Forgive Us Our Trespasses

As a pre-tween, I thought this verse from the Lord’s Prayer referred to our habit of trespassing on neighbors’ lawns on our way to school, church, the candy store, the playground, or a friend’s house. 

God had better forgive us because there’s no way we’re ever going to give up cutting through folks’ backyards. God and I had better come to some sort of understanding. And then…Here’s Johnny! “As we forgive those who trespass against us.”  

No problem, I forgive you, everyone. You’re all more than welcome to trespass on my parents’ lawn anytime you wish…so I guess I’m all set after all.  

 Returning to Christianity as an adult, I realized I needed a better understanding of ‘trespass’. Luke substituted ‘debts’ but that seems too narrow. About this time, I was first exposed to the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers (5th century BCE). Plato didn’t just drop from the sky, fully formed; his dialogues were the culmination of two centuries of metaphysical speculation. 

Gradually, I came to realize that the Christian message needed to be viewed in the context of Greek philosophy as well as Jewish tradition and that special attention needed to be paid to these pre-Socratic proto-scientists and metaphysicians, from Thales (d. 546 BCE) through Democritus (d. 370 BCE).  

The dean of this faculty was undoubtedly Parmenides (d. 450 BCE), but in the context of the Lord’s Prayer it is Thales’ contemporary, Anaximander (d. 546 BCE) we need to consult. Anaximander proposed that all creation is co-creation. Come again? 

We Westerners are used to the idea of creators and their creatures. We are nothing if not chauvinistic and patriarchal.  Genesis: God said ‘let there be’… ‘and there was…’ 

Anaximander had a completely different, and frankly more ‘modernist’, model in mind. Our knowledge of Anaximander’s thought is sketchy. However, it appears that he imagined  Being as a permanent state of pure potentiality (suggestive of Aristotle and Whitehead) which could be actualized only by the mutual, but unconditional, granting of ‘reck’.

This idea was difficult for Anaximander to express even though he had the multiform Ancient Greek language to work with. For us, with our scaled back modern Indo-European languages, it is impossible. But of course we have to try. So brace yourself.

According to Anaximander, Being behaves somewhat like a field in Quantum Mechanics. ‘Quanta’ (particles, persons or events) are only actualized in pairs and then only when each member of the pair freely and unconditionally grants reck to the other member (somewhat akin to the way we understand ‘virtual particles’ in contemporary physics).

The Greek concept of Reck is somewhat similar to the Hebrew concept of Shalom. I grant you ‘reck’ when I freely and unconditionally cede you the space you need to ‘be all that you can be’. I am the US Army on steroids. 

You grant me ‘reck’ when you co-incidentally, but not reciprocally, do the same for me. When each of us pulls back from ‘the fullness of being’, we create the ontological space we need to co-actualize.

This ontology has a number of intriguing consequences. For example, Unity is now a distillation of Multiplicity, rather than the other way around (aka Arithmetic). More relevant to our topic, ‘trespassing’ amounts to a ‘failure to grant reck’ and thus is the prototype of all ‘sin’.

Being is Good per se, When I trespass, I interfere with the actualization of Being. I crowd you out. To paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, it is the trespasser who has ‘become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds’.

“Deliver us from evil,” Jesus prayed. Entropy is the scientific manifestation of the ‘not-good’. Trespassing is an (or the) agent of entropy because it constitutes interference with the actualization of potential being, which is good.

What happened to the concept of ‘reck’ after Anaximander? It is implicit in the teachings of the New Testament; consider the Beatitudes for example:

Blessed are the poor in spirit (non-trespassers) – theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven…

Blessed are the meek (non-trespassers) – they will inherit the Earth…

Blessed are the merciful (non-trespassers) – they will be shown mercy, etc…

Being haughty, violent or cruel are ways I trespass on my neighbors’ ontological space; they interfere with the realization of potential being. It turns out that the Beatitudes constitute a How To manual for folks wishing to avoid the Sin of Trespass.

‘Reck’ next appears in Hasidic Judaism. Whatever is contained within itself a fragment, a spark, of divinity. That is what makes something, something. It is the non-linear factor that distinguishes figure from ground.

Shechinah, God’s Presence, is in exile in the World. It has fragmented and is now distributed among the myriad persons, places, things and events that constitute our World. As actors in that World, our job, should we choose to accept it, is to release those sparks so that they can be reunited in Godhead. 

When we grant ‘reck’, we empower someone or something other than ourselves to release its divine spark, reuniting that spark with other sparks, repatriating the Shechinah. In the case of inanimate objects, we grant reck when we take care to use an object properly, i.e. when we allow it to function according to its nature or when we allow it to fulfil the purpose for which it was intended. 

In a nutshell, ‘we will drink no wine before its time’ (except Beaujolais Nouveau) and we will break an egg only to make an omelet. This ethic of caring for God’s creatures, regardless of their form, is characteristic of spiritual practices originating in India, China, and Japan, as well as in the relationship of Native Americans to their quarry. 

Kabballah, an esoteric philosophy rooted in medieval Judaism, can be understood as a road map for reuniting the divine sparks scattered in Malkhut (the Kingdom, i.e. the World) with Keter (the Crown, i.e. Godhead). According to one interpretation, Kabballah is a spiritual practice that redeems the divine shards scattered throughout Malkhut by passing them through the eight intermediate sefirot on their way to reunification in Keter.

According to this interpretation, Kabballah and the Beatitudes are closely related. In the non-Hasidic West, Anaximander’s ethic shows itself most prominently in the Christian theology of St. Francis of Assisi and in the Existential philosophy of Martin Buber. 

Finally, young children around the world and across many cultures instinctively practice a form of Hasidism in their everyday lives. They easily recognize the divine spark in whatever they encounter, and they spontaneously grant reckot to everything that surrounds them (except their siblings). 

No wonder Jesus said, “Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mt. 18: 3) Unless you grant reck as children do…

***

Image: James Tissot, French, 1836–1902. “The Lord’s Prayer (Le ‘Pater Noster),” 1886–1896. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, 8 1/2 x 6 7/16 inches. Brooklyn Museum, purchased by public subscription, 00.159.167. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

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