By Sanford Goodkin

Could we get along without religion? Yes, I think so. Could we get along without God? No, I can’t think so. To be in love with God, to emulate goodness through a special spirituality, to teach this goodness to children is what Judaism is all about.

The noted historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in a marvelous article, in the New York Times, “Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr," the supreme theologian of the 20th Century, reminds us of another great American, President Abraham Lincoln and his expressions towards religion and God; they serve as a wake-up call to the holier-than-thou crowd that dominates the Republican party and which has convinced me of the necessary separation between God and religion:

“Mortal mans’ apprehension of truth is fitful, shadowy and imperfect; he sees through the glass darkly."  Lincoln’s experience of the Civil War taught him about the darkness of mans’ thinking even when claiming that God was on his side. What happens when the North and the South pray to the same God? Whom does the Lord answer and why? Lincoln summed up his feelings in the magnificence of his second inaugural address; “let us never forget that the Almighty has His own purposes."

When complemented on this address, Lincoln wrote back: “Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told.” Mr.Lincoln neither smoked, drank or cursed. He was an unusual man of great confidence, yet true humility. He kidded no one nor tried to. He therefore remains ironically, godlike, in his lasting influence, especially within the context of modern politics, which are a disgrace to God and to humankind.

Niebuhr wrote nearing the end of his life, in his, The Irony of American History, “If we should perish..the primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; the blindness would be induced, not by some accident of nature nor history, but by hatred and vainglory.” We have reached that point wherein we cannot measure ourselves by GDP nor statistics, but by intelligence and morality.

We are a splendid people and nation, too busy to thoughtfully analyze what we read, what we see and to whom we listen. Our immaturity is showcased by how profoundly we are failing the next generations. We drive them to soccer games, buy them new cars at a very young age, and are simply too busy to be parental about how God is our hope and faith and that we must treat neighbors as we would have them treat us—”the rest being commentary.”