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The God Who Allows Questions
Learning Theologizing from the Daughters of Zelophehad
July 15, 2007
In recent years, the media have been meditating more than usual on the subject of how people think about God. In part, this is due to upsurge of militant Islam, a religion with a strongly developed sense of fatalism, that God has decreed certain things to be certain ways, and the role of God's servants is to fully submit to the divine will. In fact, "Islam" means "submission."But the idea of service to God as being a matter of submission, passivity and acquiescence, is by no means restricted to Islam. Certainly, certain forms of Christianity also foster passivity and acquiescence.
Today I want to challenge this kind of theologizing, this variety of thinking about God. Let's look for a moment at five sisters, the daughters of Zelophehad. Their names are Machlah, Tirtzah, Hoglah, Milkah, and No'ah. The account of their lives is found in the 27th and 36th chapters of Numbers, that is, in today's reading. They came to Moses with a problem -- a question that the Torah of Moses had not yet addressed.
Up until then, nothing had been said concerning inheritance rights for daughters. All land passed down from generation to generation through sons.
But they had no brothers, so the danger was that their father's land inheritance would die when he did. And they said, "That's not fair!" These women wanted the inheritance to pass on down to them so that their father's name could also be honored from generation to generation. Hashem spoke to Moses on the matter and told him, "The girls have a point, Mo." And so God directed Moses to issue a new ruling covering such cases.
At the end of the Book of Numbers, some members of the tribe of Manasseh, to which the Daughters of Zelpohehad belonged, came to Moses and said, "One more point, Moses. If these women marry men outside of our tribe, and take their land inheritance with them, then our tribe loses land -- and that's not fair!"
And Moses knew they were right, and so he gave a new order -- new Torah according to the Word of Adonai.
What do the daughters of Zelophehad teach us about a different, Jewish way of theologizing?
Some vaunted forms of Christian theologizing have highly developed grids, ornate belief systems, seemingly with a slot -- and answer -- for almost everything. Theologizing for such people involves fitting new situations into a revered grid, finding old answers to new questions.
However, the Hebraic approach I am advocating involves asking new questions and perhaps finding answers that haven't been discussed before. Isn't that what the daughters of Zelophehad and the elders of the tribe of Manasseh experienced? Isn't that what Moses himself did, bringing new questions to God and finding new answers?
We serve a God who allows questions.
That is what Abraham did with G-d in interceding for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. He said, "It's not fair that you should destroy the righteous with the wicked." He could have just said, "Well, God is God and he knows what he's doing, and the people of Sodom are wicked so I guess they all just get destroyed."
But he didn't just do that -- he appealed to God's mercy and justice and asked the tough question. And G-d did not call him a heretic: he honored his request.
This is also what Moses did. When God was ready to wipe out Israel because of the incident of the Golden Calf, Moses could have said, "Well, God is God and he knows what he is doing, and the people of Israel are guilty of breaking the covenant concerning not making a graven image or worshipping other gods so I guess they all just get destroyed. God said it, I believe it, that settles it!"
But that isn't what Moses did, is it?
Instead he appealed to God's mercy and reputation and asked the tough question. And G-d did not brush him off, or worse still, blow him away. God was honored by Moses's wrestling engagement with him, and he honored his request.
And I submit that it is not wrong for us to ask the tough questions about all kinds of things, such as, for example religious who seek to honor God and love their fellow men.
As I came to synagogue early this morning, as every week, I saw Jewish people of all kinds going to synagogue. Usually I see fathers with their small children, and this morning, a hasid wearing a streimel, an ermine trimmed circular hat. I saw a group of men leaving the Marriott a block from here, carrying their tallis bags, walking together to synagogue. Are we obliged to simply believe that all of these people are assuredly going to hell unless and until they believe as we do? Should we just kind of hunker down in our souls and acquiesce to this as the will of God? Or are we allowed to at least ask questions? Let me warn you -- if you ask these kinds of questions, some good religious folks will call you dangerous, deviant, soft -- even heretical.
But I submit it is not wrong to say to God "It's not fair that these people should go to hell because they have never received Jesus. After all, look how Jesus has been represented to them by 2000 years of persecution and prejudice. Look God: they seek to honor you! Should not the judge of all the earth do right? Is there no place in your Kingdom for them?"
Here is a concrete example from our synagogue experience.
About two years ago Judy, one of our senior members, was visiting regularly with a Jewish woman of 100 years of age, blind and almost totally deaf. It was not possible for Judy to get doctrine across to Mildred, but she did go and visit with her, to sit and read Scripture in her presence and pray for her. A few days before Mildred died, Judy was visiting with her and heard her say clear as a bell, "Father, forgive me." Now, assuming she was talking to God and not to her departed Daddy, does "sound doctrine" require us to say that God said to her, "Mildred, I'd really like to help you, but you chose door number two and the answer is behind door number one?" If she had reached out to God in her last moments, asking for forgiveness, is it impossible that he granted it to her through His mercy in Messiah despite the limits of her knowledge and faith?
I prefer to handle such matters by taking these tough cases to God prayerfully, realizing as Moses did, that the revelation I possess may not clearly cover all of my questions [which is why Moses had to go back to God for more light for the case of the daughters of Zelophehad]. I prefer this posture to the one which obliges me to feel I must have and serve an airtight theological grid and a ready made answer for every question.
I think we would do better to resist embracing a spiritual mindset that values passivity and acquiescence. This tendency has been the legacy of Western Christianity since the time of St. Augustine of Hippo, who changed the church's perception of the problem of evil from "How shall we resist/defeat this?" to "How shall we harmonize evil with the sovereign control of God?" However, I believe that Scripture models another approach for us, especially for us as Jews, and this is the wrestling stance of Ya'akov our ancestor. I believe that Messianic Jewish theologizing would do well to have more of an element of "That's not fair" agonizing with G-d, wrestling with him and beseeching him for better answers.
Finally, I think that any conclusions we draw about people's eternal destinies need to be made with a heightened awareness of what we are talking about, rather than in the arid neo-Platonic realm of pure theological ideas. Eternal destiny should never be a subject for banter. I would want to sit down in a room with a bunch of us, and a group of right wing theologically conservative Messianic believers, and slowly review the lives of people like Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Chofetz Chaim, and Elie Wiesel for example, and then ask: "Does our theological system demand that we insist that these people will spend eternity in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, in everlasting conscious torment? Does this comport with what we know of God?" Or do you sense that there may just be something wrong here?
I think it is better for us to embrace the rigors, uncertainties, and agonies of beseeching God for better answers, than to accept the closure that comes from acquiescence to a system of theological thought that gives us tidy answers but a terrible God.
We should come away from a lesson like this with two lessons.
- First, we need to learn what it is to wrestle with the Holy One, and resist the appeal of a couch-potato passive acquiescence.
- Second, we must repent of our smugness concerning the things of God. If even Paul could confess that he saw "through a glass darkly," we ought to be less cocksure about whose going where and how fast.
When God leaves wiggle room, it is no heresy to wiggle. Let us learn to wrestle with God, and to ask new questions of him. He loves when people do this, and He just might give you an answer you never thought of before!
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