Foundational Questions

According to the armchair economist Steven Landsburg, there are two great mysteries of the universe. The first, not surprisingly, is “Why is there something instead of nothing?” Why do we – why does anything – exist at all? The second question is slightly less expected and though it seems trivial at first, I believe it is a question that has earned its seat at the metaphysical table, which is: “Why do people lock their refrigerator doors?” Or, to put it another way, why do we create obstacles to partaking in the very activities that our sense of self-discipline should restrain us from? As different as the two questions may seem, both in content and in tone, they are questions asked not only by Landsburg, but by everyone, from the youngest of children to the wisest of philosophers. They are questions of deep metaphysical significance that have occupied all faith traditions, from the ancient philosophers to the contemporary halls of the academy.

Let’s begin with the first. For both believers and unbelievers, the first question – why the world exists at all – is a question that cannot be avoided. Believers, myself included, sometimes think we can make ourselves immune to this question merely by affirming our belief in God – by saying that the world exists because God willed it into existence. On closer inspection, however, this answer proves unsatisfactory and deficient when one realizes that all it has actually accomplished is to shift the goal posts onto the playing field. Why, after all, would God – who is presumably all-powerful, eternal and perfect in every way – need to create a world in the first place? The thoughtful believer knows that his or her belief only makes this question more prickly, not less.

Atheists, on the other hand, have an understandable tendency to adopt an air of superiority on this front. Having not bought into the whole “God Idea,” they believe themselves in their unbelief to be disinterested bystanders to this age-old conversation. As Jim Holt relates in his newest book on the topic, when Napoleon asked Laplace where God was in his celestial scheme, Laplace famously replied, Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse, “I had no need of that hypothesis.” (Holt, p.7) And yet, as Holt also makes clear, even those with no need for God are still confronted with the brute fact of existence. The avowed atheist Christopher Hitchens (may his soul be bound up in God’s Eternal embrace) when asked about the origins of the universe, replied, “I’d love to know what came before the Big Bang.” Or, slightly more poetically, the cosmologist Stephen Hawking once asked, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? Why does the universe go through all the bother of existing?” (Holt, p. 5)

I could go on, but I am willing to venture that while we all may have pondered the question of “Why is there something instead of nothing?” it is the second question, “Why do people lock their refrigerator doors?” that occupies far more of our emotional energy. Why would we, why do we, put obstacles between ourselves and that midnight snack? We are rational, we are intelligent, we know the costs and benefits of a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, the rewards and consequences of our actions. We can do the math in our head, and yet we still create hurdles to the behavior. We hide our cigarettes, we invest in saving accounts designed to discourage withdrawals, we put our alarm clocks on the other side of the room, we set our watches ten minutes fast knowing we have set them ten minutes fast. When I go out to dinner, I leave my iPhone elsewhere, not trusting myself not to check it. Landsburg lists all these behaviors – and we can all think of others – concluding that “Like Odysseus resisting the Siren’s call, we lash ourselves to the mast,” creating elaborate schemes to resist the urge to do that which we know we shouldn’t be doing anyway. The refrigerator question, silly as it at first, is a question about the mysterious construction and constitution of our souls, the deep mysteries buried within our ethical selves shaping our deeds.

“Why is there something instead of nothing?” and “Why do people lock their refrigerator doors?” Maybe not the only two, but certainly two central questions of existence. But before we delve deeper, it is worth pausing to note that these are the very two questions with which the Torah begins. After all, what do we read about today if not the story of existence and the story of the strength and limits of the human will? A universe unformed and void, tohu va-vohu, until God called out, “Let there be light.” Six days of creation, culminating with Adam and Eve fashioned in the divine image. And no sooner is humanity introduced to the scene than we are confronted with our inability to maintain the explicit boundaries of existence. “Of every tree of the garden you are free to eat, but as for the tree of knowledge … you must not eat of it.” (Gen 2:16-17). The instructions are clear, the consequences stated and without missing a beat, the young couple ignore the prohibition, and having proved themselves incapable of self-restraint, are thrown out of the Garden. The refrigerator, as it were, is locked up, safe from the insistent and prying grasp of human urging.

I thought long and hard about why it is that our Torah, the central narrative for our faith, should begin with these two themes. I pondered whether in the intersection of these two imponderables there is perhaps a shared answer.

Perhaps the closest thing to an answer – to both the first and the second question– comes by way of a famous rabbinic comment regarding the creation of humanity. The midrash explains that in Genesis 2:7 God “formed,” va-yitzer, humanity. The rabbis were aware that the Hebrew verb va-yitzer, “to form” overlaps with the word yetzer, which means impulse. Humanity, created in the divine image, was created with the same yetzer as God employed to will creation into existence. In other words, whether we understand it or not, humanity is filled from the get-go with the same mysterious impulse that prompted the creation of the universe. This will, these desires and impulses, good and bad, (tov v'ra), are part and parcel of who we are as human beings, part and parcel of the divine DNA. As the Jewish mystics explain, the human will is a microcosm for the macrocosm that is the divine will.

The connection is made explicit by Rabbi Nachman who stated that so necessary is the yetzer, the impulse, that were we not to have it, a person would not build a house, get married, or conduct business. (Bereishit Rabbah 9:7). Our impulses, our drives, our ambitions are at the very core of our creative capacity, the fuel that makes the world go round. Not only is the yetzer not “bad” per se, but it is the leavening agent that makes everything possible. Without it the world would not have been created. Without it we would not be individuals capable of creativity.

Except when it goes unchecked. Because though crowned with glory and blessed with the creative capacity that is the mark of the divine, we are all, at the end of the day, made lower than the angels; we are mere flesh and blood. Like Cain, each of us struggles with what it is to be filled with an overflowing impulse, acutely aware that to give ourselves entirely over to that impulse takes us further away from God, not closer. To give ourselves over to this yetzer, to let the impulse go unchecked – as evidenced from certain fallen cyclists this past week or my last visit to Sixteen Handles – leads to greed, to avarice, gluttony and beyond. If as Mark Twain famously said, “Humans are the only animals that blush,” then it follows that were we to be left to the mercy of our impulses, we would lose the only thing that separates us from the animal world of which we are a part.

And this is, for better and for worse, where things stand. Caught betwixt and between. The very will that brought the universe into being, the very will that drives our creativity and is the essence of our humanity, is the very will that must be watched, checked, and controlled. We know we shouldn’t open the refrigerator, but the flesh is weak. Nonsensical as it is, it makes perfect sense: we create barriers to prevent ourselves from giving in; obstacles that actually enable us to be better than we would be otherwise. In fact, I would go so far as to say it is those very people who are most aware of their human shortcomings who are best positioned to aspire towards the divine.

“We live,” wrote Lev Shestov, “surrounded by an endless multitude of mysteries.” It seems to me that the most profound mysteries of all are to be found either at the outer frontiers of the universe or the innermost depths of our souls. The wisdom of our tradition is the small but gripping possibility that there is a mystical connection between the two, that our individual wills are somehow representative of the Cosmic Will itself. In this very realization lies the secret not only to our humanity, but also to the spiritual possibilities within our grasp. To be created in the image of the divine means that within each of us sits the key to understanding the divine. Sometimes a glance inwards provides insight to questions much larger than ourselves. And sometimes it is the very wisdom suggested so long ago by our sacred foundational texts that brings us a bit closer to responding to the urgent questions lurking within us all here today.