Reliance on God is wrong

Do not “leave everything to divine intervention…. It is not what God does for us that changes the human situation. It is what we do for God.” People need leaders, who are “unafraid to face the challenges of today and build for tomorrow instead of, as so often happens, fighting the battles of yesterday.” One cannot rely on yesterday’s decision; “no two generations are alike.”

We dare not sit passively while alive and seek God in a realm beyond life. We must seek God in life and in how we live. God gave us a mind, a body, and society, and we must treasure them and constantly seek to improve them. We are not defined by what happens to us but by how we respond to what happens to us.

We are not defined by what happens to us but by how we respond to what happens to us.         

What do the Bible and others say?

The failure of leadership, whether of others or of oneself results from a failure to act, “Judaism and the way of God is God’s call to human responsibility.” When God called out to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, after they ate the forbidden fruit, “Where are you,” it was a call “not directed only to the first humans. It echoes in every generation.” Righteousness is not leadership.” True leaders have “the courage not to conform…. They have a vision (of the future), not what is, but what might be. They think outside the box. They march to a different tune…. Dead fish go with the flow. Live fish swim against the current.”

Rather than repeating ancient mistakes, following the traditional practices of old, people need to change. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, said, “since the world never stops for a moment, and the pattern of power changes like the movement of a kaleidoscope, you must constantly reassess chosen policies towards the achievement of your aims.” The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that his aim in philosophy is “to show the fly the way out of the flybottle.” Sacks explained: “The fly is trapped in the bottle. It searches for a way out. Repeatedly it bangs its head against the glass until at last, exhausted, it dies. Yet the bottle has been open all the time. The one thing the fly forgets to do is to look up. So, sometimes, do we.”

“Why did God call on Abraham to challenge Him (regarding God’s decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18)? Was there anything Abraham knew that God did not know? The idea is absurd. The answer is surely this: Abraham was to become the role model and initiator of a new faith, one that would not defend the human status quo but challenge it.” Exceptional as many societies were, one of the most remarkable phenomena in history is that, according to the Bible, God chose the very people who challenge heaven itself.

“What is it that made Jacob – not Abraham or Isaac or Moses – the true father of the Jewish people?” Jews are called “Children of Israel,” one of Jacob’s names. Because more than the others, Jacob faced repeated crises, stumbled at times, and suffered. “But Jacob endured and persisted…. To try, to fall, to fear, and yet keep going: that is what it takes” to grow.” Winston Churchill wrote: “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

These are some snip bits from the book Lessons on Leadership by Jonathan Sacks.