Complex Religion for a Complex World

De and I saw the Book of Mormon this week.  For those who may not know, it’s a highly irreverent musical comedy that takes a wickedly funny look at the role religion plays, and might play, in society.

We ran into De’s cousin before the show and afterward, her husband asked, “So how are you going to use this in a sermon?”

He was kidding, but the truth is that while I laughed and even shed a few tears at what I thought was a great show and a raucous meditation on what religion might be, I spent Act II working out the sermon in my mind.   I know it’s a professional hazard to think about work during a show, but here goes. . .

I’m not going to comment on the actual book of Mormon.  I don’t know enough about it and I really don’t want to speak critically of another religious tradition. 

But I’ve long considered the question, how ought religion impact how we live our lives in a way that is truly helpful?

Across the board, religion has been co-opted by those who for whatever reasons prefer to offer simplistic pieties rather than wrestle with complex reality.

As a result, many kids the age of our b’nei mitzvah start to feel that the stories and traditions of their faith just don’t cut it when it comes to the challenges of real life.

That’s a shame, because most religions, and Judaism, for sure, are more complex than we often give credit for.  Often we tell the stories and interpret the laws in ways that are simplistic but that just doesn’t do the trick, not around bar and bat mitzvah age and beyond, not as we discover that life is tricky and sometimes even downright tragic. 

So what follows are some thoughts on the topic, with reference to Biblical interpretation, the show Book of Mormon and some kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, thrown in for good measure.  I hope I will encourage us to deepen our conversations about religion and general, and Judaism specifically.

Exhibit A.  The Torah, in the book of Deuteronomy, speaks of how, if we observe God’s commandments we enjoy abundance and good fortunate, and if not, then bad things happen.  But that correlation between behavior and outcome, unmediated by nuance and interpretation, doesn’t always cut it. 

When we do good things in the world and lousy things happen anyway –small lousy and big lousy, the straight-forward statements about the correlation between behavior and outcome don’t work; not only don’t they work, they can be insulting.  So perhaps we need to deepen our understanding of this concept.

In fact, the Bible deepens it.  The book of Job turns the Deuteronomic correlation on its head.  The man who does everything right has one tragedy happen to him after another.  The book of Ecclesiastes famously posits mikreh echad latzadik v’larasha – one fate occurs to the righteous and to the wicked.

What a far cry from “listen up and all will be well.”

Exhibit B.  The Torah, in the book of Genesis, says the following:

So therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh.

Well, here’s the thing, though.  Not every man is looking for a woman and not every woman is looking for a man. 

Furthermore, many people are single for all sorts of reasons and people who are coupled sometimes like to pretend that singles don’t really exist, which is a problem. 

And suppose a man does find a woman.  Do we really want the man and woman to become one flesh?  It sounds exciting at first but the more you think about it?  Why should two become one?   To share life is a great thing, to be united in sharing that life, even better – but that can be accomplished while two remain two.

The final blessing recited under the chupah at a Jewish wedding speaks yearningly of the ultimate emergence of kol chatan v’kol kallah – the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride.  In this vision they each have a voice, which is a nice counterbalance to one flesh, I think. 

Certain basic statements, taken literally or unchallenged, can be problematic. 

In the show, Book of Mormon, two young men are sent overseas to Africa in order to spread the word.   They are completely unequipped for what they discover:  a community ravaged by AIDS and warlords, a community that has a few choice words for God and they aren’t Happy Birthday.

It is, literally, laughable how the two missionaries try to apply their faith approach to the people of this village.

I won’t give too much more away, but I’ll just say that the missionary who is a bit of a misfit offers an approach to the faith that is ultimately helpful to the villagers. 

It ends up being a collaborative effort, and in one of the many highlights of the show, a villager turns to the heroine who has become completely disillusioned with the missionary’s teachings and says, “his stories aren’t to be taken literally.   Don’t you understand metaphor?”

Rabbi Adelson and I are in the midst of teaching a class on Zohar, a central text of Kabbala, Jewish mysticism, that originated in medieval Spain.

Here’s an interesting aspect of Kabbalah.  God is understood as being complicated and multi-dimensional.  As part of the kabbalistic framework there is a merciful aspect to God and a judgmental aspect.  They are both viewed as forces, the force of Chesed – love and mercy and the force of Gevurah, sternness and judgment.  It’s understood that these forces are in conflict with each other, that the force of judgment wants to take over the force of love.  I’m now quoting from Professor Art Green’s introduction to Daniel Matt’s translation of the Zohar:

“In this “moment” (when the stern force wants to rule alone), divine power turns to rage or fury; out of it all the forces of evil are born, darkness emerging from the light of God.”

In order to keep proper balance between mercy and judgment, a third force is necessary, the force of tif’eret – beauty and glory – and that force is symbolized by Jacob (coincidentally the name of our bar mitzvah boy) or Israel.

To cut to the chase, the kabbalists created a mythic structure that acknowledged a) that the cosmos is complicated and b) that Israel, human beings, can affect life down here and up there based on how we behave.

Instead of saying God is this way or that way, the world is this way or that way, Jewish mystics said “it’s a mixed bag, it’s complicated, and therefore you need to act to shift things around in the best possible way.”

I would put it this way, to each of us.  Is life inexplicable and often unfair?  Of course it is. 

But you can’t stay under the covers.  So do something.  Help in a hospital, treat someone kindly, fight for equality for people regardless of their status and circumstance.

To borrow from the kabbalistic discourse, find your glory and shift the balance. 

Riffing on the moniker “latter day saints,” one of the final songs in the play has, as its chorus, the words, “tomorrow is a latter day.”  Don’t freak out thinking about the next world, it’s too far away – think about tomorrow. 

I’d take it a step further. 

We should think about what we can do today. 

Relationships are complicated; good and evil are complicated; earth is complicated, not to say anything of the cosmos, and there seem to be more exceptions to the rules all the time.

But our actions do matter, so we should think about what we can do today. 

That’s something the kabbalists understood, it’s something which Torah in the widest sense teaches us. 

So I want to include with an interpretation of the blessing that the Kohanim were asked to offer the people, as recorded in this morning’s Torah reading, a blessing that we recite every day. 

Yevarechecha adonai veyishmerecha – today, despite life’s mishagos, may we feel God’s blessing and protection.

Ya’er adonai panav eleicha vichuneka – today, despite all impetus to give up, may we feel God’s light in our own resolve to shine through the darkness of despair and ignorance that’s all over the place.

Yisa adonai panav eilecha v’yasem lecha shalom – today, may we feel God’s face looking up at us with hope, hope in what we can accomplish to start to shift the balance, a hope that we can pass along to each other.

A complex world calls for a complex tradition.  All necessary, all well and good. 

But complexity and action are not incompatible, not to rabbis, not to mystics, not to creators of good Broadway.

So we acknowledge the complexity.  And each day, we try to do something.