“Let them make me a mikdash (“holy place,” “sanctuary”), that I may dwell in their midst” (Exod. 25:8). Though this verse refers to the physical mishkan (i.e., “Tabernacle”), it more deeply refers to the duty of the heart to sanctify the Name of God and bring a sense of holiness to the inner life. This requires that we focus the mind and heart to honor the sacredness of life, taking “every thought captive” to the truth of God in Messiah (2 Cor. 10:5). Since our minds and hearts are gateways to spiritual revelation, we must be careful to not to abuse ourselves by indulging in sloppy thinking or unrestrained affections. God holds us responsible for what we think and believe (Acts 17:30-31), and that means we have a duty to honor moral reality and truth. There is an “ethic of belief,” or a moral imperative to ascertain the truth and reject error in the realm of the spiritual. Since God holds us responsible to repent and believe the truth of salvation, He must have made it possible for us to do so (“ought” implies “can”). And indeed, God has created us in His image and likeness so that we are able to discern spiritual truth. He created us with a logical sense (rationality) as well as a moral sense (conscience) so that we can apprehend order and find meaning and beauty in the universe He created. All our knowledge presupposes this. Whenever we experience anything through our senses, for example, we use logic to categorize and generalize from the particular to the general, and whenever we make deductions in our thinking (comparing, making inferences, and so on), we likewise rely on logic. We have an innate intellectual and moral “compass” that points us to God.
Month: January 2022
Seeing the Invisible…
Faith sees the invisible light, the truth of love that overcomes all the powers of darkness, hate, and fear. “I believe. I believe in the sun even when it is not shining; I believe in love even when feeling it not; and I believe in God, even when God is silent” (from an anonymous poem found on the wall of a cellar in Cologne, Germany, where some Jews hid from the Nazis).
The spirit testifies that there is “unfinished business,” that there is more than meets the eye, that evil will not have the last word, and that tears will one day forever be wiped away. Despite the ambiguity, faith “hopes against hope” that the LORD God will intervene and bring everlasting healing to us all. As it says, “Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the Name of the LORD (יִבְטַח בְּשֵׁם יְהוָה) and rely on his God.”
Faith is a sort of “holy protest” over the state of the world: “How long, O LORD, forever?” Eventually God will wipe away every tear and make all things right… Bittachon (trust) is a word for this world, which says, “Though he slay me, I will trust in him…” Those who call upon the LORD can trust not only in concealed good behind ambiguous appearances (“all things work together for good”) but also in a future, real, substantive good that will one day be clearly manifest for us all. Meanwhile, may God keep us from such depth of sorrow that leads to sickness, darkness and despair. Amen.
Ephemera and Substance (גם זה יעבור)
When Abraham sought a place to bury his wife Sarah, he said to the Hittites chieftains: “I am a stranger and sojourner among you…” (Gen. 23:4). The righteous invariably feel like strangers to this world, since they are only passing through, and their focus is on the invisible “city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). Likewise they are as sojourners, not at home in this world, because their faith sees through the vanity and deceit of the present world, and therefore they regard themselves as on a journey to the place of truth and holiness where God abides. The wicked, on the other hand, regard life in this world as all that exists, and therefore they “absolutize” the moment and forfeit the blessing of the eternal (Matt. 16:26). Abraham regarded himself as a “stranger and sojourner” (גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁב) because the people of his world considered themselves as “owners” and “permanent residents” who sought their inheritance in the here and now. Abraham was a “resident” of someplace higher, however, and understood this world to be a corridor to the next. The sages comment on this paradox: God says to man, ‘If you see yourself as a permanent resident in this world, then I will be a stranger to you; if, however, you see yourself as a stranger to this world, then I will be a Dwelling Place for you.”
Hebrew Lesson:
