I long ago left my religion--Judaism--but I was brought up in a religious, almost orthodox, household. I was reading an essay by a Catholic writer and I was struck by how she expressed my upbringing, my thoughts & behavior as a child. She wrote: “I was a very, very good child -- I was pathologically obedient. I spent hours worrying about being good. I literally lay in my bed worrying about it. I was never really disobedient.”
Many of you listening must be thinking -- You, Henry, obedient, pathologically obedient? We know you as a rebel, a non-conformist. Believe me, as a child I obeyed. I wanted to be good.
The person interviewing this Catholic writer Mary Gordon, asks, “Do you think that part of your desire to be good had to do with the reality of reward & punishment, heaven & hell, saints & devils and things like that?”
Again, Mary Gordon’s answer would have been my answer. She says, “Absolutely. I really was in fear of my immortal soul a lot of the time. But there was also the idea of an infinitely loving God whom you were disappointing, whom you were hurting, when he had never done anything but love you. That sense of fear of the Loving One’s disappointment was in some ways much more potent than fear of hell fire.”
As a Jew I was told that every time I committed a good deed an angel was born who would argue my case when I died, and every time I committed a sin an angel was born that would argue against me when I died. Children, in some deep sense, believe that. I believed God would judge me, judge my behavior in this life. And I believed that if I behaved badly I was disappointing him.
Long ago a Jewish theologian, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said that even if there isn’t a God we need to create a belief in God -- and he meant a belief in an all powerful being who would, after we die, reward us or punish us. If we didn’t believe in such a being then we really could do whatever we wanted to do in this life -- or whatever gave us pleasure. After all, all there is, is this life, so we might as well, as the advertising slogan says, grab all the gusto we can.
Such a slogan cares little for others. It embodies a do-what-want to-do attitude--and the heck with everyone else, the heck with the consequences.
It is striking to me how a religious Jewish child & a religious Catholic child had many of the same thoughts. There is much that is good about a religious upbringing--but many religions are intolerant of other religions--but that’s another talk altogether.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein