Be a Mensch, the Rest May Follow!

Dan Liechty

I have spent the last dozen years as a Gentile member of a Jewish Reform congregation. The emphasis on family and ethics (while wrestling with the meanings of ethnicity) makes this Mennonite feel right at home.

There are many things that my congregation could learn from the Mennonite approach to religion and community, such as the importance of forgiveness and not holding grudges. And there are many things Mennonites could learn from a Jewish approach to religion and community. The relationship between thought and action, motives and deeds, is one of these.

Jesus rightly emphasized the importance of cultivating righteous inner motives attuned to the Spirit of the Living and Loving God. A number of Jesus’ teachings and parables revolve around the general idea that motives and inner thoughts are significant.

I see now, however, that as this basic teaching was communicated to me through pietistic Mennonite Sunday school, Bible school, general Sunday service preaching, as well as annual week-long revival meetings, the message clearly got off track. There the focus was on the need to examine scrupulously and carefully all inward thoughts, feelings, and motivations for signs of hatred, anger, pride, greed, selfishness, and lust—and to banish these thoughts and inner feelings, purifying the heart through renewed repentance. 

Furthermore, good deeds done from impure motives were but dross in the eyes of God (who sees what is hidden in your heart), acts of hypocrisy at best. Coming to the Lord’s Table without thoroughly and meticulously examining your inmost thoughts and feelings was to participate in your own damnation.

I struggled for years to live up to this standard of what I understood to be Christian spiritual perfection, only to realize again and again that, as Bob Dylan sang it, that “if my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine. . . . ” Too much of my life was spent running from the spiritual guillotine I imagined God held over my head.

Only relatively late in life did I come to understand that to have a head and heart full of strong emotions, feelings, and thoughts, both positive and negative, was simply to be human. Through the socialization process, in the family, the faith community and the wider society, we learn to balance these strong inner urgings and mold them into motivation for positive living. We learn to control them, to live with them and not let them get in our way, but we do not erase them.

Reform Judaism is very realistic and redemptive in this regard. It says, in effect, become a Mensch (a doer of good deeds) and don’t worry yourself to death about your inner thoughts and desires. They are a problem only if you find these should hinder your becoming a Mensch. 

In other words, take care of that Samaritan on the side of road, and don’t beat yourself up for the fact that while doing so, you grumble about it inside your head and wish you could be somewhere else. Let good deeds become your habit, and over time (who knows?) you might find your inner desires conforming to your actions. It’s a process; relax already, and give it some time. 

But above all else, become a Mensch, a habitual doer of good deeds. Neither God nor human can expect more (or less!) of you.

—Dan Liechty, Normal, Illinois, teaches human behavior in the School of Social Work, Illinois State University.