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The God Squad: Short Psalms for long study

Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Content Agency on

The first verse: Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Is a plea for humility. It is a confession to God and our own souls that, to quote Piglet, “It’s hard to be brave when you are a very little animal.”

We are little animals and there is a limit to what a little animal can know. Scientific breakthroughs have given us a completely inflated notion of our own power and intelligence, but the key to spiritual growth is to deflate our egos. It involves understanding that some questions are just out of our league. It also requires understanding the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Intelligence is knowing what is. Wisdom is knowing what matters. People can be smart when they are young, but they cannot be wise until they are old. Age brings with it a wise patience with all the questions we cannot answer.

The French existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel in his two-volume work, "The Mystery of Being," explained the distinction, “A problem is something that I meet over and against myself. I find it complete before me; and hence I can lay siege to it and solve it. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved and hence the distinction between what is in me and what is over and against me loses it meaning.”

Problems are not about us and mysteries are all about us. The responses to mystery (not the solutions) depend upon what we already believe. When we confront the mysteries of existence, we are confronting ourselves. Our way out of them is always through them and through our troubled souls.

When we ask about the fate of goodness in the world, our response depends upon what we already believe about goodness. If you believe, with Plautus (died 184ce), homo homini lupis, “Each man is the wolf of his neighbor” your response to evil will be different than it would be if you believed that we are made in the image of God. Problems disappear when we answer them. Mysteries do not disappear when we respond to them. Every God question is a mystery.

 

Darn it! I can’t finish even a three-verse psalm in one column. I am a failure.

See you next week.

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman.)

©2021 The God Squad. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.


(c) 2021 THE GOD SQUAD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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