Being mindful is the key for a believer: Open your heart and eyes, have a faithful life
During my rabbinical school years, I attended a fascinating debate between two faculty members — one a devout believer, the other a staunch atheist. They disagreed about almost everything, and as the conversation wore on, each of them grew frustrated. Finally, the atheist exclaimed: “You keep asking me why I don’t believe, based on the Torah! Well, if I had seen firsthand the miracles described there — the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the thunderous voice upon Mount Sinai — then I, too, would have faith in your God.”
To which the believer responded: “No — if you had been there, you’d have turned to me and asked, ‘What’s this ruckus all about?’”
The story of the Exodus bears out the truth of this argument: Miracles never make believers out of skeptics. Pharaoh repeatedly fails to take to heart the lesson of the plagues; for him, seeing is not necessarily believing. In the face of one catastrophe after another, he is unmoved, adamantly refusing to let the Israelites go.
Alas, as the story of our liberation unfolds, it becomes painfully clear that the Israelites are equally unconvinced by miracles. Marvels and portents do not move us any more than they do Pharaoh. Much as his heart is hardened, the Israelites’ spirits are crushed. Thus, when Moses first demonstrates divine signs and proposes to bring us out of Egypt, we refuse to listen. Immediately after our miraculous passage through the Red Sea, we complain about the bitter water. Our response to the revelation at Mount Sinai is to ask Aaron to make us a golden calf.
Indeed, in the entire Hebrew Bible, there is not a single case of a miracle inspiring in anyone a sustained faith that endures beyond the immediate moment of the event. My teacher, Rabbi Herbert Brichto, z”l, argued that this is, in fact, the core lesson of miracles: They are literary devices to show that we should not look for supernatural signs to guide us. Torah comes to teach that portents and marvels are the poorest of grounds for spiritual living. We don’t believe on account of what we see; we see on the basis of what we believe.
So if miracles fall flat, what does constitute a firm foundation for a faithful life? David Foster Wallace tells the story of two young fish who are swimming along when they meet an older fish coming from the opposite direction. “Morning, boys,” he says, “How’s the water?” The two young fish continue along silently until eventually one of them looks at the other and asks, “What is water?”
Wallace’s point is simple: The only way to open our hearts — and therefore our eyes — is to live mindfully. What blinds the young fish — and Pharaoh and our own biblical ancestors and, of course, ourselves — is our tendency to operate wholly unconsciously, to take things for granted rather than making our choices consciously. Our challenge is, as Wallace notes, to keep reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water.” It all begins with mindfulness. Full consciousness is the real miracle.