As to why a perfect God made an imperfect world

Understanding what hurts may heal us

Introduction

I won’t prove anything. I’m just giving possible ways to understand and handle negativity in our lives.

Fake Non-Believing

Intellectuals may have learned and adopted ideas that, when studied, they can’t really believe in.

Evil

You can’t maintain that Evil and Good are relative if you’re ashamed of or disgusted by some acts and satisfied and proud of other behavior.

Free Will

You can’t maintain that you don’t believe in Free Will if you believe in shoulds or people anger you.

G^d

You can’t maintain that you don’t believe in G^d if you get angry about what the universe gives you.

Special

For at least 100,000 years, people have buried their dead. You can’t maintain that you don’t believe in humans being special if your last will says you want some private or open sendoff ceremony instead of just, ‘Please throw my body in the garbage.’

Reality

Many monotheistic religions have abandoned down-to-earth reality. To flee depression and find perfection, they’ve proposed that life on earth is inferior to the Afterlife. It is not.

There have been suicide cults, but they are self-defeating and repulsive to all outsiders.

More subtle escapism is to declare this life as of little importance, long for and glorify death, look down on ‘earthly’ pleasures, and dismiss suffering.

Rather, pleasures are part of G^d’s gifts to us. Rejecting them as much as possible is repulsive, a sign of ungratefulness. The sources become holy when we credit the Provid^r, and limit and restrict their consumption to show that we are in charge and have not turned into animals that just run from pain and run after pleasure.

The latter is crucial because to pursue principles and tolerate discomfort is the backbone of Free Will (see below), which is our sole vehicle toward moral improvement and perfection.

G^d Won’t Hide His Face

When misfortune befalls us, it’s as if G^d doesn’t want to know us, Heaven forbid. It even says in the Torah that that can happen, but it doesn’t really.

G^d doesn’t look away. He cries for and with us, counts on us, and loves us unconditionally. So, what does the Torah mean by He’ll hide His Face?

It means that right now, you don’t get what you anticipated or hoped for. Your disappointment makes you overlook all the Good He still does give us. You only see the murdered; you forget about those miraculously saved. It’s OK to mourn our losses, but He’s with us every step of the way.

Imperfection

I don’t claim that I have proof for how I take things. Rather, I just give possible ways to look at and take situations that are satisfying, stop confusion, and encourage humans to shape up.

We need to have an idea of why G^d went through the trouble of creating a cosmos and why a perfect G^d would fashion an imperfect world.

The Jewish idea of G^d is different from idols who are moody and needy of praise. Flattery and sacrifices are meant to appease them to generosity.

The Jewish G^d is loving us already and needs nothing. Yet part of His Perfection would be to be generous, and for that He created the world.

He made humans such that we enjoy more what we worked for than handouts. So, He made an imperfect world and flawed humans, who could team up with Him to perfect creation and humanity, and get not only a good eternal life but also a tremendous earned reward.

Human Death

There are all kinds of deaths.

‘Natural Death’

Most grownups have resigned themselves to physical mortality being inevitable. No one started life like that. No child believes in death until grownups gang up on them. It’s kind of funny to have a problem with all kinds of deaths (see below) but to have made peace with mortality.

Human death is G^d’s worst PR. Some reject the possibility of a Good G^d because of human death. But the truth is the reverse. Because death is such a disaster, humans have invented gods and an afterlife to try and deal with the bummer.

Judaism, a lifestyle dealing with the relationship between people and between people and G^d, assigns holiness to human life. It teaches that death was brought on by human misbehavior and that humanity must shape up so that G^d can—and will—slaughter the Angel of Death.

Although G^d enables everything that happens, He abhors murder and natural death, cries over it with us, and, in the end, will make everything come out right. He temporarily tolerates death as an imperfection that will be ironed out, also by us.

Presently, scientists have already started to uproot all common illnesses, to be followed by ending all ailments. Then, aging must stop and be reversed, and accidental death must be undone. However, all this would be futile if we continue man-made death via greed, murder, wars, and climate destruction. Not to go extinct, more than advancing science, we need to become ingrained with classical morality.

The Sandwich Generation

In the West, now, people live long enough to have to take care of both their kids and their parents. This is so heavy. Now we can understand why the terrible waste of humans dying was acceptable as long as aging was still happening. How to raise the next generations if all our attention goes to taking care of the previous ones? When born, humans are the least self-sufficient creatures on earth, who need decades of parenting. This is because an important part of us is what we learn, not just instincts.

Kill to Protect

Judaism teaches that, as a last resort, one should kill a would-be murderer to protect the sanctity of life. ‘When someone sets out to kill you, you kill him first.’ That is not paradoxical.

Capital Punishment to Deter

We see in the Torah that G^d uses death to shape up the people to leave Egypt, the Land of Bondage, before they enter the Holy Land. Yet, toward the end of the refining procedure, a new idea is introduced: repentance. Those who would look up to Heaven would be saved. After that, we find that the Rabbis are extremely cautious with meting out death penalties. And they fully stopped convicting people to death when murder became so rampant that capital punishment no longer deterred.

G^d doesn’t want execution. He gave the Prescript of capital punishment, especially to a Nation hostile to death and killing, to teach it there’s a limit and to see how well it would reject it in practice.

Sacrifice and Martyrdom

Holier and more challenging than to die for our beliefs is to live for them.

Judaism is given to help us live well, not to die by. A Jew may (must) do almost anything to save human lives, including their own. But we’re not allowed to murder someone innocent just to save our skin.

Martyrdom is the holiest form of death a Jew can reach, but we must do almost anything to avoid it.

Jews are like one organism. Our willingness to show our love for G^d even when it would mean our death helps those martyred who did not say this. And their sacrifice helps us, who were ready but were not massacred.

Dying

Too many people die ‘before their time.’ They are tired of not crying enough all their lives and give up hope of recovery when it’s still possible.

Mourning

There is no greater joy than connecting with another human. There is no greater loss than having a close one die on you.

It’s easier to say goodbye to ones you are in peace with and when death came slowly and peacefully. But in any case, the why question is only a request for empathy. There is no substitute for mourning.

Most people only cry about death. But after the tears come the words (confusion), the shakes (fears), laughs (embarrassments), etc. Most people mourn half, which can drag you down over time.

Suffering

There are many types and levels, including simple discomfort.

Physical Pain

The gift no one wants. But the ability to feel pain protects us.

Don’t blame G^d for headaches after banging it against the wall nonstop.

If you walk barefoot, G^d doesn’t want to know you, e.g., don’t blame him when you step on a pin.

Physical pain may be unpleasant, but it isn’t designed to make us unwell.

‘Unbearable’ physical pain turns bearable when we clean up our fears of the pain (see below).

Emotional Pain

It seems such a waste of time that our brains store every detail of every painful memory. The opposite is true. These are storage houses filled with details to be uncovered by dealing with the emotions.

Cry enough, and sadness and shock are gone. Tremble until the fear and dread are up. Laugh out loud until your embarrassment is over. Talk until our confusion is solved. It’s the same as eating until we’re hungry no more (see below), except that, as babies, we were already trained to stop crying before it was enough. We were told that tears hurt, while they actually heal. When healing is labeled hurting, don’t blame the Creat^r.

Western culture promotes reason over emotions (see below). It even throws out intuition, which really is superfast thinking. That’s truly stupid.

Discomfort

When we lack something, our mind gets signals to make us get our needs. If we did not have such warning signs, life would be as dangerous as sleeping without a smoke alarm.

So, luckily, we feel hungry when we need nutrition. The body even gets ready to chew and digest food. Tragedy strikes when we can’t get food. Don’t blame the messenger. Same for thirst, tiredness, restlessness, loneliness, etc., and any longing and dissatisfaction.

Occasional, temporary bans on our needs (a fast day) enable us to show we’re not lazy comfort seekers and hurt avoiders like plants and animals.

When our needs are chronically withheld, we may develop addictions that even push us to seek fulfillment when we don’t need it. But facing the old pain from when our needs weren’t met will make the addictive pull fade.

Feelings

To end suffering, we need to make more space for ‘therapy,’ for sharing our feelings emotionally, from the cradle. Empathy before education!

To continuously suffer mental pain without progress, you must never talk about it or take prescription or recreational drugs that affect the brain.

If we don’t cry on Tisha be’Av, then when? Let’s just tell our enemies that when we cry, we’re not weak. We are as lions—don’t mess with us.

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