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This week,
Clara and I attended an interesting seminar on conflict resolution. It’s something I wish we’d taken four months
ago! The truth is that anytime you learn
something new about conflict resolution, it’s too late. After all, our lives are essentially a string
of conflicts. There’s always one that
just passed. On the other hand, conflict
resolution skills are always timely.
This, because there’s always another conflict around the corner! So you can’t win. But on the other hand, you always win. Makes perfect sense, yes??!
So we sat in this seminar all day
Tuesday. And we didn’t learn anything we
didn’t already know. But it’s always
good to confirm things you do already know. To be reminded. Because in the business of living, it is easy
to forget truths that we’ve already learned.
One thing that’s easy to forget is the
rule of causation. That is, that things
don’t just happen. There’s always a
cause. Sometimes multiple causes. But things don’t happen in a vacuum. There’s always a proximate cause.
This rule causes us no small amount of
discomfort. Because when stuff happens
to us, we don’t like to trace it back to its source. That’s because, the source is often – usually
– ourselves! Oh, I don’t mean that
bad things happen because we’re necessarily bad people. I’m not saying that we intend for bad
stuff to happen. I’m only saying that
bad things don’t just happen. No
more than good things just happen.
To every event, there’s a proximate cause.
Our sacred literature is full of causative
statements. You know: if-then kind of statements. If ‘A,’ then ‘B.’ Some
scholars, pointing out that the Book of Deuteronomy in particular is full of
such statements, call this causative mindset, Deuteronomistic Theology. Now that’s a mouthful. All it means that this particular book of the
Torah, consisting of Moses’ swan song sermons, repeatedly uses causative
reasoning.
This week’s Torah portion, Ekev, starts out with one. If only you keep these laws, safeguarding
and keeping them, then Hashem will keep the covenant and love with which He
made an oath to your ancestors. Moshe Rabbeinu is asserting that God’s love
is not unconditional. At least, God’s favour
is not. It’s quite conditional. If we keep God’s laws, then God
will keep the covenant of Moses. If so,
the corollary is also true: If we
do not keep God’s laws, then God will not keep the
covenant with us. Does that make you
uncomfortable? I’m guessing that it does
some of you hearing or reading these words, because we have been conditioned to
understand that the truest love is unconditional.
Our Christian neighbours after all, believe in a God who loved humanity so
unconditionally that he sacrificed Himself to let us live despite our
iniquities. If that’s not unconditional
love, I don’t know what is. Okay, it isn’t
really unconditional. You have to
believe it in order to benefit from it.
But belief is a small price to pay for a love that is given otherwise
without condition – not based at all on the merit of the recipient. No wonder there are more than two billion
Christians in the world, and a ‘paltry’ eighteen million or so Jews! How can a theology that offers unconditional
love not have great appeal??!
Okay, I’ve simplified to make a point! Not all Christians believe in unconditional
love, but many do. And they will tell
you that a child’s mentality in this regard is a good thing. It makes it easier to achieve salvation. Being adult-like is an impediment. But that’s not the Jewish way of looking at
it.
Dennis Prager has some choice words to offer about the concept of
unconditional love. He tells us that
unconditional love, such as that of a mother towards her child, is something
worthy only of a child. When we grow up,
we should outgrow the notion that anybody owes us unconditional love. An adult should be ready to earn someone else’s
love. An adult should understand that
love is not free.
That’s a bitter pill for some to swallow. Let’s be honest; there are adults who are
little more than overgrown children. And
one of the hallmarks of such a man-child or woman-child is a need to be loved
unconditionally. But Deuteronomistic Theology
informs us that God’s love is not unconditional. God’s love transcends that of any of us, is
capable. So if God does not love
unconditionally, then we should certainly not expect unconditional love from
one another. We should be ready to earn
someone else’s love.
So life is causative. Not always in the deliberate sense; that’s
self-evident. If the young woman hadn’t
left the house exactly when she did, she would not have been killed by that
drunk driver. She didn’t consciously decide
to be killed by that drunk. But on
the other hand, it didn’t just happen.
There was a chain of events that caused the tragedy. Likewise, a chain of events and decisions
causes virtually everything that happens to us. That doesn’t mean that we should blame the
victim. Perhaps, it means that we
should not be so quick to see ourselves as victims everytime something goes
wrong.
This causative effect is especially true in human relations. It is unrealistic to expect everybody to act
rationally all the time. If you do expect
this, you’re setting yourself up for deep disappointment! Because we human animals tend to be emotionally
driven. Emotions are not necessarily
irrational. Rather, they’ve a-rational;
they simply have nothing to do with rationality! But despite this a-rational aspect of human
interactions, we can still have a lot of control regarding outcomes. Emotional responses cause us to say and do
things that we later regret. So when
someone thus responds to us emotionally, we can let it pass and not take offence.
Because often, no offence was meant.
From this week’s Torah reading, we can understand the causative nature
of just about everything in life. But
from our understanding of human nature, we can choose to not hold others to an
absolute standard. Because if we do, we
will constantly be in conflict with others. Some conflict is inevitable. But some, at least some, can be
averted. If we, in understanding human
nature, will just cut others a bit of slack. Think about it. Shabbat shalom.
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