Worship of God -- why bother?

At a certain point, about 20 years ago, my parents and sisters stopped discussing Judaism with me -- probably because of my constant mockery of it. Their method of argumentation typically consisted of dismissing me by insisting that I speak with another person because he (always a he) will be able to answer all my questions more satisfactorily than they can.

But I've done that.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to spend numerous hours speaking with my brother-in-law, Rabbi Joshua Maroof. http://www.mdscbe.org/rabbimaroof.html

My parents, sisters and our families all went on a cruise to Alaska. Josh (as I called him) and I retired to the cafe almost every night of our week long cruise and discussed Judaism until the wee hours of the morning.

We continued our conversation via email after we arrived home. I don't think either of us managed to budge the other. My tentative conclusion is that the gaps are unbridgeable, at least not by words alone, perhaps because they are rooted in character, personality, and experience (then justified by words).

Why bother?

I have a hard time understanding WHY Jews do so much ritual and worship. The basic answer is because their God tells them to. I cannot and will not ever accept that answer. I didn't accept "because I said so" from my parents when I was a child, and I certainly won't accept this answer from an alleged all-knowing, all-just and all-powerful deity.

There must be some purpose or reward for the committed worshipper of the Jewish Deity. At least the Christians and Muslims promise a glorious after-life. (which also comes with the threat of Hellfire for the non-believers).

Jews are vague with their notion of an afterlife -- and that is the safe position to be in. The idea of an afterlife is patently absurd, an oxymoron. There is nothing after our lives are over. We will be dead -- not alive.

So, according to the Jewish belief system, there is no reward during our earthly lives for our service to this god, only vague references to an afterlife in their holy books, and certainly there are no threats to the unbeliever that he will suffer an eternity in pain.

Are we just expected to praise Jehovah and worship him all day long for the sole purpose of expressing thankfulness for just being alive? What about the people who have lives full of suffering and heartache? Should they be thankful and worship a god who they would consider to be responsible for everything including their terribly sad life?

Rabbi's answer to "Why bother?"

I reiterated this concern to Rabbi Maroof, and this was his response:

Even if we suffer terrible hardships, service of God still makes sense. This is because worship of God is not to be identified with repaying or thanking God for blessings we have received from Him. On the contrary, we give absolutely nothing to God by serving Him, so the notion of repaying him would be nonsensical.

So, we get nothing by way of earthly rewards from this egotistical god. He promises no guaranteed afterlife. And if the rabbi's right, it seems that this God does not even appreciate the groveling and begging his true believers give him. What is the god-damned point, Joshua?

He continues:

Worship of God means acknowledging the reality of God's existence, regardless of whether the actions He takes fall in line with or contradict what we would like to happen. It means recognizing an existence that transcends the physical universe - a purely intellectual existence

So, even though our worship means nothing to this god, we should do it anyway just because some people think that he exists. I don't go around worshipping things and entities which merely exist. It would have to be worthy of worship in the first place. (I would never "worship" anything anyway).

Josh continued:

. . . we should try to emulate [God] because it is the supreme form of existence and for no other reason.

Prove that this deity exists first, Joshua. And the deity depicted in the Torah does not come close to what I would consider a 'supreme form of existence.' He has all traits of a mortal human: short fuse, vengeful, angry, demanding obedience . . .

He goes on:

This would be true whether God benefited us, ignored us, or subjected us to suffering, because it would simply be a point of fact. If God exists, this has implications for human thought and behavior independent of any specific relationship we might have with Him, because His existence would change how we understand the universe and our place in it.

Of course, I completely disagree. Even if a person may acquiesce that somewhere out there in the vastness of space exists a being greater than oneself and this being has power greater than oneself, it does not necessarily follow that we would want to emulate it. This is not even taking into consideration that they claim that this supernatural being is the god of the Jewish (chosen) people AND he wrote the Torah.

If man and god are two distinct species, we can never even come close to accomplishing the goal of being "god-like" or holy. Do lower life forms spend their time emulating and worshipping higher life forms? Does the ant worship the grasshopper?

Nope, only stupid humans feel the need to kow-tow and worship. Unless you consider the submissive behavior of animals in the face of a more powerful adversary, in which case the urge to worship goes very deep and is, as noted above, justified by words after the fact.

God's a killer

What about the displays of genocide, murder and destruction which the god of the Torah orders or condones? I wouldn't wish to emulate that behaviour. Nor would I wish to spend eternity with that being.

Before we decide that we should emulate a particular god and devote our entire lives to worshipping this deity, we should evaluate this god's moral character.

Do you think that the acts of murder in the Bible committed by God are justifiable? No matter how evil or unworthy those people of Sodom and Gomorrah were, did everyone deserve to be killed?

Other ways to deal with Sodomites

Nothing can be said to convince me that this was God's only way to handle the situation (assuming that they were sinners in the first place, and not just gay). I can think of other, more humane ways, to deal with any problem which may arise, aside from utter annihilation, and I'm a mere human.

God displays his anger through the Noah story too. According to the story, God admittedly and unapologetically commits complete genocide of the human race. Why couldn't he foresee what would become of his creations (humans) and thereby avoid annihilating us?

Maybe Woody Allen was right: God is an underachiever. But I have higher standards for a supposed omnipotent and omnipresent being.

The more I learn about why people worship, the more I discover that they grovel and beg to unseen forces because they are afraid of the power which they have conjured up for their Deity. They created a God - in their own image. And now they are scared of it.

Evil Eye: Magical Amulets

Sometimes I like to peruse Jewish fundamentalist websites. I enjoy reading their apologetics. Chabad.org is my favorite. They seem to be very hard-line regarding many of Orthodox Judaism's rules and regulations.

This brand of Judaism has many kinds of ideas which incorporate magical thinking. It seems that the Jewish equivalent to a curse or a hex is the Evil Eye.

According to: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/166909/jewish/Do-You-Believe-in-the-Evil-Eye.htm

The Evil Eye is the name given to harmful negative energy which is created by people looking at you with envy or ill-feeling.

What the heck is "negative energy?" This sounds very New-Age-ish. How can we capture this energy in order to test its effects? How could there be evil power in just a glance, a look? How can my thoughts and ideas resonate into actual power and action to harm someone? That's just absurd, crazy.

Aron Moss from Chabad describes the Kabbalah tradition of wearing an amulet -- a red string:

. . . the red string is an old tradition. A thread is wrapped seven times around the tomb of Rachel in Israel, and then cut into little cords. It is then said to give protection from the "Evil Eye" for one who wears it on his or her wrist.

Unbelievable. Someone wraps a thread around a grave and that particular string (cut in cords) is supposed to protect all humanity from their own invention, the evil eye.

So, they create a problem: the Evil Eye

And they have the built in solution: wear a red string to ward off the evil energy.

But Aron Moss minimizes the effect of the red string against this negative energy:

If you are concerned that some sinister power has designs on you, there are other solutions. The most powerful protection against evil forces is the force of goodness. Whether a red string helps or not I do not know . . .

Of course, he offers his own equally loony solution to this fictitious problem of the evil eye: ignore it. He writes:

. . . the Talmud says that the Evil Eye can only affect you if you worry about it, whereas it leaves you alone if you ignore it. So a more effective (and cheaper) way to avoid the Evil Eye is to forget about it.

That is just nuts. If something is actually real, it remains in reality whether or not we ignore it or obsess over it.

If my sister has a nasty cold with symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, I can choose to ignore these symptoms and visit with her. But I will most likely catch her cold despite the fact that I chose to ignore her symptoms.

How could adults actually believe this stuff? Why would people think that they could create a negative energy (whatever that may be) with a glance or a feeling? On top of that, they think that wearing a red string will protect them from this effect.

These crazy magical amulets are abundant in Judaism; mezuzzahs, prayer shawls, tefillin, little hands of God. How can people actually think, in this day and age, that objects and incantations (prayers) have magical powers?

Life is irrational, unfair, unexplainable. How comforting to think that there are simple little things we can do to ward off evil. But this is the refuge of children. And bad things still happen.