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Why Is Life So Hard?
It is not enough to have a place to live, clothes to wear, and food in our bellies. We all need more than this: we each need a sense of purpose, a reason for our existence. Otherwise, at best, we just kind of wander around aimlessly, not getting much done. At worst, we are driven by our fears and worries, and we become neurotic nerve-balls.
This is easily illustrated in the behaviors of children. Children, at a very young age, start trying to figure out the levers that affect their world, starting with, “What happens when I cry?” They like the attention: when newborns are monitored by breathing monitors, the babies quickly learn to hold their breath in order to summon Mommy.
It grows from there: as soon as children learn to operate as autonomous creatures, they start trying to find the limits. They will push, in every conceivable direction, to find the lines – and even to test those lines occasionally just to discover how firm they are. From outside, this test-feedback process, especially for boys, can seem cruel: boys will test authority in a range of situations until they receive a negative stimulus that they find convincing – for my boys, that negative stimulus ranged from euphemistically named “hug therapy” to kinetic force.
But both are needed. A boy pushes out of insecurity, he is trying to discover the depth of the relationship. The father’s response provides reassurance, because the feedback tells the boy whether (and how much) his father cares.
The thing is, the boys (I never did really figure out girls) were always so much happier after testing me, because they knew where they stood. And following from that, they emerged with a renewed sense of purpose, because they had something productive to do. This is why I have always loved building things with my boys: building together feeds the souls of father and son. Life is meaningful and beautiful when you partner to create something, each person knowing what they need to do in order to contribute to a solid result.
So when a person “tests” someone else, it is specifically to find the lines and limits in order to know where we stand – and also to discover what is expected of us. This is true in any relationship, from parents and children, to siblings, to husband and wife. It is most obviously true in schools, where children thrive best in crisp environments with clear lines (in our home school, the students wear a uniform), and know what they are expected to achieve each day. Because nobody succeeds in life merely by wandering around.
What is crazy is that this seems to apply to everyone involved. The feedback loop of testing-limits-consequences-rewards-lesson-learned is inherently reciprocal: every healthy relationship changes and improves both participants. Parents I know who swore they would never utter the word “no” to their children learned, sooner or later, that children would find a way to extract that word, and learn their parents’ limits, even if it meant doing something very foolish, gratuitously destructive, or obviously dangerous.
Testing limits is as old as time, from the Garden of Eden onward. Later in the Torah, the Children of Israel in the wilderness time and again tested G-d to establish the boundaries, as well as to glean a more refined sense of purpose.
For example:
And the people murmured against Moshe, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried to the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he tested them.
…
Would we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Then said the Lord to Moshe, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain portion every day, that I will test them, whether they will follow my Torah, or no.
The people, like children, are trying to find the boundaries in their relationship with G-d. They don’t know what is expected of them, and they lash out. G-d reacts by trying to teach them to trust Him, to grasp G-d’s expectations of us. And the result, just as with a boy who pushes his father until he receives a consistent and solid response that he can rely on, is a sense of mission and contentment.
But there is a deeper and more fundamental example. The first time the Hebrew word for “test” is found in the text is with Avraham :
Some time afterward, God tested Abraham, saying …“Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.”
Why does G-d test him? Consider the possibility that Avraham for most of his life, did not know what we expected of him. In the Torah, G-d gave Avraham almost no instructions at all.
So Avram happily goes to Canaan when told to do so. But when he gets there, he is not sure what to do. So he built an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
Nothing seems to happen. So Avram tries again, but with a twist (emphasis added).
And he removed from there to a mountain on the east of Bet-el… and there he built an altar to the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.
Still… nothing. So, not sure of what to do, Avram is passive until a famine hits, which prompts him to sojourn to Egypt, where, just like anyone who is unsure of the nature or depth of his relationships, he fixates on the worries (of being killed because his wife was beautiful). If we lack clear purpose, we revert to our fears. (You can find countless exemplars of this problem in today’s Woke world.)
The pattern continues. Avraham acts every time and in every situation where he has clarity. But otherwise, he seems to be aimless. Even late in his life, Avraham is not sure what to do:
And Avraham planted a tamarisk in Be᾽er-sheva, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.
Why do this? The altars did not seem to achieve much, so Avraham thinks that maybe he is supposed to plant a bush?! It is very odd.
Avraham is still not sure. The next verse:
And Avraham sojourned in the land of the Pelishtim many days.
Why do this? It seems that he is lost. Avraham is waiting for instruction, waiting for purpose.
And then, in a momentous story that still reverberates today, G-d gives Avraham a specific instruction: He orders Avraham to sacrifice Isaac.
G-d tests Avraham’s limits, and finds that he will indeed do what he is asked.
What happens after the Binding? Avraham, like any person who now knows what is expected of them, is energized. He does not wander anymore. From that moment on, he knows what he is to do: he first goes to great lengths and expense to honor his deceased wife, Sarah (whom he had not treated in this way during her lifetime – there is a reason she was so insecure about Hagar). Then he similarly invests in Isaac, a son who, despite being Avraham’s great ambition, had not been mentioned in the text since he was weaned.
And then Avraham goes on to remarry, have a bunch of other sons, and dies very happily and content. He found his way, thanks to the test. The Binding of Isaac changed Avraham forever, and clearly for the better.
But there is more: like any test within a relationship, the result changes both parties: G-d is the one who blinks, who changes His mind about the request. And one could even argue that G-d also learned from the testing of Avraham. He learned that even the most righteous man in the world needs to be given limits and direction. That man, like children, crave instruction and feedback. Without it, we can accomplish nothing.
This is not a small lesson to learn. It may be the lesson that leads to all the others. After all, it is possible that the entirety of the laws of the Torah after Avraham are the result of the lessons learned by G-d through Avraham’s life: G-d learns that we need commandments. We need to know what we are supposed to do, and what we are not supposed to do. Because if Avraham could not grow without being tested by the divine connection, then none of us can.
Is this true for each and every one of us, in our own lives? Does G-d test us not only to challenge our faith, but also to push us to grow? Are we tested with hardships and challenges because, as G-d learned with Avraham, if we are not challenged, then we lose our hunger and sense of purpose and mission?
P.S. We learn later what happens when we refuse to learn from our experiences. After the episode of the spies, and G-d threatens to kill all the people, Moses begs for the people to be forgiven.
And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word: but truly, as I live, and all the earth is filled with the glory of the Lord: surely, all those men who have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Miżrayim and in the wilderness, and yet have tested me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice.
We were tested and given limits, and we refused to internalize the lessons – and as a result:
They shall not see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who provoked me see it:
The lesson here is not only for the generation of the spies, it is a lesson to us all. If we ignore the “obvious” feedback that G-d gives us in our lives, if we refuse to learn from the tests we are given, then our lives become nothing more relevant than a timer slowly ticking down until we die.
P.P.S. You can verify the above by seeing for yourself every time the word for “test” is used in the Torah.
Published in General
”G-d tests Avraham’s limits, and finds that he will indeed do what he is asked.“
The English word “test” was on my mind as I read this.
An important instruction in our Scripture on how to live a virtuous life is Romans 12:2:
The definition of the word “prove” has drifted since the time of King James, so the New International Version translates the original text to English as…
(Perhaps the word “test” in the KJV of this version has no connection with the word in the Torah. I may have just been struck by a coincidence.)
This also explains why Avraham did not argue with the command to sacrifice Isaac – in contrast to his negotiations with G-d over the destruction of Sodom: Sodom was not an action or instruction for Avraham, and it related to a third party.
But the Akeidah was a specific instruction, dealing directly with himself. Avraham craved the instruction – after years of uncertainty, he wanted to know what G-d expected of him. And so he did not argue with it. He embraced the test.
But there is more: like any test within a relationship, the result changes both parties: G-d is the one who blinks, who changes His mind about the request. And one could even argue that G-d also learned from the testing of Avraham.
This might be a Christian/Jewish difference, but the Christian understanding is that God does not change. He is immutable. Though there are texts that seem to indicate God changing His mind, the Christian understanding is that this is God relating to His people in a way they can understand. God does not “learn” – He is outside of time. I did not realize the Jewish understanding was different.
Thanks for your posts!
Actually, most observant Jews agree with you, but IMO they (like Christians) have to pretzelate their understanding of the text to make it work. There are so very many examples of G-d changing His mind!
I do not consider Greek philosophical approaches to perfection to be a higher truth than the text itself.
The circle can be squared simply enough: G-d clearly limits Himself to make this physical and limited world possible. (The Jewish word is tzimtzum.) Why could He not have similarly limited His ability to span time, so that at least the part of G-d we can relate to experiences time alongside mankind?
This works very well with the text, and would not force someone to conclude that G-d is limited and somehow weaker than Time. G-d would thus choose to experience alongside man – which means He can change.
Ask yourself the following thought experiment: if you believe that Good Works matter, then does that not change G-d’s mind? And if it does, then does that not in turn suggest that G-d is mutable?
No, I don’t believe that God is mutable. Your thought experiment doesn’t change that – God is outside of time, and therefore a crummy, sin-filled life lived before conversion and the very different life lived afterwards are both present to God. We are changed by prayer, grace, and a life lived in accordance with that grace (good works) – not God. (Aquinas puts it this way: “Note that to change your will is one matter, and to will a change in something is another. While remaining constant, a person can will this to happen now and the contrary to happen afterward. His will, however, would change were he to begin to will what he had not willed before, or cease to will what he had willed before.”) The texts indicating otherwise are, to me, an indication of God’s progressive revealing of Himself to His people – these texts are written in this manner so that His people can better understand Him and develop a relationship with Him, so they can eventually learn more (and then eventually come to understand why God cannot change His mind!). God does not dump everything in the Israelites’ laps at once – He teaches them in stages to bring them along: Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions…
A perfectly normal understanding, to be sure.
For me, the Torah (the Five Books) offers nothing suggesting your understanding is correct. Which makes my understanding not heretical to Judaism (except to those who consider Rambam to be holy writ).
But the New Testament certainly agrees with you. I don’t know any Christians who think G-d can change.
Perceiving G-d changing would first involve perceiving G-d. Aspects? Yes, imperfectly. In totality? Nope.
Yes, there is a difference. But I appreciate your input and I learn from your posts.
Well, you do know one*.
But one out of millions is statistically insignificant.
So you shouldn’t let that one counterexample influence your thinking about Christians.
* * *
*I’m a Christian and think that if the Torah says that G-d changed his mind, then he did.
So you don’t see God as outside of time? Or pure act (you see Him as having potency)?
Also, there’s Malachi 3:6 – “For I the LORD do not change.”
No, I do see God as being outside of time, because creating time and space can only be the act of a will (a person) outside of time and space.
I don’t understand this question. Could you reword it?
I absolutely believe that. If the sentence, in the context of all of Scripture, meant that G-d doesn’t answer prayers, then there would be a lot of lies in the Bible, and I would never have accepted it as a trustworthy guide for my life and for all of our lives.
So I don’t think it means that. I think it means that God’s nature does not change; he is love and life and truth. He is steadfast: he made a covenant with me and is worthy of trust that he will keep it, as he has kept all the covenants in the Torah.
Maybe it is my Congregationalist (a Reform church) upbringing, but it is my understanding that God responds to us and thus changes and that he is not outside of time. Time is a trajectory that never repeats. He is directing it. He is time. He is not outside of it. We have one life. [Just as an aside, there is a great book called Einstein’s Dreams (1993) by Alan Lightman in which the author plays with the different ways time might have worked in terms of our existence. Reading it, it becomes very apparent that of all the ways God could have structured our existence, he chose the best one: one life, one arc of time.]
In fact, I have always believed (because someone taught it to me–but I don’t remember who, perhaps it was just a homily at mass some Sunday) that change was one important part of Christ’s time on earth and his death and resurrection, that the God of Noah was harsher than God’s son Christ was, that God was here in the form of Christ to save us from our sins by being with us, suffering with us, and knowing us. Having thus done so, he said that he would not destroy us again.
The Lord’s Prayer also seems to suggest that he wants a relationship in which we ask for and receive his help. That implies that he will change in response to our prayers.
Of course, the Reform churches are not “Protestant” in the sense that they were ever part of the Roman Catholic Church family, the way, say, the Anglicans and Lutherans were. The Reform branch is a different branch on the tree. That said, the Congregationalist church does use all the same liturgies as the Catholics, the Anglicans, the Baptists, and so on use each week. Every Sunday we all have the same readings. :) So there’s that. :) :)
If God is outside of time, then there’s no actual “change” – that requires a period of time between the first decision of mind and the changing of it to something different. Because I believe that God is outside of time, I believe He is ever-present, and therefore there can be no “change of mind” in the sense that we usually understand it. I don’t see the Biblical texts that state this as “lies” – I see them as God’s way of teaching His people by teaching complicated concepts in ways and on levels that the people could understand. In other words, the human author of the inspired texts is employing anthropomorphic language, which attributes to God human characteristics to help humans relate to God but are not meant to be taken literally. He reveals Himself gradually. For example, if you want to convince someone who is just getting to know you that a particular action is desirable (in the case of the Biblical texts, prayer and/or repentence), it probably wouldn’t be very productive for you to make it very clear at the beginning of the relationship that you will never change your mind. It would be confusing at best, and possibly off-putting. After the person gets to know you better, they will realize that the action you wanted them to do is beneficial for them, and they will further discover that you want what is best for them.
What I meant about God being pure act is that God has no potentiality. Created things do – a piece of wood has the potential to become a table or chair, for example, but it requires some kind of change to make it go from potential to actual. God is perfect – He is not potentially God, He is actually God, and infinitely perfect. Change means that something is either perfected or, possibly, is declining (to use the example of the piece of wood again, it could be perfected by a carpenter into a table, which later declines by being broken). So God, being pure act and having no potentiality, is changeless and eternal. If we believe that, then we can’t accept that He “changed His mind” in the sense that we are used to understanding that phrase. Otherwise, that suggests there was some perfection that He would have acquired or lost – an impossibility.
I meant only that in creating time, he must have been outside of time. But in talking to and listening to humans and acting in the temporal world he must be acting within time, like a mortal.
I emphatically disagree. God is eternal, and therefore doesn’t exist or act in time. He is completely outside of the succession of moments of time, as we experience it – all moments of time are present to Him simultaneously. There isn’t a time when God begins to act at a certain time, before which He didn’t act.
That God is not outside of time is a pretty radical idea – are you sure that’s what Reform churches teach?!
That said, the Congregationalist church does use all the same liturgies as the Catholics, the Anglicans, the Baptists, and so use each week.
I have been to Baptist services, and they were completely different from what Catholics and High-Church Anglicans have in their liturgies. So I don’t know what to make of this statement of yours.
No, I’m not sure. :)
I was raised in the Congregational church, but I married into the Catholic Church, and I raised my children in Catholic Church, but I have never converted because I’m uncomfortable with communion. I have not attended the Congregational church as an adult, I don’t remember that teaching my childhood. I don’t know what they say about it.
I have listened to and enjoyed immensely Biship Barron’s videos about the Church. I think he talked about this concept in one of the videos I watched a few years ago, but other than that, it is a new idea.
It is certainly a powerful and interesting idea.
All I was trying to say in my comment was that as I understand it, yes, God is affected by us in our relationship with him through our prayers and our actions.
Throughout the Bible, there are countless stories in which God asks someone to do something. At that moment, the person has a free will choice that will alter destiny. So it seems to me that God changes course in relation to our actions.
My mom was a Baptist, and her readings each week were exactly the same as ours in our Catholic church. I don’t know what church you visited. We Protestants are a diverse bunch. :) Anything is possible. But most of the Protestant and Catholic churches that I have been to use the same readings and the same liturgical calendar.
There’s a council that decides on the readings, and it’s an interesting mix of people of different Christian faiths. :)
That is problematic, because then you’re saying that God is imperfect – because if He can change, that suggests perfectability. The traditional Christian understanding of God – of the Catholics, the Orthodox, etc. – is that God is eternal and perfect. Because He is outside of time, there is no “change in course” because all moments in time, as we understand it, is present to Him. I don’t think you and I are worshipping the same God – your god doesn’t have the same attributes.
I looked up some Reform theologists, and though I didn’t spend a lot of time at this, what I did find suggested that they have the same understanding as I do.
I went frequently to Bethlehem Baptist church in Minneapolis. That was a long time ago! The pastor was John Piper, who has become well-known, I believe, in Protestant circles. I think he was a “Reformed Baptist,” but I couldn’t tell you how that differs from other Baptist traditions.
If I have prostate cancer at a certain time, and at a later time Kate, and the kids, and Susan and Flicker and Dr. Bastiat, etc. pray that G-d will cure me, and at a later time I don’t have prostate cancer, all of those things are temporal events.
We pray IN time and God answers IN TIME.
But OUTSIDE OF time I SING God’s praises with the cherubim and seraphim, far in the back rows. We say “I WILL sing”. But using the future tense implies that “Mark sings” happens in time. We say “I will sing of your love forever” which implies it will be a temporal event, but with “t” increasing without limit. But I think that our life in heaven is really life outside of time, not in time. Like God, we “will” be outside of time in heaven.
Yes, but since God is outside of time, your having prostate cancer, having people pray for you, and your cure are all present simultaneously. Obviously, that is a very hard concept for us to grapple with, as we are in time. It’s because of God being outside of time that I continue to pray for my stepson, who died an unbaptized pagan. I pray that he was able to make a choice for Christ at his death.
Yes, I agree with that to the extent that we will become immortal.
“Simultaneously?” That word means “at the same time”. That is, they happened in time. I don’t think that that is what you meant to say. If those were temporal events, then we know for sure that they were NOT at the same time. The disease happened, and later the prayers, and later the healing. I think that those events, and all of the events in the Torah and the History books of the Scriptures WERE temporal events.
And we will become immortal to the fullest extent.
We’re human, and so of course we’re going to see events happening in time – and our language reflects our being in time. I am not aware of any specific term that would be better than “simultaneously,” though perhaps learned theologians have one. God is outside of time and is changeless. If He is not changeless, He is not infinitely perfect. This isn’t to say that He doesn’t interact with His creatures – of course He does! – but what we see and understand as sequential events are not that to God. We are not God. To posit that God is capable of change is to diminish God.