So What: A Rosh Hashanah Sermon

So What? It’s a question that very few of us ever think about. Think about it now: When you want to focus on discovering the meaning of an action, a rule, an event, whatever, you often ask another question: Why?

But that question of why is a question that only leads to further questions, complicating whatever conclusions you may find with more complex issues that often get left unresolved. And when you do this in your life as an individual among the masses of humanity, you are far from alone.

After all, the repositioning of the “So What” aspect of life into the unanswerable question of “why” is what has led to much tragedy and unexplainable atrocities throughout the long history of human life.

After that grandiose introduction, I am sure you are sitting in your seat thoroughly confused.

Perfect. That confusion will get you thinking.

In order to help clear away that confusion and get you on the path toward understanding why I have positioned the question of “why” as the root of all evil on this earth, let me take you back through an experience in my life that led me to realize we have all been asking the wrong questions of ourselves and of our society.

During my sophomore year in high school, I decided to challenge myself and take AP US History. Most students at my high school took US History, AP or not, during their junior year. But there were a handful of us who were ready for the challenge and decided to jump the gun a bit.

The first week of APUSH, as it was affectionately called in the local lingo of Deerfield High School, was one of the tougher weeks I have had to go through in my admittedly sheltered life. From the first sentence out of Mrs. Kaplan’s mouth, I knew I was a bit in over my head.

Homework on the first day? I had enough trouble keeping my wits about me during the 3-hours we had to sit through classes.

But I did the homework and did it well.

Then came Day #2. Class was fine, beyond the whole “sitting in my desk” thing, but the assignment handed out in APUSH was another story.

Never mind the fact I had a golf meet that wouldn’t end until around 8 that night, I didn’t think I could finish the first of the famous “So What” assignments in a whole night.

I know you have no idea what a “So What” is at this point but hang on, I promise I will explain.

Anyway, I put the assignment out of my head during the meet and worked tirelessly to get it done that night. Not just done, but done right.

Here’s the timeout you were waiting for. What is a “So What”?

Well, besides being the bane of existence for the four or five of my classmates who took one look and said, “I think I’ll just switch into regular US History this year”, it was a challenge from Mrs. Kaplan to her students. Sure, it was a challenge that we at the time hated her for giving us, but also a challenge for which would leave those of us who made it through alive will be forever indebted to her.

The challenge was to move beyond the traditional: What happened and why, instead answering a third question: SO WHAT?

George Washington famously crossed the Delaware River. Why? Because the British Army was chasing his fleeting force to the river’s edge.

That is easy.

Answering the question of “SO WHAT” is a much more arduous task.

In other words, why should I care that Washington crossed some river on the east coast?

Why should I care that Neville Chamberlain did not adequately assess the threat that Hitler posed when he signed the Munich Pact?

Why should I care that FDR steamrolled his New Deal programs through a reluctant Congress?

These answers are not as simple as the answers we seem content with on a daily basis. That in itself is a problem, but not the biggest of problems with our being content to know “why” something happened and yet remaining unable to explain the “SO WHAT” that takes that question another level deeper.

Still confused? That’s fine. But hopefully that confusion will begin to clear as I bring all of this to the present day.

So now lets take the current “protests” against the anti-Muslim movie recently thrown out on YouTube.

Muslims around the world were offended by the video, a video that disparages their religion and gives them every right to be offended.

That is the “why” being the protest movement.

But because no one seems to care about the “So What”, a simple event of offensive media has escalated into a deadly serious of violent riots and protests.

First, the protesters: Ok, you are offended. You have every right to be offended. If you want, you even have the right to assemble and protest against the video. If you think the US had something to do with it, sit outside the embassy and protest. Suit yourself.

But before you go burning flags and climbing walls (Libya is a more complex situation), please take a moment, by yourself, to think about the “So What” in this whole ordeal.

So What if you are offended? Is burning down a US Embassy going to help erase your being offended? Is that going to affect the fact that the movie is out there and propagating across the Internet?

No.

So you have to ask yourself: So What?

When you finally do sit down and think about it, there is no reasonable answer to what is clearly a pivotal question. There is no So What?

Now since I am probably not giving this sermon to you in the Muslim Middle East, lets turn the attention back toward home. Toward you. Where it matters.

This failure to address the So What isn’t just a problem for religious extremists, but for all of us.

I get reprimanded for being late to a meeting. Why? I got stuck in traffic. Does that even matter? no, it probably doesn’t.

But if you want to start thinking deeper, does it even matter that I was reprimanded? Again, the probable answer is no. Why is that a bad thing? Because it sets a bad tone. So what?

Nothing.

You are a social conservative and find out you are living next to a gay couple. That doesn’t sit well with you. Why? Because you find that lifestyle deplorable.

So what?

Again, silence.

But the problem is that often we act when we have an actionable answer to the “why” question and not the “So What”.

We lash out against what we feel is wrong with the world around us before even contemplating whether that perceived wrong has any impact on us, our families, or even on our communities.

And it goes both ways. So what if you are a Jewish liberal and end up rooming with an evangelical Christian?

The bottom line is that there are too many rules, too many hot button issues in our society today that simply have no bearing on the important question in human life, the “So What” we all must answer when assessing the world around us.

What the Jewish High Holidays are supposed to do is to get us all to take that time to think about the “So What”.

So what if there is a YouTube video that offends me and disparages my faith? If I believe in the principles of the religion, what does it matter that someone else disagrees?

So what if a neighbor chooses a different lifestyle path than I have chosen? Will that force me down an unwanted path of sin? Instead, maybe it’s a blessing, a chance to learn a thing or two.

And so what if I end up rooming with someone of a different faith? So what even if they try to sway me over to their side? Even the evangelism is simply an opportunity for me to gain a glimpse into the tenants of a faith I myself have no interest in joining. But nonetheless, it’s a learning opportunity.

In the end we all fail ourselves and we fail society by skipping past the “So What” and taking action without true reason. On a macro scale, the result has been the radicalization of minute differences in the innate beliefs we as humans are born and bred with. Over time, these differences have been allowed to fester and have been pushed apart by the divisive actions that have resulted from our unreasoned actions, both as individuals and as a society.

And that brings us to today.

Sure, it is a long shot, but if each and every one of us took the time to think about why we take action based upon belief, our world will gradually become a better place for it.

This is definitely going to have to involve leadership across human societies taking the lead, but each and every one of us is a leader in our own life, a leader that has the power to make a difference, even if that difference goes unnoticed on a larger scale.

These holidays are a perfect opportunity to take a moment to yourself to address your life. To ask the necessary “So Whats” to guide you forward. Do that, and you will be a better person for it, no matter what effect you might have on society.