Take Control of Your Faith

Is it just me or did Perek 3 turn out to be a pretty swell perek? At the beginning there (during chavruta time) I wasn't too sure about where thins thing wasgoing. Sure, the language was easier to understand than in the other perakim. Yes, there wasn't a lot of scary, destructive imagery (baruch Hashem). Still, it was odd at first glance! When we were studying it in chavrutot, it seemed like there was this random 'Gever' person who had an unstable relationship with God. My group assumed he spent the beginning  part kvetching about how much God hated him and how much he hated God, and then out of the blue he switched his mind and decided to become best friends with God. I didn't see how this was significant to the development of the sefer, and I definitely saw no connection between this perek and my life in general. What was your initial reaction to the Perek?

Aha! Once we began studying in-class, slowly the pieces began meshing together. The Gever is this universal man, and his story of transformation teaches us a valuable lesson for our spiritual lives. He starts off as this self-absorbed dude who's angry because his tefillah is being shut out. He feels as though the world is arbitrary because there is no escaping his terrible affliction. The implication here is that there can't be any God. How could there possibly be a god if I'm suffering so much for no good reason? Oh.. the age old question. Any suggestions are welcome! About 12 pessukim into the perek, he veers away from the 'there's no god' philosophy and ventures into the 'I'm being targeted by God' one. Now there's a God at least, but it's not a very nice God. Actually, it's a very mean God- this god is cruel. As we've mentioned (in class and in blogs), though, once the Gever opens up the whole 'God' thing (as in, he admits there there is a god, albeit an angry one), he begins feeling more complex emotions. (Hey! Women express complex emotions! Maybe it should have been a geveret.. #psych.)

It's not a Peanuts, but I thought it was funny. 

Now it all starts to open up. First he implies that there is a possibility that his relationship with God is fixable. Then he gets even more logical: he realizes that the good and the bad come from God,and God doesn't punish from spite. The only logical conclusion, then,to explain his sorrows is that he did something wrong. Look how mature our little Gever is getting! He's almost all growed up! Do you believe that most of the times 'bad' happens to you, it is because you did something wrong? Towards the end, the Gever takes a giant step and rejoins the community. He stops talking about 'I' and 'me' and enters into the realm of 'we' and 'us'. He acknowledges the sin and makes it clear that they want to have a relationship with God. In the last section, he goes back to speaking in the singular, but now it's from a different perspective. He's not a lone, angry man anymore. Now he's an amalgamated member of a community. He's tired of whining and complaining in vain, he just wants God to hear his simple request. He knows he doesn't deserve forgiveness- he knows he probably should have a worse punishment- but he would like God to use mercy instead of justice and forgive them. Do you really believe the 'he probably deserved worse' part? Someone wanna explain it is exactly that was so treacherous? Because.. remember how terrible the destruction was? 

I know what you all are thinking- Wait a second Rawchelli. Where's the lesson for life? Funny you asked. This Gever fellow teaches us a grand lesson about life in Galut (ya know, the life we live). We don't always see the presence of God (see: Gever at the beginning). Okay, maybe we never see the presence of God obviously at all. Maybe we pray really hard and nothing happens; maybe something bad happened and we're totally devastated. Maybe we feel completely alone and we don't think that there's anything out there. In the last section of this perek, the Gever is fully developed and teaches us that even if we can't see God, we still have to do the right thing. We don't have a Biet Hamigdash or anything of the sort, so it's hard to see God when there's nowhere God can respond from. We need to be proactive, take control of our lives, and do all this perspectifying just like the Gever did. What do you think of this 'independent' method of taking control of your faith? Is it too difficult to apply in real life?