The World At My Door
I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is the result of rivalry between a man and his neighbor. This too is vanity and striving after wind. Ecclesiastes 4:4 NASB
Every – One of the claims of some religious systems is that only those actions taken “in the Spirit” and only those deeds accomplished “with the will of the Father” have merit. In other words, there is a chasm between what is spiritual and what is material, what is motivated by heavenly pursuits and what is motivated by earthly desires. If you do something that has a hint of personal gain associated with it, then God isn’t so pleased and He doesn’t count your effort as righteous credit. This all sounds very lofty and high-minded. There’s only one small problem. If we really, really examine virtually all of our actions, we can probably find a hint of self somewhere in the mix and that means, of course, that “all of our deeds are as filthy rags.” We are defeated before we begin.
Some versions of Christian theology rush to the rescue. After all, we don’t want to live in a world where everyone feels defeated and gives up even trying to be good. So theology often counters with the claim that righteous merit isn’t earned anyway. It’s all a matter of God’s choosing. So since God has already granted merit, then what you actually do doesn’t have eternal consequences for you. Therefore, you can continue to work at being good even though you know you can’t quite make it all the way because being good is still a reasonable goal for a society to function without chaos and anarchy. Other theological systems simply confirm that your efforts and actions really don’t have any true spiritual value, but God’s election isn’t based on this anyway so what you do doesn’t really matter to God. If you are one of the chosen, then God knows you will produce righteous so you don’t need to be concerned about possible hints of selfishness.
Judaism opposes any of these solutions. Judaism accepts the fact that sometime worldly motives produce righteous consequences. Qohelet goes so far as to say that every labor and skill in the human arena is the result of “rivalry.” The Hebrew text is revealing. First, of course, is the universal category “every” (“all”) in the Hebrew word kol. Unless the Teacher (Qohelet) is lying to us, this means that all human behavior is partially influenced by the yetzer ha’ra. Nothing in the world of human interaction comes from pure yetzer ha’tov. But this is what we would expect, for the yetzer ha’ra is not evil. It is the desire to make the world into what I want. As such it is the absolutely necessary motive power to change anything at all. As the Talmud says, “Were it not for the evil inclination, no one would build a house, marry a wife, have children, or engage in business” (Genesis Rabbah 9:7). Rabbis Sacks notes, “Purity of heart is essential to the relationship between man and God. But in relations between man and man, what matters is the outcome, not the sentiment which brought it about.”[1]
What is the “rivalry” that is essential to human effort? The Hebrew is qana, an interesting word that can mean both zeal and jealousy. “This verb expresses a very strong emotion whereby some quality or possession of the object is desired by the subject.”[2] Once again we see that it isn’t the emotion that is wrong (or sinful). It is the application of the emotion, the direction that I choose to go as a result of my strong desire that causes me to assert the dominance of the yetzer ha’ra rather than bend its power to serve the yetzer ha’tov.
Life is choice, my friend, and there is no escaping it. No theological excuses. No opt-out clause. No denying the power that makes you human. You have to choose—and what you choose determines the direction you take and the reputation you carry.
Topical Index: every, all, kol, rivalry, envy, jealousy, zeal, qana, Ecclesiastes 4:4, yetzer ha’ra
[1] Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference, p. 98.
[2] Coppes, L. J. (1999). 2038 קָנָא. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke, Ed.) (electronic ed.) (802). Chicago: Moody Press.
“But in relations between man and man, what matters is the outcome, not the sentiment that brought it about.”
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“You are no better than your last deal.”
Why can’t I trust my own intentions? Because my own sense of self preservation is going to automatically cause me to paint myself to myself in the best possible light, and to excuse myself to myself with at least SOMETHING, and if that cannot be found, I am going to be telling myself “well, at least you meant well!”
I had a precious person in my life, who was merrily and enthusiastically spreading chaos far and wide tell me with pure earnestness, when I asked them why they were not at least TRYING to adjust their miserable outcomes, “Don’t they say the road to heaven is paved with good intentions?” That’s a good sample of how insanity works, folks!
I have to adjust every time the outcome is wrong. If I am falling short of the glory of G-d, then I have to repent to all and try again. The outcome has to be the measure, and I have to be accountable for it, otherwise I would have nothing to steer by. The result of my last effort sets the steerage for the next one. If I want my course to change, then I adjust according to the outcome, not the intention. My intentions, you see, are only a reflection of my LAST outcome, too. They cannot be trusted because they are also just a product of my last choices. Everything in the yetzer ha-ra, in fact, is a product of choices past. What I commonly think of as ‘myself’ is then also no better than the outcome of my last deal. I am traveling on yesterday, in fact, if I am in the flesh, and I am bound to it, too. Think carefully about it. What is another definition of living in yesterday? It means that you aren’t alive today. To be “quickened”, then, in that old KJV translation, means to be made alive; to be brought into the present. If I am only a product of what has already been chosen, I am dead, folks: dead in trespasses and sins. Bound to yesterday. I need to be delivered from this body of death, but I don’t need it at the end of time: I need it right now!
Grace is what I have to have on a continual basis because every time I make the choices of death; every time I yield to the yetzer ha-ra, I am tying myself to the past again, where no freedom to choose is possible. The curses are a stop-gap measure, given because of grace and mercy; intended to at least give me a chance to choose again, and with more motivation – short of death, anyway. John says that some sins, those he calls “sins unto death”, override grace AND mercy, and still dump us into the arms of death. He said it is not something you can override with prayer, either. At that point, the only hope is to turn around.
Faith is the answer to the question of how to get the right outcome.. For such a long time I believed it was my intention, which is a creation of the yetzer ha-ra, and therefore is a flesh response, that determined the outcome. I could not have been more wrong. (If you want to check it out, ruthlessly set out to count how many times the result turned out the way you intended, and you are going to see the insanity.) Faith is where I let love call the shots. Love is always in the present tense, as it is an action. My intentions are a reflection of what I chose last time. I may want all the best, but my intentions are set, are calibrated, to start from my last choice, and that setting is always going to include some sort of cover-butt, or excuse for, what I chose before. Not a good basis for love, folks! Faith, however, calls the shots according to love; it literally, as the verse says, “works by love”. Faith does not seek the self-justification that my intentions will have automatically built in to the equation. Faith leap-frogs me entirely and sets a new basis for action. Faith, then will always require humility; I have to be willing to agree to set aside my own interests, and trust that what is good for others is going to be good for me, too. (Of course, that is what a good steward is going to be operating out of, anyway.) Faith delivers me out of the past, and into the scary present, right at the sheer edge of the precipice. Only when I am in faith, then, am I really alive; in the present. But then, that is the only place I am going to be able to account properly for myself!
So…was it the yetzer ha’ra or the yetzer ha’tov that led Ruth to curl up at the feet of Boaz?
Or both? Are our choices so pure that only ONE shows up?
Same question for Havvah in Gan Edan. Apparently, for Havvah, it started with yetzer ha’tov and digressed to yetzer ha’ra. A very slippery slope. Our decisions are apparently a brawl for purity down to the last moment of no return. Then comes realization and hopefully teshuva, that which should have taken place in that last moment. The cycle repeats in the next moment.
We have eyes that cannot see. Or, at least, eyes that are very foggy and blurry.
Is Shaul’s statement about doing the very thing he doesn’t want to do the battle of choice on that slippery slope that must always stay on the radar in order to be subjugated in each instance of choice?