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From: matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt )
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: A query to "Dvar Torah"
Message-ID: <2344@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 23-Oct-85 09:48:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2344
Posted: Wed Oct 23 09:48:35 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Oct-85 06:59:06 EDT
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Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
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DAVID SHER writes:

> How can someone be considerred sinful for teaching something that he 
> believes?  I can see that some who does not believe the hypothesis but
> hypocritically teaches it anyway should lose his share in the World to
> Come.  I do not believe that God would punish a man for being honestly
> wrong.  Of course I could be mistaken, I'm no authority!  

Try applying this idea to secular civil or criminal law:  The King of
England warns everyone that robbing the rich is a crime (the secular
counterpart of sin).  Robin Hood knows what the King has said, but
Robin Hood doesn't think robbing the rich is a crime at all if one
gives the proceeds to the poor.  Do you think the King will punish
Robin Hood if he catches him robbing the rich?  Do you think the U.S.
Government will punish the participants in the "sanctuary movement"
who honestly believed they had the right to shelter Central American
refugees?  Do you think the Israeli Government fails to punish men
who honestly believed it's no crime to shoot at Arabs who are throwing
rocks at you?

Many of us take secular law seriously, whether we agree with it or not,
because there are policemen and sheriffs waiting behind the billboards
to run us in if we don't.  Not having seen any sinners struck with
bolts of lightning, we don't take religious law that seriously, even
after reading Dante's Inferno and James Joyce's vivid descriptions in
"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."  Nevertheless, we have all
been warned -- see the Tochacha in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, not to
mention the thunderings of the Prophets.  Because the Children of
Israel didn't heed the warnings we are even now living in Exile,
with no Temple, no animal sacrifices, no real kedushah.  Do you
think it mattered that people honestly believed in Molech, or Baal,
or Ashtoreth, or the disgusting Baal of Peor?  Does someone have to
write a book on "Why good things happen to bad people" before we
take the warnings from the King seriously?

				-- Matt Rosenblatt