God's holy place

The Holy Place

 

The great question facing religion today as always is: "  Where is God's holy place?"

The question appears in the book of Psalms in a very clear way and virtually screams out of every word  of the Bible. I would go so far as to say that the purpose  of the Bible is to reveal the holy place of God.

A person who doesn't seek the answer to this question will be quite disappointed and will wonder why the Bible is such a popular book.

It's popular because there are obviously many people at all times in history, primitive times and modern, who want to know where is God's holy place.

Of course the Bible doesn't tarry with the answer and gives it straight away; God's holy place is the Garden of Eden.

There's no beating around the bush. Plane and simple, the holy place of God is The Garden of Eden and Man was in it and as long as he was perfectly good he was entitled to be there and like everything else over there he was immortal.

The Bible encourages man to search for immortality by searching for God's Holy Place.

I think that one can safely say that, in the physical world, the world of the 5 senses, man has resigned himself to the fact of death. Modern science may lengthen the span of life but I don't think any scientist thinks that immortality is attainable in the physical world.

All religions, however, promise immortality – of the soul. According to them man has a soul and if he is religious it is immortal. If he isn't religious – well, either he doesn't have a soul or, anyhow it doesn't  matter because a soul that isn't immortal isn't worth having.

This is the basis for the religious justification of the death penalty and in fact for all punishment. Because by committing a crime a person damages his soul and it needs to be repaired by punishment.

Having chosen to eat the fruit of Eve man is expelled from The Garden of Eden. In other words the eating of the fruit of Eve has made him imperfect and not entitled to be immortal.

Religion, however, comes to his rescue, to save his soul, as it were. It offers him an alternative holy place and a myriad of tools for repairing his damaged soul; sacrifices, ceremonies, prohibitions of certain types of behavior, foods, cloths etc.

Exodus 34:6

"And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth," Ex 34:6

This verse from the Bible is repeated many times in the prayer service of Yom Kippur. It's one of my favorite verses but it has puzzled me for a long time. 

On the one hand I'm comforted when I think that God is merciful. He will forgive my sins and will take away my aches and pains. 

On the other hand I still have aches and pains even after I've prayed and fasted all Yom Kippur.

This raised the question in my mind, "if God doesn't take away my suffering then how does He express His mercy?"

The answer is that God's mercy, graciousness, long suffering, abundant goodness and truth applies not to me as an individual but to all the universe, in its widest sense. It applies to the universe as a whole, in its entirety. 

God's mercy, and other qualities, isn't like man's mercy. God is merciful. to everybody and everything all the time and for all time. 

In Man these qualities, mercy and grace etc, are in addition to himself. He may or may not have these qualities. Some men have these qualities while others don't.

In God these qualities are Him. They are an imperative of His nature. It's not a question of choice. He doesn't choose to have them or not to have them. (this idea has been explained by Maimonides in Guide to the Perplexed part 1) 

The creation of the universe, for example, is an expression of God's mercy. God didn't choose to create the world. He created it because it's his nature to create and it's His nature to be merciful. 

The crucial question that people have always asked is whether the universe is infinite. Will it last forever?

In order to last forever the universe must be perpetual. If the universe isn't perpetual then it's going to stop existing one day. 

In other words it must continue without intervention. The question is important:

If the universe is permanent and perpetual then there can't be any intervention. Intervention negates perpetuity. If God intervenes in the natural sequence of events there wouldn't be perpetuity. There would be an end.

In an infinite and perpetual world it's natural that God's mercy is His non intervention.

In an infinite and perpetual world the only kind of intervention can be man's intervention in his own situation, not God's intervention in the actions and situation of Man.

Man's mercy and not God's applies to healing suffering and maintaining life. It's natural that man should seek better ways to relieve suffering and promote his well being. Not to expect God to intervene to relieve suffering and prolong life..

In an infinite and perpetual world God's mercy applies to His non intervention.

In an infinite and perpetual world individual birth is as necessary as death for the survival of the universe. Birth and death and life without God's intervention is perpetual.

Birth, life and death continue all the time in an infinite world, with no intervention of God.

Man mistakenly thinks that he's praying for God's intervention in healing his aches and pains when actually he's praying for God's non intervention. 

Because God's non intervention is His mercy.

God's intervention would bring an end to perpetuity and an end to the universe. So God does not intervene. 

It may be very comforting for us to think that in His mercy God relieves our aches and pains, but it's much more comforting for us to think that the world is forever because God is merciful and doesn't intervene.

Our aches and pains are necessary for the survival of the universe. Instead of looking for God's intervention to take away our suffering let us rather take comfort that we suffer while at the same time looking for rational, human ways to relieve suffering.