Heschel's “God In Search Of Man“

The reason for this viewpoint is twofold. First, Heschel’s basic insight is that God is to be found through the spiritual awakening to the mysteries of this world. This standpoint is relevant to all persons to seek to find Go

This should not leave us believing that God is disinterested in establishing relationships with us as individuals, or that all the effort must originate with us. From the moment of creation God has singled out mankind out as worthy to know Her. This is the great paradox of religion, it is God who is pursuing mankind. “It is as if God were unwilling to be alone, and She had chosen man to serve Her.” The history of the earth, seen even today through the Bible, has been God calling out to mankind. Religion has been our answer to this call.

Having established the foundations for our knowledge of God we may now look to how mankind relates to God - what is the status of the relationship between God and mankind? Heschel states that our immediate relation to God is the experience of awe, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. Thus our relationship to God is our relationship to wisdom. How is it then, that we begin to establish this relationship with our Creator? First we must know that “understanding of God depends on mankind’s readiness to approach God and God willingness to be approached.” Mankind’s relationship with God must be a mutually desired exchange, just as God cannot force us to believe, we cannot force God into dialogue with us. Next, Heschel says, we must realize our own lack of knowledge. “Only those who have experienced ultimate not-knowing . . . total muteness, are able to enter the meaning of God, a meaning greater than the mind.”

God is in need of us to reach Her, “in need of man’s share in redemption. God who created the world is not at home in the world.” God tells us in the Bible, “I am a stranger on earth.” Mankind has forsaken and alienated God, has removed God from our world and made Her as a stranger in Her own land. This is the reason for God’s call to us, the reason for revelation to the prophets. Revelation lingers as an absurdity so long as we cannot comprehend the realness of God’s pursuit of mankind. Once we come to grapple with this idea we must seek the purpose behind the pursuit, a purpose we cannot understand - the redemption of the world. We can, however, ask what it is that God needs of us to accomplish this goal; how is it that we should live in order to aid the divine?

The theory behind our religious understanding is that something is being asked of us. We are being asked to emulate the philosophy of God. As we are created “in the image of God” we are also created with the mind of God, and we should behave accordingly. Thus “when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion - its message becomes meaningless” as it is no longer the message of God. Heschel believed strongly in the call to emulate God’s compassion and concern for mankind through action and deeds. He was a courageous social activist, who ardently believed that prayer and devotion could not be separated from communal action. In 1965, Heschel told a reporter in Selma, Alabama, that “when I march . . . my feet are praying.” Later that same year, Heschel aided in founding an interreligious clergy group to oppose the United States’ involvement in the war in Vietnam.

On the most basic level the answer to this question is found inside us, we know it as our conscience. It manifests itself as a “voice that reaches everywhere, knowing no mercy, digging in the burial places of charitable forgetfulness.” Some will say this results from a development in our subconscious as an attitude towards the strictures of society. To deny that claim and realize our accountability to God is an essential movement in religious consciousness. We must realize that we are not the ultimate authority; “we have not the power to forgive ourselves” we must be “open and communicative to someone who transcends us and is concerned with our life.”

The spiritual person’s feeling of awe precedes the acquisition of faith, indeed

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