The Bible for the Clueless But Curious

After 40 years of wandering in the desert, the Jewish people are now standing on the border of the Land of Israel. It is the culmination of hundreds of years of national destiny.

What's the deal with the Land of Israel? Why not Uganda, for example, or maybe Brooklyn?

"Religion" usually means one day of worship sandwiched into a week's brutal exploitation of our neighbor. But God wants His commandments to shape every nuance of our lives -- the way we do business, administer justice, fight war, make love, raise children, and respond to the poor. Only a community can live the Bible.

A community needs a place where it can live its ideals -- it needs a land. And Israel is not just any land. It is a holy land, which means a place where God is uniquely present and available.

After the Six Day War, Yitzhak Rabin, chief of staff of the Israeli Army, is reputed to have said, "God had nothing to do with this victory." Patton probably didn't comment on God's role in the Battle of the Bulge, but in Israel, even atheists find God's presence too tangible to ignore.

On the president's desk there are three phones. The president explains that the white phone is a direct line to the U.S. ambassador in Moscow. The red phone is a direct line to the commanding general of NATO. The blue phone is a direct line to God.

"But," says the president, "we never use that phone because it's too expensive."

Then the president goes to visit the Israeli prime minister. On his desk there are three phones. The prime minister explains that the white phone is a direct line to the Israeli ambassador in Washington. The red phone is a direct line to the head of the Army. The blue phone is a direct line to God.

"But how can a small country like Israel afford such a phone?" the president asks. "Even the U.S. can't afford to use it."

The parsha begins with Moses imploring, begging and pleading with God to allow him to enter the Land of Israel.

Parents love their kids, so they tell them what to do: "Take your vitamins! Wear your boots! Don't touch the stove!

But no one likes rules, and sometimes children are resentful of their parents' discipline.

The Children of Israel were resentful, and frustrated by God's demands. The umpteenth time the Israelites whined for water, God told Moses, "Take your stick. Speak to the rock, and it will give water."

Moses went as he was told, but when the people screamed at him in rage and frustration, he lost his temper. He yelled at the people, and then he bashed the rock, which gushed forth water.

Only Man has the choice whether to listen to God. The mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds do exactly what they're created to do. God hoped that when the rock responded to Moses' gentle command, the people would introspect and become more responsive to God's will themselves. But inadvertently, Moses taught them even a rock resists listening to God and gives water only when it's beaten. The generation that left Egypt never truly appreciated that God loves them. Moses' mistake only reinforced the people's sense of grievance.

Because they never fully trusted God, they weren't allowed to enter the Land of Israel. Moses was their leader. He was responsible for them. And if they couldn't go in, he couldn't go in either.

In the "Shema" prayer, the Jewish "Pledge of Allegiance", we are commanded to "serve God with all your heart and with all your soul."

"Love God with all your soul" means be willing to die for God. This troubling idea needs explanation:

1. You don't know how precious something is until you know what price you'll pay for it.

Many years ago, a friend and I drove to the mountains in the middle of a Vermont winter. We stopped to change drivers, and my dog hopped out of the car. A passing car brushed the dog, which ran off terrified into the woods. It was midnight, and the temperature hovered near zero degrees. We looked for the dog for hours in the freezing cold. All the time, I wondered to myself, How much does this dog mean to me? How long am I willing to do this for? (P.S. We found the dog.)

The Bible invites us to understand that our relationship with God is so precious, we would be willing to pay the ultimate price.

In the year 135, the Jews rebelled against Roman domination. The Romans crushed the rebellion with terrible savagery and then tried their best to stamp out Jewish life completely. They murdered every rabbi they could find and prohibited teaching Torah on penalty of death.

The next day, Rabbi Akiva went to the marketplace and publicly taught Torah. He was arrested, sentenced, and tortured to death. As the executioner flayed Rabbi Akiva alive, he smiled and said, "All my life, I hoped for the opportunity to love God with all my soul."

Life is precious and it's wise to cling to it tenaciously. But life gains meaning from commitment to something more than life, and there is a time when not dying robs life of its meaning.

Rabbi Akiva's sacrifice was not in vain. His death, like the death of those Jews throughout history who died rather than convert, taught us the extraordinary importance of our relationship with God.

3. When you pay the ultimate price for something, it becomes more precious to you. It becomes yours.

Who has greater pride and pleasure in the State of Israel: Someone who risked his life to fight against impossible odds in 1948, or someone with the best of motives who wrote checks from the comfort and security of America?

Even kids understand this. In Dr. Seuss's "Horton Hatches the Egg," an elephant named Horton is left to mind the egg of a frivolous bird named Mayzie. Through terrible troubles and at risk of his life, Horton protects the egg. When it finally hatches -- it's an elephant with wings!

Invest yourself in something and it becomes yours. If you put yourself on the line for God and the Jewish people, they become infinitely valuable to you. And that enriches your life beyond description.

The opposite is also true: if there's nothing you're willing to risk your life for, there isn't anything you care about very much. And that's a tragedy.

"If there should arise a prophet... and he does a miracle... and he says to you 'let us follow other gods,' do not listen to him. God is testing you to know whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul."

I met a Jewish girl who had converted to Christianity. She told me the following story in explanation:

I was in the hospital, critically ill. The doctors gave up all hope for my recovery. A priest came. He told me to pray to Jesus for recovery. I prayed to Jesus and I recovered!

Delegates of all the world's nations are gathered in the United Nations General Assembly. A man walks up to the podium.

The United Nations building lifts off its foundation and hurtles into the sky. It lands on the moon. Delegates file out of the building and fill their pockets with moon rocks. The building flies back to Earth.

A frog? How can a man be a frog? That guy is powerful and dangerous, but he isn't a frog. He's crazy.

A man can't be god. Even if he has great power and does inexplicable wonders, he still can't be god, any more than a man can be a frog.

We're credulous creatures and easily impressed by things we don't understand. But as Sky Masterson says in the movie "Guys and Dolls":

"One day a guy's going to walk in and offer you a bet he can make the ace of spades jump out of a deck of cards in his pocket and squirt seltzer in your ear. But don't take that bet! Because if you do, you'll wind up with seltzer in your ear!"

"Appoint judges in all your cities... if a matter of judgment [or] dispute arises in your cities -- you shall rise up and ascend to the place that God shall choose. You shall come to the judge who will be in those days. You shall inquire and they will tell you the word of judgment. You shall do according to the word that they will tell you... and you shall be careful to do according to everything that they will teach you... do not deviate from the word they tell you to the right or to the left."

Since no written legal code could possibly cover all conceivable situations, judges must apply the Bible's laws to resolve specific cases.

This raises a basic and important question. I'll listen to God. But why should I listen to the judges? They're only human, and they can make mistakes.

The short answer is that the Bible tells us to listen to the judges. The long answer ends the same way, but the middle is more interesting.

The Talmud tells of a disagreement in the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Supreme Court) over a point of law. Of the 71 rabbis on the court, 70 say the law is one way. One holds the opposite view.

"If I'm right," the dissenter says, "let the walls of the study hall buckle inward."

"The Bible is no longer in heaven," he says. "The Bible tells us to follow the majority view of qualified Sages. Miracles and voices from heaven are not admissible as evidence. You're outvoted and that's the end of it!"

When God gave the Bible and its explanation to Moses, it became our job to understand and apply it, and informed reason becomes the arbiter of the law's meaning.

This doesn't mean everyone's opinion of the law is equal, and it also doesn't make the final decision subjective or illegitimate. People also interpret and explain the laws of physics or of chemistry, but this doesn't make science subjective or illegitimate. And though scientists are people, not all people's opinions are equal. If I say, "Einstein was wrong. Really, E=MC4," no one's going to listen. If Stephen Hawking says it, it means more.

Mistrust of authority isn't new. Vietnam and Watergate may have heightened mistrust of government, but Enlightenment philosophers struggled against the authority of the church and state 200 years ago.

Blind allegiance to the past is stupefying. But tradition also gives us roots, and it gives context to our lives. In denying tradition's claims, we may just discover we have become orphans in history.

"When you go out to war against your enemies, and God delivers them into your hand... and you see a beautiful woman, and you desire her... bring her to your house. She shall shave her head and let her nails grow. She shall remove the garment of her captivity from upon herself and sit in your house, and she shall weep for her father and her mother for a full month. Then you may come to her and live with her."

In wartime, otherwise decent people behave with extraordinary savagery. When society's thin moral veneer is punctured, a raging torrent of passion and terror sends life spinning over the edge. In that environment of moral meltdown, how do you save your own humanity?

You see a woman you want to rape? First bring her into your home. In the familiarity of home, normal moral boundaries are reasserted. Let her shave her head, and sit in mourning for a month. By month's end, the moment's passion has faded. And the intimate spectacle of the woman's grief has humanized her; she is no longer merely an object of sexual desire.

The next time you're enraged, tell yourself "I'm going to destroy this person. But first I'll give myself 24 hours to think it over."

Human beings are capable of all kinds of higher reason. We can split the atom and land a rocket on Mars, but sanity and civilization are a delicate edifice of reason over a maelstrom of envy, insecurity, and terror.

One night, a guy is driving alone far out in the country. The bolts holding the wheels of his car become loose, and eventually one wheel comes off. The car careens into a ditch.

With no phone or dwelling in sight, the driver is at a loss. Then looking up, he sees a fence with the sign "State Mental Institution." Behind the fence, a man with wild eyes stands frothing at the mouth.

"Take one bolt off each wheel," says the madman. Use them to fasten the fourth wheel, and you'll have three bolts on each wheel."

"That's brilliant," says the driver. "But tell me, if you're so smart, what are you doing in an insane asylum?"

#5 of 5 in the Aish.com Bible For Clueless Series
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