Do you ever wonder about people who sometimes seem to act so righteous for the little stuff but major issues act really sketchy? I think people notice more by religious people, and quite frankly I do think it happens more by religious people but that’s not fair to stereotype. I’ll leave that to Richard Dawkins. But you definitely see it. This is by far not a new issue.
The big contradiction that gets pointed out about Noah all of the time is that he was called righteous and at the same time he gets heavily criticized for not saving his generation from the Flood. He didn’t pray for them like Avraham did, and the Midrash tells us that Noah didn’t get one person to change their ways in the 120 years from the time he was commanded to build the Ark and the time the floods came. Not a stellar record.
The answer was that he was righteous. Righteous beyond what we could ever imagine. It was lacking though. The way he treated people came from his relationship to G-d and basically from his ideal system. It didn’t come from his relationship to people. It was missing the human dimension. So when it didn’t appeal to his ideal system to help people out, he didn’t do it. When G-d told him that he was going to send the Flood, he accepted G-d’s verdict and accepted the fact that the generation deserved it, rather than trying to find every way to help them out despite their faults.
I take back what I said that it’s all about religious people since the example I thought of is about atheists. Atheists proudly tout the fact that they are disproportionately underrepresented in jail. That’s great. They are also less philanthropic. Religious people beat them soundly on giving charity, even on giving to charities that have nothing to do with religion. Atheists adhere closely to their idealogical system, but make all of their decisions based on that. It’s missing the human dimension.
I’m not sure how you teach sensitivity training. Sensitive is not an adjective people use to describe me. The world could use it though, even very religious people.
