#4 - The Revelation Paradox

A FAITH GARDEN:

The Revelation Paradox

In the previous podcast, I explored why Faith is an inescapable ingredient to every framework of meaning, even secular ones. If no one can prove a godless universe, faith opens the door for people to believe there is a creator God, just as people are free to believe there is no cosmic power beyond nature itself. I can’t help but feel that the world would be a more kind and loving environment if atheist and religious fundamentalist alike understood this point. Maybe we would avoid the overreach, mocking and demonization so prevalent nowadays when discussing the topic of Religion. And since faith is essential for every framework of meaning, I also suggested that the word Religion should apply more broadly, covering each such framework, even if it does not involve a belief in God. Religion is really any system that offers a meaningful path to live life, offering guidance for life’s decisions. And finally, because each of us is a separate consciousness, a separate soul, choosing a faith is ultimately a personal decision. Faced with this choice, perhaps the most important decision I will make in my lifetime, the critical question is: how do I pick a Faith to believe in? How do I analyze whether a faith or Religion resonates for me? What tools do I use to decide whether a Religion will provide me with a meaningful life? In other words, how do I make this Choice?

Let’s return to the image of the Faith Garden. At its lowest point, my Faith Garden looked like the salt flats. Barren. Pitiful. At least, that’s how I felt. Seeing this condition, I sought out a variety of opinions on what to do next… on how to replant my Faith Garden. As you can imagine, I received a host of conflicting ideas: some thought I needed to immediately replant A, B and C – that is, stop questioning my Judaism; some thought I should wait a few months before replanting – let the dust settle and the temperature cool down; some thought I should plant X, Y and Z instead of the A, B and C I had before. Unfortunately, I wasn’t trying to solve a theoretical problem here – because when it comes to this Faith Garden metaphor, am the soil; I am that garden. So in the face of these conflicting opinions, I needed to figure out which option would be the best for me.

Stepping back, I needed to find Religion to achieve guidance and inspiration in life. I was already beginning to feel the harmful psychological effects after losing my childhood faith. Now my challenge… no, my responsibility, was to analyze whether a particular Religion would provide satisfying guidance and meaning for me. This is the blessing and the curse of consciousness, of soulful self-awareness. Because this Choice is personal, I had to adopt a Religion that I have faith would be best suited for me.

At first blush, this call for analysis appears misplaced, perhaps even arrogant, when the Religion in question involves an event of Divine revelation. Who am I to judge the reported word of God? Let’s remember that most, if not all, traditional Religions involve prophecy as a component that introduced and solidified the Religion’s framework of meaning, its beliefs and values. The deeper I thought about this question, the more I recognized that even prophecy has its limits. It turns out that not even Divine revelation provides the clear answers, the certainty, that I longed for. Over thousands of years, competing claims to Divine revelation have emerged, each with its own prophet or series of prophets, so that today we possess a pretty-wide variety of reported and even contradictory revelations. Since they often claim to be mutually exclusive, how do I go about determining which one is the truth? Beyond the challenge of competing revelations… the initiating events for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and similar Religions occurred thousands of years ago. Because we live at such a distance from most of the “traditional” revelations, it is impossible to verify the authenticity of these competing visions through the mist of time. I found that these two characteristics – competing claims and the distance of time – created what I call the Fog of Revelation. Tales of revelation could be necessary but not sufficient to ground my faith. I found clarity to be impossible, where visibility remains so limited through the fog.

Even beyond this Fog of Revelation, my newfound faith was going to have to be more than simply declaring “I believe.” The very nature of revelation itself forced me to ground my faith in both analysis and experience. You see,

a revelation must always be translated into concrete ideas and thoughts - in the form of words.

To understand this challenge, we need look no further than the remarkable drama over picking Supreme Court justices of the United States. What a circus! But in reality, both sides are fighting over something fundamental and fascinating – it’s the exact same issue that I encountered with revelation: when you read or hear words, any words, you must decide what did, or what do or what should those words mean? This decision is why the Supreme Court hearings are so contentious. Some judges will try to figure out what the words meant when originally written and some judges will try and determine what those same words should mean today, based on our evolving beliefs. Those two interpretations may be dramatically different. My point is that the common denominator, the inescapable truth, is that all words demand interpretation. Human interpretation.

It is exactly the same with revelation. Revelations are written down. Put into words. Sometimes they begin as a great oration. Sometimes they claim to be transcribed from above. But inevitably, it’s pen to paper, or perhaps in the old days, chisel to stone. Once this occurs, an unavoidable characteristic of revelation is that those words provide the fertile ground for endless human interpretation and reinterpretation, even if they are reportedly Divine in origin. It’s really simple: once words are articulated, they will be interpreted. And all interpretation comes from that unique human gift – our consciousness – the human soul.

You may think I’m exaggerating – that there can’t be that much room for interpretation or disagreement. But you’d be wrong. Sometimes, even those who claim to have heard the same revelation remember and record it differently from one another. The result of every revelation is competing interpretations of the received and transcribed words. That is why religions subdivide over time into subsets and further subsets. Interpretation leads to differences in dogma and ritual. Interpretation also leads to the inconsistent ways religions see outsiders over time: for example, there were periods of history where Christianity and Islam warmly embraced Jews as long-lost cousins; and there were periods in history where the same religions, Christianity and Islam, tried to exterminate all Jews as heretics. The difference lay in how those religious sects interpreted foundational texts. It all comes back to human interpretation.

None of this should have surprised me; I simply had never focused on this inescapable phenomenon until I encountered it as a Free Agent. At that moment, I suddenly appreciated something remarkable about Judaism’ understanding of this challenge. In a move of systemic innovation, Judaism actually imbedded the interpretation phenomenon through the interplay of the written Bible and the Jewish oral law; creating a formal mechanism and dynamic for human interpretation of the revealed word. I’ll talk more about the Jewish oral law in a later podcast, but for now, let’s just say that – complimenting the Bible, Judaism has a tradition of an oral law that is remarkably comprehensive and touches all aspects of life. Over centuries, that oral law was put down in writing – that’s how the Talmud was created. But Judaism’s various commentaries on both the Bible and oral law demonstrate the remarkable elasticity of humankind’s interpretive gifts. The flexibility and creativity with which the Jewish oral law interprets the written Bible cannot be overstated. Take one simple example: the Jewish oral law refused to interpret the Biblical punishment of “an eye for an eye” literally, and instead reinterpreted that simple phrase to mean the value of an eye for an actual eye. Obviously, that ‘aint what the text says. By accepting and even encouraging this interpretation phenomenon, the most commonplace characteristic in Jewish commentaries is constant disagreement: the existence and recordation of multiple, contradictory interpretations of text, laws and traditions. Only the Jews would celebrate endless argument. Judaism even brags about it, picturing these conflicting human interpretations as 70 different faces of the Bible – meaning there are at least 70 equally legitimate ways to interpret every word of revealed text.

My point is that, armed with soulful self-awareness, interpretation is inescapable and inevitable. As a result, we are each charged with the responsibility to examine the authenticity and resonance of a Religion, even traditional, revelation-based religions. The Word of God is only the starting point. It may be a strong push in one direction, but it always begs the question: what does that word mean to me? I’ve concluded that the Choice – “why am I here? What should I do with my limited life span?” exists for every one of us, and to lead our best lives, this Choice demands we commit to a Religion that resonates with our souls. Some people find answers to this Choice without any assessment, without verbalizing questions, perhaps intuitively concluding a Religion provides meaning and inspiration towards a life well-lived. In many ways, that was my condition, having been born into a family committed to one Religion. I learned and lived Judaism – I experienced it first-hand, and because of that, I gained a deep appreciation of its core ideas, as well as its strengths and weaknesses. I could feel whether the Religion provided personally fulfilling meaning and purpose. But for me, even that insider experience was not enough. I encountered both psychological and intellectual obstacles: psychologically, I needed to feel that I made the Choice on my own to opt-in to a Religion. I needed to own it. The mystical Kabbalah has a wonderful insight into this psychological dark cloud: when I don’t earn something, when it is simply handed to me or inherited, Kabbalah calls it the “Bread of Shame”, meaning I feel no pride of ownership, no more than superficial commitment and appreciation. That’s why a convert to Judaism is deemed to have an advantage – having independently and consciously chosen the framework of meaning. And that’s the psychological phenomenon behind the Choice. The tension is in the Choice. I had to answer the question for myself: does my Religion provide personally meaningful answers?

In addition to this psychological need for personal confirmation, there is often the intellectual challenge to be met – namely, how do I address my significant doubts about the Religion I was raised in. Of course, I had many positive experiences in my Judaism, but I felt troubled or uncommitted in some fundamental way because of my doubts. As my soulful self-awareness evolved into adulthood, my unique consciousness turned the mirror inward and examined my Religion and its origins. I faced the challenge to either independently commit to Judaism or find another Religion that I would find compelling. Maybe I’m a strange bird, but I have to admit, once the dust settled from my spiritual breakdown, this challenge excited me.

This is where my Faith Garden journey turned in a more positive and constructive direction. What would be my vision for a new Faith Garden? What flowers would best take root in my soil, in my soul? If this has a hopeful and positive vibe to it… it should! This was an expedition to find a personal faith that would provide purpose, that would enhance my courage and resilience to live life. As I searched desperately for perspective, I realized that faith is a paradox. Faith exists because of uncertainty, but faith only exists in commitment. Faith demands I commit to a framework of meaning, commit my life to a Religion. Commitment means I’m “all in.” And yet, faith will never overcome the uncertainty of existence. Blending uncertainty and commitment is counter-intuitive, and yet those are the primary ingredients of faith.

In order to commit to a Religion, I would need to find a reasonable basis, a strong belief, in what the Religion stands for and the meaning and purpose it offers me. Could I find in Judaism the ideas and infrastructure that would inspire me to recommit? Armed with my new understanding of the unique universal soul and the essential Choice, with more expansive understandings of Religion and faith, I felt ready to begin replanting my Faith Garden.