Mark: There is a Jewish blessing which directly acknowledges a close relationship between God and every single human soul:
Blessed are You, God of the universe, the Knower of all secrets.
This short but substantive prayer suggests that belief among many that the Master of the Universe knows each of us on an intimate level, knowing our thoughts and our impulses, our strengths and our weaknesses, our hopes and our dreams, our transgressions, misgivings, and mistakes. To acknowledge that we really believe in a God that is the Knower of All Secrets, to believe that there is a God who can know even those things that no one else does about us, who can recognize the fears we hold and hide within us, who has access to our doubts, our longings, our misgivings and regrets, who can see things that no one else can see within our hearts, our minds and our souls…can that really be true?
Frank, as both a scientist and a man of faith, what do you think of this: Does God know us? Does it matter? And if God knows us, what can we, in turn, know about God?
Frank: Mark, you mention that God knows us on an intimate level, knowing our thoughts and our impulses, our strengths and our weaknesses, our hopes and dreams, our transgressions, misgivings, and our weaknesses. To understand this concept as a scientist and man of faith, I needed once again to turn to science.
There are approximately 36 trillion cells in the human adult with 86 billion of these cells found in the brain. Each cell in our body holds a nucleus which is made up of 46 strands of chromosomes (23 from our mother and 23 from our father) that carry long pieces of DNA. DNA is the material that has genes, which are the building blocks of the human body. These 46 chromosomes have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes with the rest of the genetic material found among three billion base pairs which are found in each of the 46 chromosomes, and which directs the body in an enormous variety of ways.
More than likely, this genetic material contained in each brain cell aids in deciding our personality, interests, likes and dislikes, mood behavior, feelings, choices, mental stability, intelligent quotient, emotional quotient, and an enormous number of countless other aspects of our being. These brain cells, called neurons, are the computer of our body and function in an enormous number of ways to help keep us alive and functioning.
When we feel love, empathy, pain, anger, sadness, happiness, depression, jealousy, or a host of other feelings, they are produced by the interacting cells in our brain and are the result of the DNA that we obtained from our parents and all their ancestors before them. Those feelings are the result of the DNA contained in our neurons and direct so much of how we feel and what we do. I came to believe that the God I believe in is embedded in my DNA since it was this God that created me through the incredible and complex process of evolution. God’s “voice and hands” direct me through the DNA God created. The God I believed in was within my human form helping direct me on a path of goodness and righteousness speaking to me through a still small voice.
Mark, what do you think of this explanation that the God I believe in is embedded in the DNA of the cells in my brain and speaks to me through a still small voice?
Mark: Frank, you have offered a brilliant approach that offers a rational, logical, and scientific possibility that God knows everything about us and even speaks to us through the intricacies of the human body.
Let me offer a different, if less rational, and more religious, less scientific, yet more spiritual response.
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When I contemplate the majesty and order of the universe, the rhythms of the seasons and the years, the complex and complicated ways in which the human body is constructed and continues to exist and evolve, it is certainly possible, I believe, for the Creator of the universe, to know us in some way or another.
I am humble enough to acknowledge the possibility that God knows us, especially given the fact that our earliest Biblical narratives describe each of us as created in the Divine Image. What a noble concept! A part of that creative force, that energy that gives and sustains life, has been implanted within every human soul. If I couple that notion with the prophetic writings that further describe “the still, small voice” within us, we can contemplate the ways in which God offers us a moral compass, accessible to all who seek to use it.
It is possible, of course, that both of us are wrong about this, that there is no real proof of any of this. And that may be so. But unlike others, who believe that one’s faith needs to be sure and ironclad, I am comfortable living in the realm of “what if?” What if it is possible, based on your scientific and my spiritual approach, that God could even possibly know us, speak to us, enter dialogue with us, as an internal part of us and our lives? Wouldn’t even that possibility inspire us to better ourselves, to reflect the best within us, as a reflection of that Divine image, as an echo of that Still, Small Voice?
That is the pathway to a richer and more fulfilling life: A life infused with both a greater meaning and with a more sacred purpose. Who would not want that kind of existence? Who would not want that way to add greater worth to our days?
Rabbi Mark Schiftan can be reached at mschiftan@aol.com
Dr. Frank Boehm can be reached at frank.boehm@vumc.org