Life, of course, isn’t all about survival, any more than it is all about ambition or pleasure. But all of these are components of our lives. If there’s one peoole that we can learn something about finding meaning in the midst of uncertainly of survival from, it’s the Jews. It’s amazing that they are still here today. And even more amazing is the fact that their survival and their success as a culture has not depended on the world making things easy for them. They seem to have learned how to create success anywhere they go. And everywhere they’ve gone they’ve tended to find a world out to destroy them.
So how have the Jews survived, and not even survived but prospered? Is there some connection to the strategies of meaning we’ve been discussing? I think there is. They have had a durable vitality to the life of their culture, which can only come from having a durable meaning to their lives that does not depend on either their own perfection or the perfection of the world around them. They have had a constant habit of spinning straw into gold, and also a habit of losing that gold and then making it anew.
According to their own history, they have lived through a constant cycle where they depend on and trust their God and achieve stability and prosperity. Then, as soon as they have got used to prosperity, they forget their God and stop living in proper relationship to their covenant with him. Laziness and blindness and corruption sneak in, and they forget and neglect their foundations. The universe throws a storm at them, and they are unprepared to withstand it. They fall and are enslaved and scattered. And in time they come back to their foundation and rise again.
The surprising thing about the Jews isn’t that they rise and fall. Everyone does that. What is surprising about the Jews is that, no matter how many times or how far they fall, they always seem to come back to their foundations and rise again. Their foundations endure, even if their cities and temples and great constructions do not. And so they have outlasted empire after empire because, though they cannot always save their houses or their lives, the foundations of their nation are built upon a rock that endures.
The Jewish approach to life could be summed up by the verse, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Jesus, a Jew, spoke these words to Jews, and they were in keeping with what the prophets had been telling them for centuries. But what does it mean?
It means, attend to your foundations first, and everything else, all the great things you wish for, can be built atop them. And rebuilt, if necessary, again and again. Seek first the kingdom of God, the foundational, stable repository of value and the proper relation to life and being and meaning and value, and everything else can be added to that. And if it all falls, which for the Jews it often did, especially the higher their towers rose and the further they got from their foundations, you won’t be swept away. The lynchpin of your meaning and strength and value and hope won’t be swept away.
That is a life of a culture and of an individual that is tenacious. It is living. It grows and regrows out of something rooted. Meaning, more than anything else, is the central problem of humanity. Solve that problem, and all other problems can be endured. Build that foundation, and all other things you could want can be built atop it. And that is why I believe the Jews have endured and succeeded against all odds.
We could all stand to learn a little from their experiences.
Mr Nobody's Patented Blog 