Now here's another reason why Abraham Joshua Heschel is one of my most trusted spiritual guides. He preserves and affirms the Godness of God. Long before we fell for what Bill Placher called 'the domestication of transcendence', Heschel was insisting that God is not reducible to human categories of control and usefulness. Those who want a God who is manageable and amenable to our wants, likes, dislikes and life plans had better look elsewhere than the God of the Bible, who refuses to be the default option of the self-interested ego, religious or secular, sincere or selfish, assertive or fearful.
"God is of no importance unless He is of supreme importance. It is hard to define religion, it is hard to place its wealth of meaning into the frame of a single sentence. But surely one thing may be said negatively: religion is not expediency.
If all our actions are guided by one consideration, how best to serve our personal interests, it is not God whom we serve, but the self. True, the self has its legitimate claims and interests; the persistent denial of the self, the defiance of one's own desire for happiness is not what God demands.
But to remember that the love of God is for all men [and women], for all creatures; to remember His love and His claim to love in making a decision- this is the way He wants us to live. To worship God is to forget the self. It is in such instants of worship that humanity acts as a symbol of Him."
That single paragraph, broken into three thought sized bytes, contains the substance of Heschel's philosophy of religion, which itself is one of the more demanding intellectual achievements of mid 20th century religious thought. What I get from Heschel is thought distilled to the essence of what we most want to say about the God whose love pervades the universe, carrying with it mercy, purpose and redemptive intent.
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