According to Rabbi Ephraim Becker, “Mussar is the term for describing the lifelong endeavor to make a human being ever more Godlike”. The Mussar movement has a rather extensive history and providing a detailed description is beyond the scope of this article. I’ll point you to the Wikipedia article on Mussar for those details. What I want to illustrate about Mussar is something more specific.
I recently read an article that Rabbi Becker wrote for Torah.org called The Difference between Mussar and Self-Improvement. Since I just provided the link, I encourage everyone to give it a read, but in essence, Rabbi Becker separates the goals of self-help vs. Mussar as the difference between helping yourself for your own sake and helping yourself for God’s. To again quote Rabbi Becker, “The Torah calls upon every human being (both Jews and Gentiles in different ways) to recognize this world as the place to activate G-d’s Will through the use of the physical world of things, feelings, thoughts and actions”. The purpose of our existence on Earth is to serve God, not merely to serve our own needs or interests.
While, as believers, was can agree on this in principle, it’s sometimes difficult to bring the principle into practice. Our world and our personal lives seem fraught with troubles and hardships. We are all facing a difficult economy, an uncertain political administration, and a planet that seems to spawn one crisis after another at breakneck speed. The Torah (such as Exodus 22:21) and the Gospels (such as Luke 10:30-37) talk about our duty to help those less fortunate than us. Giving aid to the widow and orphan, visiting the sick and the imprisoned, are all Biblical values that we as believers in Yeshua (Jesus) as supposed to hold dear and to practice. But how to we do that when the world seems to be coming apart around our ears?
The answer, at least as far as Mussar is concerned, has to do with comparing who we are to who we ideally should be. Rabbi Becker says that the blueprint for the ideal is in the Torah, but not in the “heroes of the Bible”, so to speak. The ideal we are to shoot for is God Himself. Pretty imposing thought, isn’t it? Obviously, this doesn’t mean that we have a realistic possibility of achieving a “God-like” presence in the world, but we can learn the “attributes” of God, compare them to our own attributes and characteristics and, seeing the difference, define where we need to improve.
Again, this isn’t improvement for its own sake, but for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. A more able servant of God is more able to serve His purposes. A person truly rejoicing in serving God and seeing others being helped by Him (through us), will have a harder time being anxious or depressed. These are the core goals of Mussar: self-discovery of our strengths and our challenges, dynamically moving to overcome those challenges by emulating Him, and using the difference in ourselves to make a difference in the world of the here and now.
It occurred to me as I was reading Rabbi Becker’s blog, that we have a perfect role model for how to live a human life of righteousness; Yeshua HaMashiach, Jesus the Christ. Yeshua didn’t run around 1st Century Israel in blue tights, a cape, and a red “S” (or would that be a “shin”?) on his chest, solving everyone’s problems by overwhelming them with his power, at no risk of harm to himself. He lived out every one of the principles we read about in the Torah and indeed, in all the Bible, living a human life and enduring human hardships. The Lamb of God often referred to himself as the Son of Man. It was the name he most often used to refer to himself and, although it certainly is a reference to his “Messiahship”, it is also a pointer (at least in metaphor) to his humanity.
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. -Hebrews 4:15
There are probably hundreds of self-help books on the market, as well as a plethora of lecture series, tapes, and other programs, but thousands of years ago, God created the only resource we’d ever need to understand and improve ourselves and to understand and improve the world around us: the Bible. The Bible points to the one person above all people who can act as our guide and our model for living out a life of righteousness: Yeshua, our “living Torah”. The study and practice of Mussar seems like it can be the framework by which we operationalize Torah and Messiah to live out that ideal. It can act as the lens by which we look at ourselves, look at the Master, compare the difference, and define our goals. Then its a matter of “running the race” towards that goal, much in the way Paul described himself towards the end of his life.
In a world that seems to be anything but encouraging, I encourage you to take a look at one of the reasons why we study the Bible and why we pray. We do so for our own sakes, so that we can better learn about ourselves and to be better emulators; better disciples of Yeshua, our Master. As better disciples, we serve Him by serving the people around us and, in that way, continue to bring about His Kingdom.
Shalom.
#1 by Dree - April 24th, 2009 at 16:06
I think this gets down to WWJD? Only, after I thought about that for about twenty years–I finally realized that I didn’t really have a clue about what Jesus would really do. So I’ve fallen back on trying to find out from Him what He wants me to do.
I guess it’s all about Yeshua really, but not our perceptions of Him but the reality of who He is in our lives. Since He has made us all individual and unique, the things we need to work on, the things we need to do to become more like Him, will be different for each of us.
I think, even the ways that effect change in our lives are as different as we are individually unique. What works for one, will not work for another. I think that’s another reason that we are to encourage each other–because we can get discouraged within ourselves when we find out that something isn’t working the way we think (or the self help author things) it should be working. Life isn’t that cut and dried, as we all know.
This Musar way of thinking of ethics is intriguing, and the idea of looking at Yeshua as our only example of true ethics, is the only thing that really works–as long as we don’t decide that we are knowledgeable enough to look at the Messiah and determine for ourselves what that means.
And now I’m rambling…so I’ll stop before I really get myself in trouble.
#2 by James - April 24th, 2009 at 16:52
Wow! Thanks for your insights, Dree. Actually, I kept thinking of this blog during and after last night’s Torah class. There was just so much that we discussed in class that maps to this blog in particular and to Mussar in general. Yeshua is our ultimate “role model” for living a life of Righteousness and the Torah (and in this case I mean the entire Bible) is the guidebook. Mussar provides the framework on which to structure both.
Be well. See you next class.