#8 - Empowered Immanence

A FAITH GARDEN:

Empowered Immanence

A lonely gardener.

In the last two podcasts, we explored together why Judaism views each of us with such optimism. To put it in sports terms, God sees all-star talent in each of us. The Bible describes our unique consciousness as a gift from God. Armed with this soul, you and I can nurture and grow the intra and inter-personal worlds of self-esteem, family, friends, and community. And God also gave us the bandwidth, the space, and the freedom, to succeed or fail in those endeavors. To quote the psalmist: HaAretz Natan Livnei Adam – God turned this world over to us. Through the phenomenon of evolutionary development, God empowered and challenged us to improve our world.

This superpower of consciousness idea really resonates with me. Yes, we are tiny grains of sand in a vast universe, but somehow we appear to be the only grains that can step back and self-reflect. We each possess a unique soul. No other specs of sand can analyze, manipulate, and create, for good or for evil, like you and I can.

Still, something fundamental felt missing from my Faith Garden. I was inspired by my realization that faith in a creator is both possible and valuable, but it didn’t feel sufficient. I couldn’t shake a sense of terrible loneliness; I felt like a lonely gardener. I found that the brighter the light of empowerment… the darker the shadow of this loneliness. I guess “God as my creator” is not the same as a God who cares about me; a God who I turn to when the going gets really rough, and really painful; a God who guides and molds my life. The Bible understood this loneliness when it observed: לֹא־טֹ֛וב הֱיֹ֥ות הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְבַדֹּ֑ו (“It is not good for man to be alone”). Suddenly, as the lonely gardener, that insight meant something new to me. In context, Genesis was talking about our need for human relationships and love, but if we dive deeper, it reflects a critical element of our spiritual essence: it is not good for us… not healthy for us, to live life without any relationship to our spiritual source. Don’t forget that we are fundamentally relationship-oriented animals. And that applies to both our human and spiritual relationships. Let me say that again; it is not healthy for us to live without a relationship to our spiritual source. This lonely gardener tripped on perhaps the most profound challenge we face today – how can I conceptualize and create a relationship with my creator in modern times?

And I know I wasn’t the only lonely gardener out there. In fact, this sense of separation and spiritual loneliness has grown dramatically over the last couple-hundred years, accelerated by two factors: first, modern history isn’t Biblical history. We are very far from the prophetic and openly miraculous events of ancient religion. Judaism actually describes our post-Biblical era as a time of God’s hidden face, or Hester Panim. Spiritual loneliness and drifting make sense. If the Bible records so many events of national rebellion and doubt, even in God’s most active, hands-on period, should we be surprised how difficult a relationship with God will be during this time of withdrawn Divine presence?

At the same time, the belief in human self-sufficiency has reached epic levels, replacing the need for God. As noted in an earlier podcast, we reject “we don’t know” today; we believe we are in control of nature and should anticipate and eliminate all disasters and illness. As this sense of empowerment took root, during a time of Divine recession, our ability to find a place for God, to relate to God, shriveled away. To so many of us today, talking about a relationship with God, working at a relationship with the spiritual source of life, feels as relevant as the old computer floppy disk. And if you’re too young to remember the floppy disk, that’s a good indicator of how irrelevant it is today.

But hold on. Maybe that old computer floppy disk is actually an insightful metaphor for this challenge of thinking about, of experiencing, a personal relationship with God. When you look at that disk it seems so outdated. You can’t even imagine how to plug it in or incorporate it into your life. But at the same time, that disk may contain profoundly meaningful and valuable data. Maybe it’s a family history your great grandfather wrote, or the location of your ancestor’s lock boxes filled with gold bullion (a man can dream, can’t he?). How do I access that meaningful data to unlock the value? How do I find relevant ways to tap into that content? Put another way, the challenge becomes how to extract those ideas and upload them through a medium that’s useful and meaningful today.

Without a sense of personal connection to God, I felt like a lonely gardener. This struggle to upload a religious relationship with God in our modern era led me to Judaism’s third and most important big idea. This idea originated in the words of Judaism’s prophets, and it radiates through the Fog of Revelation. I call it Empowered Immanence. Let me explain:

“Immanence” means that we experience God as a force within this world.

Immanence is not simply an idea; it is an experience. To say that God can be immanent is to say that I can experience God as a force in my life. Now it’s nothing new to suggest that traditional religions believe God can be present, or immanent, in this world. In many places, the Bible presents this Immanence as a top-down, mystical, supernatural phenomenon: dense clouds in a temple; a perpetually burning bush; angels appearing among us; a mysterious loud voice from the heavens. But fascinatingly, Judaism’s prophets – its messengers of God’s word and will – laid the foundation for a radically different understanding of God’s Immanence, where Immanence remains the pinnacle of spiritual achievement, but through a bottom-up approach. In this model, I am empowered and challenged to be an immanence-generator by leveraging my image of God in this world. Something very special and powerful happens when we combine Judaism’s empowerment idea with the concept of Divine immanence, and that outcome is the subject of a simple, three-part statement that randomly appears in the Biblical book of Deuteronomy, like a monolith in the desert:

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל, יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, יְהוָה אֶחָֽד

Hear this, Israel:

God is our God;

God is One

Jews call this 3-part statement “the Shema.” The Shema highlights and addresses the exact puzzle described above – how can I have a relationship with God? This enigma has always been and will always remain at the heart of our monotheistic spiritual essence: if God is radically and uniquely One, then how can God be our God? How can God be a presence in this world? The Shema highlights both sides of this contrast: on the one hand, God is physically unimaginable – possessing no physical characteristics whatsoever and existing beyond the realm of either time or space. The affirmation that God is One stubbornly clings to the monotheistic idea that God is radically one – radically unique – unlike anything in our universe and with an essence that is completely beyond our comprehension. Because of that oneness – that uniqueness – all descriptions of God fall short of the mark, they could even be said to be inapplicable. God is not physically present, but God may still be spiritually present. In a certain sense, the Hester Panim, or Divine recession, we live in today reflects this idea of Oneness as no other time in history.

But on the other hand, traditional religions describe God as somehow accessible to all human beings, involved in history, an immanent force in our world. The Shema and Judaism don’t settle for a simple deistic approach, concluding that God is only or exclusively the One. Instead, the Shema asserts and affirms that this unique God is somehow also “our God.” Judaism believes that God impacts our world and is in relationship with us.

How do we make sense of this conflict? How do we conceptualize, how do we relate to a God who not only lacks all physical characteristics, but also “exists” so to speak, beyond time and space?

This is a central spiritual question that we all face and certainly that a traditional religion like Judaism had to address. It should come as no surprise then that these 3 lines of the Shema occupy a critical and dramatic position in Judaism’s rituals. The united, communal singing of the Shema is arguably the climactic moment in the synagogue service, occurring just as the prayer leader removes the Torah scroll from the Ark, standing up on a stage at the front of the synagogue. Beyond that weekly communal affirmation, Jewish tradition also suggests that each Jew recite the Shema formula immediately prior to succumbing to death. A final affirmation for this secret formula of faith. The Jewish idea of these last rites echoes the key observation in one of the initial Faith Garden podcasts – our conscious soul is irreducibly personal. A vault only I can access. I always have the personal choice to believe, to choose my framework of meaning, and the Shema provides the words to affirm my relationship with my spiritual source, right up to my last breath. But why is the Shema a, or perhaps, the, affirmation of the Jewish faith?

The idea of human empowerment – recall the Psalmist’s claim that the world was turned over to us, tells me that the statement “God is our God” describes a bottom-up relationship. God armed me at birth with a unique consciousness, allowing me to discover God, to kick-start my own God/human relationship, and to bring God’s immanence into this world. That is why the Shema describes God as “our God.” God becomes immanent in this world through our unique consciousness. When we live a God-inspired life, we bring God close. We tap into Godliness; we make God manifest and present. The thinking goes like this: consciousness is an evolved gift of creation and through this consciousness, we struggle for insight into our existence. The Bible and its commentaries report that Abraham, the father of 3 major traditional religions, used his gift of consciousness to discover the God of the Shema. He discovered a partnership, and from that partnership, he became a beacon of Tikun Olam – the idea that God empowered us to fix this world, which released a revolution in morality and interpersonal obligations. The great 20th Century Rabbi, JB Soloveitchik, writes that despite the literal text of the Bible, God did not interfere with Abraham’s freedom of thought. He did not compromise Abraham’s personal Choice. Instead, the nomadic Abraham discovered the Godly source of morality on his own. In Rabbi Soloveitchik’s words, Abraham’s physical and spiritual life journey culminated by finding a new land and a new God. That may explain why the Shema states “God is our God” before it states God is one. Like Abraham, it’s on me to kick-start that relationship – to use my tools and gifts in determining how a God-inspired life becomes a fulfilling and meaningful life. Abraham’s new faith and new Religion introduced a novel theory of interpersonal obligations and was given poetic voice through the words and warnings of the Biblical prophets. And here is the key point: when we live in accordance with those values, when we realize our potential to put the puzzle pieces of this world together, we bring God into our world. Empowered Immanence means that we generate God’s immanence.

Have you experienced Empowered Immanence in your life? In Judaism, the greatest immanence-generators are known as Tzadikim. I often wish we had the equivalent of a thermometer or a radar gun that could measure the immanence-generation level of each person in the world. Imagine a hand-held device that registers people’s immanence-levels generated by acts of kindness, compassion, sharing, and healing. I’m sure you know people who radiate such immanence-generation. That device would confirm the identity of the most profound immanence-generators, the Tzadikim, that surround us. If you are lucky enough to have encountered one of these people over the course of your life, you know exactly who I’m describing. Angels on earth. Now, I’m no angel. But I realized that – just like a puzzle – generating immanence starts one piece at a time; I too have the ability to generate God’s Immanence in this world, one step and one day at a time.

So to summarize: we have the ability to bring God into this world as a force,

to actualize God’s providence, when we act with an awareness of the God/human partnership.

Empowered Immanence is the foundation of Judaism’s framework of meaning. I believe that all of Religion, every framework of meaning, can only be actualized in this world through my and your Choice – that’s what it means that we are empowered. We get to lean in, or lean out. Even, and maybe especially, in a time of Divine recession, of Hester Panim, I have the ability and the challenge of bringing Godliness into our interpersonal world. But what are the values that Judaism ascribes to God? What does it mean to live and act with this awareness of Godliness? Isn’t that the million-dollar question? The answer awaits in the next podcast.