- This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 7 months ago by .
-
Posts
-
we all have bechira, each one of us. we can choose to be good or evil. we can choose to listen to hashem and serve him with love, or rebel against him and be kafuy tov. hashem leaves that choice up to us, he does not interfere and force to be one way or the other.
human beings are not solitary beings, we are social creatures, we form groups, or collectives. we interact, we exchange ideas, we are a collective species. as such, we have more than individual bechira, we have collective bechira. we all have the opportunity to better our world, or destroy it. so the question no longer is why doesn’t god do something about evil, teh question now is why don’t WE do something about evil? hashem has given us the collective bechira as a species to decide between good and evil, the question is, what will we choose?
compare it to a regular person. a regular person must make conscious decisions in his or her daily life. whether to buy the new car and go into debt or not buy it. whether to hit the person who insulted him or not to. we all have to make conscious decisions, life will nit live itself for us. we must make active decisions. so too, we cannot simply sit back and do nothing then ask hashem why he is allowing evil to continue. we must make a collective choice, good or evil.
On a ‘hashkafic’ level it doesn’t work this way. Each person is accountable for their OWN actions. HOWEVER, using the communal responsibility of ‘all Jews are responsible for each other’, you are correct that EVERY Jew has a collective responsibility to make everyone the best they can be.
EXAMPLE: Joe was bullied by his classmate, Chaim. The school did nothing to Chaim because his father was the Chairman of the Board, and instead blamed Jow for not being able to fight back. After more hypocritical situations, Joe left Yiddishkeit. Joe is responsible for his actions (he will likely be found Not Guilty due to mitigating circumstances). At the same time society who allowed the administrator to remain, Chaim the bully, and the board who allowed Chaim’s father to remain it’s Chairman are all COLLECTIVELY responsible for the outcome.
On a PRACTICAL level, there are very few people who are willing and able to be Nachshon and jump into the water against the tide. All COLLECTIVE/GROUP THINK BEGINS WITH AN INDIVIDUAL. There is certainly movement and an overwhelming agreement among many in the frum world against abuse of all types.
EDITED
not everything we do is clear to us good or evil not everything is black and white
Jewish Girl, when you see a “black and white” picture in a newspaper you usually also see some grey in there.
But in fact it is not grey.
What it is, is actually the white (or off white) background of the paper with black dots spaced such that the more black dots the darker the overall “grey” color seems to be.
Fewer and more spread out black dots creates a lighter grey color.
So what looks “grey” is actually black and white mixed together, but
wherever a black dot in not placed in that area, is white and thus that microscpic section of white is not grey or black, it is still white.
It is the same thing in life.
We may not clearly see that good and evil are mixed together, but if you could look closely enough and see it from H-sh-m’s perspective you would very clearly see
there is no such thing as grey in looking at good and evil.
They are mixed together to ‘look’ grey, but the tiny particles of evil are still evil no two ways about it.
The same is true for the tiny particles of good.
But to “call” it grey is to say “we must throw up our hands and not try and do good or stop evil because it is all grey and we cannot separate out good from evil”.
But if we would follow Torah and truly try and understand what G-d wants from us
instead of having our own personal agendas which in some cases may not be
so in line with Torah, we could do enough to separate out the evil from the good
and address problems that some might otherwise find too overwhelming to deal with.
DELETED
A sweeping public condemnation of an entire section of the Jewish population. If you think that’s not Loshon Hora you better ask someone who knows the Halachah well.
If you have FIRSTHAND knowledge of a specific case and would like to post it (without identifying information), if you feel there is a toeles, then go ahead.
Good is not the absence of Evil. Neutral is the absence of Evil. Good is a conscious choice which we must make every moment of the day, to actively take steps to make this world a better place than it was a moment before. That is my philosophy, the one by which I try very hard to live.
It is not possible to have complete neutrality because everything one does regarding choices between good or evil is either good or evil.
If someone is G-d forbid, being robbed or drowning, for example,
someone watching can either try and save them or at least try and find someone who can save them wghcih would be doing good.
Sitting there and watching would not be neutral, it would be aiding evil by not doing anything (or even trying) to stop it.
If the person had absolutely no way to get hep and couldn’t do it themselves, that would make them putt’ter, “”””not”””” “neutral”.
Putt’ter just means someone is excused from doing what really they should have done, not that it was ‘OK’ to not help, which would have been neutral.
What if they were OOnis? That would just be a higher level of being excused, a “better” excuse, as it were.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.