58 Spirituality Studies 9-2 Fall 2023 Perhaps Freud was right that often the idea of God that many people have is nothing more than a psychological projection of their inner need to pay homage to an idol. That is why Amos said, as I mentioned before, that God must be sought, or as the psalmist says (Psalms 145:18): “God is close to all who cry out for God’s presence, to all who cry out with the truth.” In life itself, day by day, God must be sought. The action of seeking God is the consequence of another search that man must undertake. The famous Argentine writer Ernesto Sábato (2003, 7) reflected: One embarks towards distant lands, or seeks the knowledge of men, or inquiries into nature, or seeks God; later he noticed that the phantasm he was chasing was he himself. When one finds themselves, when he or she sees their being without grandiloquence or melodrama, then they can open a space in their spiritual core for an encounter with God. The Freudian notion that through mental exercise one can master destructive impulses and create something sublime that he calls culture leads to the question: why should an individual do this if in the end, as Freud himself says, such a process of self-limitations only brings pain? I might answer this question by saying that a society’s culture enhances the human condition. But if human existence does not have a transcendent dimension, as Ecclesiastes (1:9, 14) would say, then everything is irrelevant, what was is what will be since everything is vanity, everything is futile. The lack of deep religiosity leads to an existential void that can lead people to horrible behaviors. The pursuit of meaningless grandiosity – such as the lust to conquer other countries, to possess immense wealth, or to achieve fame – becomes fanatical. It makes those so obsessed temporarily feel like idols. This self-deception fills our world with fire and destruction. One of the questions that arises when reading the biblical story of Abraham is how it came to pass that the first of the patriarchs received the command from God: “Go from your land, from the place of your birth to the land that I will show you.” (Gn 12:1). How is it that Abraham conceived of a single God, the Creator of all that exists? In the Midrash Rabba (Bereshit Rabba 39:1), Rabbi Itzhak explains: Abraham’s situation can be compared to that of a person who wandered from place to place and suddenly sees a great fortress on fire. He said to himself: can it be said that this fortress is without any leadership? In the same way Abraham our patriarch did, he said: can it be said that this world does not have a leader? Then God was revealed to him and told him, ‘I am the owner of the world.’ What does the great burning fortress represent? According to the version of this tale in Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer (1934), the burning fortress represents Nature and its perfection, which could not have come about by chance but is rather the work of a great Creator. To this can be added another midrashic speculation that surely Abraham was delighted by the technological developments in Babylon, where he was born. The ability to construct tall buildings, according to the biblical story, led the inhabitants of that land to erect a tower that would reach to heaven. Observers like Abraham would have been amazed by humanity’s creative capacities. They will deduce that in the same way that human constructions have a maker, so too must the great Universal Creation. According to the Midrash Lekach Tov (1880, 55), the burning fortress represents a world that defies God and distances the divine presence from human reality. From the first human generation, in which Adam and Eve transgressed God’s directions, followed by the corrupt generation of Noah, which was followed by the builders of the tower of Babel, there was a refusal on the part of humanity to share their existence with God. Abraham discovered God’s reality in the midst of that pagan reality. That, the midrash says, is why God began to speak to and befriend him. Our world has the same characteristics as those described by these two midrashim. On the one hand we can see a great development in science and technology. On the other hand, we perceive generations that have been banishing God, and with God the virtues of justice, mercy, and goodness, which are what the Creator most desires from humanity. It is up to each one of us to search for the master of the fortress that is on fire, to try to perceive his intentions, and turn to him just as Abraham did four millennia ago. Abraham’s legacy continues to challenge all of us in the present and will do so forevermore.
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