Posted on 01/11/2022 3:54:27 AM PST by Kaslin
The Algemeiner, a Jewish publication I highly respect, published a column about Judaism that is not merely wrong; it actually advances a thesis that is the opposite of what Judaism teaches.
That fact alone would not have prompted me to write a rebuttal. What prompts me is that the column was written by an Orthodox rabbi. It is sad enough that many non-Orthodox rabbis have been influenced more by their secular/Left educations than by the Torah. But when a rabbi identified as "centrist Orthodox" distorts one of the most important and normative ideas in Judaism, and is published in a major Jewish journal, we might be in trouble. Of course, he might be an outlier. But I don't think he is unique. Though certainly not yet dominant, secular values have entered parts of modern Orthodox life just as they have traditional Catholic and Protestant Christian life.
With regard to mainstream Christianity -- both Catholicism and Protestantism -- and non-Orthodox Judaism, we are indeed in trouble. The secular and leftist influence on these denominations has been disastrous.
I should note that I am not mentioning the rabbi's name as I have no desire to make this issue personal, let alone engage in an ad hominem attack. I know that the curious can identify the rabbi by searching the internet, but I cannot control that. I can only control what I write. And since I assume that this rabbi is a sincere individual, I want to restrict my response to what he wrote.
The rabbi wrote that Judaism posits that people are basically good, that human nature is good.
This is one of the most foolish and dangerous ideas of the secular world. No Abrahamic religion -- not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam -- asserts that people are basically good. This notion is a product of the secular age and a major reason for the moral confusion that characterizes our era.
With regard to Judaism, the Torah completely rejects the notion that man is basically good. God Himself states that "the will of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21) and that "every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time" (Genesis 6:5).
For a rabbi to assert that man is basically good is to assert that God was wrong. I am used to secular people saying that, not Orthodox rabbis.
In addition, the Torah -- and the rest of the Bible -- repeatedly warns us not to follow our hearts. In fact, Orthodox Jews cite this admonition from the Torah three times every day: "Do not follow your hearts and your eyes after which you prostitute yourselves" (Numbers 15:39).
If the human heart is basically good, why does the Bible repeatedly warn us not to follow it?
The rabbi never cites any of these verses. For good reason: They would simply invalidate his argument. This secular belief in the inherent goodness of man is not only not Jewish; as noted, it is foolish and dangerous.
How foolish? It is not possible to be aware of human history and to rationally maintain that people are basically good. For a Jew to believe such nonsense after the Holocaust is simply breathtaking. Apparently, basically good people murdered six million Jews.
But we don't need references to the Holocaust to make our case.
In the 20th century alone, more than a hundred million people -- civilians, not soldiers -- were murdered by vile regimes and their vile followers. These include the approximately 20 million killed in the Gulag Archipelago; the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda; the genocidal murder of Armenians; the deliberate starvation of about 60 million Chinese; the Japanese mass rape of Korean "comfort women" and hideous medical experiments on Chinese civilians; and the torture and murder of approximately one out of four Cambodians.
And that is only a partial list.
Virtually every serious thinker in history knew people were not basically good. They knew about the universality of slavery and the tortures and rapes that accompanied slavery. They knew how men behaved in wartime.
Were all the people who engaged in these evils aberrations? In fact, most were quite normal. The aberrations in history have been the truly good individuals. To cite the Holocaust, the Germans, French, Poles, Hungarians, Lithuanians and others who aided the Holocaust, let alone those who did nothing, were normal people. The handful who aided Jews were the aberrations.
And what about childhood bullying? Are fat, or slow, or unattractive boys and girls generally treated with kindness and empathy? The question is rhetorical.
And what about child sexual abuse? The WHO in 2002 estimated that 73 million boys and 150 million girls under the age of 18 years had experienced various forms of sexual violence. Quite remarkable for a world of basically good people.
So much for the foolishness of the belief that people are basically good. Now let's deal with why it is dangerous.
One reason is that the most important, and most difficult, task of parents and of society is to raise good human beings. Yet, those who believe we are born good will not concentrate on making good people. Why bother if we're already good?
A second reason the belief is dangerous is that those who believe it blame the evil that people do on outside forces, not on the individual who committed the evil. Belief in the basic goodness of human nature is the major reason people claim that poverty, or guns, or racism causes crime. Anything except the perpetrator.
The rabbi cites a Yale study that purports to show that babies are not only moral agents but are actually moral beings. Such studies are one reason so many Americans have come to hold universities in increasing contempt. The idea that babies know right and wrong is preposterous. The idea that babies are moral is even more preposterous. Babies are neither moral nor immoral since they have no more free will than your family dog.
Babies are selfish -- as they have to be to survive. And babies are innocent. But innocent is not the same as good. The rabbi conflates "innocent" with "good."
He also conflates "in God's image" with "good." He writes: "the Torah stating that human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27) (is) a statement that underscored humanity's inherent goodness."
Not so. Created "in God's image" has never meant man is basically good. Rather, it means that human beings, like God (and unlike animals), know good from evil and have moral free will. In Genesis 1:27, Rashi, author of the most influential Jewish Bible commentary ever written, explains "in God's image" as "the power to comprehend and to discern." Second, it means that human life (again, unlike animal life) is infinitely precious.
Finally, if people are basically good, what is the Torah for? What are all the commandments for? If people are basically good, why would God need to command us not to murder? Don't basically good creatures know this?
It is very troubling that an Orthodox rabbi would teach the opposite of what the Torah and Judaism teach concerning one of the most fundamental issues of life. As more and more modern Orthodox Jews attend college and graduate school, it is imperative that Jewish schools teach the distinctiveness of Jewish values.
Increasingly, they do not.
The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man,
to see if there are any who understand,
who seek after God.
They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one....
Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people,
let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad.
I think people want to be good, unless you are a sociopath or psychopath. However, I think some people don’t have a clue as to how to be good.“””
Well, define “good”. AOC et al believe in the deepest part of their shriveled hearts that that is exactly what they are doing. Evil is a constant force that is always there acting in its own interest. It never flags it never sleeps it never quits. Evil seeks to define right and wrong and what is true what is false. Presently evil, among a agreat many other things, is telling us that a man is a woman and a woman is a man and that we WILL profess this. Own a man’s thoughts and words and you own him. And that is what evil is after.
People are not entirely good, nor entirely evil.
If people were entirely good, no government would be necessary. If they were entirely evil, no government would be possible.
If people were entirely evil, then no government could function, because the people enforcing the laws would be totally corrupt, and would not stop people from killing, raping, and eating their neighbors.
What makes Third World countries stay Third World is they exist in a culture which sanctions corruption, where business cannot happen because you cannot trust the other person to follow their end of the deal, and the courts are corrupt and for sale.
I have a strap in the trunk for just this purpose; but that sure don’t make me good!
Liberals are the kind of people I am talking about. They want goodness, but think it has to be legislated in order to make it happen. They would be a prime example of how they are aschew.
And a hell of a lot more people fought against the Nazis than fought for them.
The Bible spends a lot of time telling us how to be good. We seem to know how to be bad on our own.
I wonder what all those people had in common?
I think people are basically good—and bad.
Interesting read.
This is where the left really loses it out of the gate. They believe, even if it’s unsaid, that people are basically good and want to do good and that is obviously, patently untrue.
The question so many people ask is that if God is good, why is there evil and suffering in this world.
Considering the way human beings have revealed themselves to be, the question shouldn’t be why there’s evil in the world, but why there is good in the world and where did THAT come from?
Or, you could go by Scripture and regard that God expelled them from the Garden to protect them from themselves.
They already proved they were not trustworthy and had they eaten of the Tree of Life, they would have lived forever in an unredeemed, corrupted state with no chance for redemption.
God expelled them to protect them and give them another chance, not be as vindictive as you appear to think He was.
Besides, rebellion is not “erring”. Man chose to rebel. It wasn’t a mistake.
"So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" - Romans 7:21-25
The title of the article you reference tells so much. “Survey Shows Most Americans Believe ‘Humans Are Basically Good’ But Don't Think Life Is ‘Sacred’.”
The lie of the “noble savage” has permeated secular life, and been used to support various incarnations of evil, academic to political to quasi-theological.
That the 20th century alone is dotted with repeated wars and utter brutality cannot be explained with “humans are basically good.”
Professor Rummel’s site details much as counter to that ‘evil’ premise, because power kills.
Just like any toddler.
That orthodox rabbi either doesn’t know his own scriptures or doesn’t believe them.
People are bad, sinful and evil. When we choose good it is a triumph for got.
Two titles are better than one.
They may or may not be “good”, but they have all sinned and fallen short of the righteousness of God.
If this were not so, The Lamb of God would have given a Ted-talk to inspire them - instead of dying a horrific death on a cross to save souls of those who put their faith in Him alone.
Sounds like the rabbi doesn’t want to repent in dust and ashes.
Thanks for the ping, Metmom.
Makes you wonder what the Rabbi tells those parents whose child was randomly murdered for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What about the woman who seeks comfort from him because she was brutally raped? And so on, and so on ...
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