Dear G-d, You’re Mean

Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with G-d.
That’s right, I said it.
Before I became observant, one of my biggest problems with “religion” was its condemnation of gay rights. I’ve had many gay friends throughout my life, and I could never understand why anyone would want to deny them the right to live a full, rich life. To allow them to marry who they wanted. Basic rights that we all take for granted.
What was wrong with those crazy religious kooks?
That was the thing. I had no problem believing in G-d. In miracles. In the spiritual. But to listen to a bunch of words? What the?
Somehow, as time passed, one of those crazy religious kooks got to me and convinced me to join their ranks. To be one of the crazy people that believes what one of those books said. To listen to ancient scribbles on a piece of paper.
What the?
And now, I’m stuck. Like, seriously stuck. I still have gay friends. I still wish they could be married.
And yet G-d says no. He says, “A man who lies with a male as one lies with a woman; the two of them have done an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood guilt is upon them.” Intense stuff.
I’ve read plenty discussing this situation. Trying to work it out in my head. Everyone has their own answers. And every answer has come out shallow.
What it comes down to, in the end, is that the rule makes no sense. G-d created gay people and then told them they can’t be together.
Again, I have to wonder. What is wrong with G-d?
And that’s when I start thinking about everything else that bothers me about the world. The fact that G-d gave us Israel, but then decided that the world would hate us for it. The fact that six million of us were shot, gassed, or burned alive (no reason can justify that, can it?). And that millions of others still suffer to this day. The fact that we’re still alone, unable to see Him, unable to touch or feel truth.
What’s wrong with Him?
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with Him. He’s perfect. But every now and then, couldn’t he show us some of that perfection?
It’s when I’m feeling like this that I remember being in yeshiva, when we sang and danced on tables and then in the middle of our celebrating, one of the rabbis demanded that G-d bring us out of this exile. Demanded that G-d listen to our pleas.
It is when my friends who aren’t observant demand that I speak up for G-d and explain his actions that I remember that even the Rebbe refused to give a reason for the Holocaust. The Rebbe told us it was okay to be angry with G-d. To demand that he stop the insanity already.
And it’s when I remember that, that I start to get a glimmer of that perfection of G-d I keep hearing about.

From Audience To Actors

Every now and then, when my mind is open and lazy enough, I am suddenly struck by what an incredible thing a life is. How much energy has been expended in me, around me and because of me because of my existence. And then, to think that currently there are something like six billion people existing with similar energies floating around them. Who burst into this world from a womb and changed everything around them from then on.
What surprises me further, in these moments, is that we are not constantly blown away by this fact. And the simple miraculousness of it all in the first place. That we could have a world like ours exist at all is a miracle that I am amazed even G-d was able to pull off.
Then, just as quickly as this thought enters my mind, it is gone. Suddenly, I am annoyed again with children who sit behind me in the airplane. I look at a mountain in Arizona and think, “Well, that is just a piece of dirt, isn’t it?” The world is suddenly a statistic again, just one planet among many instead of a metaphysical entity that is constantly producing an unimaginable spiritual energy.
It makes me scared to be parent, feeling this way. I want to cherish my future children with every part of my being. Yet, a part of me knows that even the best parents get bored, annoyed and sick of their poor little children. And, let’s be honest, one day those children are going to grow out of their fascination with their parents and the world and grow up to think the way I do in my advanced age.
So what’s a person with a desire to connect to truth to do at this juncture? Do we accept that as we get old our perception of the world will deteriorate before our eyes? Or do we fight back with all our energy, trying desperately to grip onto the strings that we see coming lose from our grasp? Neither answer seems right, does it?
There is a story of two Hasidim who visit a village hostile to their philosophy. The people of the village are suspicious of them, and so one man comes up to the men and asks, “What thoughts preoccupy your mind most: worldly matters or G-dly ones?” presuming that a Hasid would undoubtedly say the latter.
One of the Hasidim said without hesitation, “Worldly matters, of course.” The two were left to go about their business after this happened.
When the two were alone, the other Hasid turned to him in shock and asked, “How could you possibly say such a blasphemous thing?”
The first Hasid looked at the one who asked him a question and simply said, “When you believe in something, you do not need to obsess over it.”
We should strive to internalize the beauty of spirituality and G-d, but it is a dangerous business to get addicted to that initial feeling of amazement at the world that surrounds us. We feel this feeling for a reason. To use it as a springboard into a world where we are no longer observers of this incredible world, but are its shakers and movers.
Many of us get bored because we think in polarities. We think we are either bored or entertained. And so if we are not entertained, we are convinced we must be bored. But those are both essentially passive emotions. True spirituality begins when we move from passivity to action.
Thus, the world may not be as entertaining, but that is only because we will be the main characters in the drama we were only able to observe in the past.

The Sand And The Light

He wakes up. He looks around. He feels something gritty under his hands. Sand.
Getting to his feet, he looks around. The desert surrounds him. Plain, white sand in every direction.
What had happened ? How had he arrived here, he thinks?
He starts to desperately search for answers. He picks up the sand and examines it. Every single grain is exactly the same. There are no rocks, no plants. Nothing.
He starts digging. But the fine sand keeps falling in on itself, and he reaches nowhere.
He runs. And runs. And runs.
But finds nothings.
Finally, he gives up, and lays down on the ground, crying. He is all alone. He is nothing, he might as well be a part of the blank, white sand.
As he cries, he notices that his tears are dissolving the sand under his face. A hole begins to appear. He notices a glimmer. Something is there! Something red. His tears of desperation transforming into tears of joy, he begins digging through the dissolved sand. As he digs, he hits something metal. He yells out in joy and digs around it.
Hours later, he has uncovered a car. A truck. A Pathfinder. The keys still inside. A full tank of gas. He jumps inside and turns the key. Brummmm! It’s running.
And he drives his car, convinced that now he is saved. Now if he drives far enough, he will find what he has been looking for, he will find his connection to reality.
Within moments, he sees some lights. It’s a city! He sees the people bustling, the neon lights flashing. He puts the pedal to the medal.
For the next few years, he lives there. He builds a life, he builds a home, he builds a wife. For years, he forgets that he came from the blankness of the desert. He forgets that surrounding the city was a sea of nothingness. He sends his car to a junkyard.
One day, he turns the faucet to wash his hands. No water comes out. The lights go out. He tries flicking the switches. Nothing. He looks for his girlfriend. Nowhere. His car: gone.
The house starts to shake. The walls start to fall. He shields his head, confused. But nothing hits him, nothing hurts him. All that falls on him is sand. Sand and sand and more sand. Until all that is left of the city is the same nothingness that surrounded him when he began.
Again, he is alone. Again, he trudges through the desert, through the white sand, hoping to find something, something outside of himself before he goes insane. Something to save him.
Finally, exhausted, he sits down on the ground. And he thinks. He meditates. He stares down at the sand. For years, he sits like this, longing to find some truth in the sand. But he finds nothing. Day after day, he is forced to accept that there is no truth in the sand, that he will never be connected to anything real again, and that everything he ever touched or knew was a mirage, a fake.
And so he stops looking at the sand. He stops caring about it, and instead takes a moment to look at himself, something he realized he never did his whole life.
In a flash, he realizes that he is made of the same sand, the same white nothingness that has surrounded him for so long. He realizes that he is just another grain of whiteness in the sea.
But perhaps there is more? Perhaps he can find more truth if he just… digs. And he begins to dig into his chest, into his brain, into his body. Until he can dig no longer. Until the sand falls away onto the ground and dissolves amongst it. Until he is exposed for what he really is.
Light.
Exposed, the light spreads around him, exposing the world in a flash. He sees cities, but this time they are real. He sees the car that he supposedly sent to the junkyard. He sees the sand build itself into something real.
For the first time in his life, he is able to go out into the world and realize who he really is. As long as he looks past the sand that surrounds him and sees the light radiating from his essence, he knows that he is divine, sacred and real.