There's another thing, too, that I learned,
when I was going through these biblical lectures.
It was a fascinating thing to do.
It was the story of Jacob, who became Israel.
And Jacob was a real trickster.
You know, he was a morally ambiguous figure, to put it mildly.
And he tricked his older brother out of his birthright,
and he was full of tricks, and he had a lot of tricks played on him,
too, and maybe learned something as a consequence.
Anyways, after running away from his
brother, who had murderous thoughts and for good reasons, for about 20 years,
maybe it was only 14, but it doesn't matter.
It was a long time.
He decided that he would go back and try to make peace.
And he came to this river.
He sent his family across the river along with his belongings,
partly as an offering to his brother, a peace offering.
And he had a dream, visionary experience, hallucination, God, who knows what it was.
And he dreamt that he wrestled
with an angel all night and that the angel was God.
And God... He won.
Which is very strange because, well, first of all, he was a trickster figure, like...
He wasn't your most upstanding moral creature.
He wasn't Noah, for example.
And second, well, it was God.
It's like if you're going to wrestle with someone and lose,
there's an opponent that's likely to take you out.
And he did damage his hip, which is not that impressive,
an accomplishment on God's part, in my estimation.
But it's a very interesting story because
what it does indicate, what's so cool about it.
You see, Jacob's name is changed
at that point to Israel, and Israel means "those who wrestle with God".
That blew me a...
One of the things I love about studying old stories is now and then you come
across a piece of wood and you see into it.
You see down into the depths that characterizes it.
It's very difficult, but it happens sometimes.
And it just flattens you to think that
if Israel is the chosen people of God, that's the hypothesis,
and what Israel means is those who wrestle
with God, then think that gives... It seems to me to be such a hopeful idea
because, well, everyone does that, to some degree.
You do that in your life because, well, you don't know what's a fundamental
transcendent worth because who the hell are you and what do you know?
You're struggling all the time with... Well, I would say with good and evil.
When you're struggling with yourself, you're struggling with the world.
To portray that as wrestling with God,
that's perfectly reasonable from a metaphoric perspective.
And the idea that that's what characterizes the true people of God is
that willingness to wrestle, that's really something, because...
It kind of indicates that you're here as a contender.
You're not here to be happy, you're not here to be complacent.
You're not here to be materially satisfied.
Not that that would be possible, anyways,
but that you're here to contend with the structure of reality, right?
And that's what will satisfy you, because there's something to you.
You're not weak and nothing.
There's something to you.
There's something malevolent and terrible.
I mean, you know that you look at how people behave.
You look at the blood and catastrophe of our history.
You can certainly see
the absolute hellish depths of the human soul.
But there's something that takes root
in that and grows up out of that that's absolutely magnificent beyond belief.
And that's looking for...
To contend!
And I've often thought that I've been fortunate in my marriage because...
You think, well, you get married and you live happily ever after.
It's like...
That's not it.
You don't want that even. What do you want?
You want your partner to do just... All she's going to do is sprinkle
rose petals in front of you, right?
And pat you on the back of the head
and tell you how wonderful you are, constantly, day after day.
Man, you'd be so sick of that after two... Well, maybe take a month.
But let's say two weeks.. Because, you know...
She should be more on the side of who you could be than on the side of who you are.
And if she's deluded enough or terrified
enough to worship you in your current form, then, well, that doesn't say much
for her, and it certainly isn't very helpful for you.
You want someone that's going to get in the way now and then, and to contend with.
And I've been fortunate in my marriage because I have someone to contend with.
We have our discussions, and they're not easy,
but partly because we have hard problems
to solve, because life is full of hard problems.
I want someone who stand up and have her say, even if it's not what I would say.
And maybe I'm even willing at times
because she's quite intuitive and a good dreamer and I'm more facile verbally.
And so we have to be careful in our
relationship, because if I'm in a particularly ornery
mood and she has something to say, I can usually slice up her arguments verbally.
That's fine as far as I'm concerned, because I get to win.
But it's stupid.
Well, it's stupid.
First of all, that doesn't mean I'm right.
It just means I can formulate verbal arguments slightly faster than she can.
But her intuitions and her dreams are often extraordinarily accurate.
And so we've learned to some degree to buttress each other's arguments just
on the off chance that the person that you were foolish enough to marry might know
something you don't, now and then about something important, you know?
So what do you want?
Well, you want someone to contend with, then it's an adventure.
And then you have someone that you love and that you respect.
And that's not a bad combination for longevity of a relationship.
And then maybe if you have someone
that you love and respect and that you can communicate with, and your children also
love and respect her or him, and then that's pretty good for them because
they've got some parents that they could love and respect.
That's a good combination.
It solidifies their life.
And so you want to contend with them.
You want a job that's challenging,
I would say that pushes you beyond what you already are and God only knows how
hard you need to be pushed in order to go beyond where you are.
But to some degree, if you have a choice,
It's not that uncommon that what we'll do
is choose to be pushed to the limit, especially when we're at our best.
We think, well, where's the limit? It's here? Maybe I can manage that.
I'm going to push myself right to the damn limit.
And then I'm going to push myself a little bit over just to see if it's possible,
and if that happens, then you emerge with a sense of triumph.
I'm now more than I was. Right?
And maybe that's what you're here to be.
Is to be more than you were, to push those limits.
And to do that you contend with the world,
you wrestle with God. You don't casually say "I believe"
Because who knows?
No one knows, right?
We're separated from the infinite by death and ignorance. We don't know.
We contend. We wrestle. And in that maybe we find our destiny.
At least we find our purpose.
We find something that justifies us, to some degree.
If I'm awake at night wondering, and I think, God, you know, I pushed myself
as far as I could in this effort, whatever the effort
that I'm considering happens to be, I pushed myself. I don't have a weight
on my conscience because I let something go or I failed to accomplish something.
I mean, I do often have Those sorts of weights.
I'm talking about the rare times when I don't.
It's like, well, there's something that's where there's
some atonement and some peace as far as I'm concerned, where that contending
and that wrestling has been successful and I would say that insofar as you're
deeply involved in that, like, completely involved in that, thoroughly involved in that,
Then you have the right to say that you believe in God.
And since I'm not like that, 100% of the time or even
approximating the time that I would like to be like that,
you know, despite my best efforts...
Then when people ask me I'm not going to...
Say something virtuous like "I'm a believer" because...
There's plenty wrong with me...
That needs to be fixed...
Before I would dare utter words like THAT.