nudges and tests

[cellio]

A friend who is converting to Judaism just faced her first job/Shabbat dilemma, and she is naturally frustrated by it. She needs the job, and the only interview time they would give her is on Shabbat, even though the job itself is Sunday-to-Thursday. She explained the problem and they wouldn't budge, so she's presumably lost the job. This prompted her to speculate about God's involvement in day-to-day life, and whether this was a test.

I've written before about the question of whether God is involved in the world (immanent) or just transcendant. I don't like some of the implications of an immanent God, but I believe this is the case nonetheless. (It's not either/or; God is both immanent and transcendant.)

But, I don't believe that God micro-manages. God does not get involved in minor actions or the day-to-day routine. God doesn't even decide who is going to suffer various man-made calamities. But every now and then, I believe God takes specific interest in specific events in specific people's lives. As a result of my friend's problem, I've realized that these interests take two forms: what I've been calling "nudges", and tests. (There is actually a third form, but I'm putting that off for later.)

I've talked about nudges before. Sometimes something happens that causes us to become more aware of God (and perhaps what he wants from us). This doesn't have to be the major nudge that sets someone to change religion; it could be the minor nudge that causes someone to start caring about some aspect of his life that he'd previously neglected (whether that be Shabbat, or what we eat, or how we interact with other people, or something else). Perhaps such nudges actually come entirely from within, but I think they come from God, at least some of the time. (Sometimes they come from heightened awareness, which itself may come from God.)

I hadn't thought much about tests before, but I suppose it makes sense that God would test us from time to time. I don't mean "test" in the "fail and you go to hell" sense, nor do I mean major events that affect other people like the Akeidah (the binding of Isaac). I mean the minor events that help us to solidify what we believe and strengthen our resolve. If a good job that's not available because of Shabbat conflicts helps one to strengthen one's commitment to Shabbat, then that is a good result, not a bad one. There have been several events in my life that I thought were bad at the time that ultimately turned out to be for good; they are the events that changed or strengthened me. I think, when we can see that and say that this too shall pass, we've sometimes passed a little test.

I don't mean to imply that God is personally involved in every temptation we face. If my kashrut is pretty strong, I don't believe that God is making sure the people around me are eating yummy-looking pork roasts or the like. As I said before, God does not micro-manage. Random temptations (that come from anywhere, really) are different from the incidents that actually shape or strengthen us.

I had to tackle some employment-related issues when I got serious about Judaism, though my job was never in any danger. At the time I was converting, some of my coworkers did not seem to take me seriously and that kind of hurt. I'm glad that, job-wise, I was able to make a clean break eventually: my current coworkers have only ever known me as an observant Jew, and this has made some things much easier. No one here questions early winter-time Friday departures; the previous coworkers remembered when that wasn't an issue. (Yes, we did talk about it briefly in the interview; the response was along the lines of "why should that be an issue? don't worry about it".)

Oh, the third category of divine involvement? What I'll loosely call "fortune". But it'll have to wait for another time.

Comments

[jducoeur]

Coming at the question from an unfocused-religion POV (that is, I'm a fairly classic modern "seeker" type, without enough faith for any specific organized religion), my viewpoint on this sort of thing was articulated best by a line from B5, roughly "The universe always puts us where we need to be right now." (Okay, I know that drawing religious thought from B5 is ultimately geeky, but truth is truth, wherever its source.)

This was particularly driven home by my just-ended seven-month bout of unemployment. On the one hand, the experience was utterly terrifying. I've never been without at least a job offer for more than a week in my adult life, and the sense of failure that the whole thing instills, along with money worries, drove me into occasional depressions that were as bad as anything I've ever experienced.

Yet, stepping back from it, it was a positive experience on the whole. Having the free time left me with no excuse not to clean up my act on the diet/exercise front, with the result that my physical condition is improving for the first time in twenty years. (And the unemployment was long enough to actually turn those good habits into habits, so there's a good chance I can sustain them.) The prospect of running out of money forced me to actually undertake some shareware development, which helped me prove to myself that I can actually accomplish real work in my chosen field without an employer looking over my shoulder; that's been enormously helpful to my general outlook. After about five months, I finally started to truly relax for the first time in years. And then a job virtually landed in my lap serendipitously, just about when I'd had time to internalize these realizations. One can't help but see "nudges" in that.

All of this is a tad facile, of course, drawing conclusions from a rather mild experience. Still, the underlying effect on me personally has been rather profound...

-- Justin
Who just finished a rather good Teaching Company course on comparative religion, which spent a lot of time on the problem of divine justice, and finds this an interesting sidelight on that...