Am I supposed to pity angels?

This is a paper I handed in today for my midrash course. I thought I'd reproduce it here because I haven't gotten as much of a chance to talk about these kinds of things with my friends as I might like. Maybe this will help.

So far a lot of the midrashim we’ve read seem to center on humans, which is totally understandable and I won’t deny its worth. However, some questions and some topics have apparently always been so pressing that they’re tired. They’ve been beaten to death. For example, the old question of why bad things happen to good people. As far as I’ve seen the only unique contribution in a sea of “well, God knows what’s best” has come from Lovecraft, and you can hardly call that midrash. Most issues that attempt to make sense of humanity and our role in the universe get painted with the same brush in my mind. I’m tired of hearing about that, and something new seems more and more attractive the more I read.

For all the talk of the suffering of mankind, from those who believe God treats humans unjustly to those who believe God treats humans too leniently… there’s not enough talk about how our existence affects the lives and minds of other beings that are around. Since God is usually written off as infallible, ineffable, and otherwise beyond study, the best object for study for me is looking like his host of angels.

They don’t get mentioned much in scripture itself, not from what I’ve read. Most don’t even have names. They just show up, do one or two things, and then disappear back into the celestial host from which they came. Midrash gives them a little more attention, but I’m still not entirely satisfied with it. The midrashim we read for class presents questions of its own.

Most of the examples I’ll use are from The Book of Legends, labeled on our sheet as Sefer Ha-Aggadah. The host of God is generally only mentioned with relation to man, since apparently they weren’t important except for when their activities touched upon the fates of mortals. There was a good deal of discussion over the precise manner of “counsel” that God took, whether with Himself or with the ministering angels. He asked them for their opinion, and according to R. Judah (if I recall), when He consulted them and they gave an unsatisfactory opinion, He destroyed them. He did this more than once!

This raises several questions. The first is that if angels can disagree with God, if angels can answer Him and tell Him they think he’s wrong…. Doesn’t that mean that they too have free will? Doesn’t that mean that this great gift supposedly given to mankind alone belongs to them as well? And if that’s true, why is it said that only God is allowed to both have the power of choice and live forever? Wouldn’t angels by this system also qualify? Another question that remains unanswered is what exactly it’s like to work for God.

I can assume that it is ingrained into the very nature of an angel to love and revere God. If I were going to create an innumerable force of powerful beings to serve my every whim, I too would probably create them to like me. Given that, in a relationship that should by all rights be built on mutual love and respect… why is it that God and His angels seem to bicker so much? And why is God so erratic in His tolerance for creatures who theoretically can do naught but obey Him?

If mortal humans are supposedly given so many privileges like free will and the ability to reproduce and love and song and souls and beauty and seemingly-infinite tolerance from their otherwise-irascible creator… it seems to me that the angels have really gotten the short end of the stick. They are given jobs to perform in the service of a creation that can never truly belong to them, they are given the ability to observe a world that will never truly know them, and they are allowed to give counsel to a Lord who will never truly listen! Why bother?

When I was very young, the movie The Prophecy was something my father and I talked about for a long time. It centered on a war among angels, a war begun by jealousy of man. Man has been favored in so many ways, does so little in return, and even gets more attention in midrashim than the devoted and loving servants of God. And yet, because angels are angels and seem still to be fundamentally extensions of God… they accept all of this, and they go on praising.

I find that depressing.

Am I supposed to pity angels?

This is a paper I handed in today for my midrash course. I thought I'd reproduce it here because I haven't gotten as much of a chance to talk about these kinds of things with my friends as I might like. Maybe this will help.

So far a lot of the midrashim we’ve read seem to center on humans, which is totally understandable and I won’t deny its worth. However, some questions and some topics have apparently always been so pressing that they’re tired. They’ve been beaten to death. For example, the old question of why bad things happen to good people. As far as I’ve seen the only unique contribution in a sea of “well, God knows what’s best” has come from Lovecraft, and you can hardly call that midrash. Most issues that attempt to make sense of humanity and our role in the universe get painted with the same brush in my mind. I’m tired of hearing about that, and something new seems more and more attractive the more I read.

For all the talk of the suffering of mankind, from those who believe God treats humans unjustly to those who believe God treats humans too leniently… there’s not enough talk about how our existence affects the lives and minds of other beings that are around. Since God is usually written off as infallible, ineffable, and otherwise beyond study, the best object for study for me is looking like his host of angels.

They don’t get mentioned much in scripture itself, not from what I’ve read. Most don’t even have names. They just show up, do one or two things, and then disappear back into the celestial host from which they came. Midrash gives them a little more attention, but I’m still not entirely satisfied with it. The midrashim we read for class presents questions of its own.

Most of the examples I’ll use are from The Book of Legends, labeled on our sheet as Sefer Ha-Aggadah. The host of God is generally only mentioned with relation to man, since apparently they weren’t important except for when their activities touched upon the fates of mortals. There was a good deal of discussion over the precise manner of “counsel” that God took, whether with Himself or with the ministering angels. He asked them for their opinion, and according to R. Judah (if I recall), when He consulted them and they gave an unsatisfactory opinion, He destroyed them. He did this more than once!

This raises several questions. The first is that if angels can disagree with God, if angels can answer Him and tell Him they think he’s wrong…. Doesn’t that mean that they too have free will? Doesn’t that mean that this great gift supposedly given to mankind alone belongs to them as well? And if that’s true, why is it said that only God is allowed to both have the power of choice and live forever? Wouldn’t angels by this system also qualify? Another question that remains unanswered is what exactly it’s like to work for God.

I can assume that it is ingrained into the very nature of an angel to love and revere God. If I were going to create an innumerable force of powerful beings to serve my every whim, I too would probably create them to like me. Given that, in a relationship that should by all rights be built on mutual love and respect… why is it that God and His angels seem to bicker so much? And why is God so erratic in His tolerance for creatures who theoretically can do naught but obey Him?

If mortal humans are supposedly given so many privileges like free will and the ability to reproduce and love and song and souls and beauty and seemingly-infinite tolerance from their otherwise-irascible creator… it seems to me that the angels have really gotten the short end of the stick. They are given jobs to perform in the service of a creation that can never truly belong to them, they are given the ability to observe a world that will never truly know them, and they are allowed to give counsel to a Lord who will never truly listen! Why bother?

When I was very young, the movie The Prophecy was something my father and I talked about for a long time. It centered on a war among angels, a war begun by jealousy of man. Man has been favored in so many ways, does so little in return, and even gets more attention in midrashim than the devoted and loving servants of God. And yet, because angels are angels and seem still to be fundamentally extensions of God… they accept all of this, and they go on praising.

I find that depressing.

Am I supposed to pity angels?

This is a paper I handed in today for my midrash course. I thought I'd reproduce it here because I haven't gotten as much of a chance to talk about these kinds of things with my friends as I might like. Maybe this will help.

So far a lot of the midrashim we’ve read seem to center on humans, which is totally understandable and I won’t deny its worth. However, some questions and some topics have apparently always been so pressing that they’re tired. They’ve been beaten to death. For example, the old question of why bad things happen to good people. As far as I’ve seen the only unique contribution in a sea of “well, God knows what’s best” has come from Lovecraft, and you can hardly call that midrash. Most issues that attempt to make sense of humanity and our role in the universe get painted with the same brush in my mind. I’m tired of hearing about that, and something new seems more and more attractive the more I read.

For all the talk of the suffering of mankind, from those who believe God treats humans unjustly to those who believe God treats humans too leniently… there’s not enough talk about how our existence affects the lives and minds of other beings that are around. Since God is usually written off as infallible, ineffable, and otherwise beyond study, the best object for study for me is looking like his host of angels.

They don’t get mentioned much in scripture itself, not from what I’ve read. Most don’t even have names. They just show up, do one or two things, and then disappear back into the celestial host from which they came. Midrash gives them a little more attention, but I’m still not entirely satisfied with it. The midrashim we read for class presents questions of its own.

Most of the examples I’ll use are from The Book of Legends, labeled on our sheet as Sefer Ha-Aggadah. The host of God is generally only mentioned with relation to man, since apparently they weren’t important except for when their activities touched upon the fates of mortals. There was a good deal of discussion over the precise manner of “counsel” that God took, whether with Himself or with the ministering angels. He asked them for their opinion, and according to R. Judah (if I recall), when He consulted them and they gave an unsatisfactory opinion, He destroyed them. He did this more than once!

This raises several questions. The first is that if angels can disagree with God, if angels can answer Him and tell Him they think he’s wrong…. Doesn’t that mean that they too have free will? Doesn’t that mean that this great gift supposedly given to mankind alone belongs to them as well? And if that’s true, why is it said that only God is allowed to both have the power of choice and live forever? Wouldn’t angels by this system also qualify? Another question that remains unanswered is what exactly it’s like to work for God.

I can assume that it is ingrained into the very nature of an angel to love and revere God. If I were going to create an innumerable force of powerful beings to serve my every whim, I too would probably create them to like me. Given that, in a relationship that should by all rights be built on mutual love and respect… why is it that God and His angels seem to bicker so much? And why is God so erratic in His tolerance for creatures who theoretically can do naught but obey Him?

If mortal humans are supposedly given so many privileges like free will and the ability to reproduce and love and song and souls and beauty and seemingly-infinite tolerance from their otherwise-irascible creator… it seems to me that the angels have really gotten the short end of the stick. They are given jobs to perform in the service of a creation that can never truly belong to them, they are given the ability to observe a world that will never truly know them, and they are allowed to give counsel to a Lord who will never truly listen! Why bother?

When I was very young, the movie The Prophecy was something my father and I talked about for a long time. It centered on a war among angels, a war begun by jealousy of man. Man has been favored in so many ways, does so little in return, and even gets more attention in midrashim than the devoted and loving servants of God. And yet, because angels are angels and seem still to be fundamentally extensions of God… they accept all of this, and they go on praising.

I find that depressing.

Relativism is a dirty word...

Okay. This is taken from my class notes for my midrash course, since I guess I wasn't having as much luck explaining this point there.

Theodicy. Can God be both omnipotent and benevolent? People have run themselves around in circles over this question forever and it really doesn't seem necessary to me. There have been questions about why humans were created if we're going to be allowed to run amok and cause all kinds of suffering. Why we were allowed a choice to do good if God knew we might do evil.

If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world? If God is omnipotent, can't he help us? If God has a purpose, why didn't I get that job, why can't I pay my rent, why is my mother unsupportive, why doesn't he love me, why doesn't whywhywhywhywhinewhinewhine.

What a tired fucking subject. I seriously am so sick of talking to people in the same hamster-wheels when it comes to this. Because I don't know how well I made my point in class, I'll attempt to make it here in a slightly more organized form.

Evil is an overused word. Evil, as a word, is dead to me now. We only call destruction 'evil' when we don't see its purpose. We call the works of man evil when we can see no good coming from them. On the other hand, if we believe that we were made in God's image, and God destroys when necessary as well as creating... is not our ability to destroy just as necessary and divinely-granted as our ability to create?

You can accept that destruction doesn't make God evil (or even less good) if you can accept that destruction is necessary. It seems like the only theodicy trap is one we choose to make ourselves by binding ourselves into binary categorizations of good/evil, God/man. If we didn't do that, we wouldn't have to question the goodness of God because he destroys and so do we.

This is a view I've obviously borrowed from Hinduism, that in order to sustain creation destruction must be present. Without it life would stagnate, flounder, and eventually choke itself out in the midst of its own decaying mass.

That's why I don't find theodicy debates all that interesting. Sure, theodicy is a problem if you're going to call everything "evil" that you don't like. Think of it this way. I want to know why God allows flatulence. Does flatulence force me to question the goodness or omnipotence of God? No. I still don't like it and I would like there to be less of it. That's all.

We need to let go of this ingrained notion of "evil." I feel like the professors and some of the students in class found it much easier to dismiss my view as a product of the necessary moral relativism of an anthropologist, that I only take that view because I've been trained to do so. Surely I agree that eating other human beings is evil, right? Surely I agree that war is evil, right? I suggested that perhaps our definition of "evil" is causing a problem in this discussion and that letting it go may be helpful, but the response was mainly "oh well no we can't do that."

This further confirms for me that people voluntarily stick themselves in this question. A way out of the binary mindset invalidates a question they assume must be answered in order for their lives to have meaning. Or something.

Let's try a less irreverent example than farts, eh? If the Titanic hadn't crashed, if thousands of people hadn't died-- and not because of a big chunk of ice-- because of the shortsighted elitist callous negligence of other humans... we wouldn't have the nautical safety laws that we do. We wouldn't realize how ugly those parts of human nature are. If we call that tragedy categorically evil, we miss the context, and we miss the purpose because we miss the good that you can only learn later.

Are the traits I just condemned evil, either? Is it evil to be callous? Is it evil to be negligent of the well-being of your fellow man? Or is it simply harmful? Is it simply destructive?

Do we need to make a moral entity out of everything? Why isn't it enough to say that we don't like it and therefore want to see less of it happening in our lives and in the lives of others? Why can't we treat all "evil" like a fart?

Relativism is a dirty word...

Okay. This is taken from my class notes for my midrash course, since I guess I wasn't having as much luck explaining this point there.

Theodicy. Can God be both omnipotent and benevolent? People have run themselves around in circles over this question forever and it really doesn't seem necessary to me. There have been questions about why humans were created if we're going to be allowed to run amok and cause all kinds of suffering. Why we were allowed a choice to do good if God knew we might do evil.

If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world? If God is omnipotent, can't he help us? If God has a purpose, why didn't I get that job, why can't I pay my rent, why is my mother unsupportive, why doesn't he love me, why doesn't whywhywhywhywhinewhinewhine.

What a tired fucking subject. I seriously am so sick of talking to people in the same hamster-wheels when it comes to this. Because I don't know how well I made my point in class, I'll attempt to make it here in a slightly more organized form.

Evil is an overused word. Evil, as a word, is dead to me now. We only call destruction 'evil' when we don't see its purpose. We call the works of man evil when we can see no good coming from them. On the other hand, if we believe that we were made in God's image, and God destroys when necessary as well as creating... is not our ability to destroy just as necessary and divinely-granted as our ability to create?

You can accept that destruction doesn't make God evil (or even less good) if you can accept that destruction is necessary. It seems like the only theodicy trap is one we choose to make ourselves by binding ourselves into binary categorizations of good/evil, God/man. If we didn't do that, we wouldn't have to question the goodness of God because he destroys and so do we.

This is a view I've obviously borrowed from Hinduism, that in order to sustain creation destruction must be present. Without it life would stagnate, flounder, and eventually choke itself out in the midst of its own decaying mass.

That's why I don't find theodicy debates all that interesting. Sure, theodicy is a problem if you're going to call everything "evil" that you don't like. Think of it this way. I want to know why God allows flatulence. Does flatulence force me to question the goodness or omnipotence of God? No. I still don't like it and I would like there to be less of it. That's all.

We need to let go of this ingrained notion of "evil." I feel like the professors and some of the students in class found it much easier to dismiss my view as a product of the necessary moral relativism of an anthropologist, that I only take that view because I've been trained to do so. Surely I agree that eating other human beings is evil, right? Surely I agree that war is evil, right? I suggested that perhaps our definition of "evil" is causing a problem in this discussion and that letting it go may be helpful, but the response was mainly "oh well no we can't do that."

This further confirms for me that people voluntarily stick themselves in this question. A way out of the binary mindset invalidates a question they assume must be answered in order for their lives to have meaning. Or something.

Let's try a less irreverent example than farts, eh? If the Titanic hadn't crashed, if thousands of people hadn't died-- and not because of a big chunk of ice-- because of the shortsighted elitist callous negligence of other humans... we wouldn't have the nautical safety laws that we do. We wouldn't realize how ugly those parts of human nature are. If we call that tragedy categorically evil, we miss the context, and we miss the purpose because we miss the good that you can only learn later.

Are the traits I just condemned evil, either? Is it evil to be callous? Is it evil to be negligent of the well-being of your fellow man? Or is it simply harmful? Is it simply destructive?

Do we need to make a moral entity out of everything? Why isn't it enough to say that we don't like it and therefore want to see less of it happening in our lives and in the lives of others? Why can't we treat all "evil" like a fart?

Relativism is a dirty word...

Okay. This is taken from my class notes for my midrash course, since I guess I wasn't having as much luck explaining this point there.

Theodicy. Can God be both omnipotent and benevolent? People have run themselves around in circles over this question forever and it really doesn't seem necessary to me. There have been questions about why humans were created if we're going to be allowed to run amok and cause all kinds of suffering. Why we were allowed a choice to do good if God knew we might do evil.

If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world? If God is omnipotent, can't he help us? If God has a purpose, why didn't I get that job, why can't I pay my rent, why is my mother unsupportive, why doesn't he love me, why doesn't whywhywhywhywhinewhinewhine.

What a tired fucking subject. I seriously am so sick of talking to people in the same hamster-wheels when it comes to this. Because I don't know how well I made my point in class, I'll attempt to make it here in a slightly more organized form.

Evil is an overused word. Evil, as a word, is dead to me now. We only call destruction 'evil' when we don't see its purpose. We call the works of man evil when we can see no good coming from them. On the other hand, if we believe that we were made in God's image, and God destroys when necessary as well as creating... is not our ability to destroy just as necessary and divinely-granted as our ability to create?

You can accept that destruction doesn't make God evil (or even less good) if you can accept that destruction is necessary. It seems like the only theodicy trap is one we choose to make ourselves by binding ourselves into binary categorizations of good/evil, God/man. If we didn't do that, we wouldn't have to question the goodness of God because he destroys and so do we.

This is a view I've obviously borrowed from Hinduism, that in order to sustain creation destruction must be present. Without it life would stagnate, flounder, and eventually choke itself out in the midst of its own decaying mass.

That's why I don't find theodicy debates all that interesting. Sure, theodicy is a problem if you're going to call everything "evil" that you don't like. Think of it this way. I want to know why God allows flatulence. Does flatulence force me to question the goodness or omnipotence of God? No. I still don't like it and I would like there to be less of it. That's all.

We need to let go of this ingrained notion of "evil." I feel like the professors and some of the students in class found it much easier to dismiss my view as a product of the necessary moral relativism of an anthropologist, that I only take that view because I've been trained to do so. Surely I agree that eating other human beings is evil, right? Surely I agree that war is evil, right? I suggested that perhaps our definition of "evil" is causing a problem in this discussion and that letting it go may be helpful, but the response was mainly "oh well no we can't do that."

This further confirms for me that people voluntarily stick themselves in this question. A way out of the binary mindset invalidates a question they assume must be answered in order for their lives to have meaning. Or something.

Let's try a less irreverent example than farts, eh? If the Titanic hadn't crashed, if thousands of people hadn't died-- and not because of a big chunk of ice-- because of the shortsighted elitist callous negligence of other humans... we wouldn't have the nautical safety laws that we do. We wouldn't realize how ugly those parts of human nature are. If we call that tragedy categorically evil, we miss the context, and we miss the purpose because we miss the good that you can only learn later.

Are the traits I just condemned evil, either? Is it evil to be callous? Is it evil to be negligent of the well-being of your fellow man? Or is it simply harmful? Is it simply destructive?

Do we need to make a moral entity out of everything? Why isn't it enough to say that we don't like it and therefore want to see less of it happening in our lives and in the lives of others? Why can't we treat all "evil" like a fart?