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These Jewish Thought classes are causing a lot of crochet, but I'm getting a surprising amount of blog mileage out of them as well. Hmmm.
So we were talking about Heschel being cheesed off with God because of the Holocaust, more or less, and about how nonetheless Heschel wants his God to be terribly human(e) and generally fluffy (a multivalent term), and the subject of David Blumenthal's book Facing the Abusing God: a theology of protest arose.
Consensus seemed to be, on the whole, that at some point the proper thing to do with an abusive relationship is leave, not build a theology round it, and that Blumenthal was being a bit of an idiot writing a book grouching about living with an abusive God when he could have just left.
Blumenthal and abusive gods were absolutely not the subject of the class, so I didn't say, but thought: it's not that easy.
I mean, if your whole identity is Jewish, and you say "bugger this God business," and you rip the God out of Judaism, that's ripping out a pretty fundamental part of your identity. Non-theistic Judaism isn't inconceivable, but not just like that.
Sometimes your abusive relationship is near enough to your surface that you can leave, with greater or less pain, but sometimes it's so wrapped around your core that to separate you and it is well-nigh impossible. We know that some people stay in abusive relationships forever: they would rather the low-level trauma of constant abuse than the major trauma of having one's identity ripped away and having to rebuild.
So give Blumenthal a break, and give people in abusive relationships a break as well. They have it hard enough without other people being judgemental and saying "Why don't you just leave?".
So we were talking about Heschel being cheesed off with God because of the Holocaust, more or less, and about how nonetheless Heschel wants his God to be terribly human(e) and generally fluffy (a multivalent term), and the subject of David Blumenthal's book Facing the Abusing God: a theology of protest arose.
Consensus seemed to be, on the whole, that at some point the proper thing to do with an abusive relationship is leave, not build a theology round it, and that Blumenthal was being a bit of an idiot writing a book grouching about living with an abusive God when he could have just left.
Blumenthal and abusive gods were absolutely not the subject of the class, so I didn't say, but thought: it's not that easy.
I mean, if your whole identity is Jewish, and you say "bugger this God business," and you rip the God out of Judaism, that's ripping out a pretty fundamental part of your identity. Non-theistic Judaism isn't inconceivable, but not just like that.
Sometimes your abusive relationship is near enough to your surface that you can leave, with greater or less pain, but sometimes it's so wrapped around your core that to separate you and it is well-nigh impossible. We know that some people stay in abusive relationships forever: they would rather the low-level trauma of constant abuse than the major trauma of having one's identity ripped away and having to rebuild.
So give Blumenthal a break, and give people in abusive relationships a break as well. They have it hard enough without other people being judgemental and saying "Why don't you just leave?".
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In the absence of the option of leaving, you'd have to develop coping strategies. Maybe becoming a bit masochistic, maybe trying to work out ways to influence the abusers behaviour, maybe trying to fool yourself into thinking that you have some control.