The Left Hand of God

I was watching the author of “The Left Hand of God”, Michael Learner, Rabbi of a San Francisco progressive Synagogue discussing his book on CSPN. I was intrigued by the underlying theses and whereas I would have ordinarily clicked to the next channel, I listened intently. The basic premise is that there exists a continuum somewhere along which everyone’s worldviews lie. It has at one end a belief that the world is a hard place where everyone is out for themselves and grabbing all they can before someone else does. At the other end the belief is that the world is a warm, nurturing, comforting place, sort of motherly. Though few are at the poles all have views, which can change over time, that are somewhere on this continuum..
I got the book. Not great. The theme is repeated in many anecdotes but the premise is nevertheless profound. He goes on to say that people at the “hard world” end tend to envision God as the thunderbolt toting wrathful God who condemns the sinners to an eternal hell and smites the enemies of the believers. In the Christian faith this would be the Old Testament God. Michael Lerner refers to them as following the “Right Hand of God”. In Islam they would interpret the Qur-an in a more fundamentalist way with some even finding passages leading them to militant positions as professed by Al Queda. At the “soft world” end Christians follow the New Testament God, the God of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, the “love thy enemies”, the “turn the other cheek”. In Islam I imagine there is also this segment of believers but I don’t know how to name them. In the Hindu tradition there is Kali with her necklace of skulls and Krishna’s love and joy.
Michael Lerner further goes on to postulate that one’s place on the continuum also informs their political position with the ultra right being at the Right Hand of God and the extreme left, at the Left Hand. (I don’t know where I would put the Libertarians. My inclination is to put them somewhere left of center on this scale.) At the “soft world” end would be the pacifists and the “hard” view reflects the hawks. The “hard world” world view would lean more toward rugged individualism and minimum Government intervention and the “soft” to a position where Government has an increased responsibility for the welfare of its populace.
How one views the world in this context also influences people’s aspirations and drive. The view that the world is hard and we need to claw and scrape to survive leads one to be more aggressive, competitive and materialistic and the “soft” view results in less drive and a more “laid back” kind of a temperament. This concept can be further extended to the “glass half empty” vs. the “glass half full” personalities with the optimists viewing a “softer” world and pessimists a harder one..
There was a recent article in the Economist (a conservative leaning British weekly) that cited a study testing conservatives against liberals and found a physiological difference between the two with liberals tending toward optimism. The article concluded, somewhat “tongue in cheek”, that the good news is now we understand the difference but the bad is that we probably can’t do much about it.
I find now, having been exposed to this idea, I tend to often take this continuum into consideration and think of where would a holder of a given point of view fall on it? As for myself, I sit to the softer side of the middle. I am an optimist and definitely see the glass as half full despite segments of my life having been spent in harsh and sometimes dangerous circumstances. (This may support the Economist’s physiological argument.)