misgendered Here is a letter form that mentally ill people can use to hurt other people that treat them as if they are in fact mentally ill.
One thing this shows is that the Oral Law is necessary to understand the Written Law.
While it is admirable that in Western society, great value is placed on compassion for the mentally ill. But this can get out of proportion when power is given to the mentally ill to hurt normal, healthy people.
Appendix: The idea here is that the Oral Law does a good job in explaining the basic meaning of many of the commandments in the Bible. Without the Oral Law it is very easy to get confused about the simple explanation. One can make it all into an allegory if he wants to.
I know that even with the Oral Law, people do this anyway. But with some knowledge of the actual explanations of the Laws of the Torah it is harder to allegorize the commandments into touchy-feely "Be a nice guy" kind of thing.
The best advice that I can think of for this kind of problem is to learn Torah. That is every day to set aside a set time for fast learning [to get through every single last word of the Old Testament, the two Talmuds. That is the way we, the Jewish people, were taught to keep the Law by Moses and the Prophets. That is to say when we were told by the prophets to keep "the Law of Moses" they meant this in a very specific kind of way. That is, when the prophets told us to" keep the Sabbath" they meant a very specific day of the week. They did not leave it up to our discretion. The same goes with all the commandments. Another example is to "honor your parents." The prophets in telling us this, did not mean for us to choose who we want to be our "spiritual parents." They meant our physical flesh and blood parents.
One thing this shows is that the Oral Law is necessary to understand the Written Law.
While it is admirable that in Western society, great value is placed on compassion for the mentally ill. But this can get out of proportion when power is given to the mentally ill to hurt normal, healthy people.
Appendix: The idea here is that the Oral Law does a good job in explaining the basic meaning of many of the commandments in the Bible. Without the Oral Law it is very easy to get confused about the simple explanation. One can make it all into an allegory if he wants to.
I know that even with the Oral Law, people do this anyway. But with some knowledge of the actual explanations of the Laws of the Torah it is harder to allegorize the commandments into touchy-feely "Be a nice guy" kind of thing.
The best advice that I can think of for this kind of problem is to learn Torah. That is every day to set aside a set time for fast learning [to get through every single last word of the Old Testament, the two Talmuds. That is the way we, the Jewish people, were taught to keep the Law by Moses and the Prophets. That is to say when we were told by the prophets to keep "the Law of Moses" they meant this in a very specific kind of way. That is, when the prophets told us to" keep the Sabbath" they meant a very specific day of the week. They did not leave it up to our discretion. The same goes with all the commandments. Another example is to "honor your parents." The prophets in telling us this, did not mean for us to choose who we want to be our "spiritual parents." They meant our physical flesh and blood parents.
