SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
U.S. SENATOR, DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE FOR VICE PRESIDENT (2000)
Joseph Lieberman was a member of the U.S. Senate from Connecticut for 24 years. By the end of his service, in January 2013, he had become the Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and was a senior member of the Armed Services Committee. Through both Committee positions, he became a leader in protecting the security of the American people and supporting American international leadership. In 2000, he was the Democratic candidate for Vice President of the United States.
Senator Lieberman is known as a national leader who works across party lines to get things done, and who speaks his conscience regardless of the political consequences.
Senator Lieberman is Senior Counsel at the law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres LLP in New York. He also serves on the board of several nonprofit organizations, including the McCain Institute. Before his election to the Senate in 1988,
Senator Lieberman served in the Connecticut State Senate for 10 years and was Connecticut’s Attorney General for six.
Senator Lieberman is married to Hadassah Freilich Lieberman. They have four children and 13 grandchildren.
Why I Am So Confident that God Exists!
SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN
My faith in God began in my childhood. That faith answered two of life’s most difficult questions before I was old enough to ask them. The questions were: How did I get here? and now that I’m here, what should I do? The answers were: I’m here because God created the heavens and earth and all living things; and I should “do” what the law and values that God gave Moses guide me to do. How did I know those profound answers as a child? The Bible, my family, and my rabbi told me so.
After reading about, thinking about, and debating God’s existence for decades, my childhood faith is deeper than ever. Science has made huge strides in analyzing Creation’s results, but can’t tell us how Creation began. No study has convinced me that nature’s beauty and order, and the stunning capacities of humans, just happened by accident.
History teaches that no society has escaped chaos, violence, dehumanizing immorality, or tyranny without embracing a system of justice sourced in the Ten Commandments. Liberty alone isn’t enough. My belief in God and the Ten Commandments is part of what moved me into public service and shaped my priorities and practices once there. If God created us, then not only are we joined together in one “family,” but we should act accordingly. If the people we live with, work with, and debate with are children of the same God, then we should treat them with respect, civility, and kindness. Each of us has a spark of God within us, and therefore has an equal right from birth to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My belief in God compelled me to prioritize policies that protect and advance God’s creation, including human rights, environmental protection, and equal justice under law.
The daily rituals and liturgy of my religious observance have encouraged me and made me more secure and optimistic. I begin each day with a prayer of thanks to God for restoring my soul to my body. I end each day with a prayer of gratitude and the hope that my soul will return the next morning. In between, as Scriptures say, I try to “serve the Lord with gladness,” remembering that each day is “the day that the Lord has created, and therefore we should rejoice and be glad in it.”
My belief leads me to work hard for six days and to rest on the seventh. This has given me (and billions of others) the gift of Sabbath rest, which has been an anchor and sanctuary of tranquility in my life. People ask how I could observe the Sabbath and be a U.S. Senator? I answer, “I don’t know how I could be an effective Senator without following God’s commandment to observe the Sabbath.”
I pray to God at least three times every day, but I also know, as President Kennedy declared in his 1961 Inaugural Address, which encouraged me into public service, that, “here on Earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”