Yaacov, I love this piece and the way you describe the unity of Hashem as both a mother and a father, loving and merciful, righteous and just.
G-d's ways are hard to understand though, and it seems sometimes like it is not just G-d's absence or firm guiding hand that characterize the "Father" side, but (dare I say) harshness or even cruelty. We are supposed to learn from Hashem but if we would treat our children the way Hashem treats us sometimes, we would no doubt be arrested for child abuse (I'm thinking Holocaust, Inquisition, Crusades).
These questions didn't bother me before I had children. It was much easier for me to say "Well, everything Hashem does is fair and just, and we just can't see the full picture." I still believe that this is true, but it is something that I grapple with.
On an intellectual level I would answer that if we saw a man ripping open his child's stomach, we would view it as horrific child abuse, but since we understand he is performing a life-saving surgery, we see it as a kindness. The harshness/cruelty of the act is very much defined by the desired outcome. Since we don't have any understanding of the desired outcome, it makes absolute sense that we can feel that God is (chasvesholam) being cruel or gratuitous.
Having said that, what you are trying to express here is not an intellectual problem but a deeply human struggle with evil that I think most of us will face at different levels throughout our lives. We have to remind ourselves that we are not alone in wrestling with the seeming incongruity between God's loving kindness and hiddenness. This was a struggle faced by our greatest prophets and leaders.
What I will suggest is that with the analogy of God as a father, the Moshul is obviously not comparable to the Nimshal, i.e. the parable is in no way equivalent to what it is trying to convey (This is true anytime we try to speak about God). When a Father acts in a seemingly harsh way towards his offspring, his deeds may be interpreted as cruel by the young child, who does not yet comprehend the love driving the father's decisions. Yet even in this scenario, the father does not exist on a totally different plane of reality from the child. They still inhabit the same world, so to speak; it's just that the father has a more developed understanding of what needs to be done.
In contrast, when it comes to God, we see how even when in conversation with the greatest of prophets, He is hidden within the anan 'cloud'. When it comes to God's actions, our lack of understanding is not just quantitative but qualitative as well. Even if one were to possess the most immense intellect possible to mankind, God would still be inscrutable (something which is not true with regards to the analogy of the father and child). I think this is the reason why no intellectual answer can really satisfy the feelings of dissonance that the problem of evil arouses within us. Even the most perfect and sophisticated intellectual justification would fail to do justice to the transcendent truth.
True, true. Thank you for taking the time to write such a beautiful and thoughtful answer. It's something that really never bothered me, and I couldn't even understand how great Tzadikim struggled with it. It was so clear and obvious how you are saying, that we just don't see the full picture. I guess it's harder to justify suffering when you imagine, even for an instant, that that suffering is happening so someone that you love with a love so fierce and strong, you could never have imagined before experiencing it. It is an emotional rather than intellectual argument. However, it does open up other questions which I won't get into, and which frankly are impossible to know the answers for certain.
Yaacov, I love this piece and the way you describe the unity of Hashem as both a mother and a father, loving and merciful, righteous and just.
G-d's ways are hard to understand though, and it seems sometimes like it is not just G-d's absence or firm guiding hand that characterize the "Father" side, but (dare I say) harshness or even cruelty. We are supposed to learn from Hashem but if we would treat our children the way Hashem treats us sometimes, we would no doubt be arrested for child abuse (I'm thinking Holocaust, Inquisition, Crusades).
These questions didn't bother me before I had children. It was much easier for me to say "Well, everything Hashem does is fair and just, and we just can't see the full picture." I still believe that this is true, but it is something that I grapple with.
On an intellectual level I would answer that if we saw a man ripping open his child's stomach, we would view it as horrific child abuse, but since we understand he is performing a life-saving surgery, we see it as a kindness. The harshness/cruelty of the act is very much defined by the desired outcome. Since we don't have any understanding of the desired outcome, it makes absolute sense that we can feel that God is (chasvesholam) being cruel or gratuitous.
Having said that, what you are trying to express here is not an intellectual problem but a deeply human struggle with evil that I think most of us will face at different levels throughout our lives. We have to remind ourselves that we are not alone in wrestling with the seeming incongruity between God's loving kindness and hiddenness. This was a struggle faced by our greatest prophets and leaders.
What I will suggest is that with the analogy of God as a father, the Moshul is obviously not comparable to the Nimshal, i.e. the parable is in no way equivalent to what it is trying to convey (This is true anytime we try to speak about God). When a Father acts in a seemingly harsh way towards his offspring, his deeds may be interpreted as cruel by the young child, who does not yet comprehend the love driving the father's decisions. Yet even in this scenario, the father does not exist on a totally different plane of reality from the child. They still inhabit the same world, so to speak; it's just that the father has a more developed understanding of what needs to be done.
In contrast, when it comes to God, we see how even when in conversation with the greatest of prophets, He is hidden within the anan 'cloud'. When it comes to God's actions, our lack of understanding is not just quantitative but qualitative as well. Even if one were to possess the most immense intellect possible to mankind, God would still be inscrutable (something which is not true with regards to the analogy of the father and child). I think this is the reason why no intellectual answer can really satisfy the feelings of dissonance that the problem of evil arouses within us. Even the most perfect and sophisticated intellectual justification would fail to do justice to the transcendent truth.
True, true. Thank you for taking the time to write such a beautiful and thoughtful answer. It's something that really never bothered me, and I couldn't even understand how great Tzadikim struggled with it. It was so clear and obvious how you are saying, that we just don't see the full picture. I guess it's harder to justify suffering when you imagine, even for an instant, that that suffering is happening so someone that you love with a love so fierce and strong, you could never have imagined before experiencing it. It is an emotional rather than intellectual argument. However, it does open up other questions which I won't get into, and which frankly are impossible to know the answers for certain.
We aren't Robinson Crusoe...more like The Swiss Family Robinson
Love this!