Friend of the show, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, stops by to discuss faith in the midst of certain “hot button” issues plaguing our society. Topics include Lent and fasting, Shaun White, and the #MeToo movement.
With regards to Lent and fasting, Father Dave shares that he often gets questions about adding something in during Lent, rather than taking something out. Father Dave explains that while both are helpful, intentionally depriving ourselves of something is valuable to our spiritual lives. Rabbi Brad agrees: “It should be obvious that adding is not the same as subtracting … The act of surrendering something, the act of giving something up, the act of setting something aside is a really powerful thing because the absence of something has its own experience physically, psychologically, spiritually than the adding of something. It’s not that I’m saying it’s bad for people to add a new practice, it’s just that giving something up has its own unique value.”
RELATED: Why Do We Give Up Something for Lent?
Father Dave also shares how moving it was to watch Shaun White win the gold medal in the Olympics, but at the same time, sexual allegations against White have recently resurfaced. Father Dave gave a homily on Shaun White’s success, and afterward, a parishioner mentioned the allegations to him. “My first reaction was the fact that he is so flawed and such a sinner … And I quickly said, ‘You know, it is about redemption.’” Father Dave compared the situation with Shaun White to leprosy: “When I was preaching the other day about lepers, our modern day lepers are these folks that have been accused, many of them have been rightly accused. And now, we as a society have no place for them, and they’re completely discarded. And there’s something very disturbing about that to me. That we are no longer a society that can have redemption, even for things that are heinous crimes.”
Rabbi Brad responds, “It’s fine, you wanna put Shaun White out of the camp? Put him out of the camp. But not until you tell me, how does he come back in? And how do we care for him in the meantime? I’ll go with the Hebrew Bible Old Testament model: Real leprosy, real contagion, it really has to be out of the camp, real hard boundaries, but no such thing as a hard boundary without the possibility of repentance and without care for that sinner in the meantime. If you don’t do those two things, then actually, that’s not a biblical rule. It’s just mean-spirited hatefulness that gets you to not deal with your own sins. He’s an ideal role model because he’s not an ideal person, and there isn’t a person out there, including myself, who isn’t wrestling with stuff that I feel a little bit ashamed of … that’s being human the last time I checked, and if we weren’t, we wouldn’t need all of this stuff.”
Father Dave points out that there have been far too many cases when women make allegations that have been swept under the rug, and some sins are larger than others, but that is exactly why we are all in need of redemption. (Original Air 2-15-18)