“Here’s Lookin’ At Ya!”

  So, with this new normal livestreaming I was moved to do a typical Peter’s-silly-sense-of-humor, and it happened during the Holydays. I don’t recall at which service, but at some point, in one of them I looked up, speaking to people in cyberspace as if I could actually see them. I accusingly said, “Excuse me, would you please move six feet apart from each other.” I figured that was that until the next day when I received an email from a congregant that read, “Rabbi, we’re really sorry. Just to tell you, after reminding us we did move apart.” Fortunately, the email address was such that I couldn’t identify who sent it, and the first name didn’t even give me a hint. Did I laugh? Is the Pope Catholic?

  But it got me thinking…do we have to believe someone is looking for us to be mindful of what we’re doing? Is the fear one of being caught? What motivates towards goodness?

   In a book called God is Watching You, the author, Dr. Domenic Johnson explores the idea expressed in the title and how it’s evolved over time. “For millennia human civilizations have relied on such beliefs to create moral order,” and that this general idea “(is) so good at promoting cooperation that (it)  may have been favored by natural selection” and “even atheists often feel they are being monitored and judged.” 

   Upon hearing someone say, “When we wake ourselves up because we snored a loud obnoxious snore, why do we look around to see if anyone is laughing or staring at us?”, it occurred to me that this seems to be connected to behavior in general… when someone apologizes for a misdeed, maybe in fact s/he feels bad not that s/he did it, rather for getting caught.

   Pardon the exceedingly mixed metaphor, but it’s like “He knows when you’ve been sleeping, he knows when you’re awake; he knows when you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake!” We’ve taken it one step beyond: our traditional theology states that not only does God “see” us but that what God “sees” is recorded in some volume that is reviewed annually. 

   It’s an interesting concept, but let me remind you of a couple of things: I cannot see you when livestreaming the service; and if you believe you are being watched from above (surely not me) and that belief keeps you from behaving badly, stick with it.