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Shoftim: kings and awe
I'll get back to the king, but first I want to tell a story.
Recently I was participating in an online Jewish forum when a Christian asked us for some advice. He wanted to be able to ask us questions and wanted to know what mistakes he should be careful about. He got a lot of practical advice about things like the "old testament" and how to talk about Jesus and whether it's ok for him to write "God" instead of "G-d". Then the conversation went in a more philosophical direction, and I was a little surprised to find myself saying roughly the following:
From the outside people sometimes see Judaism as a religion of "thou shalt not"s and perceive the mitzvot as a burden to be borne for a harsh master. Some of my non-Jewish relatives act as if I have food allergies and take pity on me because I can't go out shopping with them on Shabbat and so on. I've tried to explain to them, but I haven't succeeded. It's not that I can't eat pork, as if I'll get zapped if I do; it's that I don't. I am compelled not by dire warnings; I don't eat pork because God said not to and I care about God. I keep Shabbat because it's important to God. I don't follow these rules because God will do bad things to me if I disobey; it's not about fear of direct punishment. This can be, I've learned, hard to comprehend.
A rabbi I know likes to say that God so loved the Jewish people that He gave us His one and only torah. I chuckled the first time I heard this new form of a phrase familiar to me from another religion. I smiled the second time I heard it. After a few more repetitions, I started to understand it.
When you really look at it, the torah doesn't ask for major sacrifices from us. For example, I'm not required to take a vow of poverty and join a monastery; I'm not required to take up arms for the sake of a jihad or a crusade; I'm not required to risk my life except for a very few special circumstances that are unlikely to arise. Comparatively speaking, giving up bacon cheeseburgers is a piece of cake, so to speak.
Yes, God does make real, challenging demands of us too, in the realm of morals and character and interpersonal relations and tzedakah and, yes, ritual too. I'm not trying to trivialize torah. And I make plenty of mistakes in all of these areas and I feel bad about disappointing God, other people, and myself. And some mitzvot I don't do at all. But the torah that God gave our people has room for me nonetheless. God gave us a torah that allows for errors and teshuvah, learning and growth and change, gradually evolving in our love and respect and awe of God, all while we live in the world with its obligations and distractions and complications.
So back to the king. I used to think that the king had to carry around this sefer torah as a constant reminder of all the laws he needs to follow lest God grow angry with him. That may be part of it, if the king is not very far along in his religious development, but I don't think it ends there. The text tells us that he must do this so that he will be in awe (yirah) of God -- awe of God's grandeur and compassion, not fear of being punished if he makes a mistake. If you fear punishment you act to prevent it; if you are in awe then you want to heed the torah because it's your connection to the object of that awe, God. The scroll is a means for developing this awe, this yirat Adonai.
Those of us who aren't kings don't have to carry the scroll around every day, but if we think upon its words daily, learning and wrestling and arguing and perhaps understanding, then maybe we can become in awe of God too. And when we're in awe of God there is no more "I can't" or "I have to"; there is only "I will" and "I want to".
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