Water and the Better Angels of Our Nature: Khukat

Last week I wrote about guilt and responsibility—not exactly subject matter that leaves you feeling happy or with a whole lot of faith in humanity. I mean, come on. I wrote about Nazis.

So this week I wanted to bring in the opposite: faith in humanity. It may be like drawing water from a rock, but hey, that’s what this Torah portion is about anyway, so let me draw!

Indeed, Moses strikes a rock with his staff to get water from it. The people have been complaining again, tired of the bland food, mostly fearful (still) of dying in the desert, and for good reason; there’s no water. God tells Moses to talk to a rock, and water will come from it.

Even though he doesn’t exactly follow God’s directions (instead of talking, Moses strikes the rock), water still comes gushing out—enough for the myriads of people and their animals.

But since Moses has disobeyed God’s command and he’s made it look like he and Aaron made this miracle happen and not God, Moses and Aaron are punished; they will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land with the people because of the lack of faith shown by their words. Also, Aaron will die later in the parsha, as punishment for his disobedience.

According to God, Moses shows a lack of faith that God will provide the water by taking credit for it himself.

Many of us struggle not only with faith in God, but also faith in humanity. The way the world is going, even with bits of positive things happening, they still feel like just drops in the grand ocean of the negative. And perhaps lack of faith in humanity is not so different from lack of faith in God.

Let’s take this a step farther; if humans are made in the image of God, as they say, then our emotions and actions reflect God-like emotions and actions, and as we see in the Torah, God isn’t always so nice, kind of like human beings. (Case in point: God flies into another one of his rages over the people’s complaints and sends serpents to bite the people, and Moses must intervene on their behalf—again.)

We could look for a male propensity for violence in Moses in this moment at striking the rock, or his hubris, or we could tell a different story and decide that his actions reflect his current emotional state. You see, I failed to mention that right before the rock incident, Miriam has died. There’s no mention of a mourning period (unlike for Aaron, who gets a full 30 days, not the normal seven days—maybe because she’s a woman?)

The story we could tell might go something like this: Moses must be in shock and grieving. Maybe he’s angry about Miriam’s sudden death. Maybe he feels abandoned by God. This might explain his striking the rock instead of being in a conversational mood. Also, as Miriam is famous for her connection to water, perhaps her spirit helps the water come gushing from the rock after Moses strikes it. This might be Miriam’s response to Moses, saying, “I’m still here. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be alright.” But in his grief, Moses can’t see or feel or hear this message.

I heard Nicholas Christakis, author and professor at Yale University, on the On Being podcast last Sunday with Krista Tippett: How We’re Wired for Goodness. Christakis’ work is about re-narrating what we believe about humanity. He says science has focused way too much and for far too long “on the dark side of humanity and our propensity for selfishness, tribalism, mendacity, cruelty, violence—as if this were a normal and primary state of affairs.”

Christakis says that the bright side has been denied the attention it deserves. He’s more interested in focusing on the qualities that make, not an individual, but a collective “good.” He wants to know how a group of humans comes together and cooperates.

Moreover, his work looks at the human qualities that have evolved over millions of years—qualities like love, friendship, cooperation, and teaching. He points out how unusual these are in the animal kingdom, like teaching others, but also to teach and love those not connected to us genetically. He argues that these qualities are more powerful than the negative ones and in some ways much more important because they outweigh the cultural aspects that separate us because we are hardwired for them.

Tippett and Christakis talk about Theodicy and a term he coined called Sociodicy.

Theodicy questions how we can believe in and justify a beneficent, omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving God given the amount of suffering in the world. How do we explain the origins of evil?

Sociodicy takes a different angle by asking, how can we vindicate a confidence in the goodness of society despite the manifest evil in society? It is not to deny that every century has been replete with horrors, venal actions of all kinds, but rather to draw attention to the equal propensity we have for goodness—despite these horrors.

Sociodicy recognizes that even our evil qualities are features of our humanity and the good qualities we’ve evolved are in response to those evil qualities. As humans, we have few natural predators, and we in fact are our own predators, so we’ve had to evolve to cope with the evil qualities for our own survival.

Christakis says that we don’t really have what’s called Free Will in the denigrated way we have been taught; we’re wired for certain feelings and behaviors, evolved over time, and part of that behavior is copying each other; just like with mob mentality, “social contagion” has its positive side. And when we act in ways that show cooperation, love, concern, and teaching, the effects are magnified dozens, maybe thousands of times. This raises Free Will to a different level, because we have the option of working with what he calls, “The better angels of our nature.”

Water shows up again and again in this week’s Torah reading, whether it comes gushing from a rock for drinking or it’s to wash infected clothes or it’s sprinkled on a person exposed to death, or it’s a reference to countless wells in the desert, including one the Israelites sing to in order to help water spring up from it.

God wants Moses to give credit where credit is due: he wants Moses to remember that he can not possibly lead the people to freedom without God’s assistance. God is saying, “Remember the Source of All Life; you are not it.”

As with the water springing from the rock, human agency seems to be involved here. But maybe Moses, or Miriam, having some agency in drawing water from the rock reflects the faith that we need to have in humans as much as God since, as it is said, we are made in the Image of God. Again, if we have faith in humanity, we are showing faith in God, and vice versa.

So how do we use our agency? Christakis recommends going through our day looking for opportunities to see the goodness in others: imagining reasons for their actions, like we did with Moses above, constantly re-narrating anything negative we encounter.

The word for messenger in the Torah is interchangeable with the word for angel. Often messengers are sent ahead to assist on any journey.

Sometimes re-narrating may feel like drawing water from a rock.

May the waters we encounter cleanse us of our negativity, allowing the better angels of our nature to guide us.