E.J. Dionne discusses how questioning is the hallmark of faith. From the text: It is a mark of our pluralistic moment that I learned of an old joke among rabbis from the writings of a great Christian scholar, Jaroslav Pelikan. In his book “Jesus Through the Centuries,” Pelikan tells the story of a rabbi who is challenged by one of his pupils: “Why is it that you rabbis so often put your teaching in the form of a question?” To which the rabbi replies: “So what’s wrong with a question?” [...] Arnie Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary [...] thinks that all traditions need to recognize the radically new situation in which they find themselves. “The job market is global, and so is the thought-and-values market,” Eisen said in a lecture in November in Jerusalem. “It is more difficult for ‘The People of the Book’ to sustain the belief that it is in any meaningful sense ‘The Chosen People’ — or is ‘the’ anything — because an unlimited diversity of claims is literally in our face every time we look at a screen on a laptop or smartphone.” Admitting this does not produce all the answers, but, as the rabbi in the story might say, it does lead to the right questions. [...] By simultaneously conveying a certainty about what his faith teaches him and a confident openness to those who are seeking answers along other paths, Pope Francis gives an intimation of what holiness needs to look like in the 21st century. [...] Around the time that Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was released. Rabbi David Saperstein, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, had been a sharp critic of what he (and many others) saw as anti-Semitic tropes in the movie. But several of my students had appreciated the film. Rather than launch into an attack on Gibson’s work, Saperstein invited them to have their say. When he finally did express his view, Saperstein began with these words: “If you believe that the birth of Jesus Christ is the most important event in human history, you cannot help but be moved by this movie.” Only then did he offer his critique. Religious freedom will thrive and religion itself will be a force for good only if religious people can convey this sort of empathetic understanding of the truths that others hold dear. In faith as in science, finding the right answers inevitably involves questioning our own questions.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 05:58:29 +0000
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