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Zach Wichter's avatar

This is something that I often have to defend in my own life, to my ongoing frustration. There's a certain degree to which many non-religious people I know assume all religious people are biblical literalists (...I think a big part of that is the pervasiveness of Evangelical Christian theology in American politics right now, but I digress).

What I'm trying to say is, I wish there were a way to get people to understand more easily that beardy-man-in-the-cloud-chair is not the default way of thinking for every faithful person. I feel like no matter how many times I explain that to some folks, their past experience with the literalists is always the prevailing narrative of religion in their minds, and it hurts when I feel like people I'm close with are putting out energy that feels like a head pat towards my religious observance. Even when they're generally respectful about it, it can still feel like the underlying message is still, "that's nice, but you're crazy and uncritical for buying this stuff."

I do understand that if you're, say, a queer person who has been burned by a particular kind of religious person in your life, it makes sense that your default is caution/skepticism/dislike of all religion generally. But I wish there were a way to change the default narrative from a fundamentalist one to this more curious one.

PS: Rabbi, can I just take a minute to thank you, again, for doing this? The last couple weeks, I've been marveling at and appreciating your ability to come at us with such deep thinking twice a week. I always feel like I want to participate in every comment thread, but sometimes I can't think of anything to say, even in response to others, and then I stand (well, sit) in awe of the fact that you can hit such resonant notes every time.

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Batya Wittenberg's avatar

There's a line somewhere in the Talmud, on the principles of Biblical exegesis, that says if two verses appear to contradict each other, the third will come and reconcile them. That's the phrasing: not "you must find a third" but "the third will come."

On matters of practical halacha it can be a real problem if there appears to be a contradiction, because how are we supposed to know what to do? But on matters of theology or cosmology or narrative, I'm inclined to read that phrasing as a subtle hint: we don't have to wear ourselves out _searching_ for a reconciling verse that makes sense out of the contradiction. It'll come. Maybe when we aren't expecting it, and maybe not when we want it, so in the meantime maybe what we should do is sit with it and get comfortable with not having the answer.

(There's a song someone wrote called "The Word of God," which made me think about this concept on another level entirely; I want to come back to this when I have time to write all that out.)

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