Do I believe in God? Yes. But what has that really told you about me? I’m Jewish. Whether you know some or a great deal about Judaism that would still tell you little about me. The same would apply, I believe, if I had been born Catholic, Presbyterian, Muslim or Hindu. The label means nothing. You will only know us in this world by our deeds, by the way we live, and by the way we treat our fellows.
Locked deep down in each of us is our own personal, utterly unique, understanding of and compact with our Maker. "Call that a him or a her, call it God, the deity, creator, Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus or Yehuda, like no two snowflakes, no two thumbprints, our compacts with that entity are absolutely individual, no two alike."
Not to belabor the point, but I submit that three hundred or three thousand people, sitting knee to knee in the same pew of the same church every Sunday year after year, praying together from the same sacred text, no two congregants are having the same inner experience. The sacred texts we read from and the church strictures we observe may nurture our relationships with the entity we are worshiping, but the specifics of that relationship are buried deep within each of us and should remain there.
We've learned, from time immemorial, that when we trot out our gods and go public with them, we can’t seem to resist the game of “my God is the only true God.” Mayhem and murder follow. From what religion or prophet have we received such instruction? Certainly not Jesus, Mohammed, Mahabharata, Moses or the Buddha. Rach, in his own idiom, made the golden rule the essence of their teachings. Over the centuries they came together in reverence over that singular concept: Treat others only as you would have them treat you.
I like the metaphor of the 1000 mile river. It sees several climate changes as it flows, and responding to those changes, the vegetation along its banks changes also. It's the same water that nurtures the varying growth, but it is all compatible and in harmony. This tree and that plant does not “tolerate” the trees and plants not like it. The golden rule is to view the “other” as entitled to be other, not as tolerated.
So I propose we continue worshipping openly, but keep God deep within us where He lives. And publicly, let us gather with our prophets around reverence and the rule. Reverence for our planet, what we know to be our universe, reverence for daybreak and nightfall; for our children and their children; reverence for one another and for that golden rule and the prophets that passed it down to us.
