If you have seen Fiddler
on the Roof, you will probably leave with the impression that Judaism is
about tradition rather than a faith or belief. If so, you’ve gotten the right
idea, as this representative statement indicates:
·
Judaism does not require faith statements as a
sign of legitimacy…Torah goes to great lengths to reassure the searching Jew
that skepticism is healthy, legitimate, and even celebrated in Jewish life.
Fundamentalists [of other religions] may regard anything short of absolute
faith as religiously insufficient; Jewish tradition does not share their
reliance on certainty…Synagogue sermons tend either to speak of God as obvious
fact or to avoid the issue of God altogether…the question “Do you believe in
God?” is not the central Jewish spiritual question. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/from-belief-to-faith/
What then brings Jews together if not common beliefs?
Tradition! However, today even tradition is not providing the necessary glue.
Instead, Judaism seems to have more to do with just a vague and uncertain sense
of identification.
This raises the question, “What was the required glue for
the Israelite, if there was any at all?” The life of Abraham answers this
question. After about ten years of sojourning in the Promised Land, Abraham had
lost faith in God’s promise that if he would leave his family and go to a land that
God would show him, He would give him many descendants (Genesis 12:1-3, 7).
Since his wife Sarah had been barren, this promise spoke volumes to this
grieving couple.
However, after ten years of waiting for its fulfillment,
Abraham despaired and had resigned himself to the disappointing likelihood that
his servant Eliezer would be his heir. However, once again, the Lord came to
him:
·
And behold, the word of the LORD came to him:
“This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” (Genesis
15:4)
The Lord then led Abraham outside to look at the sky and
told him that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars, and Abraham
believed the Word of the Lord:
·
And he believed the LORD, and he counted
it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6)
God was pleased by what Abraham believed and not any ongoing
skepticism. This doesn’t mean that Abraham’s faith was now filled with a
glowing and unquenchable feeling of
confidence. It certainly wasn’t. Even though Abraham believed, he asked God to
reassure him regarding this Word:
·
But he said, “O Lord GOD, how am I to know that
I shall possess it?” (Genesis 15:8)
God granted Abraham his request by pledging Himself to His
Word through a formal covenant. What then is faith? It is not exactly peace of
mind and glowing emotions, although these might be the result of faith. There
is no indication in this account that Abraham’s faith was accompanied by a
glowing, warm, and fuzzy experience. Instead, God’s covenantal pledge to
Abraham was associated with a “dreadful and great darkness” which came down
upon him (Genesis 15:12). Besides, the presence of God was accompanied by
symbols of His wrath as He made this pledge to Abraham. Why was it that such a
great promise was associated with dread? I think that this was indicating that,
in order to fulfill His pledge, the Son would have to die for the sins of the
world (2 Corinthians 1:20). Thus, God was giving Abraham a foretaste of the
Gospel.
What then is faith? It
is fundamentally a willingness and a commitment to take God at His Word, even
when it hurts and doesn’t make any sense to us. It is a matter of believing and
trusting in the Word rather than in ourselves or our traditions and rituals.
A few years later, Abraham again despaired in believing in
the Word of the Lord, God’s promise. Instead of believing God, he placed his
trust in his own ill-advised devices and impregnated their servant girl, Hagar,
in order to produce his heir. Although this didn’t thwart the plan of God, the
birth of Ishmael did produce a ton of domestic strife.
God returned to Abraham, when he was 99 years old and Sarah
was 90, after she had ceased having her periods, and announced that next year Sarah
would give birth to Isaac, the long-awaited promised child (Genesis 18).
Abraham believed God, but succumbed to fear, when sojourning in Gerar (Genesis
20). He lied, claiming that Sarah was merely his sister. Consequently, the king
received his still beautiful wife into his harem. However, God returned Sarah
to her humiliated husband.
However, Abraham was learning to believe in the Word of God,
rather than in resorting to his own devices or in performing a household
tradition. When God asked Abraham to offer his treasured son Isaac as a burnt
offering, he had learned that he had to trust in God rather than in traditions:
·
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up
Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his
only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.”
He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead… (Hebrews
11:17-19)
Abraham had grown in faith in his God and understood that,
somehow, he would rescue Isaac. After perhaps 50 years of sojourning in the
Promised Land, God had proven Himself trustworthy, the very thing He has always
intended to do. His Word had never failed him, and Abraham was convinced that
His Word wouldn’t fail this time, even if he had to put his son to death.
What does God want from us? To always remain critical and
skeptical of the Word of God, as the rabbis suppose? No! Instead, He wants
obedience to His Word arising from a resolved faith in Him. He therefore
intervened before Abraham sacrificed Isaac:
·
“Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything
to him…By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this
and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I
will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that
is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies. (Genesis
22:12,16-17)
Obedience to God’s Word, rather than to our own interests in
tribal solidarity, is only possible once we have learned to have faith in Him. It was a lesson that Israel had to
repeatedly learn:
·
“And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed
you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he
might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives
by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothing did not wear
out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your
heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you. So
you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and
by fearing him.” (Deuteronomy 8:3-6)
Faith and belief didn’t require a blind leap. Nor did it
require the Israelite to shelve both mind and skepticism. However, Israel’s God
was intent on remold their skepticism into an evidence-based faith. He,
therefore, provided many evidences of His love for His people – His deliverance
from slavery through ten supernatural plagues, the splitting of the sea, and His
provisions during the 40 years sojourn in the desert. Based upon God’s miraculous
confirmations, Moses advised Israel to believe in their God and to obey Him:
·
“To you it was shown, that you might know
that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him. Out of heaven he let you
hear his voice, that he might discipline you. And on earth he let you see his
great fire, and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire. And because
he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out
of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, driving out before you
nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land
for an inheritance, as it is this day, know therefore today, and lay it
to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath;
there is no other. Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments,
which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children
after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land that the LORD your
God is giving you for all time.” (Deuteronomy 4:34-40)
By His miraculous works, God deprived Israel of any basis for
skepticism in favor of an assured knowledge of Him. Consequently, any
disobedience would not result from the lack of evidence but a stubborn refusal
to have faith in their God. If they weren’t certain that He existed and loved
them, there would be no reason for them to obey God or to even celebrate their Biblically-derived
traditions. Consequently, a Judaism without some degree of certainty and assured
knowledge of God is unthinkable, a perversion of God’s will and workings.
In the midst of Israel’s continued rebellion against God’s
Word, God sought to win their faith and allegiance to His Word. Even after
seeing God’s many miracles, Israel rebelled against God as they heard the
Egyptian chariots approaching them.
·
[Israel] said to Moses, “Is it because there are
no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What
have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt:
‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better
for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” (Exodus 14:11-12)
At God’s command, Moses instructed them to not fear but to
have faith in Him:
·
And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand
firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For
the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. (Exodus 14:13)
While the rabbis charge that the NT diverges from the Old by
emphasizing “faith” instead of obedience and tradition, it is just a matter of
different semantics. When God instructs His people to “not fear” or to “trust
in Him,” it is the same thing as saying “believe in Me” or “have faith in Me”:
·
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the
LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment
to your bones. (Proverbs 3:5-8)
How do we “trust in the Lord?” By not trusting in our own
understanding but in His! However, in order to trust in someone, we need to
believe that he is trustworthy. In other words, we need to know who he is and
how he has rescued us in the past. Resisting our fears and desires, requires something
even more substantial – a confident knowledge of God. This was the basis of
Joshua’s trust in the Lord. God had been with him in many tangible ways and
promised to never leave him:
·
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your
mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful
to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way
prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be
strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the
LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:8-9)
Being “strong and courageous” was a matter of believing in
God’s Word, which promised great blessing. Therefore, we cannot separate belief
in doctrine and God’s Words from obedience, blessings, and even the traditions
that the rabbis value. If the truth of Words Word does not underlie our
traditions, our traditions are baseless and will not endure the storms.
God would be Joshua’s strength and hope, and God had
provided him an evidential foundation and a knowledge of God for this faith. Consequently,
knowing God is trusting in Him:
·
The LORD is a stronghold for the oppressed, a
stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name [God Himself] put
their trust in you, for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you. (Psalm
9:9-10)
Unlike our rabbis, Moses understood the value of proof and
evidences, and so did God. At Moses burning bush encounter, God instructed
Moses to return to Egypt to lead His people out of bondage. Predictably, the
reluctant Moses retorted that the Israelites had no reason to believe that God
had spoken to him. However, God was not like the rabbis, who deny the need for
proofs and evidences and just affirm tradition:
·
The LORD said to him, “What is that in your
hand?” He said, “A staff.” And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw
it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. But the LORD
said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”—so he put out his
hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand—“that they may believe
that the LORD, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” Again, the LORD said to him, “Put
your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he
took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, “Put your
hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and
when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh…If they
will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take
some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you
shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” (Exodus 4:2-9)
The rabbis make a mistake when they insist that faith and
certainty are unnecessary and associate them with a rigid fundamentalism. Instead,
it seems that God is a rigid fundamentalist.
The Bible also uses many other language forms to express
faith/belief. In a Psalm widely considered Messianic by the rabbis, God orders
the rebellious to do homage to the Son:
·
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish
in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge
in him. (Psalm 2:12)
Many OT verses use this and similar language to express the
concepts of faith/belief. Obedience requires the bedrock of faith/belief.
Without this, there is no reason to obey or any basis for meaningful and
enduring tradition. If Judaism is about tradition, it must also be about faith
in the Word of God, the foundation of all meaningful tradition. A faithless tradition or ritual is an abomination to God:
·
“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of
well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of
goats. When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this
trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination
to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure
iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul
hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you
spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many
prayers. (Isaiah 1:11-15)
If faith is not present, then any prescribed offering,
ritual, or tradition is unacceptable.
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