Before the holiday season, I was forwarded an "inspirational" video about a young couple who had had a wrong done against them. The transgressor had acted with the best of intentions, but he had still grievously erred. Before Yom Kippur, he asked forgiveness from this couple. Initially, they were not sure if they could do it, but they ended up granting it.
A few days later, the wife was in a terrible car crash, but she and her unborn child emerged unscathed.
With a swell of violins, the video concludes with the reminder of the power of forgiveness.
This didn't jive with me.
Was this couple amazing for forgiving the wrong-doer? In my opinion, yes. If the video's message was that if this couple could forgive this fellow, then open your heart to mechilah, well, I would be behind that.
But it was the connection I was bothered by. Because life rarely has a perfect connection between one action and another.
Is the video's message that if this couple had not freely given their forgiveness, the wife and unborn child would not have emerged unscathed? That is not a prediction that can be made.
What if there had been no car crash? There would be no story, that's for sure. "This young couple gave their forgiveness, and experienced no incidents on the road!" HaShem could have spared her from the car crash to begin with, right?
Do any of us arrive home safely and marvel at the miracle of our survival? Or try to examine our actions as to why we merited returning home in one piece?
We don't. Because human nature takes such things for granted, while only according near-misses as miracles.
What if our everyday, drama-free, crisis-absent (in other words, boring) existences is the very blessing we should be cherishing?
There are plenty of sin-free souls who die in car crashes, or are taken in equally horrific ways (hello? Holocaust? Illness? Freak accidents? Etc.?) If we apply this premise to everyone, it would follow that they are/were guilty in some manner, or else they would have lived. Which is not Judaism.
People should be inspired to do amazing good without the reminder of reward—or the belief that if they don't, well, there's a car crash waiting for you. Then that goodness is not freely given, but extracted through threats of cosmic lightning bolts.
Someone once asked me for forgiveness. I was so bowled over by her request that I freely gave it. Do I know if that "saved" me in any way? I didn't "almost" get hit by an air conditioner, so I have no idea. And I don't need to know.
The way Divinity operates . . . it's not my business. My job is to do my part, while keeping my puny human mind out of His methods.
2 comments:
These types of stories make me shudder. I guess some people find comfort in them. In the seventies (I think), terrorists murdered more than twenty students at an Israeli school. Soon afterwards, the story spread that they checked the mezuzahs in the school, and exactly the same number were passul. This was seen as an 'explanation' of what happened. I can't get into the mindset of someone being comforted by the idea of a God Who is so strict and merciless as to kill children for failures at a mitzvah that was (a) not a capital crime and (b) not their responsibility (even if they had been adults, which they weren't).
That is HORRIFIC. And I agree, I don't understand how comfort is brought by unproven cause and effect, especially as flimsily as in that case! People become so superstitious about mezuzahs, I don't get it.
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