In other words, the literal words of the Bible, the literal words of the prayers aren't as important as that pledge- a pledge to act a certain way in the world.Īnd reading and calling around in the days since we had that conversation, I've learned that other clergy- Christian, Jewish, Muslim- some of them say the same things, especially that God doesn't need our prayers. He's basically re-pledging himself to those principles, which he loves.
And when he's praising God, he said that's what he's praising. Like he's somebody who we're calling on the phone or something when we're praying.īut the way he sees it, he understands God to be all the values and principles that he sees in scripture- the obligation to love each other, to be honest and decent in our dealings with each other, all of those things. He said, first off, he thinks lots of people make the mistake of picturing God as being like us, like humans. It's beyond the power of language to capture it.Īnd it really hit me, sitting there- what does God get out of that? Why does he want us sitting down and telling him how great he is for 45 minutes a day? Is he that needy? If some parent demanded that of their kids- OK, I want you to praise me for 45 minutes a day, every single day of your life- we would know they were nuts.Īnd it's like what I was saying to John- what does God care if we love him? And John had such a lovely answer. It's beyond the power of any prayer, or word, or song, or praise. Comforting, huh? It's basically God is great over and over, building up to this beautiful line, really beautiful, that's basically God is so great. Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One." That is what they have you say when your mom dies. And the words basically are, "May His great name be exalted and sanctified. Even the Kaddish, which you say over and over during services. And I really was struck at how many of them- the Amidah, the Ashrei- are about praising God at length. And I started looking at the prayer book on the side of the page with the English translation of the prayers, which I hadn't done in years. So there's that, but all the rest basically exactly the same every day.Īnd everybody is singing and chanting. They read a new part of the Bible, part of the Torah some days. Every day, the same words, same songs in the same order, stretching back hundreds of years. And I don't know if this is good or bad, but not having sat in a synagogue in over a decade, it really hit me how every day is a rerun.ĭo you know what I mean? They never do a new episode.
And so my dad, and my stepmom, and I were at one of the daily services that observant Jews go to every day in Baltimore where I grew up.Īnd I always liked going to synagogue as a kid. And we're Jews, so you're supposed to go say Kaddish, this old prayer that's one of the central prayers in Judaism at the anniversary of somebody's death. I hadn't been to synagogue in forever.Īnd it was the anniversary of my mom's death. Do you know what I mean? If you do what God wants, and you try to be good, you try to treat others right, what difference does it make if you love God? What does God care?Īnd I got to ask John about kind of a variation on this question that I've wondered about for a couple years, ever since the last time I was in synagogue. But I told him I've never really understood why is it important to love God above all. Like, I can see how that can reshape just everything about how you treat others, and really, everything you do in your life in the world. I told John, like, I totally get the love your neighbor as yourself part of that. Love your neighbor as yourself, and love God above all. And John said that as he gets older, the literal words of the Bible seem less important to him than the big picture. It happened the staffer who drove me to the airport was a retired Methodist preacher, an associate pastor at one of the churches in Chautauqua, named John Jackson.Īnd we had this hour and a half long drive and somehow we got onto how he doesn't believe that every word of the Bible is literally true, which, if you're a Methodist, that's no big deal. Which is how I fell into this long conversation about the literal word of the Bible. Which, if you don't know what that is, starting in the 1870s, it was this high-minded lecture circuit- like Ted Talks, but before the internet, or public radio before the invention of radio- with a big religious component. Last weekend, I gave a talk at Chautauqua in upstate New York.
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