PRAYING BEFORE DOING, DOING BEFORE PRAYING . . . YOUR CALL

I have not led a particularly rough-and-tumble life. This epiphany came to me last Monday morning as the ER doc put five stitches into my badly sliced thumb, and I realized that, save for a little minor surgery, I had never before in 53 years required stitches for an injury.

The circumstances that necessitated the stitches bear repeating because of either my sheer forget-to-look-before-you-leap stupidity or the intimations of my potential for heroism. I am inclined toward the former, while my nearest and dearest lovingly insist on the latter.

We awoke last Monday morning to an extraordinarily huge clap of thunder in the midst of a rainstorm, followed by the wail of an alarm system. Looking out our front door, we could see flames leaping from the far side of the house across the street from an area that I thought was the bedrooms. I rushed out shoeless, clad only in gym shorts, and impulsively started pounding on a window shouting, “Get out! The house is on fire!” Well, I pounded so hard that I shoved my thumb through the window. Hence, the dripping blood and five stitches.

Thankfully, but unbeknownst to me, the family had already escaped, called 911, shaken but safe in the backyard. My thumb, thus, became the most serious human injury of the day, thank God. The house, by the way, was severely damaged, but salvageable.
Hero or stupid? Your call.

An interesting theological (?) sidebar to the story: We live in a heavily Christian neighborhood, a scant mile from the hyper-fundamentalist Bob Jones University. We Jewish Yankees tend to be skeptical, even cynical, about fundamentalist Christians as a group. Yet, I tell you, as neighbors, family-by-family, they are wonderfully gracious, kind, thoughtful people – despite what they may or may not say behind our backs about our absence of salvation.

As the neighbors rushed out of their homes and ascertained that the family was safe, they instinctively seemed to gather around them to offer words of comfort and prayer. God bless them for that.

I, on the other hand, saw that the daughter had escaped into the pouring rain barefoot, shivering, dressed only in a tee shirt and sleep-pants. By equal instinct, I ran to our house for my trench coat and a pair of Naot to keep her warm and dry.

Is it that Christians instinctively pray and then do, while Jews instinctively do and then pray? Saying that the Jewish instinct is morally superior would be a cheap and cynical shot. I have come to appreciate, instead, that the world is kept in its delicate, precarious balance by both virtues establishing a careful equilibrium:

The world needs a critical mass of people whose first instinct is to pray, and it equally needs a critical mass of people that instinctively takes actions and prays later. The world is healed from its unwholeness as much by the force of divine providence as it is by human determination. That family was restored from its trauma and grief as much by prayer as by a warm trench coat.

I have no doubt that those lovely Christian neighbors went on the do extensively for the family once they offered their prayers. But, it certainly put the onus squarely on my shoulders: If we Jews come from a tradition of “doing first,” does our conscience then afterward lead us instinctively to pray? For many (most?) of us, doubtful.

A mentor once told me that we Jews are inclined to define our spirituality in strictly sociological terms, if we give it any definition as all. Maybe it is time for a change.