From: strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: "God is unfair" Bible passages.
Keywords: Jewish viewpoint
Date: 11 Nov 92 00:16:15 GMT
Organization: IBM Research

In article <1992Nov6.175349.4663@blaze.cs.jhu.edu>, arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
[Elisha and the children and the bears]
|> 
|> So God merely mauled a group of teenagers for calling his prophet names.
|> Forgive me if I still put this under the "God is unfair" category.
|> 

I agree.  I've posted before that this is a story I
will teach my children only with a negative disclaimer.

|> >    In the case of Lot, God did NOT destroy a city of innocent people,
|> >they were a bunch of gang-rapists, ...
|> 
|> God did not limit himself to destroying just the gang-rapists in the city.
|> Even if every adult man in the city was a rapist, he also destroyed all the
|> women and children when he destroyed the city.  This no doubt included a
|> number of innocent people.

Now bringing up this story is very timely, for it is this week's Torah reading.
(That is, Jews divide the Torah into sections.  At each weekly Torah
service, a different section comes up.  This week's section is Vayera ---
which is the section of the Bible containing the story of the destruction
of Sodom.  So Jews all over are studying this passage this week,
and you can see discussion on soc.culture.jewish on specifically this passage.)
This is also the week of my daughter's Bat Mitzvah, so I have the
privilege of helping her study and give her first public speech
in the synagogue. Her speech is a commentary on Vayera.
Since this story is very much on my mind, permit me to post
my personal example of how we teach it in a Jewish family.

The most important part of the story is not the destruction of Sodom.
The most important part of the story is that Abraham *challenges God*
on the very issue that Ken Arromdee raises in this post.

Abraham says (I'm quoting from memory now --- look up Vayera yourself
if you want the exact details;  it's around the 20th chapter of Genesis)
"Shall the righteous perish with the wicked?  Shall their righteousness
be judged as unrighteousness?  Surely the Judge of the Universe shall
do justice!"  

And what is God's response?  Does he say "Be silent thou audacious
creature, who art thou to question Me?"  On the contrary,  God
yields to Abraham and they start bargaining over how many righteous
will be left before destroying the city.  And it turns out
that (for the purpose of the myth) only Lot's immediate family
are among the righteous, and they are rescued before the city
is destroyed (please defer the story of Lot's wife to a separate thread).

So the lesson is not that God indiscriminately destroys cities,
the righteous with the unrighteous.  The lessons are:

(1) Even God is constrained by His moral laws.
(2) The righteous man does well to stand up for righteousness,
    even if it means calling God Himself to account.
(3) (less obvious but still important)  You don't need
    an intermediary (e.g. priests, Jesus, Mary) to approach God.
(4) Obeying God doesn't mean shutting up and passively
    submitting; it means *doing righteousness*.

Another poster in soc.culture.jewish pointed out the evolution
of the merciful drive in man.

Noah remained silent in the face of the destruction of humanity.
Abraham argued to save the righteous.
Moses argued to spare even the wicked.

You see the growth of mercy and kindness over time --- and
even God, the supposedly unchanging one, appears to evolve as well.
In the Midrash, God *regrets* having destroyed the world
in the Flood --- basically he says he *made a mistake*!

These are the lessons we teach.  They are relevant for
alt.atheism, since you can view the lessons as lessons
even if you believe the stories are all fables, and
that Abraham and God either never existed or are
literary metaphors.

The stories only seem evil if you violate the literary
assumptions --- e.g. you say "well there must have been
some innocent babies in Sodom so this was evil".  But *for
the purpose of the story*, there are no innocent babies
in Sodom.  Just as for the purpose of the story of Maitre
Corbeau, crows eat cheese, whether that's really true or not.

-- 
Rob Strom, strom@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7641
IBM Research, 30 Saw Mill River Road, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598