Good God: Faith for the Rest of Us

Radbam June 1st, 2009

The name “Spock” indelibly impacted the culture of the 1960s through a popular commitment to an age-old ideal:  balance.  The “Benjamin” variant of Spock, the granddaddy of all chutzpah-driven child development gurus, counseled harried parents to strive for a healthy pairing of discipline and nurture.  The “Mr.” version (no first name for Vulcans, but the niceties of conventional address?) constantly struggled for a few years in the mid-60s to battle his half-bred imprints pitting Vulcan rationalism against human emotion.  Amidst a rich and radical stew of anti-Vietnam and pro-Civil Rights moralizing that was the most common fare of the show, Spock’s more existential quandary resonated well beyond the expiration date of Star Trek’s other social crusades.

 Which is why, despite the passing of 40 years and countless television and cinematic sequels, Mr. Spock’s psychic struggle between chilly, alien reason and the volcanic effluence of terrestrial appetites emerges as a key theme in the continuing trek of the JJ Abrams era.  But this struggle between elemental forces and the challenge to find equilibrium mark other, more consequential facets of “real” life.

 In the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the inevitable “inside baseball” analysis overshadows the nature and character of the flesh and blood person being considered (as is now always the case).  Putting aside her qualifications, and even the debate about whether compartmentalizing her personal history from her legal reasoning is necessary or even possible, President Obama’s early (even before inauguration) criteria for what he sought in a justice provoked a debate that is worth a weigh in.

 Well before the choice was announced, the slings and arrows of audacious borching (Yiddish for complaining) condemned Obama for considering “empathy” as an important quality in a nominee. As is often the case, the right-leaning weight in the Times quest for balance on its op-ed page, David Brooks, offered a concise critique of this conservative canard.  Challenging the notion that any carbon-based, chromosomally-composed life form could serve as an adjudicator of absolute legal reasoning, Brooks counters:

People without emotions cannot make sensible decisions because they don’t know how much anything is worth. People without social emotions like empathy are not objective decision-makers.  They are sociopaths who sometimes end up on death row.

 My faith tradition takes the discussion one step further, positing God as the ultimate model (and therefore exemplar) of striking the balance between empathy and justice.  Fixating (as the rabbis were wont to do) on a semantic discrepancy, the dual names of God (YHVH and Elohim) in the Creation account, the sages overriding concern was to allay the notion that this signified multiple gods and thus imperiled monotheism. Their solution was as theologically sound as it was morally instructive.  One name expressed God’s attribute of justice (midat din) and the other God’s attribute of compassion (midat rachamim).   Both were necessary ingredients for a functional, healthy world.  An oversubscription to either would lead to a world out of whack (a hifalutin seminary expression) and a human family hopelessly condemned to an eternity of mocked appearances on the cosmic version of Jerry Springer.

 Tradition is clear:  What is good enough for God is integral for us—including Supreme Court nominees.  We are complex creatures, a tempest-tossed stew of imagination and idealism, incisive thinking and razor-sharp analysis, dispassionate deliberation and impassioned impulse.  We are Spock, and Sotomayor is us.  Who better to entertain and inspire us?  Who better to judge us?

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