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Who is God?
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Ravenclaw




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, May 18 2019, 7:40 pm
IrenaFr wrote:
Coming from a very secular background and interested in quantum physics I would say - Creator and the Source and the Brain of the energy of every fundamental subatomic particle in our universe . It's just the part that we can discover, everything else is just not for our knowledge , we were created by this so that don't need the full knowledge so we will not be able to discover it Smile


Well said. Edward Fesser explains it like this.
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amother
Salmon


 

Post Sat, May 18 2019, 7:48 pm
simba wrote:
Well because all he does is for my Good.

I am limited, I don’t always see it, I may never see it. I pray that he lets me see it. I pray that I don’t have to look to hard to see the good. Hashem, please don’t make it hard for me
to believe. Please show me your goodness in an obvious way.

Amen.



I don't think your being realistic. Your comment reminds me of one of my favorite lines. "Hashem, grant me the company of those who seek the truth, but spare me the company of those who find it."
We are comforted by things that make sense, and scared of things that don't. It's nice to believe that perhaps in 3 or 5 or 10 years from now we will understand why hashem allowed a certain event to happen. Now reality..... we will NEVER know why babies get cancer. We will never know why hashem allows innocent woman to be raped. We will never know why hashem takes mothers away from children and children away from mothers. These things will never make sense to us, and is frustrating because on one hand hashem is our all merciful, loving, kind father who loves us, but on the other hand he allows what I just described. So we close our eyes and focus on the good and pretend it's obvious that hashem is warm and fuzzy. We train our children to only see the good and explain away awful events simplistically by saying things like, "we don't understand hashem". I do this with my children as well because I decided I don't want them to be logical about hashem because it's to confusing and painful.
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youngishbear




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, May 18 2019, 7:50 pm
Ravenclaw wrote:
“He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the center of time and he can see the turn of the universe. And... he's wonderful.“

I see Hashem as the source of all life, the energy pulsing inside and around everything, the driving force of the universe.


Nerd
Smile
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imasoftov




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 2:23 am
I very much object to the question. God is not a person, and "who" can only be asked of people.

L'havdil, one cannot ask "who is the Battle of Hastings" or "who is the theory of gravitation".
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amother
Olive


 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 3:13 am
imasoftov wrote:
I very much object to the question. God is not a person, and "who" can only be asked of people.

L'havdil, one cannot ask "who is the Battle of Hastings" or "who is the theory of gravitation".


I dunno. Hashem defines Himself as creator of the world, and the one who took us out of Egypt.
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mommy3b2c




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 4:09 am
G-d is the one who never lets me hit the bottom of the pit. I fall and I fall and I think I’m going to break, but He never quite lets me get there. He always catches me before I hit the bottom. I wish I knew why He keeps making me fall though.
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amother
White


 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 4:28 am
Listen to Rabbi Manis Friedman, he talks a lot about God.
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amother
Cerise


 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 4:52 am
relish wrote:
Interesting perspective on being taught to envision God.
I was taught that if one envisions God, then that is Kefira, because God has no form. It’s interesting to hear another perspective.

If we can perceive and or sense something, wouldn’t that be an indicator that we are actually not experiencing God, but rather a manifestation of His creation?


The being taught= as a male form due to the pronouns used in the Torah and in our speech

Children naturally form an image of what they are learning, since children are concrete and need to concretize the abstract. Those constructs typically follow us into adulthood

Since we actually don't know what G-d is, I don't think it is possible to say what is a manifestation, or what is an actual sense of Him. I described my personal sense and experience
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PinkFridge




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 5:44 am
He is not Dr. Who Cool
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Ravenclaw




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 5:59 am
PinkFridge wrote:
He is not Dr. Who Cool


Sorry, I couldn’t resist. It fit too well.
Tongue Out
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amother
Linen


 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 6:01 am
For me,the best mashal for God is the pregnant mother. The mother has to make space in herself for her baby (creation) to.grow. The mother knows that the baby is there but the baby does not, cannot , understand what is going on beyond the uterine wall. Cannot even perceive her. But the mother provides every need for.the child absolutely automatically. And the baby can feel secure in this, even though she cannot come to know the mother on any meaningful level. This is why chazal refer to the birth canal as a kever (grave), because just as a baby passes through the birth canal and gets to meet her mother, when we pass through the kever we get to meet God.
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amother
Salmon


 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 6:06 am
amother [ Linen ] wrote:
For me,the best mashal for God is the pregnant mother. The mother has to make space in herself for her baby (creation) to.grow. The mother knows that the baby is there but the baby does not, cannot , understand what is going on beyond the uterine wall. Cannot even perceive her. But the mother provides every need for.the child absolutely automatically. And the baby can feel secure in this, even though she cannot come to know the mother on any meaningful level. This is why chazal refer to the birth canal as a kever (grave), because just as a baby passes through the birth canal and gets to meet her mother, when we pass through the kever we get to meet God.
[u]



I don't agree with this mashal because we really can't feel secure in this world with hashem in charge. All kinds of tragedies happen to all types of people. Why would anyone logically feel secure?
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Simple1




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 7:53 am
mommy3b2c wrote:
G-d is the one who never lets me hit the bottom of the pit. I fall and I fall and I think I’m going to break, but He never quite lets me get there. He always catches me before I hit the bottom. I wish I knew why He keeps making me fall though.


Thank you for posting this! It really resonated with me!!
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amother
Burgundy


 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 1:58 pm
amother [ Salmon ] wrote:
[u]



I don't agree with this mashal because we really can't feel secure in this world with hashem in charge. All kinds of tragedies happen to all types of people. Why would anyone logically feel secure?


I think about this when people say don't worry trust Hashem.
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youngishbear




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 2:21 pm
I don't think security means believing nothing bad will happen. As adults we know that davening hard doesn't guarantee a good outcome, because the davening process is not about getting Hashem to give us things.

Emunah also doesn't mean always being happy and pretending things don't hurt.

Bitachon doesn't mean believing Hashem loves me so much He will never let anything go wrong in my life.

I mean, it's good to be positive and look to the future with hope, but even if experience has taught me to be quite cynical and pessimistic about a painful reality, not knowing what the outcome will be, or even waiting for the other shoe to drop, I can still trust that Hashem knows something I don't.

Even when it hurts, or is so unfair, or when the world seems so cruel and arbitrary. I try to be humble enough to accept that His ineffable plan is not meant to be comprehended by us puny humans in our lifetime.

It's hard to feel this way when the pain is still a constant presence.

Hugs to everyone in pain. Hashem sees your struggles and is okay if you're angry. Tell Him that you're angry. He can handle it. Just ask him for strength and clarity, and maybe, if we're lucky, some tiny bit of insight into the purpose of it all.
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amother
Salmon


 

Post Sun, May 19 2019, 3:46 pm
youngishbear wrote:
I don't think security means believing nothing bad will happen. As adults we know that davening hard doesn't guarantee a good outcome, because the davening process is not about getting Hashem to give us things.

Emunah also doesn't mean always being happy and pretending things don't hurt.

Bitachon doesn't mean believing Hashem loves me so much He will never let anything go wrong in my life.

I mean, it's good to be positive and look to the future with hope, but even if experience has taught me to be quite cynical and pessimistic about a painful reality, not knowing what the outcome will be, or even waiting for the other shoe to drop, I can still trust that Hashem knows something I don't.

Even when it hurts, or is so unfair, or when the world seems so cruel and arbitrary. I try to be humble enough to accept that His ineffable plan is not meant to be comprehended by us puny humans in our lifetime.

It's hard to feel this way when the pain is still a constant presence.

Hugs to everyone in pain. Hashem sees your struggles and is okay if you're angry. Tell Him that you're angry. He can handle it. Just ask him for strength and clarity, and maybe, if we're lucky, some tiny bit of insight into the purpose of it all.



I hear you. I think sometimes when these discussions go back and forth, it is often pointed out that davening, having emunah and bitochon, don't guarantee anything. I think from the time we are young children, it is ingrained otherwise. We always hear stories about people who had tremendous bitochon and things all fell into place for them. I've read many popular emunah books that are positively loaded with stories of the poor man who was about to be evicted while never losing his bitochon, and he miraculously found money to save his family. Now some of us are older and wiser and we see those stories are exaggerated but it's hard to come to terms with the harsh reality that things aren't the way they seem to be in the emunah books.
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