The Judeo-Christian view of God as a person

How the funeral of my grandfather caused me to investigate the origins of Judaism and discover a greater appreciation for the idea of god “more like a person than like a thing, more like a mind than like a machine.” 

Read on and let me know what you think in the comments below!

My grandfather, Morton “Moe” Coleman, passed away this week. He was 86. He was a native of Pittsburgh, PA, where he spent nearly his whole life both in public service as a community organizer and as a professor and dean at the University of Pittsburgh.

He was a social force within the community; an avid student of politics and social movements, Moe helped direct and organize the Civil Rights Movement in Pittsburgh in the 60s, founded the Institute of Politics at the University of Pittsburgh, and taught politics and social work for decades. 

His funeral, held at Ralph Schugar Funeral Home in Pittsburgh, was attended by people from all walks of life: from kitchen staff at his retirement home to two former mayors of Pittsburgh. Jews and gentiles. Black, white. Rich, poor. Old and young. Former students and former camp counselors. Nearly 100 members of his family were there, having flown in from all over the country. 

He was a great man. 

And as his step-grandson of over 20 years, Moe made me feel a real part of the family from the beginning. My family in Pittsburgh is Jewish (my mother married in when I was 15), and I’ve experienced aspects of the Jewish community and faith that I’d have never had the chance to experience had it not been for the Coleman family. My life is greater for it. 

Not especially religious, nor especially “at peace,” Moe had the divine ability to be interested and enthusiastic for nearly every single person he met. He had the desire to learn about everyone – who they were, what they loved, what their plans were – and to support their passions with his own indomitable enthusiasm. I’ve never seen anyone like him in that way.

In the speech that I wrote for Moe, I quoted Huston Smith’s incredible book, The World’s Religions. Specifically because Smith explores how and why the Jewish idea of God differed from other ancient religions of the time. Smith described the Jews’ concept of God as being uniquely and profoundly personal, and that view was a consequence of how they viewed existence.

The Jews thought of the world as holy simply because God had created it; it had come from Him, and thus how could it not be good?  They viewed God as being both loving and noble (which was in contrast with the Greek view of their gods as being jealous and lust-filled). As Smith said, the Jews saw God as being like a person, because ultimately they “found greater depth and mystery in people than in any of the other wonders at hand.”

Additionally, Smith writes this, most interesting of questions: what is the evidence against God being “more like a person than like a thing, more like a mind than like a machine?” 

Because as much as science tends to investigate the impersonal aspects of this existence, the fact of the matter is this: we, human beings, exist. We each experience and manipulate this world through the vessel of our personas. And those personas are as much a part of this world as anything else, and uniquely part of what it means to be human. As Alan Watts used to say, “we came OUT of this world, not INTO it,” and that “as an apple tree apples, the world, and the universe in which it exists, peoples.” 

If personification of matter occurs (in the form of human beings and perhaps other, more advanced life-forms yet to be discovered), how can that personification NOT be divine?

Of course, other aspects of existence are divine too, but damnit if we don’t live in an age in which we are encouraged to think less of our own humanity, to not only question our own egos, but look at them as the source of the problems in each of our own individual stories. 

So I will quote the Tao again: 

“Free from desire, you realize the mystery. 

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. 

This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.”

Both the ego and the universal come from that divine, holy thing that created us all.

Yes, our egos cause suffering. But suffering is a part of life. And how could we ever understand or appreciate the sweet beauty of existence without its painful dark side? How could we ever understand the bliss of nirvana-experiences without being also fully invested in life and ensnared in our own individual perspectives?

Since I started studying eastern religions in my teens (having been raised Baptist before that), I’d never felt encouraged to continue to think of God as a having those aspects of person, and personality, that I was taught as a child. But this week I read that quote and, for the first time in a long time, it made me feel good about thinking of God, or at least aspects of God, as being very human, very much like a person. For, as Smith asks, what is the evidence against that? 

This week has been tough – loss is never easy emotionally, nor are the logistics of loss simple or straightforward. Moe leaves behind his wife of nearly 65 years, Greta, and two grown sons, one of whom is my step-father, Jim. 

Having been such an incredible personality and connoisseur of people, I just wish Moe had been at his own funeral. He would have had a blast seeing, in one place, all those people whom he loved, and who loved him.

Why does it sometimes take the end of a life to bring together all the people who are so integral to our lives, and who likely benefit so much to be around each other? 

That said, the sheer number of people in attendance, and their genuine enthusiasm for Moe, made me smile. It continues to make me smile, and I thank everyone for their presence, their well wishes to the family, and for the parts they played in Moe Coleman’s blessed life.

~Cecil

Below is the speech I gave for my grandfather. 

***

On Tuesday, A couple days ago, Howard (Moe’s elder son) and I were in the common room of Weinberg Terrace, getting some coffee. 

One of the kitchen workers saw Howard, walked up to us directly and said to him, “you must be Moe’s son, – you look just like him.” 

To which Howard smiled and replied, “Yes.” Howard does look like Moe – startlingly so.

The young man then proceeded to tell Howard how kind Moe had been to him since Moe and Greta had moved into Weinberg Terrace, and about some of the great conversations he’d shared with Moe. 

The young man then looked at me with a puzzled face and said, “But you – you don’t look anything like Moe.” 

To which I laughed and explained that no – I wasn’t related – at least not by blood. See, my mother, Adele, married Jim (Moe’s younger son) nearly 20 years ago. 

Since then I’ve always liked to say that I’m “Step-Jewish.”

More importantly though, Moe was my grandfather, and Greta my grandmother, and they had been from the start. 

And in that young man’s story, and in mine, was the spirit of Moe – not just the ability to make anyone feel special, but the unceasing desire to. 

And not in some disingenuous way that might make any single one of us feel less special when we hear him speak passionately with, or about someone else. Because I know Moe genuinely cared so much about me, but also about you – each of you. 

My first trip to Pittsburgh, in 1999, was full of moments that were very quintessentially Coleman: getting lost in cars, seeing great movies, second guessing where to go to dinner, third guessing where to go to dinner, random facts about each neighborhood we visited, and loud 5-way conversations over a dinner table. 

But that trip was filled with something much more important too.  

The loving, inquiring, and nurturing presence of Moe, and his wife Greta.

On that trip (I was 15) I realized I had a real love for art. I snuck away to spend hours sitting and sketching some of my favorite sculptures in the Carnegie Museum. Didn’t matter that I was headed to the Naval Academy just a couple years later – no, Moe was just as interested in my newfound artistic passion as he was in my military aspirations. 

And that kind of support never went away. Moe was always one of my biggest fans, in all of my passions – be they academic, musical, artistic, or romantic over the last 20 years. 

Moe recognized when I truly cared about something, and threw himself wholeheartedly behind it, and me.

And I have the distinct feeling that he’s done the same for each of you.

Being Step-Jewish, my knowledge of Judaism isn’t extensive, but it is very very fond, and not just because I’ve learned to eat potato pancakes with both sour cream AND applesauce. 

I’ve been invited into a community I likely would have never known, had it not been for this family. And my life has been deeply enriched because of this inclusion.

I don’t know that Moe was especially religious. 

But I was reading about Judaism recently in Huston Smith’s fantastic book, The World’s Religions, and he wrote something about the Jewish perspective of God that resonated very deeply with me: 

“It is easy to smile at the anthropomorphism of the early Hebrews, who could imagine ultimate reality as a person walking in the garden of Eden in the cool of the morning. But when we make our way through the poetic concreteness of the perspective to its underlying claim – that in the final analysis ultimate reality is more like a person than like a thing, more like a mind than like a machine – we must ask ourselves two questions. First what is the evidence against this hypothesis? It seems to be so completely lacking that as knowledgeable a philosopher-scientist as Alfred North Whitehead could embrace the hypothesis without reserve. Second, is the concept intrinsically less exalted than its alternative? The Jews were reaching out for the most exalted concept of [God] that they could conceive, a [God] that embodied such inexhaustible worth that human beings would never begin to fathom its fullness. The Jews found greater depth and mystery in people than in any of the other wonders at hand.”

Moe was, in his own charming Moe-way, always finding depth and mystery in each of us. And in that way, and in his genuine love and warmth, he made me feel like a part of the family from the beginning. He’s been my grandfather for 20 years, from my teens to my mid thirties, and frankly he was the kind of grandfather, and the kind of man, I aspire to be. 

Love you grandpa. 

***
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