From the Rabbi's Desk

Traditional theology has asserted that “everything happens for a reason” and that when we do bad, we’re punished and when we do good we’re rewarded. This idea isn’t unique to Judaism and the Jewish people. It’s something that different religious groups and their followers have clung to for centuries. Some of us find this idea to be comforting because it means there’s a rationale that the world operates in a way that’s neat and organized. The problem with this theology is when many of us look at the world, this isn’t how it appears to operate.

When Carrie and I spent years dealing with our infertility, I was left feeling rejected and punished by a God I’d spent my life trying to serve and please. Left with my traditional theology, I could only assume God was behind this awfulness and that I had to cope with the adversity and find the meaning behind it. Eventually I found God, not in the infertility, but in the doctors who worked with us to become parents and the people who helped us to adopt. I could no longer find God in the catastrophe but readily saw God in the response and the drive to remedy it. Since that moment, this has become my understanding of our relationship to God. I spoke at length about this last year on Rosh Hashana. But, if God isn’t “pulling the strings” and making things happen in the world, then where and what is God? Further, what are we to do with a text that tells us God does reward and punish and everything does have a purpose/reason?

אִם־בְּחֻקֹּתַי תֵּלֵכוּ וְאֶת־מִצְוֺתַי תִּשְׁמְרוּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם׃ וְנָתַתִּי גִשְׁמֵיכֶם בְּעִתָּם וְנָתְנָה הָאָרֶץ יְבוּלָהּ וְעֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה יִתֵּן פִּרְיוֹ׃

If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit (ויקרא כו:ג-ד/Leviticus 26:3-4).

These are the opening words of פרשת בחקתי/Behukotai and in these words you find a very clear and real “if:then” statement: If you do… (then) I will do…. That’s the theological and philosophical underpinning of the statement, when we do good we will be rewarded with good. In verse 14 the text changes in tone and talks about what will happen if we don’t follow God and the תורה/Torah. This idea of good and bad and reward and punishment paints a binary world where it’s either this or that. We all know the world is indeed anything but binary in that almost everything is gray rather than black and white. We all know the world is more complicated.

What can be done for us today? The reality is that these texts are real and have a real eternal message: actions have consequences. Our actions actually matter and impact the world. When we do good, we’ve brought good into the world and made it better able to absorb good things. When we do bad, we’ve brought bad into existence and it’s more susceptible to bad things happening. That might sound simple, and it might sound counter-intuitive, but it’s at the root of what God was trying to convey to us in the text. When we listen and do what’s expected of us, the world has goodness and positivity in it, and when we don’t, the opposite occurs.

The world needs us to do what’s expected of us. The world needs us to listen and obey expectations and to rise to the occasion. We need to recognize that all we do has an impact on those around us and those far away from us. The power is within each of us to decide which way we want our world to look. God isn’t going to punish or reward, but God will allow for what we do to make an impact and we’ll need to deal with the consequences of our actions. Theology need not break us nor does it need to reject our understanding of the world around us. We can have strong and deep faith in God and still live in the world.