Victory over Defeat

This is a side note: I'm going to be quite honest. Working up the energy to go to school, much less come home and do homework, today, was hard. Doing this post was something I had to do. It won't be my best.

Compare the king image of God to the Shekhina [sp?] and also the God portrayed in the story of [again, sp?] Tamur B'achnai.

Defeat is a funny thing. I know from experience that it makes you crawl up in a corner, literally or figuratively, and wish that you'd never even tried to enter whatever contest, again, l. or f., in the first place. You fight and you fight, hard, and nothing comes of it. One must wonder, then, why God is very okay with the idea that his rule, in the story we read [Tamur B'achnai? the one with the carob trees and the walls, etc.] does not win. As a competitive person myself, this would be devastating. Mind-shattering, earth-shaking, chaos-inducing! If God is supposed to rule, let God rule! But something changes.

I guess understanding this concept is hard for me. Coincidentally, we're learning in my history class about the Renaissance and how the humanity of Jesus Christ, as the Christian Messiah, was more important than his divinity. I get why it was important, I do, but I still don't really understand it, just as I don't really understand how the humanity God created could be more powerful than the Creator. [cite: quote from my temple's prayer book: "He is God who made them all, the Creator, not the Creation." This doesn't have anything to do with anything, it's just so I don't get punished for possible plagiarism.]

Another thing I want to point out in my difficulty in understanding this concept is that God is king. In every history class I've ever taken, people who disobey kings are punished, not commended. Though I don't like it about myself, I'm a submissive person, and especially when it comes to authority. The idea of challenging God is so pro-confrontational it makes me scared just thinking about it.

I'm not honestly sure where I'm going with this, or even if I was going anywhere in the first place. Perhaps, in a weird contrary mood, the Jews decided, like the 1776 Americans, that they'd had enough of living under kings, and they wanted something new. Maybe they should have written a Declaration of Independence and fought a war for their religious autonomy, except that they had it, which is what confuses me so much. God gave humans free will, and so why would anyone argue? He [need I give me gender apology again?] gave us an opportunity to choose whether we wanted to follow His rule or not. By arguing with him, wouldn't that say that you didn't want to follow him?

I know I sound very discouraging towards Rabbi Yehoshua [or was it Eliezer? I left my folder somewhere.] but I actually love that about Judaism, and at the risk of offense, it's something people usually imagine old Jewish ladies doing. We fight in a what could be considered unnecessary battle, but we fight, because it's what we believe. It's stubborn, but still, very admirable.

Now that I've babbled in a stupid way for a while, I'll finish. I'll, by my own choice, go to sleep. Then, I'll, by my own choice, wake up. Maybe I'll argue it with God for a while. Just because I can. Because our God, at least this week, is one that accepts criticism, that gives out a free comment card with your free will and doesn't throw it away when he sees something rated as "1 : Poor." Because we're Jews, and we were chosen, and that's just too cool to pass up.