Q&A: God
God
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Assuming that the concept of “good” is determined by human perception, how can one claim that God is good? After all, there are a million and one things that are not good that God does / causes. (The idea that “God alone knows what is good” and “everything God does, He does for the good” sounds silly and unintelligent to me.)
Besides that (this is related to the previous question), how can one logically explain that the Torah was given to us for our benefit, as it says, “The Holy One, blessed be He, wished to grant merit to Israel; therefore He gave them much Torah and many commandments”? On what basis?
Answer
It seems to me that what you meant to ask is based on the assumption that a person understands the concept of good (not that he constitutes or defines it), meaning that the good is what I understand as good, and not that there is some hidden good that cannot be revealed to me (as people usually explain the non-moral Jewish laws).
I have written here on the site several times about the problem of evil, and I distinguished between human evil and natural evil. You can search the site. Briefly, I would say that the problem of evil in the world can be explained even without assuming that there is some hidden good visible only to the Holy One, blessed be He. One can argue that when there is evil in the world, it occurs because it is necessary for good purposes, and that is the necessary price. See the above-mentioned places for details.
I didn’t understand your questions at the end.