dunno why my thing didnt go up last night! probably cuz after all my “hard” work i forgot to press the “post” button!!!…….sheesh modern technology!!
well here it is….
what is a punishment?
The fact that we all punish for the wrong reasons and with the wrong intentions is a well known fact, and it is , in my “opinion”, one of the main reasons that children rebel against their parents, if parents really knew how when and why to punish their children, then their children would grow up being happy knowledgeable adults, as apposed to the angry annoyed ones they grow up to be in reality, but that’s not even what i wanna talk about. i wanna talk about what happens after the punishment.
Brace yourselves………. the whole point of a punishment is not to cause the “victim” pain!!!!…….pretty controversial no? the whole point of a punishment is so that the punishee (it’s a word now) learns his lesson, improves for next time but most of all is cleansed of the blemish which was created by his erring in the first place.
There is a very interesting passuk in this weeks parsha which tells us that right after someone receives his lashes he immediately becomes your “brother” once again, the second his punishment is finished with we have no right to look down upon him, no right to ridicule him, and no right to assume that he will ever fail again!
We tend to forget that very very often, we see someone who did bad and immediately we black list him forever, we see him doing an aveyra and we immediately assume that he is wicked to the core and should be burnt at stake, we see someone who is going thru a tough time and we immediately feel as if he is a nebech and he needs our pity (which isn’t really pity, rather it is really our way of boosting our own ego) for all of eternity.
What is wrong with the way we act? everybody does it, it is our “natural” urge to do it……………well the torah begs to differ, the torah tells us exactly how we should act towards someone who erred, exactly how we should feel towards someone who has been punished. So many times we actively ruin children and even adults by treating them the wrong way AFTER they were already punished, no one is denying the fact that every once in a while ppl deserve to get punished, if we do bad we deserve to get lashed, but as soon as the lashing is over and done with………silence. things MUST go back to normal, cuz if they don’t we will simply be pouring salt into an open wound, and never allow it to heal.
I know i wrote this in quite a unclear, boring, and choppy way, but what i am trying to relay (for a change) is actually a very important, and even life saving idea. read it. absorb it. live it. (that’s a good slogan for something no?)