Sunday, November 30, 2008
Adam, where are you?
In his book “The Art of Possibility” the conductor Benjamin Zender describes an incident when, during a live performance, one of the violonists, rather than waiting for six bars, jumped in at bar three and forced Zender to start all over. At the end of the concert somebody from the orchestra went up to him and asked: “Do you want to know who the culprit was?” Zender replied: “I know, thanks. It was me!” His point was that, being the conductor, it was ultimately his responsibility to make sure the orchestra played in synch, and any mistake was ultimately his; so rather than looking for a scapegoat, he better take responsibility for his mistake, end of story.
Yet it seems to terribly difficult to admit that we made a mistake, and if there is a way to cover up for our wrongs, we do it. The current banking crisis is a good example of it: firms claim that somebody else, the environment, clients, whoever, is to blame, and unless evidence is produced, hardly any CEO will stand up and admit: “We were wrong, I made a mistake, I am to blame”. In fact, this problem is as old as the world: the Bible describes a scene in the creation account of Genesis, when man and woman live in paradise. In spite of clear injunctions not to eat from the tree of knowledge, they do so anyway. When asked what happened (as if God did not know!) Adam blames Eve, and Eve the serpent. So the natural instinct seems to be to avoid taking responsibility, a
nd to shift blame onto somebody else.
This is where Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, starts his reflection, when he meditates on the first question God asks Adam just after his disobedience: “Adam, where are you?” Buber, and many rabbis before him, is puzzled by this question. If God is God, then he is all-knowing and hence does not need to ask where Adam is: he knows. The more likely reason for asking the question then would be that by doing so, God would help Adam to realize that he is hiding. Where are you, what are you doing, where do you stand?- all those are questions man needs to ask himself, according to Buber, in order to begin a journey of self-knowledge and change. As long as man does not take responsibility, but rather blames others, circumstances, fate or whatever, he will remain a victim, unable to change. On the other hand, as soon as man acknowledges that he is responsible for his own actions and that in this area or that he has failed, he becomes truly human. And at that moment God can extend forgiveness to him, not before.
Christians the world over are today beginning the season of Advent, a time to prepare for Christmas. In the process they take stock of their lives and seek to reform their conduct where that is needed. May we allow this question to probe deeply: Martin, where are you? And may we find the courage to admit where we have failed, both to God, but also to our fellow men. If we were able to encourage such a culture of taking responsibility for our actions, maybe some mistakes would never be made, because we would spend less time hiding them before ourselves and others.
