God of Second Chances

If you are reading this, my guess is you, like me, needed a second chance in life.  

Perhaps your marriage to the person of your youth and your dreams did not work out as you had hoped and planned.  Now you are in middle age, perhaps with children, and contemplating what is next in your life.  

Or that perfect job, the one you worked at and gave your all to for twenty years just evaporated, either due to downsizing or a change in leadership at the top.  

Or your relationship with your children is strained or non-existent and are looking to rebuild and renew from scratch the love you once had for one another.

If this describes you, then welcome to the human race.   I assure you, you are not alone.

My story is this: For over a quarter of a century I had served congregations as a clergyman, (I am an ordained rabbi) each time I moved to a new congregation, it was much larger than the previous one.  In seminary, we were taught that the path to success was moving up to ever larger pulpits.  It was the old “climbing up the career ladder” although as a clergyman, maybe I should call it “Jacob’s ladder”.  In any event, every career move brought more prestige, a larger audience to hear my sermons, and of course, a greater salary.  It was only many years later that I learned that success means something completely different….  However at age 29, I was looking ahead to a productive, maybe even prestigious career in the pulpit.

After serving two pulpits I moved to the “big time”-a large congregation in the suburbs where I was to serve as Senior Rabbi.  For those who may not know, “rabbi” simply means teacher, but like in other denominations to be a Senior in the ministry means leading a large staff team, planning multiple programs over the course of a year, overseeing a large budget, and working with a very large and diverse lay leadership effectively.

Despite lacking some of these skills initially, I did pretty well.  For the first fourteen years or so I enjoyed the position enormously, had a wonderful relationship with lay leaders and staff, and had become an effective leader in the greater community.

Around year fifteen or so, things began to change.   I found my relationships with lay leaders were not as cordial.   There developed a growing lack of trust, and it was clear that my vision for the future and the vision of those who served as lay leaders was diverging significantly.  I started having verbal clashes with lay leaders, something that had never happened, and meetings were taking place without me.  It was clear that something significant was changing.  To be honest, I was not handling things well.  I found myself growing irritated easily, only reluctantly coming into the office, complaining constantly to whomever would listen, and wondering if I had a future in this community.

In May of 2019 that decision was made for me when I showed up to work only to be told that my services as Rabbi were no longer needed.  I walked out of the building in which I had served for seventeen years, never to return.

I was crushed. 

If you’ve ever achieved a dream and had it shatter into a thousand pieces, you know the feeling.  I was lost.  I was in my mid fifties, out of a job, and humiliated in the sight of an entire community, not to mention my family.   My marriage was already uncertain and I had devoted so much time to my career I had certainly neglected both the responsibilities and joy of being a parent.  Now I was unemployed as well.  Because of the abruptness of my departure wild rumors circulated throughout the community.  It was a hard time.  One day, I pulled to the side of the road and found myself weeping uncontrollably. 

A story:  Once upon a time, a young man became lost in the woods.  He tried path after path, hoping to find his way out, but each new path led to the same dead end.  One day, he came upon an old man walking in the same woods.  He said to him, “Old man, do you know the way out of these woods?  I have been wandering a long time”.  The old man replied, “I too have been wandering forever.  I do not know the way out.  But I can show you the paths that lead nowhere.  Come, let’s find our way together”.  

I was lucky that during that dark time I found some fellow travelers who were able share with me the paths they had found that led nowhere, and also were willing to accompany me on the road to discovering paths that brought them wisdom and insight.  Along the way I learned many things, including what I have now come to believe about God.  I’ve been a rabbi for many years, but was never completely certain about what I believed when it came to God.  Only after hitting rock bottom in my personal and professional life, and some really hard and painful reflecting and learning, did I not only come to learn more about myself, but to my surprise, about God.

The God I believe in is the God who gives us second chances.   Read on, and you’ll see what I mean.

Like many who chose the ministry as a career, I spent years in the study of sacred books, particularly the Bible, which we Jews refer to as the Torah.   Let me make a confession; despite all the learning I’m not sure I can believe in a God who parts the sea, or crumbles city walls, or brings sudden darkness or sends locusts when He wants to stir things up.   All these events are recounted in the book that I love and have grappled with for over forty years, the Hebrew Bible, but I’m not sure I fully believe that every word of the Bible is literally true. (Some of you who are very devout might stop reading here, but trust me, please read on).  The God that supposedly did these things is however the God my ancestors believed in, and they drew strength and comfort from the God who intervenes in the human world. 

For my ancestors who wrote the Hebrew Bible roughly 3000 years ago,  God is a constant presence in the world and God directly rewards the good people and punishes the wicked people, often with misfortune, illness or death. The punishment of wicked people in the Bible is a pretty consistent theme, with one exception.  Of all the books in the Bible, only the unknown author who wrote the book of Job questioned why the innocent suffer and the wicked prosper.  In fact, the hero of the story, Job, complains precisely about this-he lives a good and ethical life, and yet he suffers!  You might not be surprised to know that Job is my favorite story in the Bible, but more on Job later on in this book. 

After the Bible was completed, a new group of scholars, known as the Rabbis, or sometimes the Sages, came up with their own explanation of why innocents suffer and wicked people often succeed and prosper.  For the Rabbis of old, the good are rewarded with eternal life in Heaven, and the wicked are denied entry to the heavenly place where God dwells.  Many other faithful people, Christians and Muslims, have adopted this idea to explain to themselves why misfortune comes to good people.  We might suffer in this life, but in the next we will be rewarded.  Or alternatively, God sends suffering to teach us lessons that we might otherwise never learn.  Or to jar us out of a path of wickedness.  (the Sages called this “sufferings of God’s Love”).   Over my career as a clergyman, in the presence of people whose lives have been ripped apart by death, or illness, or tragedy, it seems to me cold comfort to assure them that God is somehow “in control” of all the things that have befallen them. 

To be honest, very few of the people that I have encountered in my daily work genuinely want to believe that either.  To think that God “took” their loved one, or God “sent” this illness seemed too painful and puzzling to them.  Why would God take my dad when I need him too?  Why would God send my best friend cancer just when he was starting a life on his own?  Why should a nine year old child who has done nothing wrong die needlessly in a school shooting?  Many years ago, when I was a student rabbi, a woman asked me on my very first day at the congregation “What did I ever do wrong that God is punishing me by giving my husband a brain tumor”?  Trying to puzzle out why a kind and all-powerful God would punish good people is called “theodicy” by scholars looking for a fancy name for a very common problem. 

The answer to me, is that God didn’t send any illness, and this was not a punishment.  Rather, I have come to believe, and I have learned from some great teachers, that illness and tragedy is built into the very fabric of how the world works, and often people suffer greatly for no good reason.  I cannot believe in a God who would send my loved ones an illness just to “teach a lesson” to them, or to me.  So much for theodicy.

Now, I know that some people take great comfort in thinking that “everything happens for a reason” and that “God’s plan is beyond our thinking” and that’s okay.  I’m glad that there are people who find great comfort in such thoughts, and I’m happy that they are able to find peace in this way.  (I’m also a little envious, because I just can’t do it).   So for me, the God who is “in control” of everything and sends illness and earthquakes, plagues and leprosy and decides who prospers and who is ruined is just not for me.

Nor is the idea that God is somehow a “made up” fictional being created by superstitious people to explain their world very appealing to me.  In recent years, a lot of people who claim to believe in God and talk an awful lot about Him have done some pretty horrible things, discriminating against people who are not like them, hating people because of their skin color or whom they choose to love, cheating and stealing, and basically being incredibly bad and immoral people.  There are Jews who claim to be religious and yet oppress and exploit the people who work for them.  There are Christians who claim they lead “Christ-centered” lives yet shut their hands to the poor and blame the homeless for their grinding poverty.  They do these things, all while claiming great piety and devotion.  This has led to a lot of other people turning away from the idea of God entirely, thinking “If this is how people who believe in God behave, God must be nothing but superstitious nonsense”.  There is a reason why the Jewish tradition, my tradition, calls immoral behavior in the name of God hillul HaShem, or “desecrating God’s name”.  People like this who do bad things but publicly proclaim their devout belief do nothing but turn people away from even considering what God might mean to them.  Even worse, a lot of horrible things have been done by people who claim to be acting “in the Name of God”.  This has led a lot of people to simply dismiss the idea of God entirely.

Similarly, there are people who feel that because they are rational, and scientific in their thinking, and well educated, and they don’t believe in tall tales, they cannot possibly believe in God, or the stories about God in the Bible.  A few years ago, several best selling books were written scoffing at the notion of God and the authors became quite well known for their proofs that God couldn’t possibly exist and that science proves that the stories in the Bible are fables.   I would argue that science and religion are two very different things entirely.  Science seeks to know how the universe and all that is in it came to be, while religion, at its best, seeks to know why, what is the meaning behind the universe and all that is in it.  Why were we put here on this Earth, and what are we meant to do with the precious years of life granted to us?

So if you are a person who believes that God is in control of all things, and that bad things happen for a reason, and that certain people suffer and others prosper because God decided it, we probably don’t agree with one another.  Similarly, if you hold that God is just a figment of humanity’s imagination, and not real, we also don’t agree with one another.  Now, good people can disagree, and I’d actually hope you might still read this book and take the time to consider my thoughts, and then perhaps reach out and we can discuss it together.  After all, as my tradition states, as much as I have learned from my teachers, I have learned even more from fellow students and seekers!

Finally, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is not one, true, authentic way to approach God and all the other ways are false, or blasphemous, or wicked.  I know that there are plenty of folks who like to condemn or disparage other religions and other ways of seeking God, but frankly I don’t get those people and never will.  These people  tend to pronounce other religions “false” or “wrong” and only their way is the true and authentic path to God.  But just like there are many paths in the park by my house that leads to one spot, there are many paths that can lead each of us to that same one, universal God.  

So if you have gotten this far in the book you know that I am a person who does not believe in a God who punishes the wicked and rewards the good, who is an “old Man” in the heavens who decides who will be sick and who healthy.  I do however believe that God is, that there is a Force in the universe greater than ourselves who tries to guide and speak to us, who loves us, and who cares for us when we feel pain.

Most of all, the God I believe in is a God who gives us second chances in life, and my ancestors believed in that very same God.  How do I know this?  Because my forebears told the stories of people who were given incredible second chances, and eventually wrote down those stories in the most beloved of books, the Bible.

Remember the story I shared about the young man trapped in the forest, and the old man joining with him to find the right path?  Well join with me and we will journey together to see if we can find the God of Second Chances.  To begin our journey, we must first meet a young man named Joseph.  I warn you, when we first meet him, he is not a very pleasant kid.