Why God-guided people are leaving their synagogues/churches
Many Jews in the Judeo-Christian Western Civilization are leaving their synagogues and their rabbis, and I observe many Christians as well leaving their churches and priests.
I was trying to find “why?” and I have found the answer.
They are not leaving God with all His diversified images; they are leaving their spiritual institutions. That is how they respond to the conflict between the moralities of the two God-guided fundamental institutions of their lives – the morality of the public institutions and the morality of the religious institutions.
The morality is the conformity to ideals of right human conduct (Merriam-Webster dictionary), and the ideals in the presumably God-guided public institutions fundamentally different from the ideals of the presumably God-guided religious institutions.
The ideals of the public institutions (political, social, scientific, economic, arts …) of Judeo-Christian Western Civilization are the betterment of the human lives in this world without delegating the betterment to the life in the other world.
The ideals of the religious institutions (synagogues, churches) are … delegating the betterment to the life in the other world.
The overwhelming peoples’ majority would agree that the betterment of human lives in both worlds is the very good ideal. However, realization of such ideal would require the spiritual friendship of public and religious institutions that would deprive each of them the role of the “savior” and neither of them like it.
And many of the modern sophisticated people, when they are forced to choose the “savior,” prefer the presumably God-guided public institutions and abandon the presumably God-guided religious ones.
The Torah contains the answer why it is so and what should be done.
The Torah defines the very essence of the true God and His relationships with the humans.
The very essence of God is the God-guided human morality in the public arena among the public institutions with God being the source of the morality; the very essence of God is not the religion and its religious institutions which were created by the humans to reinforce the God-guided human morality but eventually was consumed by worshipping and rituals.
To resolve the conflict between the public and religious institutions, and therefore to restore the trust in both institutions, both institutions should begin talking to each other with purpose of creating the mutually agreed approach on the God-guided betterment of human wellbeing here in this world.
This Blog “Intellectual Judaism” explores the ways of bringing the two institutions together.
In essence, “Intellectual Judaism” applies the wisdom of Albert Einstein – “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth” – to resolving this conflict.
Various publications in this Blog, and numerous comments to the publications, may help the readers figure out what everybody may do to bring together public and religious institutions and make them work in unison for the betterment of human lives.
***The key to this approach is the following thought***
God created all humans in His own image and likeness as unique individuals, and God placed these unique human individuals in completely different life circumstances that are unique for each of them. It well might be the case, and I believe that is the case, that God provided them with the unique ability to tailor His (God’s) moral guidance to their unique life circumstances.
In the public institutions, this tailoring is done by the ideals of individual freedoms and responsibilities, and that is what is missing in the religious institutions. To fix it, the authoritative spiritual leaders should stop imposing on the people their own vision of the “truth” but rather teach the people to search for the God-guided individual “truth.”
Please, read the other posts in this blog where this thought is detailed in many articles, and please leave your comments
