[Avodah] Why G-d Lets Mankind Live

[Michael Makovi]

Cross-posted from
http://michaelmakovi.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-g-d-lets-mankind-live.html

Near the end of the first chapter of Tanna debei Eliyahu, a
Zoroastrian priest asks Eliyahu why G-d created "creepy-crawlies".
Eliyahu answers that whenever G-d is ready to destroy the world on
account of man's sins, He realizes that really, we're no more
disgusting or useless or ignorant than beasts, and so He lets us live,
just as He lets these beasts live. A sobering thought.

On Facebook, my friend Asher Zeiger's status message recently was,
"Asher Zeiger really loves it when his daughters lie down together for
the older one to read to the younger one. Especially when it's their
idea.."

I responded,

My mother has said that no matter how much your children trouble you,
once they go to sleep, they are so cute, you cannot be angry at them
anymore.

I said to her, THAT'S why G-d has half the world be night at any given
time: so that at any given time, He has half the world looking cute,
and too innocent-looking to destroy, and He saves the other half too
in their "merit".

To this, we can add your daughters; it is such things as they are
doing, for which G-d doesn't destroy the world.

Michael Makovi