G-d Gets Lonely Too

In the opening book of Genesis we read about the Creation of the world. The best lens I have found with which to see this requires the fundamental Kabbalistic paradigms of the AriZal. Through his teachings, we are able to make the connection that identifies the Ten Utterances of Creation found in Genesis as the creative Divine potencies known as the Ten Sefirot, or the ten beacons of infinite Divine light.

The axiomatic principle of the Arizal's cosmology model leans heavily on an anthropomorphic system that utilizes human experience as metaphors to gauge the unfathomable depths and mysteries of the Divine. The system is grounded in G-d's own Biblical cue where he confides that the blueprint for man is G-d himself—“and G-d fashioned man in his own image, in the image of G-d he was created.”

Another fundamental piece of the Arizal's paradigm is the notion of Tzimtzum, a voluntary receding of the Divine presence so as to allow human and planetary otherness to emerge and unfold in that emptied space without being overcome by the infinite power of G-d.

It’s helpful to see this feat of Divine self-restraint from the human perspective, as a parent or mentor figure gradually stepping back, so as to encourage the autonomous growth of the child into a place of healthy separateness.

G-d, like some parents, however, can’t seem to get the settings right, and is either in a place of radical presence that allows for no one or nothing else to emerge, or swinging to the opposite pole of radical absence.

I’m not sure about G-d vis-à-vis creation, and unsure as well about what is worse for children from a parental perspective. Overarching engagement that walks a fine line between selfless love and stifling control. Or the granting of hyper-independence that similarly walks a fine line between fostering healthy individuation and abandonment.

Setting that aside for a moment, I want to suggest that the G-dly Revelation we read about in this week's Torah Sinai portion of Yisro, is about a Divine “desire” to revisit the possibility of interacting with humanity— in a way that takes the potentially destructive elements of his all-powerful Divine nature on the frail human consciousness struggling to be the human that G-d WANTS him to be—into consideration. Adding the existential layer to the historical event of the Revelation and Giving of the Torah can and should open up substantive avenues of query and thought regarding the complex, bewildering, and often damaging consequences of what is at the core a heartfelt bid for connection. So again, why is G-d trying to refashion the ten utterances into a sudden declaration of all the 613 things he needs distilled into ten?

Why? Just take a look around at people—who, lest we forget, were created in G-d's image, etc.—for an answer. Why do people crave connection? Because they are lonely. Here’s a powerful insight. That person who you look to as being the closest thing to omnipotently aloof, might in fact be seriously and frustratingly, white-knuckling and practicing restraint of a natural gregariousness— for your benefit. The omnipotent G-d gets lonely because we get lonely as well.

Though the Ten Commandments can come off, like parents sometimes do, as an authoritarian bid for control, more often than not it is a bid for attachment and connection. Why did G-d want to redraw these lines? Because he missed us and wants to be in our lives.