Saturday, June 14, 1997

Rabbi Kushner tries to answer the question: How good do we have to be?

By Richard C. Dujardin

The Providence Journal-Bulletin

Leave it to Rabbi Harold Kushner to get down to the nitty-gritty.

Sixteen years ago the Natick, Mass., rabbi rose to international fame by writing on a topic that has troubled religious believers since the time of Job, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People."

Now he's back with a book that seems to address an issue that millions have thought about as well: "How Good Do We Have to Be?"

It's a provocative title. You can hear Kushner's critics now, saying that when so many people have lost a sense of sin, the world doesn't need a rabbi saying it's OK not to have your act together.

Kushner recognizes there are people who need to do a lot better. "It's a problem I plan to address in my next book," he said in a phone interview.

"This book, however, addresses the opposite problem, which is also very real. That's the tendency of decent people to be down on themselves and on others because they have not achieved total perfection."

Everybody, he says, deserves to hear two voices from his or her religion: "the prophetic voice, summoning us to be better; and the compassionate voice, which lets us know we are still accepted in the eyes of God even when we are feeling terrible because we haven't lived up to the standards."

Kushner, who has served the congregation of Temple Israel in Natick for 24 years, was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1960 and received a doctoral degree in the Bible from there in 1972. The author of six books, he is also a former editor of Conservative Judaism magazine.

In his latest book, which carries the subtitle, "A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness," he offers an interpretation of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve different from the common one. He doesn't believe the expulsion from the Garden of Eden was meant to show that God metes out punishment to those who make mistakes.

"I don't see God punishing Adam and Eve. When God tells Adam he is going to have to work for a living and tells Eve that in her sexuality she will suffer the pains of childbirth, are we to say these are really punishments? I don't see these as punishments at all, but a consequence of being human.

"I see it as the story of the first human beings rising above the animal level and entering the world of knowing good and evil. Now they can be both better and worse than any animal, because they are morally conscious. You can see it as the biblical account of evolution."

Kushner says he wrote the book, in part, to help people accept themselves and others even when neither is perfect.

"There are people who are still angry at their parents because they thought they needed their parents to be perfect to protect them from the world, and then felt betrayed when their parents showed bad judgment or lost their temper," he said. "Children may think they need to have perfect parents, but they are wrong. What they need from their parents are examples of being good even though they are not perfect."

(As far as being a parent, he says, people need to recognize that being a parent is far more complicated than piloting a fighter plane, so that being a "perfect parent" is impossible from the start.)

The basis of all this, says Kushner, is right in the Bible. "The heroes of the Bible were flawed human beings. They struggled with love and temptation. They made mistakes. Look at the disciples of Jesus. They ran away from Jesus in his hour of need. The message I got from that was not that they were bad, but that they were flawed."

But aren't there things that people really should feel guilty about?

Of course, he says. "People should feel guilty about hurting other people, using other people and falling short of their own standards. I'm not saying you should lower your standards. All of us must strive to do better. But if we fail, we should not lose hope in ourselves."

Then there's the matter of forgiveness. Recognizing that all human beings are flawed, we need to forgive, he says.

"When I say that, I don't mean excusing. But it does mean letting go. The woman who continues to be angry at her ex-husband is giving him too much power in her life that he doesn't deserve."

(c) 1997, The Providence Journal-Bulletin.

Visit projo.com, the online service of The Providence Journal-Bulletin at http://www.projo.com

Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.