Look at the ways Jews, Christians, and Muslims describe their God, and therefore themselves. The stories of the gods are often windows into the relationships we have with each other, and ways we understand (or struggle to understand) our place in the cosmos. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all begin with the story first presented in the Hebrew Bible, starting with the Book of Genesis and the Garden of Eden (pp. 77-78). This one God is described as all-powerful, all-knowing, and immortal. But it is also a God that is mysterious to the average person, and also to the prophets who are especially close to God. Even Moses, the Jewish prophet who is also an important figure in the Qur’an, is denied a clear view of this God. In the Book of Exodus, when Moses asks who this God is, he gets ghosted with the enigmatic line, “I am what I am” (p. 79). And yet this mysterious God is clearly concerned that the Jewish people follow a sometimes austere ethical code of conduct. The giving of the Ten Commandments on top of Mt. Sinai is seen as a reforging of a two-way relationship where the Jewish people agree to be better people and God, in turns, agrees to care for them. Since the time of Moses, Jewish intellectuals have tried to define this relationship with the unseen Creator. If the contract, or covenant, is still binding today, why do bad things happen to good people every day (pp. 83-85)? What happens when we die? Are we free to do things that surprise God, or have all our decisions been a part of God’s plan already decided? These are but a few of the crucial questions left unanswered for many. If Jews knew more about this God, the hope is that they might bear their earthly suffering a little more courageously knowing that a larger plan is in place. But the Jewish God remains always just out of reach. The Medieval theologian Maimonides argued that “God cannot be the object of human comprehension, that none but Himself comprehends what He is, and that our knowledge consists in knowing that we are unable truly to comprehend Him” (p. 80). How is it possible to have any kind of meaningful relationship with a God that we can’t rationally comprehend? For philosophers like Martin Buber, we have to learn to speak to God like a friend that we might not fully understand. Buber worried that a fractured relationship with God would lead to fractured relations with each other. “That we can no longer carry on a genuine conversation from one camp to the other is the severest symptom of the sickness of present-day man,” he wrote (p. 83). Because the rational line of investigation is so often blocked, Jews have traditionally tried to find alternate ways of finding God, like exploring their faith through loving (p. 82), longing (pp. 83-85), and humour (pp. 87-89). Which Jewish stories or practices are meant to appeal to our rational side? Which stories or practices are meant to appeal to our non-rational side? (Feel free to use your own definition of what it means to rational). What are some of the benefits and challenges to believing in one God? Watch the first 30 minutes of the 2009 debate between Christopher Hitchens (an avowed atheist), Harold Kushner (a Jewish rabbi), and Peter Gomes (a Baptist minister). Let’s pay special attention to the ways in which all three scholars struggle with the tensions of yearning for a God in a world that contains so many reasons for doubt. Rev. Gomes, for example, argues, “Religion is a human construct, not a divine construct. And as human beings, flawed as we are, we’re going to construct religions which will aspire to great things but on some level we’ll be incapable of those great things because it depends on us, fallible, frail, difficult human beings” (16.00). Rabbi Kushner discusses his own private family suffering. After questioning his faith in God, Kushner concludes that “God is not all-powerful. And God is looking for our forgiveness” (28:31). This is one way to explain the bad things that happen in the world everday, but as Hitchens points out, such a radical view is not necessarily shared in mainstream Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Why might Kushner’s God be “looking for our forgiveness?” Does this God suffer alongside humans? Why/how do both theologians struggle with their faith in response to Hitchens’ atheism? As we’ve seen, describing this Jewish has been a longstanding struggle for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Like we discussed in Daoism, the words we use seem always to fall short. And yet we rely on words to help give us some level of clarity or understanding. As we see read in our article about Jewish feminist thinkers, “The language we use reflects and in turn shapes the way we construct our experience of the world.” In the English language (along with the Hebrew language) the words we use are so often gendered. Traditionally we have used a male pronoun to describe this one God in English, the word, “He.” What does it mean to assign God a sexuality, if not a gender, when it is commonly understood that the Jewish God does not have a human body? Should God’s perfection be equated with male beings only? As Judith Plaskow writes, “[M]etaphors matter – on both an individual and social level” (p. 82). Which non-gendered description of the one God appeals to you most? Can you come up with other metaphors of God that don’t emphasize male or female gender categories? What are some advantages and disadvantages in using these other metaphors?