SOZO - Trust the Process

April 6, 2025

Pastor Patrick presented today's message, "SOZO - Trust the Process." A video of today's message is here on YouTube.

It's clear in the Torah that God wants us to have abundant life, live in wholeness. In the very first place, He breathed life into us. He created us to live and multiply. Then there are a plethora of phrases like "bless you abundantly," "your reward shall be great," "you will have abundant joy," "open for you His abundant storehouse," "I give him My covenant of peace," "become a great nation," "many descendants," "a relationship with God," "earthly (and not just spiritual) prosperity and fertility," and "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

In the "watch what you think/act/speak" paradigm, you actually get something of a pass on the first one. The Torah, and by extension God, cares much more about how you act and what you say than it does about what you think. It remains true, however, that controlling what you think is a huge step on the path toward controlling how you act and what you say. Put another way, if you catch and fix it while it's still just in your head, no harm no foul.

Patrick also quoted "when I was a child, I thought like a child, acted like a child, spoke as a child. but when I grew up, I thought like an adult, acted as an adult, and spoke as an adult" (paraphrased, see 1 Corinthians 13:11). An overall theme of the Torah (and the Bible generally) is "Grow up!" It's interesting to note that the Hebrew word for grow up is gah-ah (גָּאָה) which includes the notion of rising up and being exalted in triumph as well as physical growing up. It is indeed an accomplishment to mature as God would have you mature. Moreover, it's interesting to note that the chapter where the verse quoted above comes from (1 Corinthians chapter 13) includes the famous discussion of what love is all about, often spoken/read at weddings. I think the link is clear: acting and speaking properly to others is to love one another.

God wants you "to be His." He's been searching for you since the Garden. Genesis 3:8-9, "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, 'Where are you?'" Don't hide from God. Admit to yourself, and to God, where you are, and make a beeline toward God's desires for you.

Bonus

Tithe: Before or After Taxes?

At this time of year, we all become a bit more aware of taxes. Taxes are important; always have been. They support many good things. Tax monies also get funneled off to not-so-good things through various means from incompetence to fraud. So, what does the Torah say?

First, the Torah accepts the need for everyone to support the common good. This means supporting the poor, the work of the Temple and the Levites, and the operation of a government including a judicial system. In the Torah, it's called tithing. Torah tithing was mostly agricultural, though a few commentators make the case to extend that to income. In either case, 10% has come to be "the amount" despite the fact that the Torah never specifies an amount. (Later in the Old Testament, tithes do become "cash" e.g. in the period of the kings.)

An interesting question becomes "since x% of my taxes goes to 'charitable' causes (e.g. welfare, food stamps, public healthcare, etc.), can I count that as part of my tithing?" If you accept, as I do, that the point of the question is at least partially valid, then the answer is yes. The trick comes down to figuring out the fraction of your taxes that you may count as charitable. The portion that runs the things necessary and properly done by the government (e.g. defense, judicial system, interstate commerce, law enforcement, etc.) cannot be counted as charitable. These are legit costs of life under a societal government. Some have suggested that tithe may be calculated on one's "after tax" income. Perhaps. But you can't do both: you can't do after-tax tithing and include in your tithe paid the charitable portion of your taxes.

The bottom line is the Eighth Commandment: Don't steal! Not paying your taxes is stealing from everyone in your society. Abetting others to avoid taxes is also stealing (e.g. paying "under the table").

The other side of the coin here is that taxes must be fair, reasonable, and put to proper use. If they are not fair, reasonable, and put to proper use then we as citizens have only one recourse: get the tax law changed. This usually takes the form of making sure the people we elect to office want taxes to be fair, reasonable, and put to proper use - and act accordingly.

Here's a 5-minute PragerU video with a take on taxes: Do Tax Cuts Work?.

Bonus2

Importance of the Individual as well as the Tribe

There's a chapter in Numbers, specifically Chapter 7, that happens to be the longest chapter in the Torah. And it's a chapter that has attracted the least commentators. It's repetitive, downright boring. So, what's up?

Prager suggests the purpose of this chapter is not only to assert the importance of each tribe but also the importance of individuals. It's like naming each and every graduate and shaking their hands in the graduation exercises rather than a blanket "all stand all are now graduated you'll get your diplomas in the mail."

Rather than simply say that each tribe brought such and such (to the dedication of the Tabernacle), the Torah goes out of its way to name the individual leaders in each tribe. In the Torah's eyes, these persons were important. Just because you do not know these people some 3,000 years later does not lessen their importance. If these individuals had "dropped the ball" there's little telling where we'd be today.

This is partly why I get exorcised over recording the histories of events, families, etc. They're all important. They make up the fabric of families, communities, nations, and the world. They're all important. And we should at least remember their names. People who contribute to the success of an organization, for instance, deserve at least their names preserved in perpetuity somehow.

It's additionally interesting that in the midst of such greatness being acknowledged, a sin offering is given by each. Amongst the greatest there is the recognition that they sin, too; no one is perfect. Humility is a great trait.

See Prager's Rational Bible: Numbers, pp. 69-70.