Friday, July 15, 2016

The Council Has Spoken - Our Watcher's Council Results

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The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides. - Lao Tzu

"Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. - Mary Shelly

“Much of the wisdom in the world is contained in these two words; wait, and hope." - Alexandre Dumas 'The Count Of Monte Cristo

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This week's winning essay,Joshuapundit's Life, Death And Faith is my reaction to the untimely deaths of two people and what I guess I would call some larger questions. Here's a slice:

Recently, a young man of my acquaintance passed away. He was one of those people who seemed to have everything going for him...a great, successful career doing what he loved, a loving wife and family, and wonderful friendships. I never met him personally, but based on what I know of his courageous struggle with his disease and the sincere outpouring of sorrow not just from his family but those he knew and worked with, he was a good, decent and loving human being who seems to have left this earth far too soon. He had yet to have his 40th birthday.

In Israel just a few days before that, one of the Arabs whom call themselves Palestinians broke into the bedroom of a 13-year-old Israeli girl who never did harm to him or anyone else and happily murdered her. He was shot down after he attacked another human being, but in his mind and the mind of the Palestinian Authority, its schools, mosques and media, he was a hero, a jihad warrior and a martyr doing Allah's will. Not only that, but to his family, he represented a handsome financial stipend.

Thirteen-Year-Old American Girl Stabbed to Death in Her Bed By Palestinian Terrorist


I can't get her mother's anguished cry at her funeral out of my mind..."How do you say goodbye to your 13-year-old child?"

Is there any way to answer that?

If G-d exists, why does He allow such things to happen? Or to use the old cliche,why do bad things happen to good people? And it's even more interesting to turn that one around...why do good things seem to happen to those whom do evil, if a truly just G-d exists? Is it all just random? Does G-d exist at all or is He just a convenient fable man thought up with many names and guises to explain the inexplicable? Karl Marx referred to religion as 'the opiate of the masses.' Is G-d simply a fairy tale, just a ploy by the ruling classes to keep people in line?

As a reasonably observant Jew, one example that's always thrown at me by people when this sort of thing comes up is the Holocaust. Millions of Jews, many of them quite religious were murdered in the most brutal fashion imaginable. Whole Rabbinic dynasties going back centuries were wiped out. Even the most predatory beasts do not engage in such behavior at their worst. And in the end, only a handful of the perpetrators and their many enablers were ever punished in any way. If a loving, just G-d truly exists, how could he possibly allow that?

I can't say I know all the answers, nor frankly, would I really wish to. One of my favorite spiritual quotes comes from Ramakrishna, who wrote that a G-d who can be explained is no G-d at all. Or as one of the pithier Jewish sages once said, "If I understood G-d, I'd be G-d."

There's a great deal of insight there, I think. Given the nature of G-d as defined by every major faith, how could we possibly judge Him by our human standards?

Another thing I've realized over time and with study is that G-d simply plays on a much bigger field than we do. By nature, our perceptions are limited. We simply don't see the big universal picture, the Divine Plan and the reasons certain things might need to happen that seem random good or evil to us. And our view of such things is limited to what happens in this physical world. We have no view as to what happens in the next world, its judgements and designs.

Take the Holocaust, for instance.

I would not remotely represent that I of all people have the answer, but here are a couple of things to consider.


More at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was a Facebook post by black police officer Jay Stalien, Facebook post re blacks and crimesubmitted by Bookworm Room . It's a street level view of this topic and a must read.

Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners


See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum.

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

 It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

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