"The Chosen" by Chaim Potok

One of the books I've listed below in my reading pile is "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok. Robyn and I read through this book together, usually on Monday nights after the kids were in bed. I would read, and Robyn would knit. We finished it this past Monday.

The story is about two high-school Jewish boys living in Brooklyn during and after the years of World War II. One is the son of a secular Jewish scholar, and the other the son of a respected Hasidic rabbi. The story is about the friendship they form despite the polar differences in their Jewish upbringing and training.

The author explores many different themes in the course of the novel, but I was most intrigued by his depiction of the world in which the story takes place. The country I know, the U.S., but the culture is as foreign to me as could possibly be. I've known very few Jewish people in my life, and have only seen from a distance those from the Hasidic community (I remember seeing some Hasidic families at a theme park in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There were also several Amish families at the park. I wondered if perhaps the two groups didn't share more commonalities than differences.). So it was quite illuminating to learn about the traditions and concerns of these two groups within Judaism.

I also reflected upon the relationship between family and faith. We probably underestimate the deep influence our upbringing has on the beliefs we hold dearest to our hearts. We tend to think that we have chosen our own beliefs solely on the basis of their merits. This understanding is betrayed by those parents who say of their children, "We are not going to raise them in any one religion. When they are old enough, they can choose what religion, if any, they will believe in." But that is naive. What these parents are really teaching their children is this: religion, and by implication God, ultimately exists to serve you. They are in effect indoctrinating their children in a particular world view just as effectively as the Hasidic Jews or Amish.

If family upbringing profoundly influences our beliefs about God and ourselves, this is no accident. God created the family, and he has ordained the family as one means of bringing his people to salvation. God did not just save Abraham as a individual, but he saved him as the father of a nation. His promise was for him and his children, and his promises to those in Christ are for them and their children (Gen. 17:7, Acts 2:39). God works out his saving purpose through families. The same God who created the family before sin entered the world uses the family, now restored by grace, to bring redemption from sin and its consequences (which, incidentally, is one big reason why I believe in baptizing infants).

This is not to deny the necessity of faith, of course. It is just to say that God often engenders saving faith through ordinary means - like the influence of your parents. There are exceptions of course. Paul was saved out of a Pharisee upbringing that was probably not unlike the Hasidism in the novel. And many secular parents are surprised to find their children "getting religion". But as wonderful as God's grace is in these situations, it is no more wonderful or gracious than if he uses the simple faith of a mom and dad to reach the heart of their child with the gospel of Jesus Christ.