Religion

TEN --~-- One Question

Left Unanswered

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Among all my patients in the second half of life, that is, over thirty-five, there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.

-C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

IF there had been psychiatrists in Jerusalem twenty-five hundred years ago, Ecclesiastes might well have gone to one and told him, "I'm unhappy because I feel that some- thing is missing in my life. I feel that I'm not as consis- t~ntly good as I should be. I feel I'm wasting a lot of my lime and my talents. I keep trying to live up to the stan- dards I set for myself and sometimes I almost get there, ~ut never quite. I feel that with all the advantages I have ad, I have wasted my life. " And the therapist might have

:?Id him, " You're asking too much of yourself. Be realis-;• !0~er your standards. After all, you are only human ." c esiastes would have left the appoint ment feeling even

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more disappointed in himself for not being more com. farted by such well-intentioned professional advice.

But it would probably have been the wrong answer. A man like Ecclesiastes needs to set his sights high. In order for his life to take on meaning, he has to feel that he has been summoned to do important things. We feel better when significant moral demands are made of us. We feel we are being taken seriously as moral creatures. It would have been better to tell him that God would forgive him for trying and falling short than to suggest that he give up the effort and lower his expectations of himself.

A young man who ran away from his conventional middle-class home to join the Unification Church was asked why he had done it. He replied, "My father only talks about getting into college and getting a good job. Reverend Moon talks to me about helping him save the world." Just as we misunderstand what it means to be a parent when we make life so easy for our children that they never have to test themselves, we misunderstand human nature when we think we are helping people by not expecting very much of them. "Only human" should not be an excuse for laziness, carelessness, or selfishness. To be human is a great thing, and God pays us the ultimate compliment when He makes demands of us that He makes of no other living creatures. It may be hard to be good, given all the distractions and temptations of the world, but it is a lot harder to be told that you don't have what it takes to be good, so you are excused from trying.

Ecclesiastes asked, "What makes my life matter? What makes it more than a passing phenomenon, not worth noticing while I am alive and destined to be forgotten as soon as I am dead?" His answer ultimately was, "I can't come up with an answer, but I instinctively feel that 178

One Question Left Unanswered

l·c has to be more than mere biological existence. human 11e k . h c ·1 h When I am happy at my wor or wit my ,am1 y, w en

loved when I am generous or thoughtful, I I love or am ' . . . 1· feel that something more sigmfican; th

1 _an ~ust bemg a 1ve

. · on I feel human, and that ,ee mg 1s more persua-1s gomg · . ,, sive than logic or ph1losophy.

I think he is right, but he has not gone far enough. Having almost answered his question, "What make~ my life matter?" by referring to instincts and vague feehngs, he leaves one big question unanswered . In that case, who needs God? Can we deal with the issue of life's ultimate meaning without reference to God? Ecclesiastes has ~een disappointed by organized religion as he has been disap- pointed by pleasure, wealth, and learning. So he tries to build a foundation for his life all by himself, and he almost manages to do it. When he tells us to "eat [our] bread in gladness," he underscores his advice by adding, "for your action was long ago approved by God." Is there no more significant role for God in all this than to stand apart and approve of our actions from afar? Ecclesiastes has been a helpful guide, but he stops short of the one last step we need to take. Without it, our search for life's meaning may offer us no more than personal preferences and wish~ul thinking. Ecclesiastes has made a courageous leap of f~1th in the absence of any evidence that human life is meaning- ful, but it is only faith in himself to which he leaps. ~hat Will be the basis of his faith, the basis of his life's mean mg, when he is no longer around to affirm it?

To what question is God the answer? When we suggeSI that God is the answer to, Does Somebody really hve m H . . . 1. • d make it harder for eaven? we tnv1ahze re 1g1on an h thoughtful people to take it seriously and fi nd hel p 1 ~ r: The existence of God is not the issue; th e difference 0

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can make in our lives is . When we claim that God is the answer to the question, Is Somebody up there watching me, keeping a book on all my sins and preparing a moral report card on me? we help fashion a religion grounded in fear and unrealistic expectations.

What does God do for us to lift our lives above the level of mere existence? For one thing, He commands us. He imposes on us a sense of moral obligation. Our lives be- come important because we are here on earth not just to eat, sleep, and reproduce, but to do God's will.

Human beings have a need to be good. We need to be taken seriously as moral agents, and God shows us that He takes us seriously by expecting moral behavior from us. We feel uncomfortable, inauthentic when we are not living up to our moral nature. That may be why little children who break something or do something wrong are not satisfied until they have been found out and punished. They do not want to get away with it. It may not be pleasant to be scolded or disciplined, but it is a whole lot worse to live in a world which does not care if you do good things or bad ones. This may also be why some church and synagogue congregations seem to enjoy "fire and brim- stone" sermons in which the preacher scolds them for being such reprobates and sinners. It reassures them that God and His ministers have set high standards for them. It takes a lot to extinguish the spark of God in our souls and make us insensitive to the moral summons of being human . Even Hitler's SS troops needed periodic "ser- mons" to make sure that their instinct for compassion did not interfere with their work.

Our human nature is such that we need to be helpful, thoughtful, and generous as much as we need to eat, sleep,

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and exercise. When we eat too much and exercise too little, we feel out of sorts. Even our personalities are affected. And when we are selfish and deceitful, it has the same effect. We become out of touch with our real selves· we forget what it feels like to feel good . '

Do you remember the story of Joseph from the Bible? When Joseph was seventeen, he was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. His comfortable, secure life as his father's favorite was suddenly replaced by a life of hard- ship and insecurity. For twenty years, he dreamed of the day when he would get even with his brothers. He put up with loneliness and injustice by picturing in his mind's eye how he would make his brothers beg and grovel and plead for mercy, as they had made him do. And in his imagina- tion, he loved every second of it.

Then one day it happened. There was a famine in the land of Canaan. Only in Egypt was there grain to be had. Joseph had become Pharaoh's minister of agriculture, in charge of distributing that grain, and it was in that setting that his brothers appeared before him. He recognized them but they did not recognize him. This was the mo- ment he had been dreaming of for twenty years. Now he had them in his power. Now he would get even with them for what they had done to his life. But as he began to torment them, threatening to keep one of them as his slave and accusing them of being spies, something very strange happened. Joseph found that he was not enjoying it as much as he thought he would . It felt so good in his dreams to hurt them, to get even with them. But in actuality, he couldn't enjoy it. He did not like the person he was becom- ing. He who hated his brothers for being cruel and hard- hearted could not stand seeing himself become cruel and hardhearted (and therefore a person worthy of being

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hated) li ke them (or rath er, as they had been twen ty Years ago but no longer were). Joseph discovered th at the human soul was not made for jealousy and revenge. Act - ing agai nst his true nature, he became increasingly uncom. fortable until fi nally he broke down and cried, and told his brothers who he was.

It may well be that selfishness, cynicism, mistrust of other people are not only immoral, offensive to G od . T hey may be unhealthy and destructive to us as well. A 1984 study at Duke University Medical Center examined the link between "Ty pe A behavior" (the impatient, hard. driving, high ly competitive person) and hea rt disease, The hypothesis was that Type A personalities would develop coronary artery and blood pressure problems more than the average person. What th ey foun d instead was that some T ype A personalities were healthier t han the na- tional average and seemed to thrive on the challenges and competition in their lives. But the Type A' s who were competitive and aggressive because t hey believed tha t most people around them were cheats and liars and so they had to connive and lie to avoid being taken advantage of, were constantly tense and apprehensive, constantly at odds with the ot her people in their lives, and their arteries and blood pressure readings showed the results.

In the same way that the human body is fashioned so that certain food s and certain kinds of activity are h ealth- ier for us than others, I believe that G od made the h uman soul in such a way that certain kinds of behavior are healthier for us than others. Jealousy, selfishness, mistrust poison the soul; honesty, generosity, and cheerfu lness re- store it. We literally feel be tter after we have gone out of our way to be helpful to someone.

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God is the answer to the question , W hy should I be a od and honest person when I see people around me

gotting away with murder? G od is the answer not because ~e will intervene to reward the righteous and punish the wicked but because He has made the human soul in such a way that only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us fe eling spiritually healthy and human.

Biologist Lewis Thomas h as written that nature's great law fo r all living things is not the survival of the fi ttest but the principle of cooperation. Plants and animals survive not by defeating their neighbors in the competition for food and light but by learning .to live with their neighbors in such a way that everyone prospers. God is the force that moves us to rise above selfish ness and help our neighbors, even as He inspires them to transcend selfishness and help us. God pulls us upward out of ourselves, even as the sun makes the plants and trees grow taller. God summons us to be more than we started out to be.

Recently the twenty-one-year-old son offrie nds of mine was fo und to have bone cancer. His parents had to take him three thousand miles from home, to a hospital in Seattle, in a desperate attempt to have hi m treated wi th a new and experimental therapy. When word of th eir prob- lem got out, some as tonishing things began to happen. Service clubs organized fund-raising drives to help pa y their expenses. One of Seattle's fi nest hotels invited them to stay at no charge while the boy was in the hospi tal; restaurants served them and would not accept their money. The governor of Massachusetts intervened to di- rect their health insurance company to assume the cost of what some held to be an experimental form of treatment. Some might ask, Why would God permit a twenty-one- year-old to fa ll ill with cancer? I am inclined to ask, What

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moves people to _res pond to tragedy with such gene rosity and compassion tf not G od? The skeptic and the agnost' are a_ble to explain the evil in the world by denying God~~ role _m huma~ affairs . But how do they explain the good? Having explained cruelty and crime, how do they exp( ·

. k ' d am gene r?stt y, m ncss, courage, and self-sacrifice , u nless God 1s at work on us the way the sun affects the flo mak· . dbl wer, . mg 1t grow an ossom and reveal its most beautif I mne r self? u

G od gives us hope in a way that no human agent can Amo ng humans, Murphy's Law operates: Anything tha~ can g~ wrong will. B~t at the divine level, there is another , oppos1t_c law : A~ythmg that should be set right sooner or lat~r will. G?d 1s the answer to the question, What is the pomt of trying _ to _make the world better if problems of war, h unger , tnJust1ce, and hatred are so vast and stubborn that I can' t even make a dent in them in my lifetime? G od assu res us, in a way that no mortal can, that what we do ~ot ~chieve in our lifetime will be completed beyond our lifetime and m part because of what we did in our lifetime. Human beings may be mortal, appearing on earth for just a few years , but God's will is eternal. Ecclesiastes worried What is the poin t of all the good I do if I die and all m; good deeds a rc forgotten? The answer is that good deeds are nev er wasted and not forgotten . What cannot be achieved in one lifetime will happen when one lifetime is join ed to another. People who neve r knew each other in life become partners in making good things happen, be- cause the Eternal God gives their deeds a measure of eternity .

I have stood in the Canadian Rockies and have seen the gorges cut into the mountain rock by flo win g streams of water. To the cas ual observer, it would seem that noth ing

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on earth is harder th an rock ~nd noth ing easier to divert than water. Yet, over centu nes, the water has won the battle, cutting into and reshaping the rock. No one drop of water is stronger than rock, but each one contributed to the ultimate victor y.

What questions burdened Ecclesiastes to which God could have been the answer? In the fa ll of 1952, I was a sophomore at Columbia U nive rsity. I was too young to vote but old eno ugh to fo ll ow th e presidential election with interest . Although D wight Eisenhower was president of Columbia at th at time, most of my classmates favore d the Democrat, Adlai Stevenson. (At Princeton, Steven- son's alma mater, th e students were for Eisenhower.) But what I remember most about the election of 1952 is not that Eisenhower won or that Stevenson lost but th at Rob- ert Taft died so soon after it.

For a generation, Senator R obert Taft of Ohio had been the conscience of the R epublican party, the embodiment of its principles as an alternative to t he New Deal. His lifelong ambition had been to be President of the Un ited States as his fath er, W illiam H oward Taft, had been. With the Democ rats complacent and scandal-ridden after twenty years in office, with an unpopular war in Korea, 1952 looked like his year . But that summer, the Republi- can party turned to Eisenhower, a war hero to millions of Army veterans and other Americans. Taft died shortly afte r Eisenhower' s inauguration.

I remember that at the time, I fo und it hard to accept the idea that a man like Taft could be well enou gh to cam pai gn fo r the presidency in the summer of 1952 and be termi nally ill with cancer a few months later. I began to suspect that there was some connection between the

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collapse of his lifelong dream and the collapse of his health soon afterward. . How do you go on living when you feel that your whole

hfe has been a failure? When you have to concede that th goal you worked for and dreamed of is out of reach an~ will ne ver be yo urs , when you are too old to come up with another l_1fclong goal and you have nothing to look for- ward to m you~ remaining . years ex_cept being reminded daily of your failure, what 1s the pomt of being alive? I f through all of your life, you wanted nothing more than t' be_ a ~ood wife and mother to people you loved, and i~ m1d-hfe you find yourself d ivorced or widowed through no fault of your own, or your children have turned out very differently from how you hoped they would , where do you find the strength to keep walking into the future? If your driving dream was to be more successful than your father, to earn more money and achieve higher status so that he would finally have to admit that you had what it took, and now you confront the fact that you will never do it, how do you live with the broken fragments of that d ream?

To what . quest ion, then , is God the answer? Among other things, He is the answer to, How can you go on living when you feel that your life has been a failure? " For man sees only what is visible, but the Lord sees into the heart." (I Samuel 16:7) Secular human society, man with- out God, can only judge by results, by achievements. Did you win or did you lose? Did you make it happen or did you fail? Did you show a profit or a deficit? But God alone can judge us on the basis of what we are, not only what we have-done. In a secular society, only deeds have value, and so people are worthwhile only if t hey do things , if they are productive and successful. When a person is killed or crippled in an accident, how do we calculate the harm

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to him? We fig ure his lost earning capacity . Teenag-done bl . . ers and old people are pro ems m our society because they live, breathe, an? eat, but they are n~t pr_oductive. They don't do any thmg. A college education 1s recom- mended not because it deepen~ your soul and helps you

nderstand life but because 1t enhances your earning ;ower. So Eugene Horowitz writes, " We fear growing old lest we no longer be useful, that is, able to do things which show others that we have worth. We equate our value wi th our performing ."

When we cannot measure people by God's standards, we can only evaluate them by human standards: Are they useful? The woman who is no longer attract ive and has passed her childbearing years and the man who can no longer push himself to surpass his sales quota are no longer useful, and therefore they barely exist as people. But if people see only what is visible, measurable, God sees into the heart. He not only forgives our failures, He sees successes where no one else does, not even we ourselves. Only God can give us credit for the angry words we did not speak, the temptations we resisted, the patience and gentleness little noticed and long forgotten by those around us. J ust being human gives us a certain value in His eyes, and tryin g to live with integrity makes us suc- cessful before Him .

God might have said to Robert Taft in 1952, as He.may have said to Paul Tsongas in 1984, " So you wont be President. Neither will most people. But look _at the very real and substantial achievements of your pubhc and your

. k feel successful. Los-personal hfe. They should ma e you If . k think of yourse mg the nomination should not ma e you Id

. . If because you cou as a failure . But losing faith m youi:5e !'fe and not all of it, only do some of what you wanted m 1

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not being able to keep your victories in perspective be- cause of this defeat-that would be failure. "

Eugene Borowitz has written :

We did not anticipate the possibility of deep or lasting failure. We could not believe that our best ideas might be too small, our plans inadequate, our charac- ter mean, our wills perverse. We certainly did not expect that in doing righteousness we might also cre- ate evil, sometimes ones so great that they seemed to outweigh the good we had done. The result is not only moral malaise but a time in which, amid the greatest freedom and affluence people have ever known, our common psychiatric problem has shifted from guilt to depression. Knowing our failures, we cannot truly believe in ourselves. We cannot even do the good which lies within our power, because fa ilure has convinced us that nothing we might do is worth anything. If religion could teach secular society to accept failure without becoming paralyzed and to reach for forgiveness without mitigating our sense of responsibility, we might end the dejection and moral lassitude which now suffuse ou r civilization .. . If religion could restore a sense of personal dignity to our society, it would secure the basis upon which any hope of rebuilding the morale of our civilization must res t. (Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Summer 1984)

God redeems us from the sense of fail ure and the fear of failure because He sees us as no human eyes can see us. Some religions teach that God sees us so clearly that He knows all our shameful thoughts and nas ty secrets. I pre- fer to believe that God sees us so clearly that He knows

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better than anyone else o~r wounds and sorrows, the scars on our hearts from havm g wanted to do more and do b tter and being told by the world that we never would. e Does it make a difference how I live? D oes it make a

difference if I am a good, honest, faithful, compassionate person? It does not seem to make a difference to my bank account, or my chances for fame and fortune. But sooner or later, we learn as Ecclesiastes learned that those are not the things that really matter. It matters if we are true to ourselves, to our innate human nature that requires th ings like honesty and kindness and grows flabb y and distorted if we neglect them. It matters if we learn how to share our lives wi th others, making them and their world different, rather than try to hoard life for ourselves. It matters if we learn to recognize the pleasures of eve ry day , food and work and love and friendship , as encounters with the divine, encounters that teach us not only that God is real but that we are real too. Those things make all the differ- ence.

In the Jewish tradition, we celebrate a holiday eve ry autumn known as Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. It is, in part, an old harvest festival, deriving from a time when the Israelites were fa rmers and would give thanks every autumn when the harvest had been gathered. In fact, it is the prototype of our American festival of Thanksgiving. And in part, it is a commemoration of God 's protecting care over Israel during the forty years in the wi lderness between Egypt and the Promised Land.

We celebrate Sukkot by building a small annex to our hom es, just a fe w boards and branches, inviting friends in, and drinking wine and eating fruit in it fo r the week of the holiday. Sukkot is a celebration of the beauty of things that don' t last, the little hut which is so vulnerable to wmd

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and rain ( ours regularly collapses a day or two after we put it up) and will be dismantled at week's end; the ripe fruits which will spoil if not picked and eaten right away; the friends who may not be with us for as long as we would wish; and in northern climates, the beauty of the leaves changing color as they begin the process of dying and falling from the trees. Sukkot comes in the fall. Summer is over and sometimes the evenings are already chilly with the first whispers of winter. It comes to tell us that the world is full of good and beautiful things, food and wine, flowers and sunsets and autumn landscapes and good company to share them with, but that we have to enjoy them right away because they will not last. They will not wait for us to finish other things and get around to them. It is a time to "eat our bread in gladness and drink our wine with joy" not despite the fact that life does not go on forever but precisely because of that fact. It is a time to enjoy happiness with those we love and to realize that we are at a time in our lives when enjoying today means more than worrying about tomorrow. It is a time to celebrate the fact that we have finally learned what life is about and how to make the most of it. The special scriptural reading assigned for study in the synagogue during the Feast of Tabernacles is the Book of Ecclesiastes.

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