Out Of Control
Parshas Va'eschanan: The need to let go
Why is modern man secular? We all recall the parroted answer to this question. Humanity gradually emerged, squinting, from a shadowy cave of magical lore and religious dogma into the dazzling light of rational, evidence-based inquiry. In so hostile an environment, faith all but withered away. There's no denying the appeal of this simplistic narrative. Certainly, it delivers a deliciously evocative founding myth for the world we inhabit.
But there's a problem. As with most famous tales, the story isn't true. It's the kind of glib soundbite which reads profound on an edgy New Athiest T-Shirt yet glosses over a messy truth. And philosopher Charles Taylor isn't buying any of it. In his book 'A Secular Age' Taylor illustrates how this interpretation completely ignores the historical roots and cultural forces that shaped modern secularism. Its reasoning presumes sneakily that facts automatically supplant faith whilst conveniently overlooking science's rich theological heritage. Moreover, it denies naturalism's limitations in providing a satisfying account of human experience.
Such notions of facts replacing faith are built on a claim that runs something along these lines: We used to depend on religion to make sense of things around us. Humans were terribly confused by phenomena like lightning. Hence, they needed a god. Science now helps explain the universe, so God is no longer required. This stance is ludicrous for a whole host of reasons. Old mysteries may have been inexplicable, but they posed no logical contradictions. In comparison, contemporary physics exposes irreconcilable fissures in existence itself. But the stance's justifications, or lack thereof, are beside the point. What's going to be far more relevant for us is understanding the psychology behind it. In exploring the motivation driving society's current thinking, we will better understand how to approach our relationship with God. Sounds far-fetched? Stick with me on this.
Today, the scientific community possesses explanatory frameworks accounting for various phenomena within the universe. As we've said, for many, these changes eliminate our need to worship a divine creator. We've now got all kinds of atom-splitting, Big-Bang-type theories promising to make God's metaphysical job description obsolete. Critically this development dovetails with the underlying psychology of our contemporary worldview: the desire to feel mastery over one's surroundings. This urge pertains not only to the literal physical dominance that science and technology confers but also to the illusion of cognitive control that arises when believing we have adequately comprehended some aspect of reality. Here, our brains scratch at a burning itch: to feel like we have finally tamed the insanity of sheer existence.
Alright, so we want control. Or at least to feel in control. But what has this got to do with our relationship with God? In this week's Parsha, Moshe warns the Jewish people against idol worship. Rav Aharon Lopiansky explains that humanity's desire for dominance over our environment fueled pagan psychology. Physical objects of worship give man a sense of agency in several ways. Firstly he can understand them. Even societies worshipping less tangible cosmic bodies could forecast their movements and positions. Secondly, people could use such deities to 'predictably' perform specific functions without the hassle of relationship building. Pagan societies treated their deities as transactional entities - part of a crude cosmic cost-benefit analysis. Aztecs, for example, believed that the sun would only endure if satiated with a steady stream of human hearts. Their almighty solar sponsor, it seems, had the appetite of a gruesome gumball machine activated through homicidal organ donations.
In an age where paganism holds about the same appeal as dental surgery from booze-drunk bonobos, the Torah prohibition against idolatry remains profoundly resonant. How so? We modern's have a way of looking at things that makes us feel firmly in the driver's seat. Society can explain much of what happens to us, and causality is always present in our minds. Most cancer patients are old. Heart attacks tend to be attributed to poor lifestyle choices. The links between substandard budgeting and bankruptcy are always highlighted. Our need to 'be in control' has never been greater. Part of what made Covid-19's early months so unnerving was how little we understood about the virus. Nothing 'made sense', so we felt ourselves powerless.
How should we approach God? and how does our need for control adversely affect how we relate to Him? The verse records Moshe saying:
You, God, have begun to show Your servant Your greatness
{Devarim 3:24}
The Baal Shem Tov makes the following observation. In addition to being God's faithful servant, Moshe was foremost among prophets and the bearer of the Torah. He was an individual of extraordinary spiritual elevation, someone profoundly connected to God. Yet after one hundred and twenty years spent leading the most godly existence ever lived, Moshe sees himself as only having begun his relationship with His Creator. God and his ways are unknowable, infinitely beyond human grasp.
Despite our intellectual appreciation of God's innate incomprehensibility, we subconsciously resist it in several ways. We can observe this resistance's expression in the burgeoning segulah culture. Among particular sectors of the community, there is an ever-growing list of previously unknown rituals believed to affect one's luck or fortune positively. Want to rid your home of rats? Looking to buy your dream car? There's a segulah for that. Whilst generally innocuous, this rush for the latest segulah betrays our deep-seated need to feel in control. Success in life becomes reduced to a measurable formula. It makes divine providence more comprehensible and systematic. We believe specific results will follow if we perform the proper sequence of actions. God thus becomes an entity who can be understood, a being within our grasp.
Ironically one of the segulah culture's greatest critics turns out to be just the other side of the same coin. I'm referring here to the ardent rationalists who attempt to peel away those layers of mystery and understand religion exclusively on human terms. They desire to build a faith shorn of the inexplicable, one that meticulously follows the rules of logic and the methodologies of science—a theology we can comprehend and control. But by doing so, we take God out of the realm of spontaneous creation and divine mystery and place Him in a framework that the rational mind can finally get its arms around. In rationalizing God, we risk reducing Him to a concept that fits our narrow intellectual powers.
The divine name is cloaked in mystery, beyond our grasp yet calling to us from afar. Like the sun in its radiance, we glimpse fragments of the Eternal through creation, yet the essence remains forever hidden from our sight. To unravel the Gordian knot of God's incomprehensibility would be to reduce the Eternal to our minuscule conceptual framework. To fully understand would require us to step outside of creation, to see as the One who fashions the skies and measures the oceans. "My thoughts are unlike your thought, and my acts are unlike your acts", explained God to Yeshaya. And so our task is not to master but to marvel, not to control but to stand in wonder.
As we recall the destruction of the Temple every year, we are reminded that our attempts to justify God's ways to man, to explain suffering with smooth answers, is as feeble as trying to empty the sea with a teaspoon. The Creator of the cosmos does not owe us reasons and does not stand trial at the bar of our logic. The quest for theodicy is a futile chase after shadows, a grasping for certainty where none can be found. The Creator is not beholden to his creation. So it is in the silence we find speech. In our unknowing, we discover wisdom. And when we choose to stop courting control, the grandeur we cannot grasp becomes a place we can abide.
Good Shabbos, and Keep Pondering
Amazing piece. Thank you for your work.
Your AI is terrific! What program do you use?