Let's Discard Our Domesticated God

Parashat Beha’alot’cha, Numbers 8:1–12:16

by Rabbi Stuart Dauermann

Ours is an expeditious God. When we feel sad, he makes us happy. When we feel weak, he makes us strong. When we need a parking place, he helps us find one. When we fear death, he makes us confident. When we fear social unrest and change, he backs our candidates and defeats “the bad guys.” He is wrapped in an American flag, but also especially favors Israel . . . and as for the other nations? Well, we don’t know about that: but us and Israel? Solid! Just as we have a personal trainer to make us strong, we have a personal Savior to make us safe. And we have a heavenly Father to tuck us in at night. Conveniently domesticated.

In the words of David Bentley Hart, our very concept of God has become “thoroughly impoverished, thoroughly mythical.” We have reduced God to the captain of our team. To call this blasphemy, to call it idolatry, is the kindest thing we might say of where just about all of us are right now. The great non-contingent Being, the I Am that I Am, is wholly other, dependent on nothing, and never ever to be classed as the greatest of the bunch in any way shape or form because our concept of bunches is Tinker-Toy material utterly irrelevant to envisioning the infinite matchless wonder of the Uncreated One. Because we are mere creatures of time and space, animated dust, we are utterly incapable of even imagining what he is like.

To find and nurture true knowledge of God, we must go beyond imagination to revelation.

We may only speak and think of God in the ways he has revealed himself to us, and even then, we may be confident of this: more often than not, we get it wrong, and we are the last to know that, if ever. Therefore, when daring to speak or think of the God of all that is or ever could be, it pays to be radically humble, a capacity which is itself beyond our grasp. But let’s at least realize that this radical humility is a destination toward which we should point ourselves, like Abraham leaving the idolatry of his father’s ways and his comfortable homeland for a yet undiscovered country.

A marvelous passage from our Torah reading reminds us of the humility, the responsive docility, which should characterize all aspects of our being, thinking, acting, and community awareness. 

On the day the tabernacle was put up, the cloud covered the tabernacle. . . . Whenever the cloud was taken up from above the tent, the people of Isra’el continued their travels; and they camped wherever the cloud stopped. At the order of Adonai, the people of Isra’el traveled; at the order of Adonai, they camped; and as long as the cloud stayed over the tabernacle, they stayed in camp. Even when the cloud remained on the tabernacle for a long time, the people of Isra’el did what Adonai had charged them to do and did not travel. Sometimes the cloud was a few days over the tabernacle; according to Adonai’s order, they remained in camp; and according to Adonai’s order, they traveled. Sometimes the cloud was there only from evening until morning; so that when the cloud was taken up in the morning, they traveled. Or even if it continued up both day and night, when the cloud was up, they traveled. Whether it was two days, a month or a year that the cloud remained over the tabernacle, staying on it, the people of Isra’el remained in camp and did not travel; but as soon as it was taken up, they traveled. At Adonai’s order, they camped; and at Adonai’s order, they traveled—they did what Adonai had charged them to do through Moshe. (Numbers 9:15, 17–23 CJB)

If you just gave that passage a quick read, you need to read it again, this time slowly. You are likely to find yourself antsy, or as we say in Yiddish, to have shpilkes, when you read it because it describes a God who keeps us waiting, who is unpredictable and inconvenient. The 16th century commentator Ovadia Sforno reminds us, “even when the location selected by the cloud was not only inhospitable, but the cloud remained there for a long period, the Israelites did not grumble or protest this fact. They did not start journeying on their own, looking for a more suitable place to encamp.” We could learn a lot from our ancestors here. They did not understand what God was doing, but they realized he was not simply their assistant, or even the captain of their team. They knew he was God. A God who calls the shots, and tells us when to stay, and when to go, how long to stay, and how long to keep moving. A God who doesn’t care to justify himself to us, and whom we dare not ask, “Why are you doing this to us?”

He is a God who thinks he is God, because that is who he is. 

Dag Hammarskjold catches a whiff of that reality to which we are too much strangers when he says this: “For all that has been, Thanks. To all that shall be, Yes.” 

Let’s not make the Ever-living God over into our own image. Let’s turn away from our domesticated, thoroughly impoverished, thoroughly mythical God. Instead, let’s just pay careful attention and follow the cloud and the fire. Let us always point ourselves toward radical humility. Let’s follow orders. And let our tattoo never say, “God is on our side!” Instead, let it say, “Whatever you say, Adonai.”