argues specifically
against a creationist god, against the God who says, “get your own dirt.”
Dawkins, like Hitchens, lumps all religions together, moderate and extreme
alike. He writes, “Even…moderate religion helps to provide the
climate of faith in which extremism naturally flourishes,” and he
ultimately equates religious education with “child
abuse.” If religious education were child-abuse, then we’d be
left with a God-image of an abuser.
So who cares what
they think?
One
person who cares is Dr. Carol Ochs, scholar of philosophy and spiritual guide,
who teaches that as children we all acquire God-images, from a variety of
places: from people, from authority figures; from the stories we read, the
songs we sing, and the tales we tell.
This all happens, “long before we become involved in…theological
debate.”
“Most
people,” according to Ochs and co-author Kerry Olitzsky, “are unlikely to
reflect on this image when they are older…to modify it in terms of their mature
consciousness. More common is the
experience that we formulate an image of God in our early years and do not look
at it again until a crisis hits.”
When
we are in crisis, what kinds of God-images, if any, do we turn to?
Rabbi
David Wolpe, a cancer survivor, debated Hitchens in November. He explained that he did not turn to
God as a dictator who controls everything. He didn’t even turn to an understanding of God who will
surely heal him. “What I prayed for,” Wolpe said, “was closeness….not a
miraculous cure…I prayed for the certainty that I was not alone… for blessing
and love, not magic.”
In fact, just as
we encounter varying images of God throughout Torah, our liturgy too abounds
with a plurality of God concepts. We can read our prayer book as one
great attempt at pushing language to its limits to find ultimate meaning in the
universe. There are many divine words employed in this great task.
Let’s now take a look
at the God-words that we sing throughout the Friday evening liturgy. If you’re writing your own siddur,
which ones would make your edition?
Or what’s missing from the list? (citations from Mishkan Tefila)
In the
history of the world, no book has sold more copies than the Bible. In
this greatest bestseller, the Hebrew word for God’s face is “panim” (In
Yiddish, “punum.”) It’s an unusual word because even though
it is singular, its grammatical form is plural: “faces.” It can also mean
“Presence.” Perhaps Torah is urging us to consider spiritual Presence in
light of this possibility: that facing God means facing that God has many
faces.
posted by Unknown at 8:30 PM
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