The book is a memoir of a young female who struggles to find her spirituality. One day, she encounters a spiritual awakening that leads her to the rabbinate path after an intense struggle to find faith. The girl Danya has lived as an atheist since her teenage from the age of 13 years. In this stage, she grows up, loses direction, and engages in the revolution of the feminist Zine-makers. She is yearning for something she does not know herself, and in the process, she mysteriously finds God. Like the book title, Danya found God surprisingly; she stopped worrying and started loving religion because it came naturally. It directly reflects the integrating life of traditional Judaism with that of the 21st century, where sacrificing is not needed but rather a natural occurrence. The book reflects the task assigned to the spiritual life; the author gives a spiritual opinion affecting 21st-century believers, especially young adults. In the modern days, finding your faith and loving the religion requires more effort. This paper will examine the struggle which Danya went through in the process of finding faith. It was an arduous struggle from being an atheist to finding God and loving religion.
Surprised By God, Danya Ruttenberg Struggles with Faith
The book is a memoir of a young female who struggles to find her spirituality. One day, she encounters a spiritual awakening that leads her to the rabbinate path after an intense struggle to find faith. The girl Danya has lived as an atheist since her teenage from the age of 13 years. In this stage, she grows up, loses direction, and engages in the revolution of the feminist Zine-makers. She is yearning for something she does not know herself, and in the process, she mysteriously finds God. Like the book title, Danya found God surprisingly; she stopped worrying and started loving religion because it came naturally. It directly reflects the integrating life of traditional Judaism with that of the 21st century, where sacrificing is not needed but rather a natural occurrence. The book reflects the task assigned to the spiritual life; the author gives a spiritual opinion affecting 21st-century believers, especially young adults. In the modern days, finding your faith and loving the religion requires more effort. This paper will examine the struggle which Danya went through in the process of finding faith. It was an arduous struggle from being an atheist to finding God and loving religion.
Danya was inspired to inquire more about faith by the ongoing sense of wonder, and she learned to appreciate the Judaism faith. In her childhood, Judaism did not make sense to her; instead, she decided to live in the world that pleases her. Even though Danya did not believe in the Judaism faith, she struggled with something bigger than herself; she felt connected to something spiritual and divine. She tried to move away from the divine power that seemed related to her; she went into partying with friends, diving deeper into yoga practices, and also convening with nature; however, all the activities nothing seem enough for her (Ruttenberg, 2008). As Danya got close to the strange power, she felt the power of holiness and joy. It was a sign that's where she belonged; however, she was not ready to live in reality. In tertiary education, she majored in religious studies, which made her aware of other belief systems, and she started demanding religion. In the process, she learned to connect with a friend who helped her to see the sense and beauty of the religion of Judaism she was born. The gradual journey to her faith and practices grew with time, and she had to gradually explore faith before arriving at the rabbinical school. This made her see atheism and religion as parallel lines that can never be met. She started having a negative attitude to the atheist and hated their characters.
The author claims that her early 20s were a pure struggle and conflict when she dived deeper into the questions of religion. She was confused and wondered why she should observe the Shabbat (Sabbath), how to pray, and the essence of considering Siddur. She asked how Jewish ethics would control her behavior and choices as well. She wondered how the Jewish doctrines would drive her relationship with God, which seems genuine and honest. However, all her endless questions were not logical or ritualistic; instead, they only took her away from who she was and how she understood herself. She was in an authoritarian confused state, which was a clear sign that she needed to rearrange herself and think straight. That was the primary thing before anything else, understanding herself and thinking straight. She had confused feelings; there was fear, confusion, and inconvenience in one person. Her mind was utterly mixed up because of finding her true identity in religion; she was running away from reality. Danya sometimes could sit lost in her mind in the presence of her friend all because she was figuring out the divine power around her, the joy she felt with the spiritual energy the yoga and partying could not give her. It was one of the most confusing states as a young adult.
Gradually her relationship with the Jews practice started growing; she wanted to be like other Jews, which pushed her into reading. While reading, she discovered that even renowned theologians struggle with critical areas such as rethinking, integration, and disciplines. They work to build the family relationship and identity; they battle fulfilling their desires and manage past pain. Danya compared the same issue to hers and realized that she was not alone in this problem. It made her realize that despite the culture, the time, and the nature or personality of the theologians, they all fought one thing or the other in the journey of religion. Danya started getting contented that what she was wrestling with was part of life when one joined a religious practice. It made her begin understanding and getting interested in religion. She allowed religion to enter her heart with the hope that she would have a life-transforming and bring impact on someone, just like the past theologians who went through the same and later obtained an effect on the believer's life. Her acceptance to transform came after she engaged in religious studies, where she learned more about past religious leaders and what they went through and overcame.
Danya is a lady that meets God when she least expects it. In the book, she explains faith as a daily work at the personal and communal levels. She says the ritual is done on the foundation of faith, which involves the emotional, social, familial, physical, and theological. Danya's faith and tradition slowly grew after her mother's death; these were challenging phases in her life. After partying in college for a dot com period, it made her reflect on what she gained from college drinking because all the time she was searching for the meaning of spiritual life; Danya claimed that even if the spiritual life is connected to some suffering, she was determined to find out. She was ready for that pain and the fear of the spiritual life because it seemed better than the directionless sleepwalking of the parties because she was more disturbed by the parties than having the joy she admired. Danya had tasted both sides of life; at this point, she was more convinced that the religious life was better than the partying life she had in college. She was not enjoying herself as her friends did. Danya's life was a silent suffering; to her, parting brought more disaster than good to the point where she was willing to incur the pain of religion than worldly partying, which seemed to worsen than religion.
Danya says that even though the spiritual is described differently, it carries significance to others. In her senior year in college, when she started discovering her identity, she engaged in a midnight walk, which improved her life, and she decided to stick to God. Danya found more peace in God than in the life she had lived as an atheist before believing in the Judaism faith. She recalls her life in the atheist world, where daily rituals were her time off to engage in activities. There was no time when Danya said the mourners' Kaddish as the routine of Judaism when the adult child did eleven months after the parents' burial; she lived in a world where no one could control her. She wanted freedom where the Judaism doctrines did not dictate her life. She did not know to pray, even the mourners' prayers; she could look at Judaism do it. However, her persistence and the desire to change after gaining knowledge made her become a religious person who values rituals became familiar with prayers, and engaged in daily services. Based on the Danya case, it is true that transformation is not easy and is a gradual process. Acceptance of religious practices is an individual decision that comes from the heart. People walking in spiritual ways have a basic foundation.
Conclusively, the author explains her magical experience before accepting religion. She went through different stages in her transformation, and finally, she made a personal decision when she was struck with the truth. Based on this content is a clear reflection of what the believers go through before they accept the true religion. The author wrote this book as a message and a motivation to the people going through the same issue as her to understand that no matter what they do, the only softer life is in God. It is boring to live a worldly life, and sometimes painful; some have lost the spiritual growth in the world activities; however, none of them is satisfying like living life religiously. Accepting religion as the only way to happiness, Danya tried to run away; however, it was impossible; she kept having the divine feeling and the spiritual presence around her. Irrespective of how often she tried to escape, living away from her identity wasn't easy. It reflects modern believers fighting with the exact case; the book serves as an educator to the contemporary world, particularly 21st-century believers. Danya went through pain and decided to embrace the religion and accept her childhood religion after she had tasted all the sides; after testing, atheist life seemed more painful than religion. Young adults should take it as an example and find their true identity.
References
Ruttenberg, D. (2008). Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion. Beacon Press.
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- Quote paper
- Anonymous,, 2023, Surprised By God, Danya Ruttenberg Struggles with Faith, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1372485
