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The God Squad: Do what you love? Not always

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The Jewish people are now in between the New Year, Rosh Hashana and the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. As I wish my Christian readers Merry Christmas and Happy Easter each year, and wish my Muslim readers a blessed Ramadan, today I’d like to send out to all my Jewish readers my blessings for a good New Year.

For the occasion, I’ve condensed one of my New Year sermons. This way, interested readers will know generally what I plan to preach about, and those actually listening can sleep more peacefully during the event, knowing they have the main takeaway points in advance.

This year, I’m preaching about the difference between doing what you love and doing your duty. I was moved to pick this topic after reading a brilliant essay by Miya Tokumitsu, “In the Name of Love” (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/01/in-the-name-of-love/).

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Like Tokumitsu, I think it’s a wonderful blessing to be able to do what you love, but it’s also a curse. Doing what we love sounds terrific, but it actually turns us inward and away from doing necessary, hard and often sacrificial work that needs to be done in order to keep the world from falling apart — and to pay the rent.

The major religions of the world have many ways to express God’s desire for us to do our duty — to do the work that needs to be done — and almost no ways to express the desire to do what you personally love. The reason for this is that God wants us to serve the cause of truth and love of others, not the self-love of following our own personal bliss.

There are not enough volunteer firefighters, not enough people to serve at soup kitchens and not enough people to care for the needs of the elderly and disabled. Doing our duty gives our lives what Martin Luther King called length and breadth and height. What he did in mobilizing the struggle for civil rights was not always easy or safe, but it had to be done, and he felt that it was his duty to do it.

Doing what you love is also a privilege only a few can enjoy and still support their families. Tokumitsu quotes Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University — an impassioned pitch for doing what you love. She then reminds us that thousands of workers at Apple assembly factories labored under very difficult conditions so Steve Jobs could do what he loved without getting his black turtleneck dirty. Raising children and caring for elderly and infirm parents come with both agony and love. If we only did what we wanted to do, nobody would have kids or help their parents.

There’s a scene in Mel Brooks’ and Carl Reiner’s hilarious comedy routine “The 2,000-Year-Old Man,” in which Reiner asks Brooks how the idea of God began. Brooks explains that the early humans first adored “a guy in our village named Phil, and for a time we worshipped him. Phil was big and mean, and he could break you in two with his bare hands! One day, a thunderstorm came up, and a lightning bolt hit Phil. We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said to one another, ‘There’s something bigger than Phil!’”

We all need to serve something bigger than Phil.

The Kenyan marathon runner John Acari, who cramped up during the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games, still found the courage to somehow drag himself to the finish line hours after the winners had departed the stadium. When asked why he didn’t just quit, Acari said, “My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 5,000 miles to finish the race.”

The same duty that compels us to sacrifice for our family also ought to cause us to embrace a new and deeper patriotism. We have a duty to America that’s not the same as our duty to God, but as long as America stands as the bastion of freedom in the world, it is the same because God wants all people to live in freedom.

Mother Teresa had a business card that bore only her name and this saying: “Happiness is the natural fruit of duty.” If I was smart, I’d just say those seven words, then say, “Amen” and sit down, but I’m not that smart or that good. That’s why I need Yom Kippur, and if you are Jewish, I hope you need it, too.

May you be sealed in the Book of Life.

God bless, Rabbi Gellman

(Send QUESTIONS ONLY to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com.)

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