[Avodah] God of Love, vs. Just God

[Michael Kopinsky]

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 7:08 PM, Moshe Y. Gluck <mgluck at gmail.com> wrote:

> R' David Riceman:
> "Ein menahamim es ha'adam b'sha'ah shemeiso mutal l'fanav".  If the
> gentleman was really in distress, it may not have been the best time for
> this discussion.
>
> The classification of an event as mercy or justice is not an objective one,
> but a subjective one.  As you correctly note, it can change depending on
> how
> wide your perspective is.  My experience is that wider perspective makes
> events seem more like mercy.  As evidence I cite the above ma'amar Hazal;
> distress narrows a person's horizons, making him less able to take the
> wider
> perspective which may make him realize that something was really good, and
> thus less able to accept nehamah.
> ------------------
>
> I disagree; the classification of something as mercy or justice is
> objective. We may not - and generally do not - have the facts necessary to
> be able to correctly analyze it. Your experience notwithstanding, sometimes
> "zooming out," so to speak, makes events seem _less_ like mercy.
> I also disagree with your last sentence, above. Or, at least, the
> implication I'm reading into it - that if something ultimately leads to a
> good result then it is "really good." It is not, usually, so - it might be
> more accurately described as something that happened that is really _bad_
> but that had a good result coming as a result of it, anyway.
>


When you punish your son or send him back to his room after bedtime, are you
doing it as a loving father or as a just father? Your son, from his limited
experience, sees this as a dichotomy; we, who have the breadth of
understanding and experience to know that setting and enforcing clear limits
is the greatest chesed a parent can perform for a child, do not see the
conflict. Perhaps your son is even able to recognize that being sent back to
bed is a bad thing but that has a good result coming out of it, but in the
time of his distress he is unable to recognize that the punishment itself is
done out of love.

The metaphor can be extended much further as well.

KT,
Michael
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