A Relationship with You is Not God’s Top Priority

By Josh Klemons
Engagement Director
San Diego State University

Noah was saved from the flood because he was a righteous man living in the midst of a wicked people during a wicked time. His neighbors were sinners; the land was full of lawlessness. God saw what was going on and decided that future man would not descend from these savages. So God started over through Noah.

It was not long after this new beginning that God witnessed men coming together and building a tower to reach into the heavens. The tower was known as the Tower of Babel and the story is well known. God saw a great people with one common language coming together to get the best of God; to try and "find" God. He did not send a massive earthquake or tornado to tear down the tower, both of which were well within His power. He did not send plagues to warn man that he was not doing right in the eyes of the Lord, although this would have been an easy task for a God looking for things to do in his everlasting seventh day vacation here on Earth. Instead, He confounded man with the curse of confusion. He broke down their mode of communication so that there could be no central command, so that chaos would ensue if the people were to continue this mockery of the Lord.

When I was 11 years old I asked a rabbi why God would smite the entire human race, save for Noah and his descendants, and then merely confuse, albeit quite cleverly, the very descendants of Noah, who now sinned directly against God. His answer stays with me to this very day and helps me understand many of my questions about God’s relationship to of man.

The answer is that during Noah’s time, man was sinning against his fellow man. There was lawlessness amongst the people. During the Tower of Babel, man wasn’t sinning against his fellow man; in fact, he was working collectively and collaboratively with him on a grand project of conquest and understanding. He was "only" sinning against God, the Rabbi explained. "Only sinning against God?!" I must have pondered, most likely aloud. "But what could be worse than sinning against God?" The answer of course is sinning against your fellow man.

We know the story, but we forget the moral of Babel. God did not destroy the people involved in the Tower, nor did He send any grand message to the masses through them. He simply impaired their ability to communicate with each other, and in doing so, He promptly dispersed them back to their real lives. God did deal with the people of Babel, but it almost seems as if their "punishment" was more out of God’s frustration, perhaps even pity, at watching His people wasting their time, their energy and their resources in what God knew to be a task of futility. It seems to me that God was simply trying to get these people to go back to their lives. He wasn’t angry, rather he was being protective. He was a parent who loves his child but takes away television privileges in order to get him to focus on the important things, like homework.

The message of this story is clear: You cannot be a good person if you cannot be a good neighbor. And equally important is the message that your relationship with God is apparently less important than how you live your life. Judaism is a deeds-based religion. Unlike many of our counterparts in the West, faith does not play a major role in how "good" a Jew one can be. Israel is teeming with atheists. Are they less Jewish for it? Not many religions can handle the obvious contradictions of allowing good people to be good people even if they lack the faith that seems implied in order to do so. I am sure that if you scoured the halls of the Hebrew Union College (HUC) or the University of Judaism (UJ) you could find at least a few of our future Jewish leaders who, if asked in the strictest of confidence, would admit that they are not 100 percent comfortable in their faith. This would be a cardinal sin for Christianity and the mark of an infidel for Islam. But Judaism says that it matters not what you believe, but how you live. Show your faith through your humanity and through your deeds and let your faith remain where it belongs, as a personal, intimate thing that you can reconcile in your own time and in your own way.

I am a Jewish professional. People love asking me if I believe in God. They all get the same answer. It makes no difference whether I believe in God. As long as I live my life as if I believed wholeheartedly that God is watching, then I am doing all right.

Josh is a professional Jew and a musician. He is an avid reader and an occasional Journalist. He has an opinion on everything

[Posted 5/25/06]