HUMANITY - PART 1

GOD=S UNIQUE CREATION

For four weeks we have looked at God - does God exist?  How does God relate to the world?  Why is there evil in a God created world?  The time has come to switch themes, come down to earth, explore something closer to home.  What is humanity?  Or as the Psalmist said, AWhat is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you notice him.  You have made him little less than angels, crowning him with honor and glory.@  (Psalms 8:5-6)

The most complex creation in the entire known universe is humanity, or in particular, the human brain.  Stars and galaxies may be far larger, but they are simple to describe, mostly hydrogen and helium.  The human brain, which I believe holds the human soul, contains billions of neuron connections.  It allow us humans to function in the universe in a way that is unlike any other creature.  We are unique.  This is the basis of the verse in the Torah that we humans are created Ain the image of God.@  We must play a special role in God=s creation.

What does it mean to be human?  To start with, as I taught last week, I am a strong believer in evolution.  I believe the universe evolved from simple molecules to more complex forms, from proteins to DNA to life, from plants to lower animals to higher animals.  And eventually, after billions of years of evolution, there emerged an entity unique in ability and in awareness.  We humans are at the top of the evolutionary ladder, at least so far.

The key message of the Bible is that we humans are not merely animals.  To see this idea, let us look at one of the most famous Biblical stories - the Garden of Eden.  The story is one of the founding myths of the human race.  (By myth, I do not mean something untrue.  Rather a myth is a story that reflects profound truths about the universe.)  In the beginning, we humans dwelt in a wonderful garden, where all our needs were taken care of.  We ate what we wanted, without having to work hard for our sustenance.  We were naked and not ashamed.  Who goes through life naked and not ashamed?  Animals!   In the Garden of Eden, we were mere animals.  The story reflects an earlier stage of evolution.

One day we humans ate from a special tree, a tree from which we were commanded not to eat.  This was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  But to tell humans not to eat from this tree, not to move on to the next stage of evolution, is like telling children not to grow up and leave home.  Eating from the tree symbolized leaving the animal kingdom and moving on to the next stage of evolution.  Suddenly we humans were able to make moral choices.  (Dogs, horses, monkeys, and lions, as wonderful as they may be, do not make moral choices.)  We realized that we were different from the animals.  We became ashamed of our nakedness and God made us clothes.  Suddenly we humans lived not by mere instinct as animals do, but through the ability to know and choose between right and wrong.

Something else happened when we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  God said that Athe day you eat from it you shall surely die.@  (Genesis 2:17) Yet, when Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they did not die.  In fact, they lived a huge number of years.  Perhaps the meaning is that when we ate from the tree, we became aware of our own mortality.  Unlike animals, we humans do not live in daily bliss, oblivious to our eventual demise.  We live with the awareness that our days on this earth are numbered.  This awareness of our mortality focuses the mind like nothing else to live a life that is worthy.

So, what does it mean to be human?   It means that we have evolved beyond the animal world, that we have encountered the next stage of evolution.  We certainly share much with animals.  We eat, sleep, have sex, procreate, protect our young, and like every other living creature, eventually we die.  But in each of these areas, our job is to rise above the animal within us.  We are not mere animals, but also contain within us the image of God.  We can make choices, choices that other animals would not make.  For example, according to Darwin and the evolutionists, animals live by laws of natural selection.  Only the fittest shall survive.  The weak are allowed to die so the species can survive.  Not so humans.  According to the Torah, the weakest and most vulnerable among us are the most worthy of our care and protection.  Humans must act in ways that are not in their evolutionary self interest.

If we humans are animals who have evolved to a higher level , then we must have a special role to play in God=s plan.  What does it mean for us humans to be created in the image of God?

 

 

HUMANITY B PART 2

FAMILY

As I wrote last week, the birth of humanity began a new stage of evolution.  We humans are to rise above the animal within us.  This will be one of my major themes in many of these upcoming spiritual messages.   As an example, let us look at one issue B family life.  How can we humans rise above the animal in our family relationships?  (To see this material in a more expanded form, look at my essay Family: A Spiritual Guide which I delivered to the World Congress of Families in Geneva.  It is on my website www.rabbigold.com. )

Family is a spiritual entity. The meaning of family goes beyond the biological and material to touch the spiritual dimension of life. This paper will view family as a spiritual ideal. This ideal includes a man and a woman committed to one another through the covenant of marriage, raising the children they sire or adopt, honoring their parents, being the keepers of their brothers and sisters, and expressing their love through their devotion and service to one another. It is an ideal that grew out of the Bible, and is central to the vision of family articulated by those religious traditions based on the Bible: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

One of the key messages of the creation story in Genesis is that we human beings are qualitatively different from animals. We are created in the image of God, with the ability to make moral choices. We are commanded to be holy (Leviticus 19:2), holiness being those actions which help raise us above animal behavior and towards the Godliness within us.

Let us begin our exploration by comparing the animal world and the human world. In the realm of family life, we clearly see the difference between animals and humans. We may use the same words ‑ mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter ‑ but they take on an entirely different meaning in the animal kingdom and the world of humans.

Animals have parents. They received half of their genetic material from a male who served as sperm donor, and half from a female who gave the egg. An animal grew inside its mother, and if it is a mammal, it nursed at her nipple. Within the animal kingdom, after a relatively brief period of time, the parents are finished with their tasks. Humans also have a birth mother and father. But that is a biological fact, which has little to do with parenting. After we are born and after we are weaned, our parents' tasks are just beginning.

Animals have siblings. They may share genetic material, or even grow in the same womb with other animals. But the relationship stops there. No animal would ever ask the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

Animals procreate children. Male animals join sexually with female animals to create a new generation. For animals this is totally a biological act, with no larger moral or spiritual purpose. In fact, most animals have sexual encounters only when in heat, when there is a probability of procreation. A male leaves his sperm in a female and moves on to other conquests.

In the animal kingdom following birth and a short period of nursing and nurturing, children are set loose to survive on their own. There is no expectation of any ongoing relationship between the biological parents and their offspring. In the real world, it is unlikely that adult animals even recognize their progenitors.

Family life began when God created man, placed him in the garden, and declared "it is not good for man to be alone. I will make him a fitting helper." (Genesis 2:18) God brought each animal to the man, but none was an appropriate helper nor a proper fit. The word family does not apply to the animal kingdom. Only then did God cause a deep sleep to fall on the man and remove his rib. (Jewish mystics would say that the primordial man was originally androgynous, both male and female, and God split him/her in half) God created the woman from the rib and declared one of the most important verses in the Torah, "Therefore a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave onto his wife and they shall be one flesh." (Genesis 2:24) No other male in the entire animal kingdom is given that responsibility.

We should note that the Torah does not say "a man should leave his mother and father for a series of sexual conquests and one night stands." Sexual discipline stands at the center of the Torah's vision of family life. A human male is not to scatter his seed wherever he wishes, although it would be in his genetic self‑interest to do so. . It is marriage, the commitment of a man and a woman to a lifelong exclusive sexual relationship that helps us rise above the animal kingdom.

 

HUMANITY PART 3

GOOD AND EVIL INCLINATION

We human s have evolved to a new stage of being, beyond the animal.  This week I want to look at what this idea really means.

First a hint from the Torah.  The Torah uses the Hebrew term vayitzer Aand he formed@ to speak of the formation of both animals and human beings.  AThe Lord God formed the man from the dust of the earth and blew into him a breath of life.@        (Genesis 2:7)   AThe Lord God formed from the ground the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky.@  (Genesis 2:16) The Hebrew word vayitzer has a double meaning - its root means Aformed.@  But it also means Ainclination@ or Ainner direction.@  Both animals and humans were formed with inclinations.

Here is the key.  The spelling in the Torah is slightly different.  When God made the animals, the Torah spelled the word vayitzer with one yud (a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.)  When God made humans, the Torah spelled the word vayitzer with two yuds.  Animals have one inclination.  Humans have two inclinations.  And it is through two inclinations that we humans are different from the animal world.

Animals have one inclination.  They follow their instincts and inner drives.  Animals do not make moral choices.  With animals there is no good or evil inclination, no right or wrong.  They do what nature programmed them to do from the beginning of time.  A coyote may kill a farmer=s sheep for dinner, but one would not call the coyote a sinner.  Or, as I often tell my congregation, Ahorses don=t need Yom Kippur.@

Humans evolved to the next stage of consciousness.  Suddenly here was an animal who was not merely ruled by instincts and appetites, but was able to make moral choices.  Here was a being who could rise above the animal within him or her, could make choices that go against his or her nature.  Central to any vision of humanity is the fact that humans must make moral choices, and must choose between two inclinations.

Humans are born with an evil inclination, known as the yetzer hara.  The evil inclination is our primitive appetites, the part of us that says AI want what I want and I want it now.@   We need our appetites.  According to the Talmud, without the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, nobody would ever build a home or go to work, and no chicken would ever lay an egg.  We need our appetites, but they must be controlled.  ABen Zoma said, Who is strong?  Whoever can control their appetite.@  (Avot 4:1)  This is where the good inclination comes in.

Humans are also born with a good inclination, known as the yetzer hatov.  It is the part of us with vision of right and wrong, and the ability to set aside our appetites to do the right thing.  It is the part of us that pays the charitable pledge, even when we no longer feel like giving it.  It is the part of us that works out at the gym, even when we would rather be home lying on the couch.  It is the part of us that commits to our spouse, to our children, to our family, even when we are not in the mood.  It is the part of us that controls our anger, our hunger, our greed, our pride, and our sexual drive, directing them towards a greater good.  The good inclination allows us to do the right thing, even when every drive in our body is saying Ano!@

As humans, life is a ongoing struggle between the good and the evil inclinations.  Rabbi David Bockman tells a story he learned from an American Indian elder. The elder was describing his inner struggle: AInside me are two dogs. One of the dogs is kind and good. The other is mean and evil. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.@ When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, AThe one I feed the most.@

HUMANITY PART 4

THE CREATED CREATOR

We have seen these past weeks that God created the world through evolution.  Lower forms of life led to higher forms, leading eventually to the highest form of all - humanity.  We humans may be animals.  But we are also qualitatively different from the animal kingdom.  We have abilities beyond any other animal.  And with our immense abilities come immense responsibilities.

Only humans have the ability to make moral judgments.  We must choose between two inclinations, a good and an evil inclination, which are constantly battling within us.  (Animals have only one inclination.)  Only humans have the ability to reflect on their own mortality.   Only humans can reflect on the needs of others, a fundamental requisite for true love, as we will see in a future message.  But there is one trait we have that more than any other reflects the Biblical statement, we humans were created in the image of God.

God used evolution to create a world.  Only humans have been given the power, the wisdom, and the insight to control their own evolution.  The evolution of the world continues, reaching towards a higher and higher plane.  But only humans have been given the ability, some would say the responsibility, to help evolution along.  We, through our own actions, can guide both ourselves and the entire world to a higher state of being.  God needs us to help God with the process of evolution.  We are more than creations; one could say that we are the created creators.

What do I mean when I say that we have the power to help evolution along?  First, it refers to our own personal evolution.  Biologists use a phrase invented in the nineteenth century by Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, Aontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.@  Ontogeny, what happens to us in our personal being,  reflects  phylogeny, what happens in the world at large.  What this means is that the evolution of life in the world at large is played out in our own personal beings.  Followers of Darwin took this quite literally; if you follow our embryonic development, our embryos resemble each earlier stage of evolution.  Even for those who would challenge Darwin, there is a truth to Haeckel=s famous statement.  Each of us, through our lives, relive the entire evolution of our species. 

This has profound meaning for our lives.  We can raise ourselves up to a higher level of being.  We are not products of our instincts nor are we determined by our nature.  No human should ever say, AI am stuck.  This is who I am because God made me this way, and I am  unchangeable.@  We humans are forever malleable.  We must always carry with us a vision of where God wants us to go.  We have the ability to improve ourselves and evolve, through our own efforts, to a higher state of being.  In other words, only we  humans can create ourselves.

What is true for us as personal beings is also true for us as citizens of the world.  The world is going through the process of evolution.  It is seeking to become a safer, kinder, more loving, if I dare use the phrase, more holy place.  And out job is to help the evolution of the world along.  Each of us should carry with us a vision of where we want the world to go.  Then each of us needs to ask  the question, AWhat part can I play in pushing evolution along?   How can I help God the task of perfecting the world?@  Every human has a particular mission, a small part, in the ongoing perfection of the world.

Perhaps the best way to explain this idea is that we humans are God=s partners.  First of all, we are God=s partners in the perfection of ourselves.  Then, we are God=s partners in the perfection of the world.  God needs us.  And God waits for us.  It is a powerful idea, that comes up over and over in Jewish tradition.  God created humans with a role to play in continuing the creation of the world God made.  We are God=s agents, empowered by our creator.