Abraham, Moses and Judaism

Abraham was the key figure leading to the development of the Abrahamic religions. These are Judaism, its offshoot Christianity, and Islam.

Abraham believed in one god, he didn’t have any interest in the polytheistic traditions that had gone before. Abraham had a covenant with God, he had a sort of contract with God, and the contract was something like this: if I do the right thing then God will look after me and this perhaps is the basic belief of believers in God, that God is there and will support or look after one. But it is a two way contract, for one’s own part one should always do the right thing and then one need not worry about anything. This is one of the contributions which we could quite arbitrarily attribute to Abraham.

But there is another aspect of Abraham which is also true of Moses and many of the prophets. They wandered in the desert in search of the promised land, and this became the way of the whole house of Israel, the way of Judaism at least prior to the establishment of the nation state of Israel. So Abraham, Moses and the house of Israel, Judaism, were all wandering, homeless, seeking. This is a great contribution to our spiritual endeavour, this feeling of seeking and of being homeless. When we become comfortable when we settle down and don’t really put much energy into our spiritual life we become complacent and there is a cost to that. The cost is we lose touch with our own essence, we lose touch with God. Paradoxically whilst we are searching, whilst we are really striving to find God, to find our essence, whilst we are wandering homeless, unsettled, during these times we are actually with God. This is our spirituality expressing itself moment to moment, day by day, but it is challenging because it will not allow us to settle, it will not allow us to become comfortable and complacent.

Abraham took on this challenge, as did Moses and the Jews for a long period. Judaism has given us this, this homeless quality. Most people don’t want to be homeless – it sounds negative. But no, amazingly, if you can become homeless and if you can surrender to that state then, by a miracle, everywhere becomes your home. This is a great gift of Abraham, Moses and Judaism. This is their contribution to our spiritual endeavour, to become wanderers, nomads, never settled in one place.

Here we should not focus too much on a particular land, a particular physical location. The promised land has nothing to do with some scrubby patch of near desert. No, the promised land is golden light that can fill your being from within. The promised land is your own essence. The promised land is to live every moment as the breath of God manifesting here on Earth. This is the promised land, this is what we are seeking, searching for. Do not be distracted by physical location, by a house or home, by a nation state, these are totally irrelevant. No, become a nomad on the inside as well as the out, follow in the way of Abraham and Moses and the way of the Jews, become homeless, wandering, seeking, searching. But remember this is an inner search, the outer world is but a reflection of our inner search. Focus on the inner and you will be following in the footsteps of those great prophets.

Let me say a few more words about monotheism. These three great monotheistic traditions that have come from Abraham – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – have all said that there is one god, or to put it another way God is one. This is a tremendous step because the mind is always breaking things up into pieces, it is always shattering existence into a thousand shards and then trying to put the jigsaw puzzle back together again, but that is all a game of the mind. If we step back from that thinking mind for a moment, we too can feel the oneness of all that is. Returning once more to that undivided realm is part of the spiritual journey and this is embodied in monotheism, this is reflected when we say there is one god. So this too is a great contribution of the Abrahamic religions, this huge movement in human consciousness towards monotheism.