American Idol
Radbam January 5th, 2010
Aside from the ubiquitous question regarding the whereabouts of dinosaurs in the biblical account of creation, the next most asked school-age query posing modern sensibilities against divine revelation involves the currency and relevance of monotheism. Specifically, when we come to the topic of the Shema prayer (the affirmation of God’s oneness) in Sunday School classes, explanations tend to focus on Judaism’s ancient aversion to paganism, polytheism and their attendant pecadilloes (like child sacrifice and cultic prostitution–though in a G-rated presentation).
That’s a stark and convincing distinction, a triumph of humanity and idealism over a primitive and materialistic sense of the Deity. But the implication is that this central expression in Judaism is merely commemorative of a war already won. There are few physical idols demanding of subjugating worship left in the civilized world, Las Vegas and Fox Television notwithstanding.
So does the frequent recitation of the Shema prayer and its essential meaning still speak to our lives today? My standard response is to ask my spiritual charges, young and older, what are the goals and values that people cherish as gods, pursuits that they might break at least 5 of God’s Top Ten to engage. I usually elicit the intended, yet pertinent responses: power, money and fame, the last quality most troublingly illustrated by reality tv and its aspirants, from Jersey Shore to Dr. Phil, from Balloon Boy to White House Crashers.
In a recent piece, the Times’ token occupant of the A.M. Rosenthal right-of-center op-ed page column, David Brooks, offered one more candidate for Idol of the Moment: National Security. In a critique of our unrealistic expectations of airport security in the wake of the underwear dirty bomber (better than the dirty underwear bomber?), Brooks admonishes:
Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in–technology, technocracy, centralized government control–have failed them in this instance.
Brooks shames us into a bit more Churchillian resilience in the face of inevitable failures and fears. But the concern seems less our juvenile over-reliance on the titans of technology and our surprise when they cascade from Olympian heights at the hands of Fruit-of-the-Loom fanaticism. Rather, it is our unquenchable need for the power, mystery and beneficence of omnipotence dissonantly coupled with vain pursuits in any and all other places than what generations before conventionally deemed “God.”
The real immaturity and lack of fortitude that plagues Western society stems from our capacity (or lack thereof) for authentic faith. Our need to invest trust and security only in the tangible and concrete is more akin to our primitive, rock-worshipping forbearers than we would like to admit. And to concede sincere expressions and devout observance of established faith to fundamentalists and entrepreneurial charlatans is a further descent into a cynicism raised to idolatrous heights. When the underwear bomber induces more of an existential crisis than our increasingly consumerist, uber-acquisitive lives, it’s time for all of us to find that inner Abraham, swinging for the fences against the pantheon of our self-importance.
- Uncategorized
- Comments(2)
Of course the Shema and its essential meaning still speak to our lives today. Unfortunately, its meaning is lost in a society in which as David Brooks notes in the column you cited “we have concentrated authority in centralized agencies and reduced the role of decentralized citizen action.”
On 9/11, and again this Christmas, this centralized authority utterly failed its citizens. As Mark Steyn wrote after 9/11, “The commercial airliner is an Al Gore dream. There is no smoking. There is 100% gun control. You are obliged by law to do everything the cabin crew tell you to do. If the stewardess is rude to you, tough. If you’re rude to her, there’ll be officers waiting to arrest you when you land. The justification for all this is a familiar one – that in return for surrendering individual liberties, we’ll all be collectively better off. That was the deal: do as you’re told and the FAA will look after you.” Ironically, on 9/11, it was a few brave souls on Flight 93, acting as free men, who saved their government. Thank goodness that on Christmas, a Danish movie director, acting as a free individual, saved his fellow passengers on Northwest 253 and avoided a “man made disaster”. Perhaps this gives us reason to hope. The last time a Danish film director encountered a jihadist, Theo Van Gogh attempted to engage in conversation, ending up nearly decapitated with a note from his murderer impaled in his chest.
A centralized government that reduces the role of the decentralized citizenry erodes our freedom; inevitably stripping individuals of their humanity and simultaneously displacing the divine. DeToqueville warned that as “a immense tutelary power is elevated…it renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare; it confines the action of the will in a smaller space and little by little steals the very use of free will from each citizen.” The result is manifest as a ‘lack of fortitude that plagues Western society’. Mr. Brooks notes that the government’s response to the ‘Pantybomber’ was paternalistic because “this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways”…yet he does not make the connection between this paternalism as an inevitable consequence of an increasingly intrusive state. As for shaming us into ‘a bit more of Churchillian resilience’, we’ll get to that after reading Mr. Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights and screening grandma at the airport, because heaven forbid, we don’t want to offend anyone. And can anyone imagine Churchill inspiring the Commonwealth to prevent “a man made disaster”?
The Shema is one of Judaism’s greatest gifts. It opened humanity to a new possibility; recognizing that God grants individuals the freedom to follow their individual consciences, yet remaining answerable to eternal truths. But this liberty comes with responsibility, indeed the requirement, to act a decentralized human being.
Agree with most….caveat: as long as that decentralization doesn’t descend into an atomized society where we are all “bowling alone.”
DW