It's All About Me, and Perhaps A Bit About Thee

Researcher George Barna’s new book, The Seven Faith Tribes, offers an interesting if not exactly surprising portrait of American Jews. Here are his main findings, and some quick reactions of my own. After reading this post your comments: Does this sound like Jews you know? Does this help you understand Jews better? If you are a Jew, does this sound like you? If you are not a Jew and this sounds like you, do you want to become a Jew?

1. Being Jewish is more about belonging to a community than adhering to a faith (p. 56). Our motto is, “Two Jews, Three Opinions.” We would never have lasted these past 4000 years if we had to agree about things. Family trumps faith almost every time (Orthodox Jews sometimes excepted).

2. Jews view themselves as tough, relish a good argument, enjoy verbal jousting (p. 61), and are more comfortable with argument than any other tribe. (p. 57) I appreciate a serious argument over issues, and find that I learn more from such discussions than from simply affirming or rejecting fixed ideas—even my own. We even delight in helping our opponents strengthen their arguments to provide us with a greater challenge. We love seeing all sides of an issue, as long as that issue has nothing to do with Israel and the Palestinians, in which case we are often blind as bats.

3. Jews score lowest of all tribes regarding happiness, joy, and feeling at peace. (p. 57) Happiness is overrated. I worry about people who are or want to be happy or joyous all the time; they seem cut off from the suffering of the world. I follow Ecclesiastes; there is a time to be happy and a time to be miserable.

4. Jews embrace education more than any other tribe. (p. 58) Education, and by this I mean critical thinking, free inquiry, and a trust in reason and logic, is far more important to me than accepting the tenets of Judaism. In fact, any religion that resists such honest inquiry is suspect in my eyes.

5. Jews are more willing to take risks than any other tribe. (p. 58). Intellectually this is true of me, but not in any other way.

6. Jews’ dominant desires are health, good education, close family and friends, personal integrity, and to be knowledgeable about the world. (p. 59) Add being able to fit into size 34 Levi’s Silvertab jeans, and I’m in.

7. Few Jews care about having a close relationship with God, (p. 59) which is why only 2% rate faith as a high priority. (p. 60) Jews are more likely to trust science, reason, and logic than ancient sacred documents or teachings based on faith. (p. 63) That’s me, for sure. Though the more I know about science I don’t trust that either. As far as God goes, it depends on how you define “God.” For me God is reality and you can’t get much closer to God than that.

8. 80% of American Jews doubt the existence of moral absolutes. (p. 60) Sure, absolutes of any kind shut down free inquiry. Of course free inquiry can become an absolute, so be careful.

9. Jews are less inclined to watch violent television or films than other tribes. (p. 60) While I am proud to belong to a people who oppose violence rather than sex in popular culture, it doesn’t fit me at all. I rate movies as good or bad based on the number of exploding space ships per minute. I want big and frequent bangs for my buck. For me, sex on the screen is just a distraction between battle scenes.

10. Jews are “notoriously liberal” in their politics, (p. 62) more likely than most Americans to be “riled up about injustice,” (p.61) and resist government policies limiting personal behavior and legislating morality. (p. 62) This finding makes me very proud to be a Jew.

11. Most Jews “perceive the Bible with suspicion.” (p. 64) Of course! We wrote it! The Bible is a human document, and all human documents should be greeted with suspicion.

12. Only 36% of Jews imagine God in ways consistent with the Torah, and most Jews do not believe God is involved in people’s lives. (p. 65) Thank God! That Guy is a Crazy Person!

13. Only 20% believe there is a satanic force in the world. (p. 66) Here I side with the minority. I do believe in evil. And while I do not believe in a separate satanic force outside of the human psyche, the evil within it is scary enough.

14. Only 25% of Jews say Judaism has been a transformative force in their lives. (p. 67) As a Jew who grew up in the synagogue I get this, and as a rabbi I am partly responsible for it. That 75% of Jews find Judaism less than life transforming says to me that we have to reinvent the rabbinate. Too bad the 25% who like things the way they are run the rabbinic institutions.

Faith & Values, Rutherford Style

The Lifestyles section of my local newspaper is subtitle, “Religion: Rutherford Faith and Values.” Rutherford is the county in which my town is located. What are Rutherford values? What is Rutherford faith? Here are few highlights from the Lifestyle section:

Under GOOD IDEAS a local pharmacist warns us that the sin of America is “the abomination it truly is to God,” and urges us to repent and follow the example of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately she doesn’t define the abomination. In this town the abomination could be abortion, homosexuality, occultism, or voting Democratic.

The main article, “Letters to God,” is about a movie being made in Orlando, FL. inspired by a Rutherford boy whose faith in God helped him and his community deal with his cancer.

Beneath the fold is an essay called “Share your faith with humility” in which we learn that “Sharing your faith isn’t an easy gig… Most of all it requires you to abandon all assumptions that you know what’s best for someone else.” Really? I thought the whole point of proselytizing is that you have the truth and the other person doesn’t. If you don’t know what’s best for me, then why bother me with your faith?

The rest of the Lifestyles section deals with various church fundraisers, Bible camps, and faith programs, a complaint to Abigail Van Buren from a guy whose girl friend wears see-through cloths and no underwear, advice on how to say “no” to a wedding invitation, the comics, a listing of 125 churches—I counted— and their upcoming worship services (the town’s mosque and Hindu Temple do not list; we have no synagogue), and the daily horoscope…

…. Wait for it… DAILY HOROSCOPE!!!!!

What kind of faith and values is this? The Bible is clearly anti-horoscope: “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination [detestable] to the LORD…” (Deuteronomy 18: 9-12)

While the constant invoking of Ronald Reagan by God-fearing Republicans might be considered calling up the dead, it is the fact that interpreting omens, which includes the stars, is an abomination to God that really matters to me.

Remember the local pharmacist’s concern about abomination and how she failed to make clear what abomination she was talking about? Now we know why she didn’t make it clear! The newspaper itself is promoting abomination by printing the daily horoscope! She clearly had the horoscope in mind, but could not say so for fear of having her “good idea” removed from the paper. If we are to repent we have to get this abomination removed from our newspapers. I don’t know about you, but I will get on this very soon.

Not today, though; my horoscope said this was a bad time for me to take up new causes.

July 4th 2009, part two

Quick:

Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?

Who is in charge of the Executive branch of the US government?

What is the supreme law of the land?

How many justices sit on the Supreme Court?

These and similar questions were asked of a group of Arizona high school students in a recent Goldwater Institute survey. The aim of the survey was to find out if native-born Americans knew enough about America to pass the citizenship test given to those seeking to become American citizens. The result: 96.5% of the students failed the test.

But our kids aren’t stupid. Ask these same students to list the ingredients of a Big Mac and they do quite well, thank you very much. The issue isn’t smart versus stupid; it is a question of what really matters to them. We know a lot about what matters, and nothing at all about what doesn’t matter. And as long as McDonald’s matters more than McCarthy (Joseph, not Charlie) Americans will be driven by fat and fear for years to come.

Who took civics out of the high school curriculum? How can we raise a free people when we have no idea what freedom is, and how our system of government was created to secure and maintain it? What hope is there when you ask kids about “moon walk” and they talk about Michael Jackson rather than the Apollo astronauts?

Yesterday I wrote about the racism being preached on right-wing commercial radio. I wrote how frightening it was to hear such ignorance spewed across the airwaves and to know that the vast majority of listeners didn’t know it was ignorance. The Goldwater survey makes it is clear that this isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. Most of us are going to stuff ourselves with pork by-products, and “oo” and “ah” over fireworks. Fine. But let me suggest that the best way to celebrate the Fourth of July is to sit down with friends and family to read and discuss the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. I’d say we should read the entire Constitution, but that might be too much for one day.

I worry that the United States is well on its way to becoming a failed experiment. Democracy requires more effort, civic education, and moral courage than most of us seem to possess or are willing to pursue. True, I am a pessimist. And while I would love to proven wrong, I suspect I won’t be.

So have a happy Fourth of July. And, just for fun, see if any of your kids or friends know whose buried in Grant’s Tomb.

July Fourth, 2009, part one

Driving to a lunch meeting in the Boro this morning I turned on our local FM talk radio station to learn that almost all black people hate white people, that President Obama is a racist, and a foreign-born Moslem sympathetic to Iran and jihadists, and that the primary goal of the Obama administration is to wrest power from the white race and give it to blacks and Hispanics.

I arrived at my meeting shaking with a mixture of anger and fear. Anger that such stupidity gets commercial airtime, and fear that most people listening to it do not think it stupid.

I remember the last time we had a Democrat President. Right wing radio was apoplectic, but the talk wasn’t this vile. Sure the Clintons murdered members of their administration, were secretly Communists trying to set up single-payer healthcare, and the President could not keep POTUS Jr. in his pants, but I don’t remember it being this emotionally charged. Sure, Rush kept count of how many days American had left in Clinton captivity, but this was no more absurd that Keith Oberman continuing his count of days since Bush’s Mission Accomplished moment on the aircraft carrier off the coast of Iraq.

But there is something different about the Right this time around. And, given that President Obama isn’t doing anything of things that I wanted him to do (end discrimination against the LGBT community, stop funding dictatorships, put real pressure on Israel and Palestine to make peace, withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, cease the bailout of today’s robber barons, put real incentives behind green technology, and a host of other things that should rightly make the right crazy) the difference can’t really be political. Obama is a centrist, but he is a black centrist and that makes all the difference.

True it is hard to argue that America is a racist country when we have a black man as president, but it isn’t hard to see that those who are so afraid of his policies are not really afraid of his policies but his color. No one suggested during the Clinton years that the President was planning to give America over to poor rural whites in Arkansas.

The guest on this morning’s radio broadcast was an African American preacher in town for this weekend’s Republican Tea Party in Nashville. See, the Right is saying, we aren’t racist. Here is a black man speaking for us. Except it was this black man who told us that almost all black people were racists. It is one thing if some honky makes this claim—I can right it off as racism—but when a black man tells me that black folk hate me ‘cause I’m white then you just gots to believe!

Not only is Obama trying to sell America out to the black race, the radio host and his guest explained, it is trying to convince good Christians that Jesus was black. This Muslim in Christ’s clothing is trying to tell us that Jesus wasn’t white! How can that be? In my neighborhood not only is Jesus white, he spoke King James’ English! The fact that Jesus was a brown skinned Aramaic speaking Palestinian Jew seems to escape everyone’s notice.

As we prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July we would be wise to remember what this country stands for: White God, White Christians, and White Power—with a couple of black folks tagging along to ease our conscience.

Who Decides What is Judaism?

I received an email yesterday that I thought I would share with you. Rather than print the entire letter, I am highlighting the key points accompanied by my response.

1. Judaism should not be influenced by outside values and beliefs, and should stem only from God and Torah. The assumption you are making, namely that Judaism is somehow separate from the values and beliefs of the people who shaped it, is, in my opinion, false. Of course traditional Judaism claims that it comes from a transcendent source outside humanity, but history makes it clear that Judaism has changed over time, and that the changes came as the beliefs and values of Jews changed.

To site just a few examples: The use of capital punishment is rampant in the Hebrew Bible, yet anathema to the rabbis. So they changed Judaism to make the implementation of capital punishment impossible. Kosher is another example. While the Torah does lay the groundwork for a uniquely Jewish diet, the rabbis expanded this far beyond the Torah’s proscriptions. The same can be said for Shabbat and other holy day traditions as well.

Regarding more metaphysical matters, it is well established in academic circles that biblical Jews had no sense of a heaven and hell, and that it this was introduced into Judaism by those Jews who learned of it during their exile in Babylonia. The Pharisees made belief in the world to come central to their teachings, something their priestly opponents rejected as foreign.

Looking at Judaism in our own day, the role of women in Jewish life has greatly expanded not because Torah demanded it, but because the Women’s Movement became part of the mindset of most Jews and they demanded it.

To say that Judaism avoids change is false. To ignore the role the Jewish people play in changing their religion is to ignore how civilizations grow and survive. If priestly Judaism did not evolve into rabbinic Judaism there would be no Judaism at all. The fact that the rabbis insisted that they were simply applying the Oral Torah given to Moses alongside the Written Torah was a slick marketing move, but has no legitimacy outside the rabbis themselves—hence the rejection of the rabbinic innovations by their priestly competitors prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

2. How can we ensure that in a hundred years or more there will still be Judaism or Jews if by that time we allow our morals and beliefs to eradicate all vestiges of what makes Judaism what it truly is and not some cheap, unsatisfying, self-help program?
 Your phrasing begs the question “what Judaism truly is,” but I understand and even share your concern. What will keep Judaism recognizably Jewish? Some would say that the only thing that keeps Judaism Jewish is that a people who call themselves Jews insist that it is. From a sociological viewpoint this may be true. I would like to add another element: Torah.

I think that any Judaism not linked to a creative reading of Torah is doomed. But as our rabbis have shown over the past 2000 years Torah can be read in many different ways to yield many different meanings and insights. Torah is a living document and must be read with deep creativity and imagination to uncover the layers of meaning needed in each generation. So what will make Judaism of the future authentic, the same thing that made the Judaisms of the past authentic: Torah and the Jews.

3. Liberal Judaism is fake Judaism that threatens to destroy authentic Judaism. The real challenge to Orthodoxy and tradition isn’t liberal Judaisms, but the rise of the sovereign self. With the coming of the modern period and now with postmodernism the individual (especially in the United States) is seen as supreme. It is becoming more and more difficult to subsume the individual into the group. We are encouraged to think for ourselves, to make moral and ethical decisions based on our individual consciences, etc. Community is more and more difficult to maintain. Can a Judaism that hopes to reach out to such highly individualized people impose law, or does it have to take another path?

It is too soon to answer this question, but the trend seems to be against halacha/Jewish law among nonOrthodox Jews. Even Conservative Jews pick and choose among the halachot, and often do so based on values that come from the secular world.

While I have no doubt that Orthodoxy will survive, it seems to do so only through greater and greater isolation from modernity. Orthodox Judaism will not (thankfully) go away, but it may (sadly) go the way of the Amish. We may admire their faith, but they are largely irrelevant to the lives of the most people.

This is my fear: that Judaism becomes irrelevant to Jews. Given that most Jews (90% if I am not mistaken) have rejected Orthodoxy, it isn’t too much of a stretch to say that Orthodoxy is irrelevant to most Jews. But, if you are correct (and you may be) that the Judaism that is immerging in a weak, self-indulgent, self-help program more geared to Jerry Springer than the Prophets we Jews are in trouble.

4. Liberal rabbis are fake rabbis who bastardize Judaism. I can only assume that “real rabbis” are Orthodox rabbis. Yet there are some Orthodox rabbis that other Orthodox rabbis consider equally fake. So how are we to decide who is the real rabbi?

If I am reading you correctly, the only real rabbi is one who rejects all change. If that is true, there are no real rabbis. Rabbinic Judaism was a radical departure from Priestly Judaism. Hillel and Akiva, to mention just two rabbis, were agents of change. And the Rambam (Moses Maimonides) even more so! The difference between these sages and some of today’s rabbis is that they insisted they were not doing what they were doing: making changes, and, in the case of Maimonides, applying the wisdom of non-Jewish cultures (Aristotelian to be specific) to Judaism. Today’s rabbinic creatives are more honest in their borrowings.

But, I too, have to cop to the notion of “fake rabbis.” There are rabbis, or people who call themselves rabbis, whom I would call “fake.” I make this distinction based on snobbishness: did they attend a yeshiva or seminary? Do they know and use Torah, Talmud, Zohar, Tanya in shaping their teachings? Are they rooted in Jewish history, tradition, and literature? No matter how innovative a rabbi may be, if they are linked strongly to these things I consider them authentic, even if I disagree with them. But if they are not so linked, I, too, fall into the trap of name-calling.

To opt for name calling as a first line of defense, however, suggests a weakness in your own argument. What could have been a fine discussion among thoughtful Jews becomes a silly spat between eight-year-olds. The only way we will know what impact rabbis (fake and otherwise) will have on Judaism is to wait and see. I imagine that if you shift your passion from attacking Jews to enriching Judaism, your Judaism will thrive. At least I hope so. In the end, as it has been throughout Jewish history, it is the Jews who will decide. They will determine what is Jewish, who is Jewish, who is a rabbi, etc.

Shivas Not So Regal

Shiva’s penis is shrinking. At least this is the worry of many Hindus.

Of concern is a giant stalagmite in the Amarnath cave in Kashmir, some 12,729 feet above sea level. The cave is one of Hinduism’s most holy sites because the phallus-shaped icicle within it is thought to be a representation of Lord Shiva, the God of Destruction and Regeneration, who, along with Brahma the Creator and Vishnu the Preserver, makes up the Hindu Trinity.

Sure, I know what some of you are thinking: What God in his right mind would choose to appear as a stalagmite? And I know that the True God always prefers to appear in pizzas and grilled cheese sandwiches. But we ought not to be so dismissive other people’s superstitions, even when they are so blatantly false. A stalagmite phallus, please! Every one knows God prefers dairy product incarnations. But you have to admire the faith of the Hindu.

When God appears in a grilled cheese sandwich it is usually in a person’s home where friends and family can worship the Lactose Lord with relative ease. Where is the challenge, the true test of faith? With Shiva in Kashmir, on the other hand, the faithful have to climb over two miles straight up to gaze upon the Rock of Salvation. Now that is a show of faith!

But I am missing the point. While it is great that 50,000 Hindu pilgrims have visited Shiva over the past two weeks, it is the melting of the Lord that is troubling.

Like other phalluses, the size of Shiva’s grows and shrinks over time. The Hindus believe, however, that a shrinking Shiva denotes the God’s displeasure. This too is common to most phalluses, they shrink when they are not pleasured, but while most men worship their own phallus, the fact that millions and millions of people worship this particular phallus may mean something. If numbers matter, the penis of Shiva overshadows the pizza of Christ any way you slice it.

But, once again, I am off track. What matters is that global warming is destroying the Destroyer! This is bad news. Without Shiva there is no death, and without death, life on this planet will eventually suffocate itself. If death dies, life is doomed!

The solution, however, is not to send millions of pilgrims to worship the far away phallus. On the contrary, all their body heat and prayers will make the cave even warmer and melt Shiva even faster. Pilgrims go home!

We have got to cool the planet, or at least the state of Kashmir, and cool it now. If anyone knows how to contact Al Gore, please do so now. God is melting!

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Brain

According to the National Weather Service there is a 20% chance it might rain here tonight. Do you know that means? A lot of people don’t.

A recent study of college students by the University of Washington in Seattle shows that many completely misunderstand the notion of “probability-of-precipitation.” Some imagine that if there is a 20% chance of rain, that means that 20% of their town will get rain and 80% won’t. Others understand it to mean that it will rain 20% of the day. Can we be that dumb?

To find out, I walked out among my neighbors and townsfolk and asked them to explain the meaning of today’s forecast. Here are just some of the answers I received:

“It means that there is a 20% chance that God is going to flood the earth tonight.”

“It means that 20% of the people want it to rain tonight.”

“It means that the weather girl only looked at 20% of the map.”

“It means that only 20% of the town will get wet.”

“It means that you are a dumb Jew-bastard who has yet to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and who has a 100% chance of going to Hell.”

OK, I made the last one up. Well, no, I didn’t make it up exactly, I simply transposed it from another conversation to this conversation about weather. The prior conversation was about whether or not I was going to Hell, so you can see how easy it was for me to make the leap from one conversation to another. Homonyms are our friends.

The Seattle study found that if the weather forecaster added the probability of no rain along with the probability of rain, people understood things better. So if you say to someone, there is a 20% chance that it will rain tonight and an 80% chance that it won’t, chances are the person will understand what you are saying. So I tried that and got this:

“Do I have a choice? If I do, I’ll take the 20% ‘cause we need the rain. If I don’t I’ll take the 80%.”

Now you may be as confused about the weather as the people in my survey, so let me make it simple. On any given day there is always a 50/50 chance it will rain. It will either rain or it won’t rain. On or off, that’s all there is to it. It will rain or it won’t. It will snow or it won’t. We’ll be hit by an asteroid or we won’t. Jesus will return today or he won’t. It is always 50/50. That’s why I buy lottery tickets: I always have a one in two chance of winning whether or not it raiins.

Conversion Competition

On Sunday (June 21, 2009) I wrote about Catholic efforts to convert Jews (Choosing the Chosen). On Monday I received a private email from a rabbi saying I was taking the matter too lightly. I agree. Converting a person from one faith to another is no laughing matter. So here are a few suggestions on the more serious side.

We ought to have reality shows featuring people of different faiths being pitched to by people of other faiths. On one show, Big Bother, proselytizers would race around a city knocking on doors trying to convert people to their way of believing. On another show, I’m a Celebrity Destined for Hell, Get Me Out of Here, famous clergy would proselytize famous Scientologists. A third show, Amazing Grace, would feature missionary teams proselytizing indigenous peoples in remote parts of Africa, Australia, or Utah.

Reality shows are only the beginning. Religions seeking converts need an all out effort at product placement. Ironically, Judaism, which has little interest in proselytizing, has a leg up on the competition with the FBI hero of the hit show Numbers going to see his rabbi for spiritual direction, and the hot Israeli Mossad agent working with NCIS on NCIS. I wonder how much the Elders of Zion spent on those gigs?

Advertising will also be important. Mormons, for example, can offer converts that cool protective underwear that claims to be God’s own brand of Kevlar®. Judaism and Islam also offer distinctive clothing: caps for men, and headscarves for women. Judaism also has the option of dressing like a 17th century Polish nobleman or noblewoman if you buy the Hasidic package, while the Muslims could counter with the burkha.

Food might be another area of competition. Christianity can promote pork over and against Judaism and Islam’s pig-free diet the way Hebrew National promotes its kosher hot dogs over nonkosher brands. Catholics can offer something unique in that they alone eat the actual flesh and blood of God. Forget trans-fat, how about transubstantiation!

Potential converts looking for value might prefer Christianity’s Three Gods for the price of one, but Hinduism and its 330 million Gods will be hard to beat on that score.

Maybe the kind of eternal life in heaven a religion offers could separate it from the pack. Hindus and Buddhists might lose out on this score since they insist on reincarnation (at worst) and the extinction of the separate self (at best), but maybe not. Jewish heaven is (for those few Jews who still believe in heaven) eternal bible study with God. Christian heaven is the endless singing of the same hymn. And Islamic heaven is an unending feast of culinary and sexual delights. Of course reading the same book, singing the same song, and eating the same food for all eternity can get pretty boring after the first few millennia. And even sex gets old. So maybe this isn’t such a good area for competition.

Anyway, I like the idea of out and out conversion campaign among the world’s religions. I think this would invite creativity, and force theologians to come up with some cool new slogans. John 3:16 is so yesterday. And it will put an end to believers killing nonbelievers since this drains the market for new converts.

In the end, though, I think Catholics will win. As the competition heats up the Church will bring back dispensations and, rather then sell them as they did in the Middle Ages, they will offer dispensational packages to people who convert and get others to convert as well. When it comes right down to it, it is hard to compete with a Get Out of Hell Free card.

Choosing the Chosen

In 1986 Pope John Paul II insisted that God’s covenant with the Jews (hereafter referred to as “the Only People on the Entire Planet God Chose to be His Special Bud”s) was “irrevocable.” In other words, just because a few of us helped the Romans knock off God’s son doesn’t mean that all of us are for all time on the Almighty’s Shit List.

In 2002 U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement claiming that while it was true that the Only People on the Entire Planet God Chose to be His Special Buds (hereafter referred to as “the Jews”) had their own eternal relationship with God and would not be the target of Catholic conversion efforts, the Church would still welcome Jews who wished to become Catholics.

Seven years later, in response to challenges that earlier statements implied that there was a separate way to salvation outside the Church, i.e. Judaism, the Bishops issued yet another statement claiming that while God doesn’t “regret” His having chosen the Jews, He does want to make clear that this covenant is, in the words of Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, CT, “fulfilled in Jesus.”

This is an outrage! Catholics affirming that Jesus trumps the Chosen? How dare they! I mean what if we Jews insisted that God chose us exclusively? What if we said that all those books that Catholics claim are the word of God are just the delusional rants of Jewish authors capitalizing on a first century trend in messianic fiction? What if we claimed that God had no son, and that virgins don’t get pregnant? Wouldn’t Catholics be outraged? Wait, hold on a minute…. Well I’ll be damned, we DO claim those things!

OK, then, forget that. It’s not as if the Church is singling out the Jews. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Pagans, Indigenous Religions, not to mention those pesky Protestants all have to become Catholic to win salvation. Why? Because there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church! At least according to the Catholic Church.

Personally, I have no problem with this. Being Catholic is tough, and if convincing yourself that only Catholics get saved helps keep you on track, then go for it. I know lots of Jews who, if they no longer believed Jews are God’s Chosen, would have opted out long ago. And I’m no different. If I thought my butt looked better in Lucky jeans I’d switch brands in a heartbeat.

I don’t worry about Catholics, Southern Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, or Jehovah’s Witness trying to convert Jews or anyone else. Nor does it bother me if some Jews choose not to be chosen and join a rival faith. And when I hear rabbis complain about this I cannot help but think that if they shifted their efforts from protecting Jews from hearing the claims of rival religions into making Judaism more compelling they wouldn’t have to worry so much.

After all what Jew would want to convert to a faith where only the senior honchos get to wear yarmulkas, and then are limited to wearing only those red or white satin ones that probably have the words “I Survived Benny Kravitz’ Bar Mitzvah” printed inside them?

The (Il)logic of Faith

Never underestimate the power of religious logic. In the May issue of Christianity Today Gregory and Christopher Fung explore the deeper meaning of Harvard Medical School’s ten-year, $2.4 million prayer study.

Called Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), the study divided 1,802 people into three groups: Group A knew they were being prayed for, Group B was being prayed for but was unsure if that were the case, and Group C was not being prayed for and, like group B, were not told if they were or were not being prayed for.

Here are the conclusions of the study: Group A (those who knew they were being prayed for) suffered more post-operative complications than those in the two other groups, while Group C (those not prayed for) suffered the least. In other words being prayed for when ill is actually hazardous to your health.

You might think that this would lead people to stop praying over the sick, but that would be too logical. According to the Fungs, STEP “actually supports the Christian worldview… God seems to have granted favor without regard to either the quantity or even the quality of the prayers… True to his character, God appears inclined to heal and bless as many as possible. It is as if he can barely restrain himself—though he often does—from supernaturally intervening and disrupting the nature of the universe to care for those he loves, whether they acknowledge it or not.”

You have to love the Fungs. They seem to be saying that since God caused most of the people who were prayed for in the study to suffer more than those who were not prayed over proves that God can barely restrain himself from healing people. This makes no sense whatsoever, but it does demonstrate why religion will never disappear: its capacity to fool itself is endless.

Now, I’m not saying prayer doesn’t work. According to STEP it seems to work, but only in reverse: pray for those you hate and they will be more likely to suffer. What impresses me is how the Fungs turned the study inside out in order to protect their theology. This is why religion and science are fundamentally incompatible. Science (at least at theoretically) values evidence over theory, while religion values theory over evidence.

The Fungs go on to say “our obsession with whether prayer works is the wrong question. We know prayer works. The real question is, are we prepared for God’s answer?”

Yes, STEP proves that prayer works: it causes more suffering, not less. And the answer to the question “are we prepared for God’s answer” must be “no.” STEP proves that the people prayed for did worse than those not prayed for. This doesn’t show that God loves everyone equally, it shows that God loves those who leave him alone. Are we ready for that answer? I doubt it.

The Fungs’ conclusion is that “STEP encourages us to believe that God is eager to answer our prayers….” Did they read the study? STEP encourages us to believe just the opposite!

I love this! Their logic is so absent, their conclusion so vacuous, that it almost makes sense! But it is bullshit!

The only part of the Fungs’ article I found wise was their reminder that Jesus told us to pray only that God’s will be done. If God is Reality, as I understand God to be, then such a prayer is an affirmation of radical acceptance of what is, and that cannot be bad. Too bad the Fungs couldn’t stick with Jesus.

Make Big Money With Small Ideas

Want to make big money in a down economy? I’ve got the solution.

People need low cost distractions from the stresses of everyday life, and what is a better distraction than a truly great attraction? Tourism is the key to success, but it has to be unique, and very affordable. And it has to be something you can set up in a few hours for very little money. So here is my idea: I’m going to incorporate “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” and set it up as a franchise. For a mere $100 I will help you identify the perfect “The Smallest ‘Blank’ in the World Museum” for your area of the country.

The key to keeping costs low is to make sure that the smallest whatever is in fact invisible. For example: “The Smallest Ball of String in the World Museum” is a perfect roadside attraction you can build in your own apartment or backyard. Imagine, tourists walk into YOUR museum, plunk down $5 per person (kids under 12 months enter free) and walk into the “Amazing Global Info Center.” Here they are shown photographs of all kinds of string and introduced to the age-old argument between string, twine, thread, yarn, and rope as to which is the most authentic. The most authentic what is up to you. Be creative.

After being educated in the intricacies of string, visitors are ushered into a small booth similar to a mall photo booth where the world’s smallest ball of string is on display. Make the display attractive and inviting. What is in the display? Nothing. The smallest ball of string is so small no one can see it even with the aid of microscopes. You can even invite people to look at the ball of string through microscopes to prove that it is too small to be seen with such devices.

Of course someone will complain that there is nothing there, but that is where I come in. What you get for your $100 is a box containing a certificate of authorization proving that you are now the sole owner the World’s Smallest Whatever. This certificate will authenticate what it is you are showcasing, and that should shut up the most vocal critic.

To encourage buzz and word of mouth advertising I suggest you give each visitor a piece of the string from the ball in a special envelope with the name of YOUR museum printed on it.

Here are just some of the wonderful World’s Smallest Museum ideas I am waiting to offer you: “The Smallest Man in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Woman in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Dinosaur in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Forrest in the World Museum,” “The Smallest Bank Account in the World Museum.”

And this is only the beginning. Imagine the “The Smallest “Blank” in the Galaxy Museum” featuring all kinds of alien worlds and species. It can’t miss.

So what are you waiting for? Send me your check for $100 (no, not the world’s smallest $100 check, a normal sized check), and I will schedule a conference call with you, me, and the world’s smallest consulting team (you can’t hear them, but I can, so don’t worry that you are wasting your money; they will assure you this is a wise investment), and we will find the perfect “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” for you and your community. Remember, there can only be one “The Smallest “Blank” in the World Museum” in any given subject so send your money in early to maximize your choice of museum options.

Marquees de Sad

I love church marquees, those enigmatic sayings that are supposed to draw us to Jesus by the power of their cleverness. But sometimes the signs are so clever that I can’t understand them.

Case in point: I’m driving to a retreat center in Connecticut this past weekend and I see a church sign that reads, “Jesus. What if He never left?” OK, let’s think about that for a moment.

If Jesus never left, his body would remain in the tomb, and the resurrection would be pure fiction. Without the resurrection there is no proof of Jesus’ divinity. Without Jesus as God Christian salvation is impossible and Christianity is a sham. Why would you want to put that on the marquee of your church?

But maybe I am wrong. Maybe if Jesus never left the resurrection could still have happened but not the ascension to heaven. OK, let’s see: Jesus dies on the cross and is placed in the tomb of Joseph of Aramethea. Three days latter he is resurrected. He spends the next forty days wandering around but, since he never leaves, he never gets to sit at the right hand of the Father. Instead he’s just shuffling around the planet like a character in the Ghost Whisperer. If this is true, Christianity is still in trouble because now its God is exiled to earth for all eternity. This is the story of the Marvel comic book hero Silver Surfer, not the Suffering Servant. And, if Jesus is stuck here on earth, then the Second Coming is impossible since the First Coming never ends. But what is Christianity without the Return of Jesus? Nothing. So, again, why put this on your church sign?

Of course the sign may not refer to Jesus Christ at all. It could be an oblique reference to illegal aliens coming to Connecticut from Mexico: “Jesus. What if he never left (Mexico)? Who would cut our lawns?” A pro-immigration message like that might fly in New England, so maybe that was the point of the marquee.

Just to be thorough I tried different versions of this sign suitable to other faiths to see if they would yield any better insights. For example, a Jewish version of this sign might read, “Moses. What if we never left?” Well, if Moses never left Egypt the Jews would still be slaves, the bush would never have burned, Passover would never have happened and there would be no Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. So that doesn’t work.

How about a Buddhist version: “Prince Siddhartha. What if he never left?” OK, if Siddhartha never left home he would never have become the Buddha, Tibet would have stayed with the Bon religion and Jewish Buddhists would have had to find another religion to join.

If Mohammad never left we’d lack his Night Journey from Mecca to Jerusalem to heaven and back. If Krishna never left Arjuna would not have gone to war with his cousins and we’d have no Bhagavad-Gita. If Lao Tzu never left he’d never have written the Tao Te Ching. None of these are good things.

No, this church sign doesn’t work in any religion. It seems to me that all the founders have to leave or the religions don’t happen. So what was the sign writer thinking? Honestly, I haven’t a clue. So this one is up to you. Best answer wins a year of free drinks at your local Starbucks, but only if you can convince them to do this.

Putting the BAD in Chabad

Responding to the question, “How should Jews treat their Arab neighbors?” in the May/June issue of Moment Magazine, beloved Chabad Rabbi Manis Friedman wrote, “I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it [western morality] is immoral… The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle)… Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations….”

What kind of Judaism is this? It is Torah-True Judaism. What kind of morality is this? It is Bronze Age Torah morality. Of course you might argue that this isn’t Judaism at all, or that it is Judaism at its worst, and you might insist that anyone who takes such talk seriously and judges Jews and Judaism by Rabbi Manis’ standard is an Anti-Semite, but, honestly, Rabbi Manis is a well respected cleric, and Chabad is a powerful Jewish movement with centers in every major city (and many minor ones) around the world. So his Judaism is as Jewish as mine. Maybe more so, as I reject any Jewish value that fails to echo the best of western morality as articulated in the Humanist Manifestoes and the Declaration of Universal Human Rights.

What I find most interesting is that Rabbi Manis’ morality is the same as that of his Muslim counterparts. They too reject western morality, believe in killing innocent men, women, and children (they might spare the cattle), take pride in blowing up holy sites (especially those of rival Muslims), and use religious holy days (especially those of rival Muslims) for some of their most violent attacks. The only difference between Rabbi Manis and radical Muslim clerics is that the latter are willing to murder their fellow Muslims while Rabbi Manis is not yet calling for the murder of his fellow Jews. But give him time.

What do we say in response to this? If Rabbi Manis were a Muslim cleric we would demand his universal condemnation by the Muslim leadership, and if we didn’t get it we would use that as proof that Muslims are hate-mongers and Islam is evil. So can we expect universal condemnation of Rabbi Manis by Jewish leaders? Of course not. In fact his teaching was published without comment in one of the most respected of American Jewish magazines. His ideas were given as much credence as those of any of the other rabbis asked to respond to the question. While we Jews get all worked up because the Pope didn’t use the word “murder” when talking about the Shoah (Holocaust; he used “killing”), we won’t break a sweat over Rabbi Manis and his blood-soaked Torah. So why should we expect Muslims to act differently?

The truth is the future lies with Rabbi Manis and his Muslim and Christian counterparts. And this may not be a bad thing. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim extremists have more in common with one another then with their more “western” colleagues, and they might do a better job negotiating peace. Their willingness of slaughter every man, woman, and child (they will have to come to some agreement over cattle) may allow them to end the bloodshed with some version of divinely sanctioned Mutually Assured Destruction. In other words they will be forced into inaction because they know that any action will trigger the end of all them.

Of course, once they have ended the fighting between themselves, they will turn their attention more fully to the heretics within their respective religions. Ain’t peace a glorious thing?

Can Judaism Change In Time?

“Rabbi, can Judaism change in time?” My questioner was a sincere sixty-something man who belonged to and rarely attended his local synagogue. Before answering his question I asked him to define his terms: “Judaism,” “change,” and “in time.”

By “Judaism” he meant synagogue centered communal practice: the saying of prayers in a formal liturgical setting, and the weekly study of Torah in community. By “change” he meant an increase in attendance at these two events. And by “in time” he meant before the vast majority of Jews write-off Judaism as essentially beside the point of their lives.

Having refined his question I offered my answer: Can Judaism change in time? Yes, it could, but no, it won’t.

Change comes when people demand it, but when they make it. Liberal German Jews didn’t demand that rabbis change, they invented Reform Judaism, built new synagogues, and ordained their own clergy. Zionists didn’t demand that the Messiah come, they moved to Palestine. But today there is no great clamor for change because those who want change have by and large opted out of any serious involvement with Judaism, leaving the system to those who are quite happy with the status quo.

By change I don’t mean the cosmetic changes offered by the Alban Institute or Synagogue 3000. I mean deep transformative change: a new view of God and creation that takes us from the 12th century to the 21st; a worship service of no more than 90 minutes that is not afraid of deep and prolonged silence and chant-induced ecstasy; the study of Torah rooted more in Joseph Campbell than Rashi; a communal structure based on mutual support, dialogue, and personal growth and maturation. I could go on, but there is no point.

Why? Because people like me who want such changes to happen don’t want to make them happen. We have abandoned institutional Judaism to those who love the status quo. Lovers of the status quo don’t want to change because they see no need to change. And more power to them! They are the ones who attend each week. They are the ones who sit through long hours of prayer and Torah reading. They put in the long hours and should allowed to davven (pray) in peace.

Demanding that rabbis and synagogues engage in deep systemic change is like demanding that the Amish use zippers and drive cars. Why should they? Buttons and buggies do just fine. If we want a different kind of Judaism we will have to make it ourselves.

What would that new Judaism look like? There is no model, and probably never will be one. But a Judaism that would speak to me it would be a small coffeehouse setting where we would come together to drink, eat, question, argue, and doubt; where we would read and wrestle with Job, Ecclesiastes, Spinoza, Kafka, Jabes, Agnon, Buber, Freud, Fromm, Kaplan, Falk, Bloom (Harold not Judy, though maybe Judy also) and other radical sages of our people both ancient and modern; where dialogue would replace sermons, where silence and chant would replace liturgy, where mutual support would replace mitzvah day, where music, art, literature, science as well as religion would inform and engage us, where we would come with our questions and confusions and doubts and expect no answers but remain open to gleaning fresh insights through contemplative conversation and self inquiry.

What would make this Jewish? Jews! The last time an outside authority established an official Judaism was when God established the priesthood under Moses’ brother Aaron. All other Judaisms— rabbinic, Zionist, secular, humanist, Renewal, Reconstructionist, etc.— just invented themselves.

Will this happen in time? No. In the past Anti-Semitism forced those Jews who wanted something new to remain within the community causing foment and innovation. Today the radicals among us are no longer among us; they have moved on and opted out. Those who are left behind are either happy with what they have or too jaded to do anything to change it.

Yes, I am generalizing, and, yes, there are still visionaries among us, but they are struggling for dollars and the powers that be have not and will never fund them properly. And worse, those who benefit from the work of these creators have this hate¬–hate thing with money that allows them to take, take, take, without paying to see to the welfare of the creators. Of course the creators themselves seem averse to asking for real money and that doesn’t help matter either.

I often hear people complain that today’s Judaism is like the Titanic, but they are wrong. Judaism isn’t the Titanic. It isn’t sinking. There is no iceberg threatening Jewish life, rabbinic hegemony, and synagogue politics. And there is still a minyan (quorum) who enjoy the cruise. Jews who are abandoning ship do so out of boredom not danger.

If you don’t like the Judaism you’ve got, create the Judaism you want. And please stop harassing the passengers and crew who still enjoy the cruise.

Damn Zionists.

I was invited to preach at a very liberal church this morning, and as I entered the building an elderly gentleman walked up to me, glanced at my yarmulke, and asked, “What do you think of those Zionists?”

For a moment I thought he was asking about a sports team, the Nashville Zionists or something, and it took me a moment to realize he was asking me about Israel.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said.

“The Zionists. You know you can’t protest against Israel in Israel, you have to come to America to do that. The Zionists are causing all kinds of trouble.”

Obviously this man had his countries confused. Israelis argue about Israel and Zionism all the time. It is in America that challenging the party line of whatever coalition runs Israel at the moment gets one into trouble. I was going to say something like that, but as he elaborated on his point it was clear that he was anti-Israel on principle. Jews were fine with him as long as we were powerless underdogs, but as soon as we have the capacity to fight back against those who would slaughter us, and—even worse—win, we were the bad guys.

I am more liberal then most when it comes to Israel. I am one of the few Jews who found Jimmy Carter’s books on Israel valuable contributions to the debate around Israeli policies and the future of the Jewish State. But there is no sense arguing with people who think Zionism is the root of all the world’s ills. Especially when they are liberals.

Yes there are right-wing nuts who hope to see the end of all Jews, but they have the decency to live in states like Utah and Colorado, but liberal anti-Semites are every where. They take their anti-Semitism as a source of pride. Somehow it is a sign of just how liberal they are that they are willing to see Israel and Israelis bombed into oblivion. According to this man, African Americans, Amer-Indians, gays, lesbians and transgendered people all have a right to self-determination, but not Jews.

“We’d have peace in the world if it wasn’t for the Zionists. What do you think?”

I think, sir, that you are an asshole. But I didn't say that. Instead I said, “It seems to me you have four choices, so just let me know which one you prefer: 1) We should empower jihadists and neo-Nazis to slaughter every last Jew on the planet; 2) The US should supply Iran with nuclear weapons and encourage them to slaughter every Jew in Israel; 3) The US should forcibly remove all Zionists and imprison them in Gitmo; or 4) We should encourage the only true democracy in the Middle East to behave as such—a sort of do as we don’t kind of policy. Your pick.”

“Damn Zionists,” he said as he turned around and walked away.

"Damn liberals," I said, as I did the same.

A Quick Snapshot of Religion Today

Here is a snapshot of religion provided (unintentionally) by this morning’s USATODAY.

Item: “Faith, medicine at odds.” Colleen Hauser, a Minnesota Catholic who also believes in the Native American healing techniques promoted by the Missouri-based Nemenhah Band has taken her 12-year old son, Daniel, into hiding. The boy has Hodgkin’s lymphoma; a disease that doctors say is 91% curable in children Daniel’s age. Mom believes that chemo and radiation, the proven cures for this disease, are unnecessary and that her brand of Native medicine is superior. Is she is killing her son in the name of her faith? Does she have that right?

Item: “4 arrested in NYC synagogue bomb plot.” The FBI arrested four men they had been watching for a year who were about to bomb a synagogue and community center, and shoot down military aircraft. The paper didn’t say what their motive was, but NPR said they were upset about the killing of Muslims by US soldiers. In a war between Christians and Muslims, why are the Jews the easiest target?

Item: “Car bomber strikes in Baghdad district.” Yet another car bomb tore through a Shiite neighborhood. No group has taken responsibility, but you can be pretty sure the murderers were Sunnis. We spent thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars to free these people and all they want to do is engage in religious warfare. Is this the proper use of our American heroes?

Item: “Children forced into exorcisms.” Nondenominational Christian clergy in the Congo are making good money pouring hot wax on little kids and pulling demons out of their stomachs. Claiming to be guided by the Holy Spirit, these priests are demanding $50 per exorcism from people who annual per capita income is $100. Parents who can no longer care for their children are proclaiming them possessed and forcing them onto the streets to fend for themselves. Estimates are that 70% of the 15,000 abandoned children in the capital of Kinshasa are thought to be there because of charges of witchcraft. Jesus performed exorcisms, so there may be no way to stop this, but at least he didn’t charge for his services. Why is Christianity so plagued by witches and demons?

Item: “Report details abuse at institutions.” According to a report released yesterday, “children were beaten and raped for decades” in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland. The study traces abuse from the 1930s onward. How much brutality and rape tacitly sanctioned by the Church do Catholics have to endure before they simply walk away from their church in disgust?

***
What to make of all this? First, for every story of religious evil there are also stories of religious good. Second, abuse and witchcraft makes headlines, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless do not. And yet… Religion, like any other human institution, can shelter the wicked as well as the righteous; can promote evil as well as good, madness as well as morality. Religion can be trusted no more than any other human institution. The truth is, trust no one. How sad.

Because You Asked

I am often asked for my opinion on matters about which I know nothing. Because I write a blog people assume I know stuff. Well I am happy to oblige. Here are some of my opinions on the pressing issues of the day.

Single Payer Healthcare. I am totally in favor of single payer healthcare as long as the single person doing the paying isn’t me. I suggest we choose a person with lots of money, because I think health care is very expensive, and if he or she is going to pay for all of our healthcare, having lots of money is crucial.

A Two-State Solution. I am totally opposed to a two-state solution. There is no point, for example, to having a North and South Dakota. And why is there a West Virginia next to Virginia when there is no East Virginia? As for applying the two-state solution to Israel, I think this is a good idea. There should be a 13th Century Israel for the Orthodox Jews and a 21st Century Israel for the secular Jews. Let the religious defend themselves and their settlements. Tefillin make great bolos.

Abortion on Demand. I am totally opposed to abortion on demand. Can you imagine some misanthrope passing a pregnant woman on the street and demanding she have an abortion? This is taking individual rights too far.

Nuclear Disarmament. I am totally opposed to nuclear disarmament. If every country, ethnic group, and religious faction had these weapons no one would use them. Or if someone did use them the others would annihilate them in seconds. Peace through strength!

Guns in Public Places. I am totally in favor of guns in public places. I would make gun toting mandatory for everyone over the age of 12. The more guns we have the safer we will be. Just imagine some coked-up 12-year-old shooting up a Chucky Cheese. He’d get off two or three rounds at most before parents and kids around the restaurant would kill him and the other kids at his birthday party. But if he were the only one with a gun and we had to wait for the police to arrive lots more kids would be killed and our dinners ruined.

Nude Bathing. I am totally in favor of nude bathing. Who wants to take a bath with their clothes on?

Gay Marriage. I am totally in favor of gay marriage, why get married if you’re not happy?

Anti-Semitism. I am totally in favor of Anti-Semitism. It is the only thing that keeps nonreligious Jews in the fold. I am petitioning Dan Brown to write a book about how the Elders of Zion control the IMF, banks, media, the USA, and the Vatican. Tom Hanks would star.

So now that you have read my opinions on these pressing matters, I hope you will trust other bloggers to reveal the truth. After all, it is what we do.

A “Conversation”

[This is a compilation of comments I hear from Jews around the country. I thought it a good follow up to the 5/10/09 post on Jewish spirituality. I present these comments to invite your response. I'm going to let it run for a few days without another post to give you time to comment.]

1. We liberal Jews are a highly educated, largely secular, postmodern people. Judaism is a pre-modern, pre-scientific, supernaturalist, and largely medieval religious tradition. We postmodern Jews may love our history, our people, our left-leaning (except when it comes to Israel) politics, our comics, our novelists, our scientists, our Nobel Prize winners, and, until Bernie Madoff, our financial acumen, but we just find Judaism as most of us encounter it largely irrelevant to our lives.

So what? If Jews don’t care and Judaism dies out, so be it. But it won’t die out. The Orthodox are the saving remnant. Judaism may go the way of the Amish, but never the dodo.

2. Liberal postmodern Jews do go out on Friday night and Saturday; we just don’t go to shul. The reason we don’t is that synagogue services are more predictable than a rerun of “Law and Order.” Clapping hands to prayers that assume we haven’t read a book since the 13th century can take us only so far. Even those few shuls that do a thriving business on Shabbat owe their success more to social networking rather than religious belief; more to Facebook than the Holy Book.

So what? Who said services are supposed to be interesting? You follow the liturgy because it connects you to your people. It is a sacred obligation not a lifestyle choice. And if Jews come to shul to meet other Jews--great! Where should they meet, at a ribs joint?

3. The Chosen People gambit was a great marketing tool in its day, but that day has long passed. It is the Jewish version of Coke’s “It’s the Real Thing” campaign. The Jews are God’s Chosen because we invented the god who chose us. In other words, the product that sponsors the taste test wins the taste test. I like belonging to a tribe. I am proud to be a Jew (even when I am sometimes ashamed of what is said and done in the name of Jews and Judaism), but I don’t need to think that we are God’s special people. It sounds so Smothers Brothers: Mom liked you best! Infantile!

So what? People still prefer Coke to Pepsi or Pepsi to Coke, and nobody likes RC. Just because every product claims to be the best doesn’t mean we should claim to be nothing. We have to emphasize the brand not reject branding. We need a jingle: “We are the Chosen, the mighty mighty Chosen. Yes we are, we’re the Chosen.” And it's not infantile but primitive. And most people are primitive as any cable or network newscast can attest. The question isn't, "Should I have a tribe," but "Is my tribe strong enough and well armed enough to defend itself against the other tribes?"


4. Torah study is meaningless. There was no Adam, Eve, or Noah. There is no evidence outside the Torah itself that Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac ever existed. There is no archeological evidence that the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, escaped from slavery, or wandered in the Sinai for forty years. I don’t gather with friends to read Chaucer, why would I gather to read Moses? The Bible is irrelevant to the lives of most Jews. I recently attended a Torah study group where we discussed how Noah could fit all those animals on the ark, and not one of us believed in the Flood story in the first place!

So what? There was no Hamlet, either. Are you telling me Shakespeare is a waste of time? It’s the story that matters, not the history.

5. Rabbis Have No Intrinsic Authority. Why do you listen to your rabbi? Because she says what you want to hear. As soon as your rabbi says something you disagree with and that matters to you, you begin to lobby for a new rabbi or you change synagogues. That means that the rabbi is stuck trying to second-guess what the wealthy and powerful people in the congregation believe so the rabbi can parrot it back to them and stay employed. My rabbi told me, “I don’t believe a word of what I say, but I have grown accustomed to the lifestyle that comes when I’m paid to say it.”

So what? Rabbis who are in it for the money aren’t real rabbis. Real rabbis teach Torah. No real rabbis works for a shul that finds Torah meaningless. These “rabbis” are just employees hired to perform ceremonies and are no different from the dj, florist, and caterer. I wouldn’t belong to that kind of shul, and neither should you. Don't judge Judaism by its weakest link: the liberal humanists who use their rabbis and their tradition to placate some residual survivor's guilt over the Shoah [Holocaust]. Judge it by its strongest link: the Orthodox and Hasidim who love God, God's Torah, God's People, and God's Land. We don't need a bunch of pseudo-Jews who want a Judaism that makes them feel good, we want Jews who are challenged by Judaism because it makes them do good. I'm tired of Jews whining about Judaism. Go be Buddhists or Christians and leave the rest of us alone.

Jewish Spirituality Survey

In September 2008 Synagogue 3000 commissioned a survey to measure Jewish spirituality among American Jews. The fact that they couldn’t define “spirituality” didn’t seem to faze them. What they found was that Jews are less spiritually inclined than the general population. Not surprisingly, the survey also found that Jews don’t talk much about God, and don’t find prayer all that important. Did we actually need a survey to tell us this?

But wait, what about all those Jews rushing to other religions like Buddhism and Sufism? Aren’t they spiritual? Could be, but the survey didn’t count them because they didn’t find their spirituality within Judaism. In other words this was a survey of Jewish spirituality that excluded those Jews (perhaps 20% of the Jewish population according to the survey) that might be the most spiritual.

Given the population studied, the survey came to the following conclusions: (1) Orthodox Jews, who make up only 8% of America Jewry, are the most spiritual Jews; (2) Jews with one Jewish parent or Jews By Choice (converts) with no Jewish parents are the second most spiritual Jews, and (3) Jews with two Jewish parents are the least spiritual and the least religious.

You have to love this! After decades of fighting against intermarriage it turns out that the biggest danger to Jewish survival is Jews marrying Jews!

How are we to understand these results? It isn’t too difficult. Orthodox Jews are more spiritual because they actually believe in Judaism. NonOrthodox Jews with one or less Jewish parent are more spiritual because their non-Jewish parent exposed them to other religions that, unlike Judaism, place a high value on spirituality. NonOrthodox Jews raised in an exclusively Jewish household with two Jewish parents are the least religious and spiritual because no one really believed in the Judaism they were taught in the first place, and they were secular humanists who found spirituality far too woo-woo for their tastes.

I speak in synagogues all over the United States and I can attest, at least anecdotally, to the validity of these findings. The vast majority of Jews I meet are bored to death by the Judaism they are asked to practice. They simply do not believe in God as presented to them in the siddur and Torah (prayer book and Bible), and cannot pretend that this God they do not believe in wants them to engage in religious rituals they cannot relate to. What little involvement they have is due almost exclusively to Zionism, anti-Semitism, and ancestor worship. They love Israel (or at least their idea of Isreal), they fear Gentiles (or at least those Gentiles they don’t know personally), and they honor their mothers and their fathers. If they want God, spirituality, or even a meaningful outlook on life they look elsewhere.

This helps explain two other findings in the survey. First, those nonOrthodox Jews who are spiritually inclined do not talk with their rabbis about their interests. Why would they? I suspect that rabbis are less spiritual then their congregants. Many if not most rabbis I know are atheists when it comes to the image of God promoted by Torah and siddur. They didn’t become rabbis for spiritual reasons, and they have no spiritual foundation from which to help those Jews who are looking for Jewish spirituality.

Second, the survey found that younger Jews are more spiritual than older Jews, and that younger Gentiles are less spiritual that older Gentiles. Which shows, I guess, that younger Jews are becoming older Gentiles.

While this may sound confusing, the survey attributes the rise in spirituality among younger Jews to the fact that younger Jews tend to have one Gentile parent, and that parent brought the spiritual element into their child’s life. Why are younger Gentiles less spiritual than older Gentiles? I don’t know; commission another survey.

The Synagogue 3000 survey was designed to help synagogues plan for the future, so the following numbers seem to matter:

76% of the people surveyed wanted their rabbis to talk about God;
52% of the people surveyed wanted their rabbis to talk about the afterlife;
73% of the people surveyed wanted their rabbis to talk about ultimate meaning; and
78% of the people surveyed wanted their rabbis to talk about spiritual issues.

Houston, we have a problem. First of all most nonOrthodox rabbis don’t believe in God as the Torah and siddur picture God. If they did they would be Orthodox rabbis. If they believe in God at all, most are probably pantheists equating God with nature. If these rabbis tell the truth, what are they going to do with Torah and liturgy? We spend weeks every year reading in the Torah about how God wants us to kill animals as part of a remedy for skin diseases that a bit of antibiotic cream would cure in a day. Can it be that our all-knowing God didn’t know about tetracycline?

Second, most nonOrthodox rabbis don’t believe in a soul that survives death. Since rabbinic Judaism insists on such a soul and the possibility of heaven and hell, what are we to do with rabbinic Judaism?

You see the problem. If rabbis are honest, rabbinic Judaism is dead.

When it comes to “ultimate meaning” and “spiritual issues” I would hope rabbis are on surer ground, especially since no one can define these terms precisely. I suspect people are asking that synagogues become places where they can explore the meaning of life rather than simply get instruction as to how to live as 17th century Polish Jews did.

What difference will this survey make? I doubt it will make any at all. What difference should it make? It should lead to the wholesale re-evaluation of what Judaism is and synagogues are for. If Judaism is simply a matter of ancestor worship then synagogues may be doing the best they can to train people for life in the middle ages. If Judaism is supposed to be an on-going exploration of life and meaning then the synagogue has got to come up with better prayers, better theologies, better language, and a radically different way of engaging people. But since, as Einstein said, you cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it, nothing will change. It can’t.

Christians Deny Jesus at National Prayer Breakfast

When I was growing up in Longmeadow, Massachusetts the town’s only country club was closed to Jews. Yes that was illegal, and yes there were plenty of Jewish lawyers more than capable of suing the club, but we chose not to storm this bastion of Christendom and to build a cooler club of our own down the road. It was called Twin Hills, and while it was open to Gentiles it was a haven for Jews who, simply because they killed Christ, were denied membership at the Longmeadow Country Club.

Twin Hills was very pricey, too pricey for my family, so we joined another club in a neighboring town. This one catered to the lower classes and was open to everyone. You knew it was for poor people because it was called the Yacht Club and yet was landlocked and had no boats whatsoever. The Yacht Club featured a small swimming pool, a ping-pong table, and a Coke machine. Take that you Capitalist swine!

I’m telling you this to say that I am no stranger to anti-Jewish discrimination. So this morning when I learned that today’s National Day of Prayer was closed to nonChristians I was outraged as only a member of the Yacht Club can be.

But wait, I’m not being quite fair. Anyone can attend the National Day of Prayer, but only Christians can lead said prayers. So the National Day of Prayer is really the National Day of Christian Led Prayers to the Christian God who, because he is Jewish, is excluded from leading prayers during His Own National Day of Prayer. This is what really pisses me off— if Jesus Himself came down from heaven and asked to lead a prayer at any of today’s National Day of Prayer events he would be denied.

Yes, you heard me: Christians Deny their Lord!

Woe unto thee Shirley Dobson, woman of Focus on the (Christian) Family founder James Dobson, for thou hast denied thy Lord, and have used thy two million dollar budget to create a cult of exclusion that mocks the One Who Died for Your Sins Who was Himself a Jew and Whom thou wouldst deny a place on thy sacrilegious stage. Woe, I say, to thee, Woman! Woe! Woooooooooooe!

So what to do? Should we sue? No, that’s a waste of money. We should do what the Jews of my hometown did: create our own way more cool National Day of Prayer. We will call it the International Day of Prayer, Meditation, Chant, Psalm, Song, and Wisdom Devoted to the Unification of All Peoples in Service of Love, Compassion, Justice, and Peace or IDPMCPSWDUAPSLCJP for short. This day will be open to Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, First Peoples, Pagans, Wiccans, Atheists, Rastafarians, Pastafarians, Mormons, Catholics, Seventh Day Adventists, Fourth Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Allah’s Witnesses, anyone in Witness Protection, and, yes, even Christians, though I imagine they, like the Christians at Longmeadow Country Club, will prefer to be among their own kind at their own puny National Day of Prayer events.

What shall we of the IDPMCPSWDUAPSLCJP prayer for? As founder, president, CEO, CFO, and Chief Rabbi of IDPMCPSWDUAPSLCJP I invite you all to join with me and pray for the speedy return of Jesus during next year’s National Day of Prayer. That way when He comes back the Christians will miss it because He isn’t going to go where He isn’t welcome. Instead He will come to our IDPMCPSWDUAPSLCJP events where He is welcome and He will lift us all up to Heaven so that when the Christians come out of their National Day of Prayer events they will find that they missed Him and we will all be laughing our asses off with Jesus up in heaven. And then all the Christians will be crying and screaming and saying that it’s not fair that they are excluded. They will be jumping up and down and tearing their clothes and wailing, and then Jesus will send Satan down to scare the crap out of them, and they will be running around screaming, and we will all be up in heaven laughing, but only for a while because terrorizing Christians just never seems to be all that much fun, and so we will stop laughing and Satan will get bored with chasing them, and Jesus will lift them all up to heaven where they will build their country club that the rest of us can’t join and they will be happy for all eternity.

Of course if Jesus doesn’t come we can always join the Yacht Club.

Changing My Religion

A new Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life poll reveals that more than half of all Americans have changed religions at least once in their lives. There was a time when people stayed with the religion of their birth. Those where the good old days when leaving one’s religion was punishable by death. Of course in some Islamic countries the good old days are today, but here in the US of A we are free to change religions at will.

As one who likes to keep up with the latest religious fads (I passed on priestly pedophilia, but other Catholic traditions do have a certain allure) I have decided to change my religion. Well, not change my religion, after all how can I change Judaism? No, I mean I will opt out of Judaism and join something else. The question is what religion will I join?

Hinduism attracts me because I love all things elephant (with the exception of today’s Republican Party). But then I would be subject to the caste system, and with my luck I would be tossed in with the Dalits, the Untouchables.

When I first learned this I thought it would be cool because I thought Eliot Ness was going to be my boss. Then someone told me that the dalits had nothing to do with the FBI, so I lost interest. Then someone told me that the dalits were really the Daleks from the Dr. Who television series, and I am a huge Dr. Who fan and hate the Daleks who are always out to get Dr. Who, so Hinduism is out.

Buddhism is an option. By being a Buddhist I can still hang out with Jews since almost all the Buddhists I know are Jews. On the other hand, Buddhism doesn’t make room for God and I can’t seem to shake Her, so being a Buddhist isn’t going to work.

Becoming a Muslim or a Christian are also out since they worship the same insane warlord as the Jews from whom I am trying to switch. This would be like a Coke drinker switching to Pepsi when the whole point was to give up brown sugar water altogether.

Taoism is probably the religion for me. First, its “bible,” the Tao te Ching, is only 81 poems long so there isn’t a lot to learn or carry around. Second, the great Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu seems to share my sense of humor, something that no saint in any other religion does. And third the yin-yang symbol is round and therefore lacks the sharp points of the Star of David and Cross of Christ so there is less chance of poking myself when wearing religious jewelry.

So I guess Taoism is it. And today I am officially switching to Taoism. That’s it, then. I’m a Taoist. You know what bugs me about my Taoist religion? It just isn’t progressive enough. Too traditional. Tai Chi is too slow and too long for me. I’ve got to change Taoism, make it hip and modern, and more to my liking. But I sense resistance from my Taoist co-religionists. They don’t want to change. I’m frustrated with conventional Taoism. Maybe I should find another religion more suited to my nature. I wonder if Judaism has anything to offer me?

Christianity: No Ifs, Ands, or Butts

Jave Neyland is seven years old. She lives in Texas. She is a persecuted Christian.

The godless school board of Irving, Texas (no doubt named after a godless New York Jew) has ordered Jave to tuck in the shirttails of her blouse in accordance with school dress codes. Her mother, Dyker Neyland (named after the flood control devices of Holland and not indicative of the woman’s sexual orientation) claims that the school board is persecuting her daughter because she is a Christian. Christians, as it turns out, are required to wear their shirts untucked.

Dyker’s proof is 1 Timothy 2:9 which requires women to “adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation.” Allowing Jave to parade around school with her butt uncovered by shirttails would violate the New Testament and endanger Jave’s eternal soul.

Critics of Ms. Neyland will not doubt argue that little Jave could wear skirts or dresses rather than buttocks enhancing jeans that need buttocks covering. After all, when St. Timothy wrote his injunction against immodesty women weren’t wearing pants. Indeed neither were men. First Timothy could not have imagined tight jeans (though it is rumored that Second Timothy was a butt hound), and could not have been writing with shirttails in mind. Dyker is thus adding her own interpretation to the Bible, which she should be condemned to hell for doing, and which should not be imposed on Texans as a whole.

Now most of my readers will assume that I support the school board in this issue, but in fact I don’t. Texas is one of the fattest states in the United States. If it follows through on its threats to withdraw from the Union it will be one of the fattest nations on the planet. Fat tends to accumulate in the buttocks of many people, and forcing students to confront fat buttocks day in and day out in school will lead not to licentious thoughts, but painful and cruel jokes. Therefore it is my contention that all butts should be enshrouded with as much flowing fabric as possible. This should be true for the butts of boys as well as girls.

The whole point of a school dress code is to create an environment conducive to learning. Forcing students to stare at a sea of giant butts will not only fail in that regard, it will achieve just the opposite of its intended effect. Proof for this also comes from Timothy, in this case 3 Timothy 15: 38 which, in the King Jane’s translation tells us, “the cheeks to which our Lord referreth be not the cheeks of the butt but that of the head, yea the face, and it is these we must turneth to one another and not the lower which must remain hiddeneth behind a shroud, yea even a vast blanket, yea even angels’ wings, for should the nether cheeks capture the eye of the sinner thy neighbors beam will causest thoughts of lust and secure for them a place in the land of burning, gnashing and writhing in which the Lord castest all whose cheeks go unchecked and those whose eyes behold them.”

The Bible is clear: no ifs, ands, or butts allowed.

The Outhouse: Reflections on The Shack, Part Five: Final Thoughts

[The Shack by William Young is a major bestseller and worthy of comment. This is the fifth of five quick looks at The Shack from my perspective.]

The Shack is written for Protestant Christians, but not all Protestant Christians. One of the most controversial aspects of The Shack is its theology of universal salvation, and idea that is anathema to those who believe Heaven is a restricted club.

According to The Shack, Jesus is not a Christian, nor does he want others to become Christians: “I’m not a Christian… Who said anything about being a Christian?” (page 182). Whatyoutalkinaboutwillis? Jesus doesn’t want us to become Christians?

“Those who love me,” Jesus says, “come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats and Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, American and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved.” (page 182).

Don’t be misled by the use of “were.” Jesus isn’t saying that his followers used to be Buddhists and Mormons but now they are Christians. If that is what he means, it makes no sense to say they were Democrats and Republicans, or bankers and bookies. But neither is he saying that Mormonism and making book leads to Jesus.

Jesus isn’t saying that all roads lead to Papa. In fact, he makes it clear that most roads are dead ends. What Jesus is saying is that he will take any road to meet us and call us to transformation. (page 182) So Jesus is sticking to “I am the way, the truth, and the light,” but disavowing any notion that Christianity has a clue as to what this means. In fact, when Mack asks Jesus about religious institutions Jesus says, “I don’t create institutions—never have, never will” (page 172). And just to make sure we get the point Jesus adds, “I’m not too big on religion” (page 172).

Way to go, Jesus! This is wild stuff. Rather than find the one true path to Jesus, Jesus says he will meet you on whatever path you find yourself. The question this raises is this: Will the Jesus I meet on the Hindu path (for example) look like the Jesus others meet on the Christian path, or will he appear to me in Hindu form, say, Krishna? Or is Jesus the Buddha? Is Jesus Allah? I don’t think The Shack is clear on this point, but it raises the issue that if Jesus isn’t Christian does he have anything to do with the Christ Christians imagine him to be?

According to The Shack anyone can follow Jesus and being a Christian has nothing to do with it. This isn’t the first time Jesus says something like this, listen to Jesus in John 10:16, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.” Christians who imagine that only Christians are of the fold of Jesus don’t know Shack.

This isn’t relativism—all religions lead to God; this is universalism— God transcends all religions and works directly with individuals regardless of and irrespective of religion. Wow! And this is a best selling Christian novel?

It is, but I suspect it is because most Christians read it the same way they read their Bible—they just notice the passages that they agree with and pretend the rest just isn’t there.

So in the end should you read The Shack or not? Sure, if nothing else it will give you something to talk about with your friends (or soon to be ex-friends if you bring up this blog). And it might give you a new way to look at Black and Asian women. But is The Shack true? Only Papa knows.

The Outhouse: Reflections on The Shack, Part Four: The Hell of Heaven

[The Shack by William Young is a major bestseller and worthy of comment. This is the fourth of five quick looks at The Shack from my perspective.]

The Shack ends with Mack having a vision in which he sees his murdered daughter and his abusive father in Heaven. Right away I’m thinking, “Run, Missy, run! Grandpa is a child abuser!” But it seems that grandpa has repented his ways, and Mack asks his dad for forgiveness even as he forgives him himself.

This is troubling: was the abuse Mack’s father heaped on little Mack somehow Mack’s fault? Isn’t that what his dad told him after every abusive episode? Isn’t that what all abusers say, “You made me do it”? Maybe Mack is more troubled than we think. God suffers from Munchausen’s disorder and Mack suffers from Stockholm syndrome—The Shack is one sick hut.

What brings Mack some solace is his discovery that everything turns out all right in Heaven. He sees his daughter Missy playing happily in the fields of Heaven far beyond the garden of good and evil in which her rape and murder took place. This world is just a shack, God’s Mansion awaits. So don’t become overly concerned with justice in this world—certainly God doesn’t seem to care—and take heart that heaven is the reward for all those who repent.

This comforted Mack—his little girl spending eternity as a little girl. He isn’t bothered by the fact that she will never learn anything, never graduate high school or college, never meet someone and fall in love, never have children of her own. Well, I’m bothered by it!

First Missy is robbed of her life, and then God freezes her in perpetual childhood. Is that what Heaven is—forever frozen in the body you had when you died? Does that mean the crippled are eternally crippled? Does that mean SIDS victims spend eternity on their tummies in a cradle? Or is Mack’s vision of Missy and his dad just his own private reverie and heaven is a fiction? The Shack cannot accept the latter, but its view of Heaven seems hellish to me.

This is the problem with all attempts to make people feel better by feeding them mindless drivel. I can understand how Mack can be comforted for a moment to think that his daughter is still enjoying being eight, but how is he not raging at God for making eight last for eternity?

I have no problem with people who want life to be just and hopeful and, in the end, to spend eternity with God in some blissful paradise. What I find so troubling and even offensive is when they settle for so little. And Mack has settled big time. I think Mack is just afraid to vent his rage at God and so he takes refuge in nonsense. I don’t want a god who suffers along with the victims, I want a god who suffers because he/she causes suffering. I want god to repent. But god will never repent as long as Mack refuses to demand justice for Missy.

The Outhouse: Reflections on The Shack, Part Three: Free Will

[The Shack by William Young is a major bestseller and worthy of comment. This is the third of five quick looks at The Shack from my perspective.]

Papa (God) tells Mack that she was powerless to interfere in the brutal rape and murder of his baby girl because if she were to stop the crime she would be robbing humanity of free will, and without free will we humans are nothing.

At first this may make sense to you, and it certainly placates Mack, but it bothers the hell out of me. When God talks about protecting free will she subtly shifts our focus from Missy to Missy’s murderer. The only free will God is protecting by allowing the brutal rape and murder of little Missy is the free will of the murderer. God robs Missy of her free will without batting an eye!

Of course if you believe in The Secret and its backwards Law of Attraction (like attracts like), then you might say that Missy’s free will was also honored because she brought about her rape and murder by thinking thoughts of rape and murder. According to The Secret everything that happens to us happens because we attract it to ourselves through our thoughts. How a little kid has such thoughts, however, is beyond me, and only a heartless fool would imagine that little Missy chose to be raped and murdered, but if heartless idiocy is what it takes to excuse God of the crime of callous indifference then millions of The Shack readers are willing to do just that.

So which is it, Papa—whose free will are you really concerned with: the murderer’s or the victim’s? Papa’s logic demands that we see that she is siding with evil. Unfortunately, Mack doesn’t see this. He is content to let God squeak by with this silly argument about free will. But you shouldn’t!

Hold on a second, Mack might object. God is talking about the big picture—human free will in general and not the murderer’s in particular. If Papa were to save Missy she would have to end free will for all of us!

This is absurd on at least two counts. First, if you believe the stories in the Bible as most of The Shack’s readers do, then you know that God overrides free will. What, for example, is the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart if not the theft of his free will? Second, if God refuses to intervene in life because of free will, and this callousness allows the free will of the powerful and wicked to override the free will of the weak and innocent, then God is simply enabling survival of the fittest at its most brutal. In fact if this is the theology of The Shack, the its author is a deist of sorts believing in a God who created the world and then leaves it to its own devises.

The simple fact is that little Missy died because God let her die, and if Mack let’s God off the hook for this murder he is just enabling God to perpetrate further evil while pretending to be powerless to stop it. The God of The Shack suffers from a type of Munchausen’s disease. She let’s evil happen so she can pretend to suffer with the tormented and thus earn the love of the survivors. Papa/God is one sick black lady. How can people find this comforting?

Outhouse: Reflections on The Shack, Part Two of Five

The Outhouse: Reflections on The Shack, Part Two: Where was God?
[The Shack by William Young is a major bestseller and worthy of comment. This is the second of five quick looks at The Shack from my perspective.]

Mack’s young daughter Missy is kidnapped and murdered. Mack wants to know where Papa was during the murder. Papa is Missy’s name for God who turns out to be a large black woman. Papa assures Mack that “There was not a moment that we [God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, who it turns out is an Asian woman] were not with her” (p. 173). Mack finds that comforting. I find it infuriating.

They were there and they didn’t stop the murder? You would think that God would be in favor of a Good Samaritan Law that holds bystanders culpable for not saving a person like Missy who found herself in such dire straights. Apparently Big Mama and the Asian Chick weren’t paying attention when Jesus shared this particular parable.

Of course Mack, too, wonders why God didn’t intervene, and Papa tells him that she was powerless to do so. You see, God gave the world over to humans and promised not to interfere. It is a matter of free will, God’s and ours. If God interfered we wouldn’t be free to love him (her?), and God wants us to love him, but only if we do so of our own free will.

God is, of course, lying. God interferes all the time. What is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, the destruction of almost all life on the planet with the Flood, the choosing of Abraham, the opening of wombs, the sending of Moses to liberate the Israelites, the murder of the tens of thousands of innocent Egyptian first-born, the revelation on Sinai, the genocide of those who stood to interfere with the Israelite take over of Canaan, the story of Jonah, and… wait for it… Jesus himself? Of course God interferes! And anyone who believes God heals some and not others knows that God interferes. God just chose not to interfere in the case of the kidnap, rape, and murder of little Missy.

I would have felt more comforted if Papa had told Mack that she was at an Elvis concert on Venus rather than that she was right there the whole time and did nothing! I understand being out of town, but I cannot forgive callous inactivity. God herself commands us not to stand idle while our neighbor bleeds (Leviticus 19:16), and yet Papa admits to doing just that! “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?” (Genesis 18:25)

Why is Mack, and by extension the millions of Shack fans, comforted by this cop-out? Get angry, man! Be outraged! Demand an accounting from the Great Accountant! But that is too Jewish for our Protestant Mack. This is an aspect of Christianity that just breaks my heart. Christians can’t get angry with God. Jews are nothing without our tradition of arguing with, indicting, and even convicting God of unspeakable crimes against humanity. Being angry with God isn’t a betrayal of faith, but the firmest articulation of it. Love God so much that you demand God be holy rather than cruel. Mack doesn’t so much love God as enable God to go on claiming powerlessness when in fact God is simply callous.

The Outhouse: Reflections on The Shack, Part One: The Mother Returns

The Outhouse: Reflections on The Shack, Part One: The Mother Returns

[The Shack by William Young is a major bestseller and worthy of comment. This is the first of five quick looks at The Shack from my perspective.]

Here is the plot: Mack a married father of three who grew up in an abusive home, struggles with faith when his youngest daughter, Missy, is kidnapped and murdered. Mack blames God and himself for Missy’s death and is enshrouded by a Great Sadness. One day Mack receives a note in his mailbox urging him to return to the shack where his daughter’s bloody dress was found. The note is signed "Papa," the name Missy called God. Mack goes to the shack and finds Papa, who is in fact a large and jolly black woman, Jesus, and another woman named Sarayu who turns out to the be the Holy Spirit.

Representing God as a black woman seems like the punch line of an old joke, but I think it is exciting that The Shack has two of the three Gods of the Trinity manifest in female form. The classic Trinity is all male, and The Shack brings some needed balance to this. To picture the Trinity as the divine version of the seventy’s comedy Three’s Company may begin a process of gender modification much needed in western Christianity.

Making the Holy Spirit a woman is closer to the Jewish roots of the idea. In Judaism the Presence of God is called Shekhinah, a feminine gendered noun, suggesting that the intimate experience of the immanent God is somehow “feminine.”

The fact that a black woman is called Papa is even more enticing. Young is clearly muddying the gender issue. Perhaps taking God’s self revelation to Moses in Exodus, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, I will be whatever I will be,” seriously, Young is telling us that God can appear to us as either a Father or a Mother.

As anyone who has read my book The Divine Feminine knows, the return of the Mother is an integral part of the spiritual maturation of humankind. While some religions, notably the many faces of Hinduism, never lost contact with the Mother, and while mystical Judaism makes much of the Feminine, western religion in general (Protestant Christianity and Islam especially) have relegated the Divine Feminine to the background at best. Catholicism has Mary and the cult that has grown up around her, but Protestant Christianity stripped itself of the Mother. Such an imbalance leads (as we see in Jewish, Protestant and Islamic militants) to a religion of armed adolescents (both chronological and intellectual) whose faith in God is limited to and strengthened by a warrior mentality. The fact that The Shack is a book aimed at and capturing the hearts of Protestant Christians is a very exciting sign of a quiet and deeply promising spiritual evolution in that tradition.

Once Southern Baptists take to the idea that Papa is also Mama (and Big Black Mama at that) who knows what will happen to both women’s stature in the church and civil rights in the society at large. While I do have nits to pick with The Shack, this isn’t one of them.

Happy Birthday To Me

Today is my 58th birthday, and three TSA agents just pulled me aside at the John Wayne Airport for a special frisking. It seems that there is a strange bulge protruding from under my jacket. It’s my stomach, but the TSA agent has to rub it to be sure.

“Today’s my birthday,” I say.

“Lot’s of terrorists blow themselves up on their birthday,” he says. “Seventy-two virgins beats a birthday cake any day, don’t you think Rah-me?” He pronounces my name to make it sound Palestinian rather than Israeli. I’m neither,

“Recent scholarship into older manuscripts of the Qur’an suggests that the idea of virgins is a misreading of the original Arabic which may actually say ‘raisins.’ Martyrs are rewarded with seventy-two raisins.”

“Like raisins, do ya?” the agent asked. “Are raisins worth dyin’ for?”

“No,” I said, “but I often travel with prunes. I get constipated.”

The search took longer than it should. You shouldn’t banter with TSA agents about the Qur’an. Or constipation.

My seat on the American Airline flight from John Wayne airport to Dallas puts me next to a very large woman who has lifted the armrest between our seats so she can use half of mine as well. Very intimate. And sweaty. I think she uses Ice Blue Secret antiperspirant.

I cram up against the window of the airplane, and hum “Happy Birthday to Me,” but no one inquires why, or even seems to notice. Did I mention that today is my birthday? I’ve been on this planet for fifty-eight years.

I’ve had a few successes during that time. When I was very young I learned how to shit in the toilet rather than my pants. It is skill I worry about losing. Sometimes I stand in the adult diaper aisle of Wal-Mart wondering if I should stock up now as a hedge against inflation. Note to manufacturers: it would be cool if there were superhero diapers for adults as there are for toddlers. I’d feel better shitting in my pants if they had the face of the Incredible Hulk printed on them.

Anyway, I’m happy to be fifty-eight. I don’t mind getting older. I’m even looking forward to turning sixty, but that’s mostly because turning sixty comes after turning fifty-eight so looking forward is really unavoidable.

Sometimes when you say you’re getting older someone says, “Consider the alternative.” They mean I should think about being dead. I don’t see the value in that. I’m thinking of treating myself to a birthday snack from the cart on the airplane, instead, but paying $12 for a bag of stale peanuts seems extravagant given the economy. So, I think I’ll just ask for water and tie my shoelace to the cup after I drink all the water, and wear the cup on my head like a party hat. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Rah-me, happy birthday to me.