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Rabbinic Insights: On Faith and God

San Diego Jewish Times, May 5, 2006

By Rabbi Wayne Dosick

Religious fundamentalists of all kinds — theirs and ours — often confuse faith with religion.

In his brilliant book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Reza Aslan explains it as well as anyone ever has. "Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith. It is an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors (read: rituals and myths) that provides a common language with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence. Religion is concerned not with genuine history, but with sacred history, which does course through time like a river. Rather, sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into primordial time and whose branches weave in and out of genuine history with little concern for boundaries of space and time. Indeed, it is precisely when sacred and genuine history collide that religions are born."

Aslan continues, “…as indispensable and historically valuable as [sacred texts] may be, they are nevertheless grounded in mythology. It is a shame that this word, myth, which originally signified nothing more than the stories of the supernatural, has come to be regarded as synonymous with falsehood, when in fact myths are always true. By their very nature, myths inhere both legitimacy and credibility. Whatever truths they convey have little to do with historical fact. To ask whether Moses actually parted the Red Sea, or whether Jesus truly raised Lazarus from the dead, or whether the word of God indeed poured through the lips of Muhammad, is to ask totally irrelevant questions. The only question that matters with regard to religion and its mythology is, ‘What do these stories mean?’

"The fact is that no evangelist in any of the world's great religions would have been at all concerned with recording his or her objective observations of historical events. They would not have been recording observations at all! Rather, they were interpreting those events in order to give structure and meaning to the myths and rituals of their community, providing future generations with a common identity, a common aspiration, a common story. After all, religion is, by definition, interpretation, and, by definition, all interpretations are valid. However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others. And as the Jewish philosopher and mystic Moses Maimonides noted so many years ago, it is reason, not imagination, which determines what is probable and what is not.

"The way scholars form a reasonable interpretation of a particular religious tradition is by merging that religion's myths with what can be known about the spiritual and political landscape in which those myths arose."

So, religion is a gathering of people around a particular set of stories, ideas. In addition to the common ideas and practices that grow up around those stories, religion is sourced and framed by geography, politics, culture, community, rituals, customs, ceremonies, and, eventually, history, and, perhaps language, literature and land.

Can you "get" religion? Can you, particularly, “get” Judaism?

Of course.

Gather with the people. Join a shul. Say a bracha. Light candles. Chant kiddush. Eat matzoh. Wear a kepa, a tallis, tephillin. Study sacred text. Learn Jewish history. Learn Hebrew. Give tzedakah. Collect canned goods for the poor. Save oppressed Jewry. Connect, both physically and spiritually, to the Jewish Land. Read Jewish books; subscribe to Jewish periodicals; put Jewish art on your walls; sing Jewish songs; tell Jewish stories. Marry a Jew; have Jewish babies. Build Jewish centers, old-age homes, and social service agencies. Be a committed, involved, active member in the Jewish "tribe." Immerse in the tribal myths; tell the tribal stories; do the tribal rituals. Do and be the Jewish religion. Do and be the communal covenant.

Jewish belief and faith is not, however, Jewish religion.

Faith is your deep, personal, intimate covenant with God. Faith is your true, and certain, and deeply loving relationship with God.

Knowing God and having faith means having a full measure of God's wisdom and strength, confidence and courage. It means joy and contentment, friendship and love.

Knowing God and having faith — being able to come to God in times of trauma and tragedy, joy and satisfaction — means that you are never alone, that you will always have God's comfort and consolation, good counsel and wise guidance.

Knowing God and having faith means beings able to tap into the unlimited possibility and potential within you. For when you have faith, together you and God can accomplish anything.

Can you “get” faith? Can you “get” Jewish faith?

 Absolutely.

 The way to faith is through faith; the way to faith is through doing faith.

If you would like to be thin and in good physical shape, you can sit in your house, or at the seashore, or on a mountaintop, hoping that a slim waistline and good health will wash over you. Or, you can go to the diet center and the gym — where you will find others wrestling with the same issues — and, slowly yet profoundly, you can be guided to learn and adopt the practices and habits that. will lead to weight loss and physical fitness.

It is the same with faith. You can sit in your darkened room or in a beautiful natural setting, hoping that faith will wash over you, and that you will be in good spiritual shape. Or, you can go to the places and find the teachers where, slow1y yet profoundly, you will be guided to the world of Spirit, toward a. faithful relationship with God.

You can learn to pray, and meditate, and chant, and move your body. You can sharpen your intuition, your night dreams, your daydreams, and visions. You can tap into your soul memory so that you move beyond your Earth-existence and Earth-experience, and open yourself to receive and hold on if only for a few moments at a time — universal, eternal knowing.

You can enter into the always-open gateway and come into the Divine presence.

You can know that God loves you, and cherishes you, and cares for you and watches over you, and protects you, and comforts you, and offers you guidance, and good counsel, and constant companionship, and eternal love.

And you can come to know that God, the Creator and Sustainer, has a blueprint, a Divine Design for the universe, and that the way to stay connected
to God, to be in the Divine flow, is to strip away all ego, and to say, with complete, loving faith and conviction, "Not my will, but Thy will, O God, be done," "For, with my limited Earth-view, even if I cannot see it at the moment, with complete surety, I know that You have set the ultimate plan, the highest and the greatest good, the eternal right the infinite intent."

You can come to know that there is no separation between you and God, between you and all other human Beings; you can become vividly aware of 
the Wholeness of existence, the Oneness of all peoples.

You can believe. You can have faith. You can know God in communal covenant as the sovereign of the universe, and in deep personal intimacy as your closet friend and guide.

Then, when you open your eyes, you see from the beginning of time until its end. When you open your ears, you’ll hear the echoes of eternity resounding throughout the cosmos. When you open your spirit, you feel the Oneness of every Being. When you open your heart, you are enveloped in the presence of God. When you open your soul, you were, we are, and ever will we be.

 "With perfect faith, I believe in God, and in God's saving redemption."

Rabbi Wayne Dosick, Ph.D., the spiritual guide of the Elijah Minyan, an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego and the Director of the 17: Spiritually Healing Children's Emotional Wounds. He is the award-winning author of six critically acclaimed books, including Golden Rules; Living Judaism; and Soul Judaism: Dancing with God into a New Era.