I was wrestling with the dashing the heads of children piece. To me, this has little to do with the external world (or war as such) and more to do with uprooting (even apparently innocent) habits of Babylon before they mature into full-grown vices — within the soul, not as a military agenda. When this category error is made, barbarism and bloodshed flow. Like weeding and inner garden, you hoe when the little weeds only show cotyledons — before they've taken over. Distinct from tares (Lolium temulentum) among the wheat, because tares are indistinguishable until they produce their black seeds. But the sprouts of Babylon in the inner garden are easy to see and have to be opposed in myself (not in anyone else) just as Jesus symbolically runs the animals and money changers out of the temple, to the outer courtyard where they belong — driving the obsession with lower impulses out of the heart (temple) and down below the diaphragm (outer courtyard of the lower organs), where they belong.
"That day saw the death of three thousand men and women. Then, determined to close that chapter once and for all, Moses turned to God and implored him to do the same: 'If you for give them,' he said, 'good; if not, erase my name from your book.'
There is Moses in his true grandeur! God's messenger is threatening God! He issues him an official ultimatum! It's either-or. Forgiveness or separation. And God yields. He cannot nor does he want to continue his work with Israel without a man like Moses." - Elie Wiesel, Wise Men and Their Tales (Shocken Books, New York, 2003), pg 53.
You may know this, but according to Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, depending on how it's counted, the smack dab middle of the Torah is a phrase meaning "ask a question."
If the Bhagavad Gita can be considered a metaphor for the inner war against one's own body (Yogananda makes a pretty solid case for this in my opinion) and not a call to rampant bloodshed, so too could much of the Old Testament.
Some random thoughts that have helped me find the circumference of the question of who God is without pretending that I could describe the center.
1. God's primary attribute is purpose. He is active toward goals no other creature can imagine, never in repose waiting for his creatures to respond to him. You would never be able to take a still photograph of him. Nothing in our past or in his eternal present is determinative. Isaiah 55.
2. Anyone who can create ex nihilo, recondition the human body to eliminate any disease, cancel any competing spirit, and raise the dead obviously has a vastly different view of life than we do. We play tug-of-war. He plays four dimensional chess. Matthew 10.
Death is our ultimate limit for human life and our greatest fear. To him, it is no more significant than passing through a doorway to enter another room. Death is an intermission. No more.
3. Every person at death is judged by exactly the same standard as applied during life. We are not eventually judged by a standard of righteousness, as if God had to consult some legal code to understand our condition. Everyone in judgment receives exactly what he wanted as shown by the decisions made and the behaviors that flowed from them. Every Israeli murdered on 10/07, every innocent Gazan killed in the present bombing campaign will be satisfied with the sentence they pronounce on themselves in 'the judgment.' There is no harsher standard.
4. You aver in your piece that evangelicals, especially, have pruned their expectations of God to fit a deistic therapeutic paradigm. Their standards of decency are read back into the Biblical record. The handlers and editors of the Biblical records before they were expropriated by other cultures did exactly the same thing. If one is tied to a literal interpretation of the OT the problems are insoluble and faith often founders on the rocks of our disappointments.
A most helpful teacher I've found recently is Harry Emerson Fosdick. His 1938 work, "A Guide to Understanding the Bible," has been a refreshing oasis that places a higher and more humble value on God's presence in scripture than anything with which fundamentalists tried to suffocate me.
Nov 1, 2023·edited Nov 1, 2023Liked by Yoshi Matsumoto
Well we are made in the image of God as a stick figure is an image of me. So God is even more human than me. IMO the apophatic Neoplatonic infection that entered Christianity was a dumbing down of God, making him palatable to smarty pants “deep” types who often end up running things in intellectual land. The God the Father of Jesus in the Gospels was not apophatic and Neoplatonic, ditto for the rest of the Bible. Though scriptures here and there are pulled out to make Yahweh the apophatic, Neoplatonic One all impersonal and non-human. As a whole the God of the Bible is a hot mess by the standards of the philosophers and they think he needs to be cleaned up and tamed and then put at a distance only reachable by a years long contemplative journey. No pouring out of the Holy Spirit on ordinary folk in their world. Elitist scum! Fortunately my grandmothers didn’t get that memo and knew the immediacy of the Father. Wasn’t it Pascal who said the God of Abraham wasn’t the god of the philosophers and scholars?
You have expressed the vitality of love and the flip side.
The Creator is not constrained by time. Think of a being for whom everything is now. This makes things impossible for us to figure out. However Jesus exemplifies God experiencing what it's like to be stuck inside the dimension of time like we are. And we can see what was manifested. Big upgrades in behavioral expectations. Also additional, ongoing communication opportunity.
Wrestling with God is very good, makes us busy and keeps us from doing stupid things like killing people.
I think you’re making the same mistake as the philosophers and western theologians and their take on God, just bent towards the other extreme. Your version of God is so immanent that he ceases to become Transcendent, and therefore God. Indeed, your god is just a human (which you seem to conflate with person) with a lot of power, and I believe Ockham (or someone from the 12th century) already made this mistake, owing largely to the hyper rational tendencies of Western theology. Your god makes perfect sense as well, since he’s just a dude. The novelty of your conception of him might be exciting, and lead one to think it’s somehow mysterious. However, he’s easily understood, much like the god of the philosophers. The paradox of Christianity is that it holds in tension the absolute transcendence and immanence of God at the same time. Christ fills the cosmos from heaven to hell. He is both king and criminal, master and servant, priest and sacrifice etc. This mysterious paradox is essential to Christianity, that God is wholly other yet is very much human (but not human in the way you think, which simply takes at face value that what a human is in this world is what a human truly is). But such silly speculations on God like this article are inevitable given the framework of Western theology that this piece is clearly based on. These intellectual problems which the western mind find stimulating do not exist in Orthodox Christianity. God bless.
Our enemies are not flesh and blood as Paul reminds us. They are the spiritual hosts of evil in the heavenly places. (Eph 6:12) The Eastern Fathers see these "infants" as the distracting thoughts, attempting to lead us away from the peace and presence of God in our hearts. We are to 'dash' these thoughts upon the rock immediately with extreme will and force in order to remain in Him. This struggle, this ascesis, this jihad is the "wrestling" to which believers are called by Grace. This is repentance, this is Μετάνοια, this is abiding and keeping. Dear children, love and keep, calling upon the Holy Name of Jesus, have mercy on me, the sinner. MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS SAVE US! Endure and believe, faith hope love......
I appreciate the humble spirit with which the author posts on this subject. In fact, "I Don't Exactly Know What I'm Doing" will be the name of my podcast if I ever start one.
Proverbs 9:10 declares, "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", and I can't think of a better frame for this discussion. God's wrath gets it due here, but nowhere is mentioned God's indifference. My favorite Biblical book is Job, which begins by declaring the protagonist to be completely undeserving of what is about to befall him. God wagers Job's faith against everything Satan can inflict him with, turning away as Job loses his children, wealth, and health. Ultimately, God wins the bet, and Job regains everything twice over. When He finally deigns to speak with Job, it is with a harsh rebuke to his complaints, however. Job fearfully (and wisely) clams up and, like I said, is ultimately restored. The reader is left to speculate as to the collective fate of Job's deceased children.
There are more than a few instances of genocide in the Old Testament, and I applaud the rabbi in the story for meeting it head on. In Joshua, we get a glimpse into the consequences of being merciful to the enemy. Most of the twelve tribes fail to follow God's instruction to drive out the all of the original inhabitants of the Promised Land After just a couple generations, they drift from God and assume the polytheistic lifestyle of their neighbors. Eventually, Jerusalem is destroyed and the Israelites themselves are driven out. God knows our nature and He knows free will's a bitch.
Given this background, I can understand Netanyahu's statement. The Amalek preyed on the straggling women, children, and infirm throughout the Exodus. Denying the parallels to the Gazan's of October 7th ignores an ugly reality. I'll leave you with the same deal God made with Abraham vis-a-vis Sodom and Gomorrah: Find ten among them who are innocent, and let the whole city be spared.
Hey Yoshi, I found this post super thoughtful and encouraging. Thanks for writing it. I've been wrestling a lot with the ethics of violence over the last few years as I teeter on the edge of being a complete pacifist as someone who has carried firearms for years and continues to do so. Your post is was helpful.
I've been thinking about Abraham's bargaining with God—it's an incredible moment in the scriptures. Maybe it's an important piece of the puzzle in understanding the rest of the Bible—maybe it's reasonable that God experiences anger just like we do and wants to punish the very people He offers scandalous forgiveness to.
Also, your disclaimer made me think of a couple quotes from authors I've been getting a lot of mileage out of recently:
“I cannot hazard uttering a theological word without feeling like I'm going skydiving, night snorkeling without a light and a Belizean reef, or picking a fight with a professional boxer. I'm perilously jumping into something that might not end well.” — Chris Haw
“This is all I have known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love.” — Kierkegaard
Israelite worship was in many ways an inversion of the Pagan worship practiced by the surrounding nations. For instance, the priests' vestments described in Exodus are almost exactly the type of clothing the pagan nations would dress their idols in. The point being that while the other nations would build a statue to give their god a body (i.e. localize it) and get it to do what they wanted, the Israelite priests understood that *they themselves* were the body of God on earth, and were expected to do His work (i.e. they serve Him instead of He them). Another obvious example of this inversion is that pagan temples would have temple prostitutes, while Mary was a temple virgin. Pagan rulers would ritualistically embody the local god and try to father demigod children with the temple prostitutes. Conversely Christ was born of a virgin, without carnal union.
I respect and bow to your wrestling, true to your 'stack's name!
For my two cents, I think there's a good deal of evidence that Christian theology, from the very beginning, is a synthesis of both the ancient Jewish/Biblical world and the mid of the Greek philosophers (with Plato at the forefront). You see it already in the book of Wisdom, written in Greek by a Jewish author, likely within a century of Chris.. Both are present, and for me, it's the tension between the two that is most living and vital. How can God be both deeply personal and utterly transcendent? You can pick almost limitless quotes from Scripture, the Church Fathers and the Saints to support both aspects. In trying to hold both aspects (often alternately, and sometimes at once), we're called/invited to expand our minds and hearts. Perhaps it's collapsing the tension on either side (and yes, I think you might be doing that a bit here, just in the opposite direction that your non-praying friend did) is what makes (our concept of) God smaller. Trying to hold both continues the wrestling match, cognitively as well as emotionally.
The part of this I struggle with the most is the concept of a dynamic God. One who changes and oscillates. Where I come from, we sing many songs about the static nature of God, with phrases like unchangeable God and whatnot. Reading this, leaves me with more questions than answers.
But I will say this; whenever I read diverse opinions on the nature of God that challenge my understanding of who He is, I always turn to the Holy Spirit. So if you read this, ask the Holy Spirit, is this who God is? Is this who You are?
Nov 3, 2023·edited Nov 4, 2023Liked by Yoshi Matsumoto
Orthodox Christianity interprets the passages you have quoted here in terms of what can be called, 'Bible interiorization' describing what is known as 'Unseen Warfare' or as, the struggle with intrusive thoughts that try to take us away from our attempt to 'Pray without ceasing', as the Apostle Paul has admonished us to so do...
In this practice, of one wishes not to engage in extraneous thoughts which inevitably arise during prayer, one has to cut them off immediately as soon as they begin. If instead we entertain and enter into conversation with them, they become increasingly more difficult to eradicate.
It is written: Smack the camel's nose when it comes in the flap of one's tent before you have the whole camel in the tent with you.
You can just as easily say, "Watch and dash the little children against a rock and then continue with your prayer, lest you enter into temptation."
All this is not to say that God didn't have the Hebrew people do exactly as is described in these texts.
God has one Prime Directive and that was to produce the Messiah and get as many of us as possible into the Kingdom of Heaven.
If that meant 'dashing a bunch of Babylonian children against a wall', He will do whatever it takes to accomplish His ends for us.
We tend to see things strictly from our life in this world. God has a larger perspective and larger priorities than our health and well being in this temporary, limited framework.
If those little children had to be killed in order to make it all work together for good, we have to believe that their souls will be some of the first to inherit His Eternal Kingdom.
What you are struggling with is the 'Problem of Evil', which isn't 'heretical' by any means. It's a necessary part of any genuine Spiritual Life.
We can and should argue with God. But in the end God did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. The rabbi was wrong about Amalek, not God. Judgement is the left hand of God. A great story is told by Dennis Prager that Jews in a concentration camp put God on trial one afternoon for breaking the covenant and found him guilty. As soon as they finished the trial they announced it was time for afternoon prayers.
I was wrestling with the dashing the heads of children piece. To me, this has little to do with the external world (or war as such) and more to do with uprooting (even apparently innocent) habits of Babylon before they mature into full-grown vices — within the soul, not as a military agenda. When this category error is made, barbarism and bloodshed flow. Like weeding and inner garden, you hoe when the little weeds only show cotyledons — before they've taken over. Distinct from tares (Lolium temulentum) among the wheat, because tares are indistinguishable until they produce their black seeds. But the sprouts of Babylon in the inner garden are easy to see and have to be opposed in myself (not in anyone else) just as Jesus symbolically runs the animals and money changers out of the temple, to the outer courtyard where they belong — driving the obsession with lower impulses out of the heart (temple) and down below the diaphragm (outer courtyard of the lower organs), where they belong.
"That day saw the death of three thousand men and women. Then, determined to close that chapter once and for all, Moses turned to God and implored him to do the same: 'If you for give them,' he said, 'good; if not, erase my name from your book.'
There is Moses in his true grandeur! God's messenger is threatening God! He issues him an official ultimatum! It's either-or. Forgiveness or separation. And God yields. He cannot nor does he want to continue his work with Israel without a man like Moses." - Elie Wiesel, Wise Men and Their Tales (Shocken Books, New York, 2003), pg 53.
You may know this, but according to Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, depending on how it's counted, the smack dab middle of the Torah is a phrase meaning "ask a question."
If the Bhagavad Gita can be considered a metaphor for the inner war against one's own body (Yogananda makes a pretty solid case for this in my opinion) and not a call to rampant bloodshed, so too could much of the Old Testament.
Yoshi, you're a brave man to tangle with this.
Some random thoughts that have helped me find the circumference of the question of who God is without pretending that I could describe the center.
1. God's primary attribute is purpose. He is active toward goals no other creature can imagine, never in repose waiting for his creatures to respond to him. You would never be able to take a still photograph of him. Nothing in our past or in his eternal present is determinative. Isaiah 55.
2. Anyone who can create ex nihilo, recondition the human body to eliminate any disease, cancel any competing spirit, and raise the dead obviously has a vastly different view of life than we do. We play tug-of-war. He plays four dimensional chess. Matthew 10.
Death is our ultimate limit for human life and our greatest fear. To him, it is no more significant than passing through a doorway to enter another room. Death is an intermission. No more.
3. Every person at death is judged by exactly the same standard as applied during life. We are not eventually judged by a standard of righteousness, as if God had to consult some legal code to understand our condition. Everyone in judgment receives exactly what he wanted as shown by the decisions made and the behaviors that flowed from them. Every Israeli murdered on 10/07, every innocent Gazan killed in the present bombing campaign will be satisfied with the sentence they pronounce on themselves in 'the judgment.' There is no harsher standard.
4. You aver in your piece that evangelicals, especially, have pruned their expectations of God to fit a deistic therapeutic paradigm. Their standards of decency are read back into the Biblical record. The handlers and editors of the Biblical records before they were expropriated by other cultures did exactly the same thing. If one is tied to a literal interpretation of the OT the problems are insoluble and faith often founders on the rocks of our disappointments.
A most helpful teacher I've found recently is Harry Emerson Fosdick. His 1938 work, "A Guide to Understanding the Bible," has been a refreshing oasis that places a higher and more humble value on God's presence in scripture than anything with which fundamentalists tried to suffocate me.
Well we are made in the image of God as a stick figure is an image of me. So God is even more human than me. IMO the apophatic Neoplatonic infection that entered Christianity was a dumbing down of God, making him palatable to smarty pants “deep” types who often end up running things in intellectual land. The God the Father of Jesus in the Gospels was not apophatic and Neoplatonic, ditto for the rest of the Bible. Though scriptures here and there are pulled out to make Yahweh the apophatic, Neoplatonic One all impersonal and non-human. As a whole the God of the Bible is a hot mess by the standards of the philosophers and they think he needs to be cleaned up and tamed and then put at a distance only reachable by a years long contemplative journey. No pouring out of the Holy Spirit on ordinary folk in their world. Elitist scum! Fortunately my grandmothers didn’t get that memo and knew the immediacy of the Father. Wasn’t it Pascal who said the God of Abraham wasn’t the god of the philosophers and scholars?
You have expressed the vitality of love and the flip side.
The Creator is not constrained by time. Think of a being for whom everything is now. This makes things impossible for us to figure out. However Jesus exemplifies God experiencing what it's like to be stuck inside the dimension of time like we are. And we can see what was manifested. Big upgrades in behavioral expectations. Also additional, ongoing communication opportunity.
Wrestling with God is very good, makes us busy and keeps us from doing stupid things like killing people.
I think you’re making the same mistake as the philosophers and western theologians and their take on God, just bent towards the other extreme. Your version of God is so immanent that he ceases to become Transcendent, and therefore God. Indeed, your god is just a human (which you seem to conflate with person) with a lot of power, and I believe Ockham (or someone from the 12th century) already made this mistake, owing largely to the hyper rational tendencies of Western theology. Your god makes perfect sense as well, since he’s just a dude. The novelty of your conception of him might be exciting, and lead one to think it’s somehow mysterious. However, he’s easily understood, much like the god of the philosophers. The paradox of Christianity is that it holds in tension the absolute transcendence and immanence of God at the same time. Christ fills the cosmos from heaven to hell. He is both king and criminal, master and servant, priest and sacrifice etc. This mysterious paradox is essential to Christianity, that God is wholly other yet is very much human (but not human in the way you think, which simply takes at face value that what a human is in this world is what a human truly is). But such silly speculations on God like this article are inevitable given the framework of Western theology that this piece is clearly based on. These intellectual problems which the western mind find stimulating do not exist in Orthodox Christianity. God bless.
Psalm 136 (LXX) By the rivers of Babylon.....
"Sing us a song of Zion"
O'Lord, remember the sons of Edom....
....and dash your infants against the rock.
Our enemies are not flesh and blood as Paul reminds us. They are the spiritual hosts of evil in the heavenly places. (Eph 6:12) The Eastern Fathers see these "infants" as the distracting thoughts, attempting to lead us away from the peace and presence of God in our hearts. We are to 'dash' these thoughts upon the rock immediately with extreme will and force in order to remain in Him. This struggle, this ascesis, this jihad is the "wrestling" to which believers are called by Grace. This is repentance, this is Μετάνοια, this is abiding and keeping. Dear children, love and keep, calling upon the Holy Name of Jesus, have mercy on me, the sinner. MOST HOLY THEOTOKOS SAVE US! Endure and believe, faith hope love......
I appreciate the humble spirit with which the author posts on this subject. In fact, "I Don't Exactly Know What I'm Doing" will be the name of my podcast if I ever start one.
Proverbs 9:10 declares, "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom", and I can't think of a better frame for this discussion. God's wrath gets it due here, but nowhere is mentioned God's indifference. My favorite Biblical book is Job, which begins by declaring the protagonist to be completely undeserving of what is about to befall him. God wagers Job's faith against everything Satan can inflict him with, turning away as Job loses his children, wealth, and health. Ultimately, God wins the bet, and Job regains everything twice over. When He finally deigns to speak with Job, it is with a harsh rebuke to his complaints, however. Job fearfully (and wisely) clams up and, like I said, is ultimately restored. The reader is left to speculate as to the collective fate of Job's deceased children.
There are more than a few instances of genocide in the Old Testament, and I applaud the rabbi in the story for meeting it head on. In Joshua, we get a glimpse into the consequences of being merciful to the enemy. Most of the twelve tribes fail to follow God's instruction to drive out the all of the original inhabitants of the Promised Land After just a couple generations, they drift from God and assume the polytheistic lifestyle of their neighbors. Eventually, Jerusalem is destroyed and the Israelites themselves are driven out. God knows our nature and He knows free will's a bitch.
Given this background, I can understand Netanyahu's statement. The Amalek preyed on the straggling women, children, and infirm throughout the Exodus. Denying the parallels to the Gazan's of October 7th ignores an ugly reality. I'll leave you with the same deal God made with Abraham vis-a-vis Sodom and Gomorrah: Find ten among them who are innocent, and let the whole city be spared.
Hey Yoshi, I found this post super thoughtful and encouraging. Thanks for writing it. I've been wrestling a lot with the ethics of violence over the last few years as I teeter on the edge of being a complete pacifist as someone who has carried firearms for years and continues to do so. Your post is was helpful.
I've been thinking about Abraham's bargaining with God—it's an incredible moment in the scriptures. Maybe it's an important piece of the puzzle in understanding the rest of the Bible—maybe it's reasonable that God experiences anger just like we do and wants to punish the very people He offers scandalous forgiveness to.
Also, your disclaimer made me think of a couple quotes from authors I've been getting a lot of mileage out of recently:
“I cannot hazard uttering a theological word without feeling like I'm going skydiving, night snorkeling without a light and a Belizean reef, or picking a fight with a professional boxer. I'm perilously jumping into something that might not end well.” — Chris Haw
“This is all I have known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love.” — Kierkegaard
Israelite worship was in many ways an inversion of the Pagan worship practiced by the surrounding nations. For instance, the priests' vestments described in Exodus are almost exactly the type of clothing the pagan nations would dress their idols in. The point being that while the other nations would build a statue to give their god a body (i.e. localize it) and get it to do what they wanted, the Israelite priests understood that *they themselves* were the body of God on earth, and were expected to do His work (i.e. they serve Him instead of He them). Another obvious example of this inversion is that pagan temples would have temple prostitutes, while Mary was a temple virgin. Pagan rulers would ritualistically embody the local god and try to father demigod children with the temple prostitutes. Conversely Christ was born of a virgin, without carnal union.
I respect and bow to your wrestling, true to your 'stack's name!
For my two cents, I think there's a good deal of evidence that Christian theology, from the very beginning, is a synthesis of both the ancient Jewish/Biblical world and the mid of the Greek philosophers (with Plato at the forefront). You see it already in the book of Wisdom, written in Greek by a Jewish author, likely within a century of Chris.. Both are present, and for me, it's the tension between the two that is most living and vital. How can God be both deeply personal and utterly transcendent? You can pick almost limitless quotes from Scripture, the Church Fathers and the Saints to support both aspects. In trying to hold both aspects (often alternately, and sometimes at once), we're called/invited to expand our minds and hearts. Perhaps it's collapsing the tension on either side (and yes, I think you might be doing that a bit here, just in the opposite direction that your non-praying friend did) is what makes (our concept of) God smaller. Trying to hold both continues the wrestling match, cognitively as well as emotionally.
Gulp!
The part of this I struggle with the most is the concept of a dynamic God. One who changes and oscillates. Where I come from, we sing many songs about the static nature of God, with phrases like unchangeable God and whatnot. Reading this, leaves me with more questions than answers.
But I will say this; whenever I read diverse opinions on the nature of God that challenge my understanding of who He is, I always turn to the Holy Spirit. So if you read this, ask the Holy Spirit, is this who God is? Is this who You are?
Orthodox Christianity interprets the passages you have quoted here in terms of what can be called, 'Bible interiorization' describing what is known as 'Unseen Warfare' or as, the struggle with intrusive thoughts that try to take us away from our attempt to 'Pray without ceasing', as the Apostle Paul has admonished us to so do...
In this practice, of one wishes not to engage in extraneous thoughts which inevitably arise during prayer, one has to cut them off immediately as soon as they begin. If instead we entertain and enter into conversation with them, they become increasingly more difficult to eradicate.
It is written: Smack the camel's nose when it comes in the flap of one's tent before you have the whole camel in the tent with you.
You can just as easily say, "Watch and dash the little children against a rock and then continue with your prayer, lest you enter into temptation."
All this is not to say that God didn't have the Hebrew people do exactly as is described in these texts.
God has one Prime Directive and that was to produce the Messiah and get as many of us as possible into the Kingdom of Heaven.
If that meant 'dashing a bunch of Babylonian children against a wall', He will do whatever it takes to accomplish His ends for us.
We tend to see things strictly from our life in this world. God has a larger perspective and larger priorities than our health and well being in this temporary, limited framework.
If those little children had to be killed in order to make it all work together for good, we have to believe that their souls will be some of the first to inherit His Eternal Kingdom.
What you are struggling with is the 'Problem of Evil', which isn't 'heretical' by any means. It's a necessary part of any genuine Spiritual Life.
https://substack.com/profile/100124894-steven-berger/note/c-40736830
We can and should argue with God. But in the end God did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. The rabbi was wrong about Amalek, not God. Judgement is the left hand of God. A great story is told by Dennis Prager that Jews in a concentration camp put God on trial one afternoon for breaking the covenant and found him guilty. As soon as they finished the trial they announced it was time for afternoon prayers.
As ever, articulate and well argued. I think I only found one typo. You argue for us, not separatism. This is good.