Last week, a former congregant called me from Yellowstone National Park. “Rabbi,” he said, breathless with excitement, “I’m standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and I can’t speak. This is God.”
He wasn’t wrong. The raw power of creation does something to us. It stops us cold, and makes us feel small and reverent at the same time. We’ve all had these moments – whether staring up at stars on a clear night or watching the sun rise over mountains. Deep inside, we recognize that we’re witnessing something bigger than ourselves.
Yet the Sages share a fascinating teaching that appears to belittle the significance of these spiritual moments:
“Rabbi Jacob would say: One who walks along a road and studies, and interrupts his studying to say, ‘How beautiful is this tree!’, ‘How beautiful is this ploughed field!’ – the Torah considers it as if he had forfeited his life.”
Every commentator struggles with the harshness of this teaching. Recognizing the beauty and majesty of creation is inherently holy. David himself declares:
How can acknowledging the beauty of Godās awesome creations be considered so grave an offense that it constitutes forfeiting one’s very life?
As usual, this teaching is more profound than it may seem at first. Rabbi Jacob is addressing two different stages of our relationship with the Almighty. The first stage involves experiencing God through wonder and awe. This foundation is absolutely critical. If we do not sense Godās presence in the world, how can we meaningfully engage in prayer or worship? The second stage, however, demands something far more challenging: serving God through deliberate action and moral effort.
The Sages did not dismiss human sensitivity to beauty or the legitimate experience of wonder. What they rejected was allowing such experiences to become the ultimate goal of religious life. Experiencing God – at Yellowstone or by contemplating a beautiful tree – represents merely the first step in our relationship with Him. To remain at this level, to be content with spiritual feelings and moments of transcendence, misses the entire purpose of why God reveals Himself to us in the first place.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote: “The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder, or fear. The root of religion is the question: what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder, or fear. Religion, the end of isolation, begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.”
The person walking and studying Torah in Rabbi Jacob’s teaching has moved beyond experiencing God to serving Him. Torah study is not abstract theology. It means grappling with how to apply God’s teachings in our business dealings, analyzing the implications of a verse for how we treat our neighbor, and wrestling with ethical decisions based on biblical principles. A person who studies the Bible this way has progressed from feeling God’s presence to understanding God’s will. When such a person abandons this work to marvel at a tree or field, he retreats from the higher stage of serving God back to the lower stage of merely experiencing Him. He chooses wonder over responsibility, feeling over action.
Retreating in this way is particularly dangerous because experiencing Godās presence can feel so satisfying, so complete in itself. The rush of standing before a magnificent sunset or feeling overwhelmed by the vastness of the cosmos can convince us that we have achieved the pinnacle of religious experience. It is all too easy to mistake the appetizer for the main course, the preparation for the destination.
Modern spiritual culture demonstrates exactly this problem. Countless people seek spiritual experiences, mystical encounters, and transcendent moments. They practice meditation to feel peace, attend religious services to experience uplift, or immerse themselves in nature to sense the divine. Yet they resist the harder work of moral transformation, ethical behavior, and concrete service to God and humanity. They want the emotional payoff of spirituality without the demanding discipline of actually serving God.
The Hebrew word avodah means both “service” and “work.” Service to God requires effort, struggle, and the willingness to subordinate our desires to divine will. It demands study to understand what God wants, discipline to overcome our natural inclinations, and persistence in doing what is right even when it proves difficult or unrewarding.
Our forefathers and foremothers understood this progression from experience to service. Moses encountered God at the burning bush in a moment of overwhelming wonder and awe. Yet this experience became meaningful only when it led to his acceptance of the mission to liberate the Israelites from Egypt. Similarly, the revelation at Sinai was an awesome spiritual experience for the entire nation of Israel, but its purpose was to provide the foundation for a life of mitzvot (commandments) and moral responsibility.
The goal of religious life is not to collect peak experiences or accumulate moments of spiritual bliss. The goal is transformation through service, partnership with God in the ongoing work of creation, and the cultivation of character that reflects divine values in human action. God is not interested in passive admirers but rather active partners.
Wonder and awe serve their purpose by awakening us to God’s reality and drawing us into a relationship with Him. But they fulfill their function only when they propel us toward the ultimate destination: a life dedicated to serving the One whose beauty first captured our attention.
