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But there is in many of us a seemingly incurable desire to peek into the mind of God. Just as Dorothy and her entourage in\u00a0The Wizard of Oz<\/em>, we want to know what\u2019s behind the curtain. On the way to the early show at church one Sunday, Jeanne and I caught the last few minutes of Krista Tippett\u2019s radio program On Being<\/em>. She was interviewing Jewish theologian and prolific author\u00a0Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, who ended the interview with a charming story from one day when he was giving a bunch of preschoolers a tour of the synagogue.<\/p>\nI was leading a tour of the sanctuary, of the prayer hall with the children in the congregation\u2019s preschool. And then I figured as a piece de resistance I\u2019d have them come onto the\u00a0bima<\/em>, or the little prayer stage up in front of the room, where there was an ark where we kept the scroll of the Torah. It was accessible via a big floor-to-ceiling curtain. And I got them up on the stage, and I was about to call them\u2014\u2019Open the ark,\u2019 but I saw the teacher at the back tapping her wristwatch, which as you may know, is an old Talmudic gesture, which means your time is about up, bucko. So, I said, \u2018I tell you what, boys and girls. We\u2019ll come back when we get together again in a couple of weeks, we\u2019ll come back here and I\u2019m going to open that curtain there and show you what\u2019s behind it.\u2019 It\u2019s very special. You know, and so they all say, \u201cShalom, Rabbi,\u201d and like little ducklings, follow the teacher back to the class.<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, the next day, the teacher shows up at my office with the following story. Apparently the preceding day\u2019s hastily-concluded lesson has occasioned the fierce debate among the little people as to what is behind the curtain. They didn\u2019t know. And, the following four answers are given, which is I think pretty interesting.<\/strong><\/p>\n Answer One<\/strong>: The first kid guessed that there is\u00a0absolutely nothing\u00a0<\/strong>behind the curtain. As Kushner notes, this kid \u201cis obviously destined to become a professor of nihilistic philosophy at a great university.\u201d I read recently in the NY Times that 68% of academic philosophers in this country describe themselves as atheists, with 13% more leaning in that direction. I had no idea that I am in such a minority amongst my peers\u2014what do they know that I don\u2019t know? I am reminded of a story Nietzsche tells\u2014in a dream he once took the mask off a Greek sculpture and found himself \u201cstaring into the empty eye sockets of nothingness.\u201d<\/p>\n Answer Two<\/strong>: Another preschooler, playing a safe hand, thought that behind the curtain one would find\u00a0a Jewish holy thing<\/strong>. This kid will probably turn out to be a nominal follower of Judaism, recognizing the existence of \u201choly things\u201d and perhaps people like the rabbi who are strangely obsessed by \u201choly things,\u201d but unlikely to be bothered by what they might represent and what Holy Thing might be lurking behind such \u201choly things.\u201d Pretty much like the vast majority of children cranked out of Protestant Sunday Schools and Catholic CCD classes every year.<\/p>\n Answer Three<\/strong>: A third kid, channeling his inner Monty Hall or Pat Sajak, hoped that\u00a0a brand new car<\/strong>\u00a0was behind the curtain. There are any number of televangelists who scream something similar from various media outlets on a daily basis. There\u2019s something attractive about The Gospel of Prosperity, the notion that God wants the most faithful followers of the Divine Plan to be rich and prosperous. Too bad that there is not a shred of evidence to support the idea anywhere that I\u2019m aware of.<\/p>\n Answer Four<\/strong>: The most fascinating answer came from child number four. As Kushner tells it, \u201cthe fourth kid said no, you\u2019re all wrong.\u00a0Next week when that rabbi man comes and opens that curtain, behind it, there will be\u00a0a giant mirror<\/strong>.\u201d Not only is this creative and interesting, I\u2019m more and more coming to believe that this little boy or girl is right. What one expects or hopes for when engaged in faith-related activities may say little or nothing about God, but it says a lot about the person doing the expecting and hoping. Whatever God is, our thinking and believing about God always begins with what we want and need God to be. Somehow the four-year-old knew that whatever is hidden behind the curtain is us. The story of Incarnation, of God becoming human so that we might become God as Irenaeus put it, begins with this mirror.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I once led a seminar with a number of colleagues from the Honors Program as part of a two-day end-of-the-semester workshop. Our text was several essays from Michel de Montaigne, a sixteenth-century diplomat, philosopher, and introvert who has become one of my favorite authors over the years. My general tendency, both as a philosopher and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":14802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21,35,40,48,52,58,585,68,91,101],"tags":[610,221,242,309,350,366],"class_list":["post-35141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belief","category-christianity","category-faith","category-god","category-human-nature","category-incarnation","category-judaism","category-knowledge","category-mystery","category-stories","category-truth","tag-belief","tag-faith","tag-god","tag-judaism","tag-montaigne","tag-nietzsche"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2018\/12\/jewish-holy-things-300x213.jpg\")
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