What's required? Humility

Perhaps the most haunting line in the Bible is the psalmist's question: "What are we, that you are mindful of us?"
The prophet Micah turned this question into the stirring conclusion of his three rules: Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly before the creator.
The book of Job examines the question in great detail. In this story, Job is a thoroughly righteous man who is terribly afflicted by a multitude of disasters. Job's neighbors come to Job and take part in a series of conversations attempting to find a cause for Job's difficulties. They assume they know how the world works, and they probe for explanations. Job maintains that he has done nothing to deserve his misfortunes, but he too, at last, challenges the creator to explain why he has been afflicted. And in the end, the creator addresses him but offers no explanation. Instead, Job is chided for supposing that he could understand the world.
What are we?
The question of the psalmist is in this way subtly turned over on itself to become: "What are we, that we are mindful of you?"
What indeed are we? How can it be that insignificant transient scraps of the dust of the world are able to contemplate the design and workings of the whole universe? How can such tiny bits of the universe, as we are, not only look at the stars but also comprehend what we see? In all of science and philosophy there is no explanation for this. The lesson of Job is that the creator has made an immensely complex world, one that we may investigate and appreciate but that we may not ever hope to fully understand. The meaning of the world and our place in it is an eternal mystery, and both Job and Micah enjoin us to be humble before this mystery.
Doubting the unknown
There are those who deny the mystery. Science, some say, will provide all answers to all questions. Their faith in science is complete; science is their religion, and their faith in it is not subject to argument. Strangely, most scientists don't believe science holds all answers and all truths. But many people, especially those who don't know the limitations of science, are firm in their reverence for science. Perhaps these science-believers are right, but perhaps they are missing something very important.
Others deny the mystery on different grounds. They believe they fully understand the creator and the creator's laws. Like Job's visitors, they would deny the world before them rather than accept that the creator's laws may be beyond our comprehension. The creator, in their limited human understanding, is limited, so they believe there must have been miraculous intervention rather than the eternal laws of creation to produce all the world and us, intelligent humans. Perhaps these creator-limiters are right, but perhaps they also are missing something very important.
What both the science-believers and the creator-limiters may be missing is the wisdom of the psalmist, of Micah and of Job: It behooves us not to presume we understand all the world; let us walk humbly before our creator.
XDr. Irwin Cohen is a member of Rodef Sholom Congregation and is a retired professor of chemistry at Youngstown State University.