Passover journey

Maybe it was just a coincidence, and what happened today had nothing to do with my conversation with the imaginary God who I don’t believe in this morning.

“I don’t do coincidence,” God says

OK, so maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. Anyway, here’s my journey.

I started out with “agape,” the Greek word for love. Biblical scholars translate it as love (correct, in my view) or charity (close but misleadingly wrong.) I wrote about it earlier here. I looked up agape on Wikipedia here.

From there, I saw a link to Chesed, a Hebrew word associated with kindness and love. So I went there.

Why did I go there? I’m not quite sure.

“I am,” God says.

In its positive sense, the word is used of kindness or love between people, of piety of people towards God as well as of love or mercy of God towards humanity. It is frequently used in Psalms in the latter sense, where it is traditionally translated “lovingkindness” in English translations.

Lovingkindness is the goal of metta meditation.

In Jewish theology it is likewise used of God’s love for the Children of Israel, and in Jewish ethics, it is used for love or charity between people. Chesed in this latter sense of “charity” is considered a virtue on its own, and also for its contribution to tikkun olam (repairing the world).

I’d never learned about chesed or tikkun olam, but I remember reading about tikkun olam in Scott Alexander’s book, UNSONG.

So, I went on to learn about tikkun olam.

Tikkun olam (Hebrew: תִּיקּוּן עוֹלָם, lit. 'repairing of the world') is a concept in Judaism, which refers to various forms of action intended to repair and improve the world.

Bingo!

I had absorbed that idea through my skin. That’s what I wrote about in my blog posts “Mortality 101” and “What matters?”

That’s my goal. To do as much as I can to make a better world.

I never thought that being one of the Chosen People ™ gave me special privileges. It gave me special responsibilities—which, to be honest, I failed to live up to. (Sorry God. And sorry for ending a sentence with a preposition.)

“Your first apology accepted,” says God. “As to the second, stop paying attention to Grammar Nazis.”

“You ended that sentence with two prepositions, not just one,” said a Grammar Nazi.

I took God’s advice, ignored it, and kept reading Wikipedia.

Some Jews believe that performing mitzvot will create a model society among the Jewish people, which will in turn influence the rest of the world. By perfecting themselves, their local Jewish community or the state of Israel, the Jews set an example for the rest of the world.

So here’s my take.

That plan doesn’t seem to have worked.

The world is not on its way to being repaired.

When I went through my Christian Science phase, I took some of the Christian Science ideas as my own. Jesus is not the only Son of God. ™ I am, too. And that doesn’t make me special. We are all sons and daughters of God.

The Lord’s Prayer ™ tells us that. Jesus does not instruct us to pray to “My father”: but to “Our Father.” We’re not instructed to say “give me this day my daily bread” But “give us this day our daily bread” Not “forgive me,” but “forgive us.” Not “lead me not,” but “lead us not.”

Are people taught to pray for us, not for themselves? I wasn’t. My parents taught me to say my prayers this way: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Not ours. Mine. Mine.

“Jesus taught everyone how to pray,” God says. “You’d think that people would understand the principle. You’d think that people would realize that I ignore selfish prayers, given how infrequently I grant them.”

“So far Plan J has not worked,” I say to God.

“It hasn’t,” God says.

From here I went on to music.

I hadn’t even realized it was Passover.

That’s the subject of another post.

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