Jacob Thomson Official Website

The fiction author may very well understand God better than many theologians. I would not go so far as to claim we truly understand God in all his aspects, for no one does and, I suspect, no one is even capable of such complete understanding. But we have a unique insight into the nature of free will.

Creation has been likened to writing a novel. A writer usually begins with some sort of outline, or at least a general idea. He comes up with a set of characters and decides how they should interact, and what the outcome of that interaction should be. By the time he sits down to start writing he has plotted the action, decided which characters will be central and which will be peripheral, and how it will all end.

So the author starts as a fatalist. Whatever happens is what he has decreed will happen. Fictional characters, after all, have no free will. They are much as the Moslem imagines the world to be, guided and preordained to the most infinitessimal degree.

And then, somewhere in the writing process, one of the characters simply decides to break out of that preordained behavioral pattern and do something unexpected. There may be a few writers who can keep their characters strictly in line, but most of us are subject to the whims of a group of people who don't even exist in the world of reality.

Free will is like that. Our future may start out fixed, but we have the power to change it, to make decisions about each and every action we take. This, indeed, is what our Sages taught was meant when the Torah relates that man was created "b'tzelem Elokim," "in the image of God." Not that we somehow look like God, who as a being of pure spirit cannot be limited to any physical form, but that we were gifted with the power to discern good from evil, and to make our own choices. Some have said that man is lower than God, but higher than the angels, for there are those who declare that angels lack free will, and can only do as they are told.

Others suggest that angels do have free will, but that it is meaningless, for their proximity to God means that they also know the consquences of each choice and can therefore never truly choose. The Jewish concept of the satan, after all, is not of a fallen angel—the commonly cited reference, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer?" is to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzer, not to a rebellious angel—but of a heavenly prosecuting attorney. He has no power of his own, but can do only that which is permitted by God. (And "Lucifer," by the way, is not a name, but an interpretive Greek translation—it means "bearer of light"—of the original Hebrew "star of dawn," one of the many descriptive titles given the king.)

My novel, The Alukam, contains a number of referrences to Kaballah. (There is no "right" spelling of the word, incidentally, since any spelling is only an attempt to render the Hebrew sounds in a foreign alphabet, so you may also see it spelled "cabala," "caballa," quabalah," and so forth.) The name is derived from a Hebrew verb meaning "to receive." So Kaballah is received knowledge of a mystical nature, and by understanding it, one also comes to understand the workings of the universe at both a physical and spirtual level.

Few, of course, become quite so adept. I never did. And you're unlikely to master it by studying "pop" kaballah with the Jewish equivalent of a guru, popular as that seems in celebrity circles these days. One must presume, since they're teaching people who are often completely unqualified to learn the subject, that they are imparting only a superficial knowledge. Delving deeply into Kaballah without the proper background most often results not in enlightenment, but in insanity.

But even a basic knowledge of the subject reveals that reality isn't always real. Physicality is a matter of faith, you see. Not, in this case, our faith in our own reality, but God's faith that we exist. As long as God believes the physical realm exists it will do so. Should God ever, for a moment, decide that there is no physical world, the whole thing is over.

Are we real? We seem to be. Is a table top solid? So it appears. But is it? After all, something like 99.9% of that table top consists of the empty space within its constituent atoms. So, mostly, it isn't even there. We see it because those atoms are so closely packed together that, even if they are mostly empty space, the solid bits overlap sufficiently to create the "solid" object.

Mystics have suggested that the physical and spiritual worlds are coexistant, with the boundary between them akin to the dimensional boundaries of science fiction. Some claim to be able to erase that boundary, at least at a visual level, through concentration or meditation, so that they can see beyond the physical world into the spiritual realm hidden beneath the surface. I suppose one could say that they have learned to line up those atoms in a manner allowing the empty space to be perceived.

I have written elsewhere that good and evil are ultimately subjective values, their true nature dependent upon one's point of view. This ties in with the belief that "there is no evil act that does not have some good in it." A minor disaster in one place may save the victim from far worse somewhere else. Something that seems terrible may be the event that, when all its effects have been felt, keeps the entire world from destruction. The death of an infant, a terrible-seeming event to all concerned, may save the lives of dozens of victims of a serial murderer who will no longer grow up to begin his depredations.

Descartes' credo, "I think, therefore I am," may also be "I think, therefore you are," at the cosmic level. What most perceive as real may be a mass delusion, while what the majority believe is unreal may be the ultimate reality. Is a prayer unanswered, or was the answer merely "no?" Can one truly control his perception of reality to such an extent that he can believe illness away? Is illness, and even death, really a delusion that may be conquered with a little help from Mary Baker Eddy? Do Christian Scientists, or Jewish Scientists (both sects exist) die because they lack sufficient faith to conquer the "illusion" of death, or is it because that illusion is a reality that only God can suspend, but doesn't, since the world requires death if it is to continue to exist?

In this case, I merely ask the questions. You'll have to supply your own answers.