Posted on 06/15/2010 6:20:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Almost 30 years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a powerful book that propelled him to national and international renown. Though we have differed on some important theological matters, many of the book’s insights have been indispensible to me in understanding God and suffering.
Today we need another book that uses the words of Rabbi Kushner’s classic work, but addresses an entirely different issue: When Good People Do Bad Things.
We need such a book because of the disheartening fact that much, perhaps even most, evil does not emanate from the bad parts of human nature but from the good parts.
Most evil is not committed as a result of unbridled lust or greed. And the sadistic monster who revels in inflicting excruciating pain on other people is relatively rare.
Good intentions cause most of the world’s great evils.
Take Communism, for example. The greatest mass-murdering ideology in history, the greatest destroyer of elementary human rights, was an ideology supported by many people who believed in moral progress and human equality. It took Stalin’s peace pact with Hitler to awaken many Western leftists to how evil Communism was. And still, vast numbers of Westerners went on to support Stalin, or Mao, or Ho, or Castro, or Che, or all of them. Were all these Westerners bad people, i.e., people who reveled in the suffering of others? Of course not.
Were all the Koreans who supported Kim Il-Sung bad people? Were all the Russians who wept at Stalin’s funeral lovers of torture and mass murder? Of course not.
For that matter, most Germans who voted for Hitler and the Nazis were not voting for gas chambers. More than a few of them were preoccupied with reviving Germany. Contrary to what many people understandably but erroneously believe, Hitler actually played down his anti-Semitism in order to win Germans’ votes.
What is the major lesson to be learned from all this?
The major lesson is already noted, but I will restate it in the words of another rabbi who influenced me, the late Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, head of the Conservative rabbinate for many years. In my late 20s I sought advice from him, and I have never forgotten this piece of wisdom: “Dennis,” he said, “I pretty much have my bad inclination [‘yetzer hara’ was the well-known Hebrew term he used] under control; it’s my good inclination [‘yetzer hatov’] that always gets me into trouble.”
When it comes to personal relations and even more so to formulating social policy, intending to do good is largely worthless. Given how much evil has emanated from human idealism, the heart is an awful guide to doing good.
In order to do good personally, and in order to support social policies that do good, what humans need even more than a good heart (as beneficial as that can be) is wisdom.
This explains why we are in the morally confused world that I and other columnists document almost every week (and daily in my other life as a radio talk-show host). There has been a war on wisdom.
Many of the destructive and foolish ideas of the Baby Boomer generation emanated from the Mother of Foolish Ideas — “You can’t trust anyone over 30.”
In that one sentence, the 1960s and ’70s announced that there was nothing to be learned about goodness or about life — it was enough to rely on one’s terrific heart for insights.
The university is dominated by people who, instead of wrestling with the great ideas of those who lived before them, are convinced that all one needs to achieve good is to love equality and social justice and to regard reliance on the Bible, on Judeo-Christian values, and on the American Founders’ values as an indication of moral and intellectual weakness.
Growing up in religious schools (Jewish), I knew early in life that my heart was an awful guide to what is right, that the human being is essentially morally flawed and human nature weak, and that the greatest moral ideas preceded my birth. By the time they graduate, most Americans who studied at traditional Jewish and Christian high schools have more wisdom (though, of course, less knowledge) than many professors, artists, and editorial-page writers.
The wise — as opposed to most of the highly educated — know, among many other things, that when you give people something for nothing, you produce ungrateful people; that when you obscure the differences between men and women, you end up with many aimless men and angry women; that when you give children “self-esteem” without their earning it, you produce narcissists who enter adulthood incapable of handling life; that if you do not destroy evil, it will proliferate; and that if you are kind to the cruel, you will be cruel to the kind.
If you really want good to prevail, the key is wisdom, not the heart. That’s why we have a minimum voting age. And that’s why we have a minimum age for running for public office. We once understood that as good as a young person may be, goodness was not enough to be able to choose society’s leaders or to be one.
So, why do good people do bad things? Because they lack wisdom. Without wisdom you can be nice and you can be kind, but you will not do nearly as much good as your good heart would like you to do.
And you may even do harm.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.
Socialism and communism are bad.
Never, ever give up your guns.
Now THAT is wisdom...
Take Communism, for example. The greatest mass-murdering ideology in history, the greatest destroyer of elementary human rights, was an ideology supported by many people who believed in moral progress and human equality. It took Stalin’s peace pact with Hitler to awaken many Western leftists to how evil Communism was. And still, vast numbers of Westerners went on to support Stalin, or Mao, or Ho, or Castro, or Che, or all of them. Were all these Westerners bad people, i.e., people who reveled in the suffering of others? Of course not.
If they weren't revelling in the suffering of others (ie "bad people") then why were they supporting a system proven to cause suffering of people? There are only two choices. These liberals are either incurable mentally damaged or they are evil.
Were all the Koreans who supported Kim Il-Sung bad people? Were all the Russians who wept at Stalin’s funeral lovers of torture and mass murder? Of course not.
Then why did they support them? They are either evil or incurably mentally damaged.
For that matter, most Germans who voted for Hitler and the Nazis were not voting for gas chambers. More than a few of them were preoccupied with reviving Germany. Contrary to what many people understandably but erroneously believe, Hitler actually played down his anti-Semitism in order to win Germans’ votes.
Just like those who vote for obama. They are either evil or incurably mentally damaged. Those who are mentally curable have already repented of their vote.
People's "goodness" can be easily seen by their actions (the fruit of their lives). If they do evil things, they are not "good".
The leftist world view sees people as fundamentally good. That's why the leftist is always surprised when these "good" people (Stalin, Hitler, obama) do such evil things.
The conservative world view sees people as fundamentally evil. That's why we are never surprised and why we preach self control and responsibility, and the need for God to work in our lives.
All people are fundamentally evil. That's why we need a Savior. Those who choose to not be saved (communists, liberals, leftists in general) choose to remain evil.
“Whenever I meet someone who claims to find faith in God impossible, but who persists in believing in the essential goodness of humanity, I know that I have met a person for whom evidence is irrelevant.” ~ Dennis Prager ( Ultimate Issues , July- September, 1989)
(Quoted on my profile page)
You missed Prager’s point. (See my post #5 - which prove it)
PING
“
...if you are kind to the cruel, you will be cruel to the kind
“
One of my favorites lines from Prager (IIRC, an old Jewish proverb)
two of my other favorite lines from Prager (as close to verbatim as
I can hope to get them):
“There are just two types of people: the decent and the indecent.”
“When people ask my political affiliation, I tell them I belong to
the stupid party, not the dangerous party.”
(Quoted on my profile page)
You missed Prager’s point. (See my post #5 - which prove it)
I agree with his point that wisdom is necessary. I strongly disagree with his contention that good people can do bad things. If they do bad things, they are bad people. (And all people are bad until they are saved, and even then we have our struggles).
The bible tells us that no one but God is good. The evidence of reality confirms that.
Addendum to my last post. If Prager had stated in this article the quote from your profile I would not have had a problem with the article.
Perfect case in point...when Paulus Van der Sloot assisted his son in the Natalee Holloway cover up. I’m sure Paulus was saying to himself it was an accident, it would ruin his son’s future to ‘fess up. In the back of his mind, bet he was also thinking it wouldn’t do Paulus’ “judge in training” career any good, either. When Paulus and his cronies first covered up for Joran, it then became imperative to continue the cover up as all who were involved had been dragged into it, too. The cover up continues...and worse, it let Joran eventually kill again.
We have to define evil. Is evil what a person does? Is it the effect of what what a person does? Is it a state of mind?
If a person does something that results in harm to another, what should that person do about it?
My personal belief is that one of the keys to stopping evil is wisdom. -The ability to understand what happened and why it happened. Another key is implacability. -The resolve to do whatever is appropriate and necessary to end the evil.
Note that the concept of punishment is not an element in the above; just the understanding of the problem and the resolve to change the behavior that resulted in the evil.
Therefore, killing to stop serious evil is not, in and of itself, evil. War to stop evil is not, in and of itself evil; so long as these are not done for the purpose of inflicting gratuitous pain or suffering on the evil-doer.
There is no such thing as a "sinless" saved person. You are quite confused.
Or lack wisdom, which was his point.
BFLR
There is no such thing as a "sinless" saved person. You are quite confused.
You need to read what you quoted again. "(And all people are bad until they are saved and even then we have our struggles)"
A person who is not saved is evil by nature. There is nothing to fight against the fleshly sin nature and they will almost always perform the evil acts.
A person who is saved gets a new sinless nature. This new nature wars against their fleshly sinful nature, and as they become more and more transformed into the image of Christ they commit fewer and fewer evil acts. I do not believe that anyone achieves perfection on this earth but we should be moving closer to it every day after we are saved.
So I agree, there is no such thing as a sinless saved person. But I never said that there was.
There is s difference between lacking wisdom and being evil. Liberals are evil. They CHOOSE to do evil. They don't do it by accidnet they consciously choose to be evil.
Contradictory, confused statements if ever there were any.
That's precisely the author's point you are missing. Most people do not lead examined lives. In particular, they vote for what seems to make sense at the time, without much thought. Do you really think that, if Germans knew they would go into war that killed 11% of their population (abstract from their victims for a moment), they would vote for Hitler? I doubt it. But, at the time, he made sense to them.
And where does "sense" come from? Much of it is cultural. What is your chance to have an adequate view of the world if you grow up in Boston or New York? The other source is, of course, social institutions, which are nothing but the shrines of that same culture. You witness this today: how many college graduates have a realistic view of the world.
There is a difference between manslaughter and murder. Likewise, one should differentiate poorly considered and deliberate acts. Most liberals --- most people in general --- adopt and approve ill-considered facts (and then, to reduce the cognitive dissonance) run away from the facts. As horrible as it is, this is difference from Obama, Pelossi or Rham Emmanuel, who indeed commit deliberate, well-considered evil acts. But they are not even liberals but nweocommunist revolutionaries that want to undermine the country.
In sum, you first grant people too much credit, believing that most people examine life and their actions (as I am sure you do); and then blame them for deliberate evil. You logic is impeccable but the It premise is false.
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