If G-d will be with me, and will keep me on this way which I am going, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, and I come again in peace to my father's house: then shall the Lord be my G-d; and this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be G-d's house; and of all that thou wilt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee. (XXVIII:20-22)This is not the first bargaining scene we've come across. There's G-d's conditional welcome of the first woman and man to the Garden. There's G-d's rebuke of Cain (which has such murderous consequences). There's the rainbow covenant with Noah. There's the whole impossible miracle with the 99-year-old Abram becoming studmeister of the nation, and the circumcision bargain, the whole Sodom routine of sparing the city for the sake of five righteous people, and of course the temptation of Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac.
In this passage we have G-d making this phenomenal fertility promise to Jacob and Jacob says, "Yo, gimme food and clothes and safe passage, and I'll let you be my god and I'll even tithe to you."
All these bargains and negotiations and temptations are about power and desire. They are about establishing the rules of a right relationship with G-d. And I think perhaps they are about trying to figure out how to create a better match between what it is G-d really wants from us, and what it is we really want from G-d. This is what I would like is to discuss, and to frame the discussion I want to share some thoughts I have been entertaining about bargains and tests and when it is people try to figure out what we really want from a relationship with the Divine.
People often think of tests as the points when it is most difficult to give G-d what G-d wants (let's say, for short hand, that G-d wants us to demonstrate faith, grace, and courage). It's easy to have faith when things are fine, or when you're in a slight panic and you think G-d is offering some safe harbor. This is Jacob's bargain -- show me goodness and protection and I will believe. It's easy to be brave when there is no extraordinary challenge. It's easy to be graceful when there's nobody pushing your buttons. So a test is a good idea to check out the depth of what you have in you for G-d: do you have grace under pressure? courage in the face of adversity? faith when everything around you inspires doubt and despair? This is a very conventional story about what we want from G-d (that is, comfort and reassurance that there is order in the universe and meaning in suffering). It is moreover a conventional understanding of what a test is for; this is the story people tell themselves to explain "why bad things happen to good people." That is, we think it is easy to believe when we're in a groove, and that the real test of faith is believing when you've had the rug pulled out from under you. Sound familiar?
But what if you turn this conventional wisdom on its head? I suspect that for some of us it is easier to believe under adversity, specifically because it is harder to have grace and faith and courage in the face of temptation or testing. After all, the real "temptation" is to believe that we are sufficient without G-d. The complacent delusion of self-sufficiency is, however, impossible to sustain under adversity. It's no test of faith to see if we believe, when we're stressed out, what we can agree to when we have no cause to doubt. The test of faith is not, "how can G-d let this horrible thing happen in the world?" The test of faith is, "how can I carry a relationship with the Divine from a moment of need to a moment of peace?"
Now, here's the part I haven't figured out how to talk about. Although I want to believe that everyday practice is the substance of spiritual life, I suspect faith doesn't inevitably come from living the ordinary life in the ordinary way. Faith sometimes comes from realizing that human grace and courage will not suffice. Since we have to choose life, we have to be open to a form of support that will enable us to do that when human frailty would make it bloody unlikely. I don't think G-d actually cares as much about grace and courage as we do, but they are the gifts G-d uses to get us to faith, because they are the only ways we can respond to humiliation with integrity. They are the substance of the bargain; they are what G-d gives us so we can take what injures us and heal it instead of twisting ourselves forever to compensate for the wounds of life. And that gift can be a basis for faith in the midst of crisis. In other words, it is perhaps when we are most sorely tested that we can most easily believe, because it is then that we need the most what G-d is best equipped to give us ... and that which is mostly likely in turn to elicit from us what G-d most wants to receive: that is, our action in the face of our understanding that G-d always enters into equal relationships.
The problem driving all this, of course, is what to do with suffering, so as not to suffer over it. Suffering has plunked me right down in the presence of G-d, and I have no clue what to do about it. I am curious to discuss people's experience with the relationship between what G-d wants from us and what we want from G-d -- do we want comfort or challenge? I am also hungry to hear your observations about when it is easy to dismiss those desires for connection ... and when we cannot help but reach out and touch the face of G-d.