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This column is being written during the 10-day period between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) — two Jewish holidays known together as the “High Holy Days.” Just as many Christians who do not generally attend church do so on Easter and Christmas, many Jews who rarely attend synagogue do so on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
This year, for the 17th consecutive year (except for 2020, when I could find no open venue due to government-induced lockdowns), I conducted Rosh Hashanah services and will conduct Yom Kippur services (pragerhighholidays.net). In Jewish life, the sermons on those two holidays are the most important of the year. The following is a summary of the talks I delivered on Rosh Hashanah.
What does God most care about?
The answer is: good and evil, i.e., how we human beings treat each other.
Here are some proofs from the Bible, the book that gave us God:
1. The reason the Bible gives for why God brought the flood that destroyed the world (saving only Noah and his family) is that humans were evil. Virtually every ancient society had a flood story but, as far as I could deduce, only in the Bible’s story did God destroy mankind because people were evil. For example, according to the contemporaneous ancient Near East Babylonian story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods destroyed humanity (except for a man named Utnapishtim) because humans made so much noise they kept the gods awake.
2. In every flood story, the gods saved an individual and a mate (otherwise, the flood would have ended human life). The only reason God saved Noah was that he was “a righteous man in his generations.” Again, the sole concern in the Bible’s flood story is moral.
3. God is repeatedly described as a moral being. One example: “The Lord your God is… mighty and awesome, not partial and takes no bribe, executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and loves the stranger, providing them with food and clothing” (Deuteronomy).
4. The fundamental human division in the Hebrew Bible is not between Jew and non-Jew but between good and bad people. That is why the Hebrew Bible describes so many non-Jews as good — in addition to Noah, the daughter of Pharoah; Jethro, a Midianite priest; Caleb (whose ethnicity is not Hebrew but Kennizite); Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute who hid the Hebrew spies; and Ruth the Moabite (who becomes the ancestor of the Messiah) — and so often criticizes the Jews for their bad behavior. No holy work is so critical of the people of that holy work’s religion as the Hebrew Bible is of the Hebrews. Again, that is because God is preoccupied with moral differences, not with differences of ethnicity or even of religion. As Viktor Frankl wrote in his seminal book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” there are only two races: the decent and the indecent.
5. The Hebrew Bible — and therefore God — is also preoccupied with moral treatment of animals. Most people do not realize that treatment of animals is included in the Ten Commandments. Not only must one’s animals be allowed to rest every week on the Sabbath, but there are also laws in the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) that prohibit muzzling animals while they work in the fields, so that they are free to eat while they work; yoking animals of two different species (and therefore having different gaits and sizes) to the same plow; and eating the limb of a living animal.
6. While slavery was not outright banned, 3,000 years ago the Torah prohibited returning a slave to his master, kidnapping people to sell them as slaves (that alone should have made Bible-believers abolitionists) and sentenced a master who murdered his slave to death (that is what the punishment — “avenged” — most likely meant).
7. The Prophets (the Hebrew word means “spokesmen” — God’s spokesmen) were preoccupied with moral behavior.
8. God is repeatedly depicted as more concerned with moral behavior than with anything else: “God has told you, O humans, what is good and what the Lord demands of you: Only to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” (Micah). “Hate evil and love good, and establish justice” (Amos). “Those of you who love God must hate evil” (Psalms).
If Rabbis, priests and ministers are to be true to the Bible, they need to emphasize that what God demands most from their co-religionists is good behavior. That is not only obvious from the Hebrew Bible, but from the New Testament as well. Yes, the New Testament teaches that there is no salvation without right faith (i.e., faith in Christ). But there is no right faith without right behavior. As James put it, “Faith without works is dead.” And as Jesus, quoted in Matthew, put it, “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
The religious tragedy is that too often religious people have placed something above moral behavior — ritual practice among Jews and theology among Christians. Both are very important because goodness will not survive the death of Judeo-Christian values. Just look at the moral chaos in large parts of secular America today. The most secular institutions of our society — the universities — have become moral and intellectual wastelands.
We need God and concern with goodness. God without concern with goodness leads to evil. And so does concern with goodness without God.
What Does God Most Care About? Being exposed as a fake!
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
-Epicurus, Ancient Greek Philosopher
What would your expectations of a God be? In other words, could you explain your idea of a perfect God?
Let’s come to an agreement, you can believe in God and I can be free not to believe in God, and by using our minds and thinking clearly about the facts of reality, and honoring those facts, we can come to an agreement as to how to proceed and produce good results in any situation we both face together?
We will honor life, the facts of reality, and our mutual agreement. If need be we will sign a legally binding contract whenever we trade goods and services.
Let the facts of reality, the requirements for sustaining our lives, and the pursuit of life and happiness be the standard for our mutual morality.
That agreement isn’t necessary. You’re already free to disbelieve.
In God we trust, everybody else pays cash.
A perfect god, in her world, looks and thinks exactly like she does.
I liked the author’s take on James and works. I’ve heard many a sermon on James and works. Usually the preacher makes it all about his ministry and himself, some clever person coined the term “Ixegesis” to replace exegesis. I’ve, maybe never, heard a sermon where righteous living is considered a work.
God allows evil, because he wants people to follow him by their own volition. Evil will cease one day, goodness triumphs over evil, that day will be the end of history, get on the right side of history.
“Be on the right side of history”, that’s Marxism 101.
I think God made us eternal and we reincarnate endlessly for the eternal joy and the eternal pain, for eternal growth and lessons in living and loving.
Like the movie “Groundhog Day”.
Okay, you have free will, to believe whatever you like.
Do you post doggerel simply to see your silly words in print?
Well, you are monotonously repetitive, so I can see that you live what you believe, but what you believe is not necessarily what God meant for us. He didn’t create for us a heaven of subjectivity.
Are you able to reach your own logical conclusions? Apparently not, so you quoted someone else who can’t either.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Nice non sequitur. God gave us the freedom to make choices. We can’t learn discernment if all of our outcomes are predetermined.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
False conclusion. He gave us free will and a mind that is capable of discernment. Unfortunately, some of us have addled that mind with drugs, alcohol, etc. and are no longer capable of using His gifts.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
This conclusion is based merely on assumption, not logic or knowledge. Evil comes from envy of God.
“Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
He is willing and able, but He gave us the freedom to choose., Charlie See Addled.
” Morality cannot give us a list of ten commandments and then say: “Okay, you’re ready to go out and achieve happiness”—anymore than medicine can give us a list of ten commands and then say: “Okay, you’re ready to heal the sick.”
Morality, like medicine, is a science. Which means that one must carefully and systematically study its principles, to see that they do indeed flow from the absolute nature of reality and the factual requirements of achieving success and happiness within it. Moral principles must be accepted because we understand firsthand that they are life-serving and happiness-promoting. And then they must be thoughtfully applied by each and all of us to the concrete, unique contours of our day-to-day existence—in the same way that a doctor should accept the principles of medicine because he understands firsthand why they are health-promoting, and then he, along with his patient, should carefully apply those principles to the concrete details of the patient’s illness.
A proper approach to morality demands constant learning about the nature of life and happiness, and about your own specific existence and goals.
“If I were to speak your kind of language,” Rand writes, “I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a ‘moral commandment’ is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.” – Onkar Ghate
“Morality, like medicine, is a science.”
This is false. Medicine once believed that bleeding patients would cure diseases. Science once believed that the solar system revolved around the earth. Germ Theory was not accepted for many years, although it was correct. In fact, many advancements occur not because something new was discovered and accepted, but because those who won’t accept it died off.
If your belief was true, then morality would change as the political “elites” see fit. As we’ve seen repeatedly in history, those in power easily rationalize the murder of innocents. Your “scientific” method would allow that.
Morality must not change as society changes, else it is not morality, but fashion.
“In that story, God tells Abraham to take his beloved son Isaac to a mountaintop and sacrifice him. Does Abraham rebel at this command to murder the innocent, an innocent life so precious to him? Does he judge God to be evil for issuing it—and condemn God? No. He doesn’t argue. He obeys. As Abraham stands over Isaac, ready to plunge the knife into his son, God tells Abraham that he has passed the test.
The crucial point to grasp is that if God is the source of morality, then Abraham has passed the test. If God commands us to murder the innocent, then it becomes good to do so. To refrain from doing so, would be evil.
We can see here one important reason why faith is essential to religious morality. God gives Abraham no logical reason or argument for why he should sacrifice his son. And it would be impertinent for Abraham to demand this from God—to say to God: “Now wait a minute, this doesn’t make any sense to me. Please explain to me why I should murder my own son?”
For God to have to justify His actions, to explain to Abraham why His command to murder the innocent is in fact morally good—would mean that God is not the source of morality. God would have to offer reasons why his actions accord with the principles of morality, and Abraham would have to independently evaluate those reasons. Abraham would have to rely on his knowledge of moral principles to judge God’s commands. God’s commands, then, would not be the source of morality.
Thus, as a disciple of religious morality, Abraham must not demand reasons. He must believe and act on faith—that is, in defiance of his reason. His rational mind must scream out at him—“It’s monstrous to murder my own son!”—and yet he must nevertheless obediently perform the action.
It is far from an accident that Abraham has for centuries—in Judaism, in Christianity, and in Islam—been revered as the great exemplar of the man of faith, of the moral man, of the religious man. This is exactly what he is. He reveals the essence of what it means to accept the idea that God is the source of morality.” – Onkar Ghate
“Finding Morality and Happiness Without God” – Onkar Ghate
Um, news flash. Are you sure that G0d wanted Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? If so, then why did He stop Abraham before he could do so?
The second Great Commandment is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. If we love God first we will obey the second commandment also.
Also, Genesis chapter 6 tells us God destroyed mankind because “…the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time”. “…the earth was corrupt and full of violence”. The only witness to God’s Righteousness left on earth was Noah. When our planet reaches that point again, when He has no witnesses on earth, God will step in. We are nearing that point. Satan wants to eliminate Christianity from this earth.
Love my neighbor as myself? That’s just irrational. What if my neighbor is Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Adolf Hitler?
Some neighbors deserve to be loved their virtues have earned it. And some neighbors don’t deserve to be loved.
Also, some people hate themselves, should they hate their neighbors as they hate themselves?
If my neighbors were Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Adolf Hitler I would move. Wouldn’t you?
What or who makes a person “virtuous”? Hitler considered himself virtuous.
Children will ask trite questions. You don’t have that excuse.
God sees how the rulers, elites, and leaders are treating their people. There will be a Day of Judgment coming. The prophet Isaiah called it the Day of the Lord’s Vengeance. Isaiah 34:8. The Time of Jacob’s Trouble. Jeremiah. 30:7.
The eternal soul of man, plain and simple. He allowed the sacrifice of his only perfect son as a ransom for all that would accept and receive it. He’s not interested in the trappings and rituals of religious piety. He’s most interested in your heart.
It is far far beyond time for Christians to drop the simple Fairy Tale story of a Creation, Adam and Eve, and a Human-like God who intervenes in human affairs. Rather, it is time for them to update their language and concepts based on science and the experience and records of those people—those people all religious sects regard as Saints—who through the centuries have met the conditions for a direct experience of the Transcendent Consciousness, or Mind, or Ground, or God. When followed those conditions liberate a person from the behaviors that humans are all too proficient in—greed, tyranny, evil, murder, cruelty, and war.
Dr if you consider yourself a Christian then seems like you maybe need the great physician, you sound like a stoned hippie guru.
The updated “language based on science”. is called “Intelligent Design.”
Myths point to spiritual truths, not to the historicity of Adam &Eve or to scientific facts.
The existence of Jesus of Nazareth is well established by historians and archeologists. .
His divinity is another question. Why insist that Xians give up their beliefs? What’s that to you?
God wants His people to know that He is the true Messiah. He is the Holy One of Israel and loves them all.
dear dennis , america is ” a moral and intellectual wasteland ” already and will remain so as long as the nation rejects the gospel of jesus christ and refuses to repent and bow to the sovereign of the universe . nineveh the capital of assyria was a thoroughly evil nation but was given a reprieve by GOD when that nation repented . america is a modern day version of nineveh . america stands condemned until repentance is forthcoming .
Amen, When we reject the Lord and his Will for us, and the truth, we also reject His blessings! “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he has chosen as his own inheritance. Psalm 33:12.