The Nature of God & Jonah

Today is Shabbat, a joyful holiday, and it is also Yom Kippur, at the end of which we are to feel forgiven. A two years ago I gave a talk about guilt and how we are already forgiven: that Yom Kippur is a special day not for us to beg for forgiveness, but to stop feeling guilty and feel forgiven, because we already are. So today we can feel forgiven and joyful. But the question I'd like to explore today, is, Who are we asking forgiveness of? What is the nature of God? In this afternoon's Haftarah reading, the prophet Jonah asks that question. God instructs him to go to the Non-Israelite city of Nineveh, now in Iraq, and declare to the people their imminent destruction. He heads in the opposite direction, fleeing the assignment, is swallowed by a great fish, and survives only to have to go to Nineveh, after which he sulks in the desert, when the people of Nineveh repent and are saved, because he says, "I knew that you are a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in kindness, relenting from evil." This is a quotation from Jonah who is quoting the part of Exodus, known as the 13 Attributes of God, which we say in our Torah services during the Holy Days. Abraham, who lived before the 13 Attributes were given, asked the same question, about the nature of God: If there are 50, or even 10 righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, will you still destroy the entire city? Abraham finds out that God is compassionate and not destructive. Moses asked this question twice: once when he offered to sacrifice himself if God will forgive the people for worshipping the Golden Calf, and once to probe the essential essence of God. Moses asks, "Show me your ways, that I may know you" (Ex. 33:13), which results in his hearing the 13 Attributes where God affirms the Divine Nature: Being, Existence, God, Compassionate, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth, forgiving and cleansing, but allowing us to experience the results of our choices and learn from our mistakes. We all know that the Torah also presents a God who is not always that forgiving. There are contradictory messages in Torah, so how are we to know for sure which messages to believe? We might want to think that God is kind and loving, but as humans, we also believe in justice, believing God to be an arbiter of justice. We have an innate sense of justice. Children at a very young age will shout, That's not fair! So they know inside that fairness is to be expected in this physical life. In the first chapter of Genesis we are told that we are made in God's image. God says,“Let us make humans in our image, as our likeness, and they shall rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens and over the animal and over all the earth, and over all crawlers that creep on the earth. And GOD created the human in (God’s) image, in GOD’s likeness created him; male and female created them.”(Gen. 1: 26-7) In the story of Noah we are told, "in the image of God the human was made (Gen. 9:6)." So we are like God, not on the outside, but on the inside; however, we know that we need to satisfy our need for justice and fairness with our equal and opposite desire to punish wrong-doers. We want the world to be better and sometimes blame others that it doesn't measure up to our standards. In addition, we want to have good opinions of ourselves, and sometimes hold onto grudges in a self-righteous way, thinking we are right and others are wrong. Rabbi David Katz pointed out that Anger makes us feel powerful, and we humans would rather feel something than feel nothing, so we settle for indulging ourselves by feeling anger instead of striving to actually be like God: loving and forgiving. We have made God in OUR image rather than acting as if we are made in God's image. It is we who want punitive justice, not God. And I think that we see this in the student protests of the past year, and in so many people who see the situation in the Middle East as more black and white than in shades of gray. Many would like a better world, but as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction"(Strength to Love1963). And Ghandi, another great leader said, "It is my firm conviction, that nothing enduring can be built upon violence." Understood energetically, for those who heard my talk on Rosh Hashanah: negative energy cannot result in positive energy. Only positive energy can bring about positive energy. This also provides a perspective about one reason why Oct. 7^th happened. If we think back to the great discord in Israel over judicial reform: the protests and disruption it caused, it may not be a coincidence that a terrible, negative result came about from that negative energy. I am not saying that one caused the other. I am just saying that negative energy was perpetuated, and is being perpetuated by many people who are in the midst of the conflict and also those who are very far from the conflict, not understanding the situation energetically. The Torah clearly states that we are co-creators with God. We sometimes act as if we think we are all alone, and other times we act as if God has all the power. The Torah teaches a different way to think about life: that the power comes from God, which is exactly what we say in our blessings: Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu: Blessed are you, BEING, our POWER, with the root word, EL meaning power.  Power does come from God but we are the ones with our hand on the tiller, directing the rudder, the course of the energy flow. Once we understand this, it opens up a new way of looking at life and effecting change in our own lives. We know we have free will, and we can use that will for good: for envisioning a better life for ourselves and a better world for everyone, sending out our positive energy. We can be forgiving like God, merging with God's power of goodness and love, directing the goodness of that creative energy to cause wonderful things. Every thought carries energy. As one spiritual teacher affirmed, we can say to ourselves, it's only a thought and a thought can be changed. We know when our thoughts are neutral, when they are positive and when they are negative. Rabbi Gelberman's quotation about this urges us to choose our thoughts consciously and not unconsciously. He wrote: "If we allow rampant domination of negative thinking we are defeated by a foe with no more power except that which we thoughtfully grant to it. With Love and Wisdom we are capable of control over what enters and leaves our mind. Love thoughts push out hate thoughts. Honest thoughts push out fraud thoughts which trick us into self-righteousness and emotional immaturity for temporary satisfaction and false release. We alone are the hosts who must answer to thoughts: “Invited or Uninvited.” So it is with whom we serve: the God of Joy or the God of despair. If we choose a positive attitude based on faith, the goodness of life, and an ethical value system based on emotionally mature attitudes, we are masters of our choices, not slaves of our whims." In this time we are ready to choose our thoughts with more expertise. We are ready to choose them by looking at their energies, using our expertise to create happier lives. We are ready to become more compassionate and forgiving, slower to anger, abundant in kindness and truth; for coming closer to acting in the image of God and experiencing the joy that it brings. The prophet Jeremiah predicted this. He said, "No longer will they teach each to their neighbor or each to their brother and say, “know GOD”; for all of them will know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares GOD. For I will forgive their iniquities, and their sins I will not remember any more"(Jer. 31:33). Had Jonah only known then what we know now: that we have so much power to put more positive energy into the world, for ourselves and others, being the kind of people we can admire, taking full responsibility for what we experience, and being that source of goodness we were always meant to be. Who is God? God is who you want God to be, who YOU choose to be, as the Torah says, You are gods, all of you. The Torah teaches, it is up to each of us, as Moses said, I have placed before you life and death, good and bad, and you shall choose life. Be good to yourself as God is good to us. Love yourself as God loves us. Love others, as God loves all life. Choose Life, choose good, choose happiness.