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2 GOD 3 Torah 1, 2, 3, 4,5 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 7 Messages
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Part 2. GOD |
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Initially when I designed this website, I intended to discuss and clarify God’s goodness in this section. But I realized after finishing Section 4, that I had covered everything else I wanted to say about God there. So in this part I discuss the reality of God as revealed in the Torah and an aspect of God that I believe He has revealed to me personally: His spirit. This discussion about God is founded on seven simple -- but vital -- facts which God reveals to us in the Torah. |
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I will discuss each of these facts in turn. After that, I will discuss what I believe about God’s spirit. Fact (1): God is. God tells us that He exists in Exod. 20:2 (which begins with Exod. 20:1):
`rmoale hL,aeh ~yrIbD>h;-lK tae ~yhêil{a/ rBed;y>w: Exod. 20:1 “And God spoke all these words saying, `~yd_Ib[] tyBemi ~yIr;c.mi #r,a,me ^ytiaceAh rv,a] ^yhê,l{a/ hw"hy> ykinOa Exod. 20:2 “I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
This is the first commandment of the Ten Commandments (as given to us in Exodus and later reiterated in Deuteronomy). Many Christian biblical scholars have decided that this is not a commandment, as it expresses no negative or positive responsibility. Christians do not include the statement contained in Exod. 20:2 in their version of the Ten Commandments. However, I believe that this commandment not only introduces the other nine commandments, but itself invites – commands? – every one to believe. It's as if the Lord is saying, “Believe that I am the Lord, your God.” “Believe that I am.” “You shall believe in Me.” In this light, it becomes the quintessential commandment of the ten. Without it, the remaining nine can be construed as hardly more than a scribe's imagination or simple common sense. Many of us would not (and do not) accept the words of Exod. 20:2 as defining divine truth, believing they were inscribed by men, perhaps even inspired by subtle political motivations, not by God. Yet there is at least one other independent near proof that God exists. Of course there could be no absolute proof once you realize that even if and when God were to show Himself to every one of us, even then many would not believe. And soon this event would be viewed as legend and myth. This response is built in to the nature of the universe, known and unknown, and in the nature of us humans. The near proof I mention still leaves most of those who hear of it skeptical or doubtful, unable to embrace the argument it presents. This proof of which I write is found in the simplest of life forms, in single-celled organisms. The biological basis for all life on earth is a profound miracle, whose probability of having arisen by accident appears to be vanishingly small. In every single cell that exists we encounter DNA and RNA, amino acids and proteins, and a myriad of microscopic mechanisms, organelles, that function in an inexplicable, but highly organized fashion, to produce and sustain life and reproduction. It is impossible, given our current knowledge, to demonstrate that this incredibly complex system could have come about by chance. It is a practical certainty that only an entity whose own existence did not depend on DNA could have introduced this system to the universe. By the way, this is not to say that the above argument supports Creationism. It, in fact, does not. Creationists claim that the complex functions and the mechanisms that carry them out in the basic living cell contradict Darwinian evolution. This claim, however, is unjustified. In reality, the basis for evolution is found within DNA itself. The chemical bond that yields the molecules that form the “rungs” of the DNA helical “ladder” is a relatively loose one. It happens to be just strong enough to preserve the structure of DNA and the cell during environmental stress yet weak enough to allow the splitting necessary for reproduction. A stronger or weaker bond would have precluded life itself, much less reproduction. The nature of this bond is such that it invites mutation, and as a result, evolution, which occurs when groups of DNA segments undergo specific transformations that survive into subsequent cell generations. Moreover, Darwinian evolution says nothing about the origin of life, only about how the diversity of species had come about. And random, seemingly accidental cell mutations also do not deny God's “hand” in the process. It does not deny Creation -- it merely describes God's continuing Creation in modern terms. There is no denial of God or scripture in Darwin's theory; that denial exists only in the minds of some human thinkers. As it stands, there is some irrefutable modern evidence for the existence of Darwinian evolution. The appearance of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria soon after the discovery and widespread application of penicillin is a virtual proof. With little doubt, their appearance is the direct result of random mutation in their population and the subsequent survival of those resistant to the drugs used at the time. The only question that may remain for the skeptics (but almost surely is already answered) is whether Darwinian evolution gave rise to the many animal and plant species that have existed throughout the past hundreds of millions of years. Fact (2): God cannot be seen by us humans. I refer you to Exod: 33:20. God is speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai:
`yx'w" ~d'a'h' ynIa;r>yI-al{ yKi yn="P'-ta, taor>li lk;Wt al{ rm,aYOw Exod. 33:20 And He said, “You will not be allowed to view My face, for no human shall see Me and live.”
What, exactly, does this mean? Why does God say “… for no human shall see Me and live?” I regret to say that I have no insight about this restriction. I can imagine, though, at least one possibility. I’m sure that anyone with more imagination than I may suggest others. The first possibility is that the physical sight of the Lord is so unimaginable and/or frightening that we would suffer a heart attack and succumb in an instant. Can you imagine that? I can’t, but I’ve already admitted I have limited imagination. Another possibility is that after seeing the glory and beauty of the Lord, we would desperately desire death (in order to be with Him?) This one I can imagine: The unbelievably intense power and majesty of the Lord may be so overwhelming that we would experience an irresistible urge to join with Him. And I suspect that for us mere mortals that can happen only through our death. However, three verses after this one, Exod. 33:23, the Lord tells Moses that he may peek at His “afterglow” once He has passed by Moses who is hiding in a cleft in the rock. This suggests to me that we are permitted to imagine God’s appearance. And we may verbally describe to others what we imagine (but we may produce no visual images -- Exod. 20:4). As I see it, this means we may know some things about God, the attributes He reveals to us throughout the bible, for instance. But we cannot understand God fully. Anyone who says or thinks he does is, in my considered opinion, a victim of an overactive ego and imagination. Incidentally, there is a verse in Genesis that seems to contradict the assertion that no one can see God and live. It is Gene. 32:31, in which Jacob claims that he saw God face to face.
`yvip.n: lceN"Tiw: ~ynêIP'-la, ~ynIP' ~yhil{a/ ytiyair'-yKi la_eynIP. ~AqM'h; ~ve bqo[]y: ar'q.YIw: Gene. 32:31 And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for “I saw God face to face and my life was preserved.”
Because this verse on its face seems to contradict the above-cited verse, Exod. 33:20, I’m inclined to think that this may be a simple exaggeration on Jacob’s part. After all, in Gene. 32:25, just six verses before this one, we learned that “a man wrestled with him [Jacob] until the break of day.” I suspect that the author of this section of the Torah believed that God manifested in the angel. Thus he used the terms God and angel interchangeably. Fact (3): God must be central in our lives. This is expressed very graphically in Deut. 6:5:
`^d,aom.-lk'b.W ^v.p.n:-lk'b.W ^b.b'l.-lk'B. ^yh_,l{a/ hw"hy> tae Tê'b.h;a'w Deut. 6:5 “So you must love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
This is a most powerful and informative verse. It is absolute – no equivocation – requiring all of our attention and intention. In my mind, it is the central instruction of the entire bible. And one of the most difficult! Are we even capable of loving an Entity we cannot see, cannot touch, can hardly hear, like that? Nevertheless, we are told to maximally energize ourselves toward reaching that critical goal. If we would strive to love the Lord with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might, how could we do that without making God the Focus of our existence? To achieve such an abiding love, we must keep our thoughts on God. We must remind ourselves constantly of our desire to love the Lord and to faithfully follow in the path He has prescribed for us. We must train ourselves to feel that love. I believe the “blessings” we recite should reflect that desire explicitly. I believe they should be reworded so that their mention informs us and reminds us of this all-important verse. For example when we wash our hands, I believe the “blessing” should be something like “I wash my hands joyfully and gratefully, Lord, my God, because You are good and You are here with me and I love and revere You.” If we happen to be in a dour or somber mood, we might instead recite “I want to wash my hands joyfully....” Our love for the Lord must be central to all we think, do, and say. This commandment – Deut. 6:5 -- appears only in this one place in the entire Torah. Rabbis tell us that a Torah statement that is repeated many times (for example, “You shall love the stranger as yourself”) may be more important than one that appears only once or twice. Yet the watch words and the credo of Judaism, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One,” is also found only once in the Torah, in the verse immediately preceding this one (Deut. 6:4). I suspect there may be a reversal in the significance of a verse when it appears only once. As I see things, its uniqueness may signal increased importance over ideas that are repeated three, four, or more times. God says this many times and to several people in the Torah. Others say it as well in the Torah, some who are not Hebrews. God says it to Isaac twice (Gene. 26:3 and 26:24), to Jacob three times (Gene. 28:15, 31:3, and 46:4), to Moses once (Exod. 3:12). Abimelech says it to Abraham (Gene. 21:22), Jacob to Joseph (Gene. 48:21), Pharaoh to Moses (Exod. 10:10), Jethro to Moses (Exod. 18:19), and Moses to Joshua (Deut. 31:8). I believe that when this is revealed to someone, God is not informing him that He is near, He is reminding and reassuring him in his doubt, as well as us. After all, doesn’t He love each of us? Though God may be near, that doesn’t mean that life should always be good for us. Although God was near all the patriarchs and matriarchs, Joseph, and Moses in the Torah, they each suffered the trials of life. I will say more about this later in Part 4. Fact (5): God instructs us. The Torah also provides instruction for us. That’s what the root of the word Torah means -- to instruct. This is made most plain in Exod. 24:12.
rv,a] Hwêc.Mih;w> hrAth;w> !b,a,h txolu-ta, ^l. hnT.a,w> ~v_-hyEh.w< hrhh yl;ae hle[] hv,mo-la, hhy> rm,aYOw `~troAhl. yTib.t;K Exod. 24:12 And the Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me to the mountain and remain there, and I will give to you the tablets of stone with the Torah and the commandment that I have inscribed to teach them.”
Interestingly enough, the word teach or instruct doesn’t appear very often in the Torah. It is more often implied than explicit. In the same way that I see the entire Torah as a test for us, I see it also as a teaching tool. It may be that one of the primary tests is for us to see it as such. Fact (6): God tests our free will. God “tests” Abraham by telling him to sacrifice his son, Isaac. The well-known story begins in Gene. 22:1.
`ynINEhi rm,aYOw ~hrb.a; wylae rm,aYOw: ~hrb.a;-ta, hSnI ~yhil{a/hw> hL,aeh ~yrIbD>h; rx;a; yhiy>w Gene. 22:1 And it was after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
[Back to Part 4, the Universe] As I see it, when God tests someone, He is not trying to find out something about the individual or about the future. He knows. He is permitting that person to make a choice in a difficult situation. He is giving that person an opportunity to exercise free will. He is allowing the possibility for that person, or others, to learn something about God, the world, and perhaps about himself or herself. This concept is first made very clear in Gene. 2:19 where God allows the first human to name all the animals and to determine if any of them would be a suitable companion for him. Subtle as its message may be, I believe that the Torah informs us that we should relish and embrace God’s tests. A welcoming and discerning attitude would help make us a better person. Would that we would all strive for that goal! I see that concept as the central thrust of the Torah and the whole bible – to offer us a smarter way of life. In that way, the entire Torah is a test for each of us. Fact (7): We can either revere God or fear Him. I believe this to be our ultimate test and choice. We have to decide. Either we will willingly and joyfully follow the Lord’s instructions and revere Him, or we will ignore (or go against) Him and sooner or later come to fear Him. More than anywhere else in the Torah, this is implied throughout much of Deuteronomy Chapter 28. Deut 28:1 and 28:3 to 28:13 (the so-called “blessings”) indicate in a strong way that we would not fear the Lord if we cling to His instructions. Deut. 28:16 to 28:44, 28:48 to 28:57, and 28:59 to 28:68 (the so-called “curses”) show that we will fear Him if we stray to follow our own hearts and/or minds or heed the words of others who would entice us to stray. This vital message is completed in Deut. 30:1 to 30:3 in a rather remarkable way, revealing that Moses knew our future thousands of years earlier. He knew that we would be stubborn and ignore God and experience the consequences. As proof of his knowledge, notice the phrase “… when all these things will have come upon you, …” in the first verse.
^bê,b'l.-la, t'boveh]w: ^yn=<p'l. yTit;n" rv,a] hlê'l'Q.h;w> hk'r'B.h; hL,aeh' ~yrIb'D>h;-lK' ^yl,[' Waboy"-yki hy"h'w `hM'v' ^yh,l{a/ hw"hy> ^x]yDIhi rv,a] ~yêIAGh;-lk'B. Deut. 30:1 “And it shall come to pass, when all these things will have come upon you, the blessing and the curse that I have set before you, and you shall have a change of heart in all the nations where the Lord, your God, had driven you, `^v,p.n:-lk'b.W ^b.b'l.-lk'B. ^ynê<b'W hT'a; ~AY+h; ^W>c;m. ykinOa'-rv,a] lkoK. Alêqob. T'[.m;v'w> ^yh,l{a/ hw"hy>-d[; T'b.v;w> Deut. 30:2 and you will turn again up to the Lord, your God, and listen to His voice according to all that I am commanding you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, `hM'v' ^yh,l{a/ hw"hy> ^c.ypih/ rv,a] ~yMêi[;h'-lK'mi ^c.B,qiw> bv'w> ^m_,x]rIw> ^t.Wbv.-ta, ^yh,l{a/ hw"hy> bv'w> Deut. 30:3 that the Lord, your God, will reverse your captivity and have compassion for you, and return and gather you from all the peoples where the Lord, your God, had scattered you.”
I find no other consistent way to interpret Chapter 28 and these verses of Chapter 30. Every human has the choice to fear God or to revere Him, not just Jews. These verses of Chapter 30, when juxtaposed with the earlier verses in Chapter 28, particularly vss. 28:9 and 28:10 repeated below, carry the strong implication that all the peoples of the world will come to revere the Lord of the Jews and also turn to Him in reverence. Incidentally, referring to Deut. 30:1 above, I’ve found that events, actions, or references are often written in inverse order in the Hebrew of the bible. Please notice that in Deut. 30:1 Moses mentions the blessing before the curse. Consistent with my observations, I believe that we as a people have not yet experienced the blessing. We have for over twenty-five hundred years experienced only the curse (although individuals have and do experience blessing) and the blessing is to come in some future time. That, to me, seems consistent with history.
`wyk'r'd>Bi T'k.l;h'w> ^yhê,l{a/ hw"hy> twOc.mi-ta, rmov.ti yKi %l_'-[B;v.nI rv,a]K; vAdêq' ~[;l. Al hw"hy> ^m.yqiy Deut. 28:9 “The Lord will establish you for His holy people, as He had sworn to you, when you will keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, and follow in His ways.” `&'M,mi War>y"w> ^yl_,[' ar'q.nI hw"hy> ~ve yKi #r,aê'h' yMe[;-lK' War'w> Deut. 28:10 “And all the peoples of the earth will see that the name of the Lord has been pronounced over you and they will be awed by you.”
If I were the scribe, I would have concluded Deut. 28:10 with “and by the Lord.” As far as I am concerned, the oft-used complimentary term God-fearing Jew conveys a misunderstanding of the Torah and its most important and critical message. I believe a Jew would be a God-fearing Jew only if he ignores God and His commandments. A Jew who loves God and strives to “please” Him because of it should be called a God-loving or -revering Jew. At the same time, those called Torah-observant Jews are only partially observant. I would call them Halachah-observant Jews. For them tradition is all. And some tradition violates the Torah instructions. God’s existence is important to us above all else. Recognizing and owning that exhilarating reality must lead to a great reverence and love of the Lord and an enormous joy in that knowledge. I am aware that in the Torah sometimes God is said to “punish” the innocent along with the wicked. Thus one might conclude that we should fear His “wrath” even if we are righteous. In the remaining sections I will show how this might not be so, given that we have discernment and wisdom. An odd and mysterious contradiction presents itself in this context. As I see it, God is all. We are merely His servants. In this scheme of things, simply stated, it’s not about us, it’s all about God (maybe more rightly, it is about God and us). Now here’s the weird contradiction. As we subdue our ego and submit to God’s desire for us, and we assume a more appropriate sense of the proportion and importance of things in the universe, we achieve a closeness with God that uniquely fulfills us. In other words, the more we subject our will to God’s desire, the more we are blessed with goodness. This consequence is not a reward. It is in the nature of God’s universe. It is another test. For only the Lord knows (better than we do) if our efforts are sincere and inspired by our pure and true love for Him. If, however, we stress the reward that comes from giving of ourselves, we gain nothing from it. We must remember, I believe, that it is not about US. But I also believe it is not exclusively about God. It is about GOD and us (and any other intelligent beings in the universe) as His servants and partners. We are in the equation because we are God’s students and instruments in this realm. Through free will we learn from our choices and their consequences, and by what we learn, we do accordingly. We are continually developing toward one goal or another, either to greater knowledge of and reverence for God, or away from acknowledging Him. We make the associated choices, conscious or unconscious, much of the time throughout our daily lives. Now that we’ve completed studying the seven facts of this section as revealed in the Torah, I want to bring up a subject that I believe the Lord has revealed to me recently during an intense prayer time, and which I feel compelled to communicate. That is “the spirit of the Lord” and matters associated with it The Spirit of the Lord Let me begin this section by admitting that I don’t know if what I believe is right. I believe the Lord has revealed these things to me, but I have no certainty about it. It is merely what I believe. I’m not a fanatic about it. So take my words as you see fit or ignore them. All I know is, I have to talk and write about these beliefs. The Lord’s spirit is mentioned a few times rather briefly in the Torah. It is mentioned many more times in the remainder of the Bible. This spirit has a number of names: The spirit of God, the spirit of the Lord, the Lord’s spirit, God’s spirit, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of power, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of reverence of the Lord, the spirit of judgment, and the holy spirit (the last just twice in Isai. 63:10 and 11). I asked the Lord in my prayer, “What is the holy spirit?” I know that Christians regard “him” as a part of God, one with God, part of the “Trinity.”. I believe the Lord told me something different. Briefly, by way of introduction, His spirit is an attribute of His, just like all other attributes of the one God. The spirit of the Lord, He told me, is His manifestation in the mundane world. It is a vehicle for two-way communication between Him and the mundane world and for God’s action in it. To discuss this matter further, we have to digress to identify what is meant by holiness and the primary purpose for the spirit of the Lord. I believe I’ve heard from the Lord that there are two “levels” of holiness. Before getting to that, I want to stress that holiness means basically to be separated. But it has a companion definition, that is to be consecrated (anointed with blood and/or oil). The two levels of holiness are heavenly holiness and earthly (mundane) holiness. Heavenly holiness is the holiness of the Lord. It has no beginning and no end. It has always been, is now, and will always be. It has nothing to do with consecration. The Lord, the Creator, is set apart in heaven. Earthly holiness, on the other hand, is born in an act of consecration. It is not guaranteed after consecration. It can be destroyed if not kept separated. You may not know this, but in the Torah we are taught by the Lord that anything holy can be made unfit for holiness if it is touched by or touches anything that is not holy (that is, has not been consecrated). It doesn’t work the other way, though. Something holy cannot make something unclean holy By the way, the angels are neither holy nor unclean. They are God’s messengers and therefore travel between heaven and earth, not affected by their surroundings in either place. One of the things that God revealed to me is that His holiness is not absolutely invulnerable. If He visited Earth or any other part of the mundane world, which by definition is not holy, His holiness might suffer degradation. Therefore He employs this vessel, His spirit, to accomplish His great “desire” to have conversations with us and otherwise “enjoy” us. Now we will try to investigate the Lord’s spirit as the Lord seems to have revealed it to me. First and foremost, His spirit is an attribute of God, just as the human spirit is of a person. Our spirit can suffer discouragement, fatigue, despair, elation and more. And at times, we may feel these emotions and be affected by them, but they are not part of us. They are “outside” (or inside?) of us. They are the results of internal electrochemical processes. They are not us. In this way, God’s spirit is not a detached part of Him. Think of His spirit as a transceiver in a way, a device that can carry communications in two directions. A servant. When we hear the transceiver sounding off, we imagine it’s the device speaking to us. But it’s not. It’s merely conveying what it has received from somewhere and someone else. This is a rough analogy, I’ll admit, but it illustrates my point. Of course, the Lord’s spirit is more than a communications device. It also can function to do the Lord’s will in the mundane world. One more insight that may be helpful. We are told the following in Proverbs. Prov. 20:27. The spirit of a human is a lamp of the Lord, examining all the innermost parts of the body. In other words, our spirit illuminates all the parts of our body, Does that help, maybe? As part of this entire revelation, I have to mention God’s power as He has described it to me. That, like most of this subject, is deeply controversial. I could make enemies here. The Lord created heaven and the universe to be governed by a plethora of physical and spiritual laws, along with the forces that control the operation and evolution of His creation.. In so doing, He made an oath with Himself. He would never violate any of those laws (of course, He sees that He would never have to). As a result of His oath, He doesn’t violate any of those laws in working His miracles. Yes, miracles are real and well-behaved. We simply do not yet understand the laws of the universe by which they are governed. Miracles are not impossible -- merely improbable.
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