The (Honest) Truth About the Garden
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It is a rather humbling to consider the degree to which our first and most ancient text understood the nature of our human condition. This past week you may have read the piece in the New York Times entitled “Why Big Liars Often Start as Small Ones,” reporting on the latest research to explain the slippery slope by which “wayward politicians, corrupt financiers, unfaithful spouses and others” explain their conduct. Mention is made of one social scientist, Professor Dan Ariely of Duke University, whose book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty and much-watched TED Talk are understood to best describe the moral climate of our age. Ariely’s thesis is that every human being, when left to his or her own devices, can fall prey to a degree of dishonesty. His book begins with an experiment in which a group is given a set time to answer a series of simple math questions, with a reward of one dollar for every correct answer. Time is called, the worksheets are handed in – with an average of four questions answered correctly. In the next group, the conditions, the questions, and the time limit are all the same, but this time, the participants are invited to shred their worksheets and self-report their results. Lo and behold, this group averages not four, but seven correct answers. In economic terms, Ariely explains the cost-benefit analysis at play in any act of dishonesty, be it golf, business, or our diets. First, the perceived probability of being caught; second, how much a person stands to gain from cheating; and third, the punishment one would receive were one to be caught.
While all this analysis explains a lot about human behavior, the real insight of Ariely’s book is that important as these variables may be in contributing to dishonesty, the most important factor is what he calls the personal “fudge factor,” the manner by which we self-justify our behaviors. Everybody, at the end of the day, would like to think of him or herself as righteous. In Ariely’s words “We cheat up to the level that allows us to retain our self-image as reasonably honest individuals…” ever “seeking to identify that line where we can benefit from dishonesty without damaging our own self image.” (pp. 23, 28) So for instance, while I would never steal from the synagogue’s petty cash, I may very well take a ream of paper, having rationalized to myself that I am, after all, printing my sermons from my home computer. The golfer may take a mulligan, shaking off that first swing as an infraction that is, after all, part of the game. Or, to raise the stakes a little, the would-be adulterer need only reference his or her loveless marriage to explain away whatever misdeeds have been committed. People, generally speaking, are not dishonest, nor for that matter, would they ever wish to be categorized as dishonest. Like beauty itself, morality is often measured in the eye of the beholder, the problem being that at a certain point one’s moral compass deteriorates to the point of irrelevance. Ariely’s thesis is one and the same as the Garden of Eden: we all possess the instinct to do good and bad. In rabbinic language: Each one of us is created with a yetzer ha-tov, a good inclination, and a yetzer ha-ra, an evil inclination. Be it Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, or each of us in our own lives, the moral battleground is one the same – the two impulses of our souls pitted up against each other.
And it is here, where Ariely’s work concludes, that our work as a religious community begins. Because if Ariely is correct, if each one of us is but an arm’s length away from an act of dishonesty that can be justified away, then we need to do everything in our power to make sure our absolute moral health is maintained. And it is here, I believe, that our tradition provides three tried-and-true methods to help us win out in the moral dramas of our lives.
First and foremost, we need to establish and immerse ourselves in communities bound together by expectations of moral conduct. Over Yom Kippur, a congregant pulled me aside asking if he needed to recite every al het, every chest-beating sin, even if he knew that he had not committed them all. My answer to him is that the power of group confession is not merely to identify our personal shortcomings, but to publicly and communally agree to norms of behavior. We don’t cheat, we don’t lie, we treat people with kindness. In a follow-up to the math experiment, prior to handing out the worksheet, Ariely asked one group to try to list the last ten books they had read and another group to try to list the Ten Commandments. Every time, the group who had their moral memory jogged by way of the Ten Commandments displayed more integrity. Of all the reasons to be actively involved in a religious community, one good reason may just be that it places our imperfect souls in a community that aspires to moral behavior. Left to our own devices, all of us can be fall prey to dishonesty, so why wouldn’t we, the thinking goes, lean on each other to strengthen our resolve?
The second avenue goes beyond just being engaged in a religious community, to being engaged in religious practice – in Jewish terms, a life of mitzvot. It is by no means foolproof, but there is something about religious practice that bears the possibility of promoting moral health. My family is, not surprisingly, observant of Jewish law. The other day, one of my children, who shall remain nameless, broke a Jewish law about which they knew better. My concern was not the particular lapse, which unto itself was rather inconsequential, nor for that matter any belief that my kid would suffer some theological consequence resulting from the infraction. My concern, rather, was whether that lapse signaled a lack of self-discipline that could rear its head in far more consequential moments. You may or may not believe religious observance to be theologically compelling – that is a sermon for another day. But one undeniable dividend of living a life of mitzvot, how one eats, allocates time, dresses, and so on, is an intention-filled life in which every moment, every action, every decision can be understood as an opportunity for higher living, religiously and morally. No differently than regular gym attendance provides a regimen towards personal health, a life of mitzvot is a regimen for self-discipline, strengthening the muscle group of our yetzer ha-tov, our good inclination.
Finally, if we so choose, living a religious life provides a context in which our misdeeds, be they public or private, are ultimately, as the commercial goes, answerable to a higher authority. I remember in high school my parents once telling me that I should always act in a way that were they to be in the room, I would be completely comfortable. As people of faith, our moral compass is guided by the belief that our actions are both known and judged on high. We are never alone in the garden. My grandfather of blessed memory once preached a sermon asking, if Jewish morality could be distilled into one verse, what would it be? Perhaps “love your neighbor as yourself,” or maybe “remember that you were once a stranger in a strange land.” My grandfather’s answer to his own question was shiviti Hashem l’negdi tamid, “I have placed God before me always.” (Psalms 16:8) To live a life of shiviti is not to live with the fear of some big brother watching. Rather, to live a life of shiviti, of God-consciousness, means that even when all alone, be it on the streets of Paris or anywhere, we are never morally anonymous. We are all created in the image of God and as such, can and must live lives that aspire to the high moral possibilities of our existence.
Communal norms of behavior, a life of mitzvot, living lives with a sense of the divine presence. Once again, it is not foolproof; after all, religious communities do not lack for sinners. But it is a start, and we all need someplace to begin, especially on this Shabbat of new beginnings. Each and every one of us stands daily in the Garden of God, hearing that first question of the Bible, the question that still resonates today, the question of “Ayeka, where are you?” Neither then nor now is it a merely a question of geography. It is a question of morality: Where are you? Are you where you need to be, and if not, then how exactly will you get there? We know the tricks of self-justification, the self-deceptions of rationalization; we know lines exist and we vow to be vigilant not to cross them. It is not easy, not for Adam and Eve and not for us today. So let’s use all the tools at our disposal, leaning on each other, leaning on our tradition and yes, even leaning a little on God, and maybe, just maybe, in the year ahead our moral selves will prove able to weather the elements of the stormy world in which we live.