No Straight Path to God

Rabbi Irwin Wiener, D.D.


Scripture is filled with religious understanding of God and Israel and God and the world. It brings God into a universal setting and enables the Children of Israel to fully comprehend their mission: to teach the oneness of God and the part that God plays in the life that was created.

There is no absolute proof of the existence of God. Judaism teaches that God has provided enough clues. However, each of us must arrive at a conclusion ourselves. For example: the incident of the Golden Calf is part of that process. While we cannot see, we still yearn to find something tangible to cling to.

Jews have always questioned the reality of God, not because they doubted, but rather to relate to the purpose of creation and our place in the unending evolution of humanity's journey from birth to death. That is why we are called Israel-one who struggles with God. We question because that is our obligation. We don't accept blindly. We need and want to know exactly who is calling us and why.

It is not hard to deny the absoluteness of God. There is war and killing. There is famine and desolation. There is crime and tragedy. There is sickness and despair. Innocent people die, and evil people don't.

And yet, we have understood from the lesson of the Golden Calf that it is not hard to believe. There is beauty and nature. There is orderliness and seasons. There is complexity and simplicity. There is the ability to create and enjoy what has been created. There is the capacity to love and be loved.

Creation contains all these ingredients of life. It consists of birds that fly, trees that bloom, bodies that incorporate the most complex system of veins and vessels and limbs and organs. It contains birth and death and the journey that is in between. It involves thinking and reasoning and conclusions.

Faith is not easy. Our inclination is to doubt. Imagine: during the Exodus from slavery in Egypt the people witnessed wonders and signs and redemption and freedom. And yet there was doubt. Did anyone beside Moses talk to God? Has anyone beside Moses seen even a glimpse of God's magnificence?

The people of Israel had to learn that faith requires listening and hearing and seeing and touching and feeling. We accomplish this through prayer and deed. We reason with God by questioning our need for relationships. We see God through our connection with one another. We can't have a feeling for God if we don't have a concept of togetherness.

And then there is the question of evil. How do we reconcile evil and God? Why would God put evil and temptation, the temptation of the Golden Calf, in front of us if the intention was to bring the harmony of heaven to Earth?

I would suggest that we ask the wrong questions. We should not be asking why or what or where. We should ask how - how do we, humankind, relieve the suffering and the misery and the pain?

God created us to enhance the creation process. We can dance around idols - the idols of indifference, the idols of intolerance, the idols of callousness - but we must conclude that just as we continue, so does creation and our Creator. God knows we make mistakes but also hopes that we will make the right choices.

Our participation in the journey of independence begins with the census of the people because the ultimate test will be who stands for those attributes that will guarantee our survival. The message is quite clear: God does not need slogans. God doesn't need arrogance of thought or suppression of ideas. God does need for us to remember our origin, our foibles and our potential.

There is no straight path to God. And we will encounter detours and bumps in the road. Labels are not the answer to finding God; images such as a Golden Calf certainly will not bring us closer to our final destination. What we need is sincerity of purpose and the realization that as we are different, so is the voyage as we continue to seek unity with God.






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