In 9th grade, my friend Pete told me to read a book called "A Clockwork Orange". The book is very good, but very graphic. In the book, the main character, Alex enjoys running around his home town beating people up and rapping them. He does not understand why he likes to do this, he just does.
He gets caught by the authorities and put in prison. Once in prison, he begins to change his life and look for the good. But then he is approached by more authoritative people asking if he wants to be the new Guinea pig for a science experiment. He does it.
The scientists strap him in a chair, force his eyes open, and force him to watch graphic movies of people getting tortured, rapped, murdered, etc....and every time they would show a graphic scene...they would inject a drug into him that would make him sick.
After doing this for weeks, Alex was at the point where if he saw anything evil he would be sick and throw up. The authorities said that he was healed from his sickness, and did not have to finish his time in prison.
He is released, and tried to go back to normal life...however, every time he sees or thinks something evil, he gets sick.
This forces him to do good.
He becomes a robot, void of any emotion because he is forced to do good. Ironically, the very thing that made him "well" in the authorities mind, was the very thing that made him "sick".
When my friend had me read this book, it really got me thinking about what it means to have the choice between good or evil.
In my last blog, at the end I was telling about a guy I met at the wall. He was asking me all sorts of questions about God and such.
One of the reasons why he said he could not trust in God, was because God allowed all of the evil in the world to take place.
If you remember also in my last blog, I mentioned that I have really been struggling with my signature sin and have always questioned why God just did not take it from me.
That very night, before I went down to the Wall, I was Skyping my girlfriend Bekah, and we were talking.
I was asking her this:
"Why doesn't God just make me into who He wants me to be?" "Why does He allow me to sin?".
I was asking a question I did not realize that I already had my answer to....
In 9th grade after reading "A Clockwork Orange" and other such books (1984, The Wanting Seed, etc., books where people are forced or enslaved to be something they are not. I was really thinking about what it meant for God to allow suffering and evil in the world.
This peaked my curiosity and the more I thought about, the more I realized that the issue with suffering and free will goes back to the beginning.
Back at Genesis.
Why did God give Adam and Eve a CHOICE to eat the fruit or not?
Two weeks ago in my Rabbinical Thought class, we where discussing this.
We read a section from the Midrash of a Rabbi commenting on Genesis. This was what it say:
"Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai teaches: I will tell you a parable. To what can Adam be compared? To a man who kept his wife at home. What did he do? He went and bought a barrel and placed in it a number of figs and nuts. Then he went and captured a scorpion which he placed in the opening of the barrel which he then sealed tightly. Placing the barrel in a corner of the house he then said to his wife, 'my daughter, everything I have in this house is given over to your hand except for this barrel which you should in no way touch whatsoever.' What did the woman do? She got up and opened the barrel. When she reached into the barrel with her hand, the scorpion bit her. She then fell into a swoon onto the bed. When her husband returned from the market, he said "what is this?" she replied 'when I reached my hand into the barrel, a scorpion bit me and now i am dying.' He said to her, "Didn't i tell you from the beginning everything I have in this house is given over to your hand except for this barrel which you should in no way touch whatsoever?" Immediately, furious, he threw her out of the house. So too was Adam when the holy one, Blessed be He told him (Genesis 2:17) "From every tree of the Garden you can surely eat but from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for on the day you eat from it, you will surely die."
Fascinating.
This parable goes back to my question: Why DID God offer a choice for Adam and Eve? Why did God even "put the barrel in the house?" "Why was it even necessary to test Adam?"
The parable does not give an answer. In fact, I have never heard anyone answer this.
But I will....I have been answering this question the same way sine 9th grade when I read "A Clockwork Orange."
...granted, no one asked me this question though....haha.
The answer?
Airplanes.
When I was studying for my pilots licence in 8th grade and such, I was learning about the 4 forces that effect an airplane in flight. Two are good (+) forces and two are bad (-):
1) Thrust (+)
2) Lift (+)
3) Gravity (-)
4) Drag (-)
Thrust is the force that makes an airplane move forward. Obviously this is good, for without it an airplane would go no where.
Lift is good because this is the very thing that makes an airplane fly, without it what good is an airplane? It wouldn't be an airplane...it would be a car (this is the only true scientific difference between an airplane and a car...a car only has 3 of these forces..not lift.)
Gravity is bad. It is the opposite of the lift. It counteracts the very thing that is good.
Drag is bad. It is the exact opposite force from thrust. It is constantly the opposite equal force of the positive forward motion of thrust.
So think of it like this:
> +(Thrust)= -(lift)
> +lift= -gravity
So, in an airplane, we want to go UP and FORWARD (good) but gravity is making us go DOWN and drag is making us STOP (bad). The airplane has to reach a point where its lift and thrust is greater than the force of gravity and drag. This is why airplanes have to go so fast to take off, and why the world is always trying to make them more efficient...the biggest problem with this though, is that the faster you go to counteract the gravity and create lift, the more drag you get.
My flight instructor told me something that I have never forgotten:
In theory, it would be ideal to have only two forces react on a plane: Thrust and Lift.
If gravity and drag (friction) did not exist, and we only had thrust and lift, airplanes would be a whole lot better and more efficient.
Then he said this:
However, this is not true...in fact it is the farthest thing form the truth. Why?
because without gravity and drag, you CANNOT have thrust and lift....(and obviously you wouldn't need it!)
See, all of the 4 forces HAVE to exist for an airplane to fly, for they all effect one another.
The opposite effect on one force is the very reason the opposite positive force works.
We want Lift.
We want thrust.
We do not want gravity.
We do not want drag.
BUT! Without drag running across the wing of a plane, THERE COULD NEVER BE LIFT, and you could never counter-act the gravity.
The only force of these four that can exist by itself is thrust (in context to motion at least).
Without drag,a jet engine or propeller is useless because it is the friction on the propeller that causes it to create thrust and it is the very air that counteracts the plane that a jet engine needs to work.
And what do you get when you have a machine that defy the laws of lift, gravity, and drag?
A rocket in space (Gravity is zilch, no drag because there is no air, and they don't need lift). However, this is not good....and NASA knows it. This is the very reason why flying in space is SO complicated: space does not have gravity and drag reacting on a rocket....so you can't use a jet engine in space...you have to use a machine that requires no other force in order for it to work and its only outcome is thrust: a rocket engine.
In the 1980's, NASA developed a machine that could use the friction and gravity of earth to fly in the world (friction environment), and still be able to fly in space (frictionless environment) without the aid of these forces.
It was called the space shuttle and to this day is considered one of the most complex things mankind has ever created.
and it is a flawed, hyper-inefficient machine. In fact, it is so flawed that this year is the last year they will be using them....and NASA is going to go back to just using rockets.
So what is my point?
The good things that make an airplane fly could not exist without the negative things that are counteracting the good.
THAT is my answer to Eden.
See, there have always been huge philosophical debates oriented around these issues:
-If there was a God, why would He allow evil and suffering?
-Does God allow free choice? Do we as humans have a free will if there is a god?
The guy at the wall told me he could not believe in a God who allowed so much evil in the world.
But my question is this:
If there was no evil, would we even know what good was?
See, if God would NOT have put the option to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and evil in the Garden,
then how can we as His Creation truly love Him?
If God would have forced Adam and Eve to accept Him, love Him, live with Him, CHOOSE Him,
then how could they LOVE HIM?
They couldn't and we couldn't, because we would not even known what love was.
Just like Alex in "A Clockwork Orange". Once he was forced to do good, he lost his humanity.
I am not saying that evil is what makes us human...on the contrary.
I am saying that our ability to choose to do evil or good is what makes us human.
For without a choice, you are nothing but a robot...
an orange that works like clockwork.
Think about this:
If we do not experience the negative results of our choices, how would we know what was good?
Or what we wanted?
In Eden, the very fact that God gave Adam and Eve a choice to obey His words or not to, was the very thing that made it so that we could truly Love Him.
And if we are created in God's image, wouldn't it matter to God if we could choose Him just as He chose us? Because God could choose to destroy us at any moment. Heck, He didn't even have to create anything...but He Chose to.
and why? For His creation to glorify Himself.
But if He does not give His prized possession, humanity, the option to choose Him, then what would of been the point in Creating at all? Because He chose Us.
So this is my point (Naturally, this is my very argument against Calvinism....which in context to this in my mind, makes it one of the biggest contradictory ideas ever.)
How can you know something is good unless you have experienced the bad side of it?
I mean, how can you know that a cheeseburger from Granite City is the best burger on earth, unless you have had McDonnalds?
You can't.
See, if there were no other options for cheeseburgers besides Granite City, I could not honestly say that I liked it... because I wouldn't know what it meant NOT to like it if it was the only option.
I like root beer.
I always liked MUG root bear. Loved it. Its great.
My entire life I always thought thats what root beer tasted like.
But one day I had Virgils....and thats when I suddenly realized that MUG root beer is not root beer.
Its fake. It doesn't even taste like root beer compared to Virgils.
MUG uses artificial root beer flavour.
Virgils is pure, 100% naturaly brewed root beer.
BIg difference...but i had not idea for years what root beer actually tasted like.
NOW that I know the difference, I suddenly can HONESTLY say whether or not I like MUG or not.
Before I just knew I liked it....but now I think its disgusting compared to whats out there.
GOOD.
BAD.
If we are forced to love Adonai, to choose God, to WANT God, how would we know what it means to love Him unless we have been given the option to choose Him?
We can't.
THAT is why God allows suffering. There is no other way for us as humanity to be able to understand what good is until we experience evil.
Because how could we even know there was such a thing as non-suffering unless we known what suffering is? But this does not mean God is cruel. Yes He allows it, but it is not HIS CHOICE. It is OUR choice. And it has to be like this in order for us to understand. However, one day God will come and destroy the evil and fix everything and make it like it was in Eden...the difference is only THEN will we realize why God gave us a choice...and only then can evil be done away with and God won't have to offer a choice, because we would have come full circle and will finally be able to understand what it means to choose God... because we had experienced the evil already.
That is why God won't just take my sin from me: I have to choose to follow Him, He won't force me to.
I think this really explains a lot about life.
God is always willing to bless us and let us live under His Gaze.....
however, because of the existence of sin and evil in the world, there will always be an opposite force on our lives.
It may not be as strong as God's force.....and God may "speed" or intensify the good things in our life in order to make us useful for Him and to neglect the opposite force....
Newtons laws of motion start with the fact that for EVERY action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I agree. I think this is how life is.
But we have a choice. An depending on where we choose to go in life our thrust forward in life will either be done...or He will give us the ability to move on. But there will always be the opposite and negative, bad force on our lives.
And amazingly, these are the very things that cause us to go sky high.
This is the cosmic battle.
When I see and airplane fly..I know it is on the edge of falling from the sky. All it takes is a little less thrust for the gravity to take over.
But the thrust and lift is always one step ahead of the gravity and drag.
Life may be hard,,
you will always be one step ahead of the things that drag you down in life....you just have to take the negative things in your life and use them for the positive....
because that is how you fly.
(Jeremiah 31:31-36)
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