Liberator > Creator

Religion Begins with Encounter, Not Metaphysics

If you only read one sentence read this: “Religion Begins with Encounter, Not Metaphysics.”

The Biblical God never says to the people, “I am the Lord your God who created the world,” but rather, “I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt.” Ok, yes, God does ask Job, “Where were you when I created the world?” But it’s a rhetorical question, addressed to an individual prophet. And, moreover, the point of the question is to silence Job. You weren’t there, so shut up. In the Five Books of Moses, God wants human participation and so the appeal is to the Exodus. You were there, therefore get involved. Love the stranger because you were a stranger. When God addresses the people as a people it’s as the God who redeemed them, not as the God who made humanity in general. Why should ex-slaves care whether plants were fashioned by God ex nihilo, or came ready-made with the pre-fab earth?

The Torah does link Shabbat/Sabbath to Creation, but on the whole the most common reason for following the law is “Because you were slaves in Egypt.” God doesn’t introduce Godself at Sinai as the God who made heaven and earth, but as the Liberator from slavery.

The above point stands alone, but also profound is that Jews never say over everyday things, “Blessed is the Lord our God who took us out of Egypt,” but rather “Blessed is the Lord our God who creates X.”

I'm aware that there are some exceptions, but the point is they are exceptions.

The commandment to keep Shabbat is connected to God creating the world and then resting bears a direct link to Creation.

But consider this: Does God say, "Love the stranger, widow, and orphan because I created the world"? No. God says do it because I took you out of Egypt. The national moral fabric is grounded in the Exodus event, not in Creation (with the exception of Sabbath).

When God reveals Godself at Sinai in commandment 1 it's not as the God who made heaven and earth, but as the God who liberated from slavery.

There are many teachings we could take from this observation, and I leave them to you.

Here’s one take: People want to know God in terms that are relatable. God’s role as Creator is not as personal or compelling to people as God’s role as Redeemer.

In therapy, Irvin Yalom makes a similar point. The job of the therapist is not to impress the client with brilliant insights but to establish a connective relationship.

If the therapist has an insight, but shares to show off or to self-gratify rather than to establish connection it backfires. A less insightful therapist who is better at establishing connection will be a more healing presence for the client.

So too, God, doesn’t lead with God’s identity but with the aspect that establishes maximal connection. In Hegelian terms, it’s not God in itself, but God for itself that concerns the meaning of covenant, law, morality, peoplehood.

The other point, and this is really not mine, but rather common (we find it in Heschel, Sacks, Wyschogrod, Levinas, Buber, Heidegger, et al.) is that the Biblical God is a far cry from the God of medieval philosophy, which is chiefly focused on God as Creator. The reason medievals focus on Divine Creation is because of their debt to Aristotle and the need to show that God is causa sui (self caused). But as Heidegger writes, the God to whom people bow, the God before whom people sing and dance and sacrifice is not the God of philosophical metaphysics.

Yes, God creates the world in Genesis. But God doesn’t say to Moses, “I am the God who created the world.” God says, “I am the God of your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” In contemporary parlance, God is very good at reading the room. It is the appeal to ancestors, not to metaphysics, that compels Moses to leadership.

This essay (which started as a twitter thread) is my philosophical companion piece to today’s theological-essay-sermon which reads Lamentations and Numbers through the prism of Christopher Lasch’s A Culture of Narcissism.