{"id":73323,"date":"2020-04-15T09:09:13","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T06:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=73323"},"modified":"2020-04-15T09:09:13","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T06:09:13","slug":"accept-no-substitutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/accept-no-substitutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Accept No Substitutes"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"73323","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":37561,"related_cahpter":"460","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"When we lose access to something we love and want - do we live with our longing, and suffer the pain of absence? Ezekiel, and God, say yes...\r\n\r\n","content":"

Way back in the Book of Exodus, the Israelites were afraid when Moses was on the mountain longer than they expected, and they made a Golden Calf to replace a God they couldn\u2019t see and a leader who they felt abandoned them. At the time, God and Moses were livid at their lack of faith. How could these people, who so recently witnessed God\u2019s miracles during the exodus, forget the God who saved them?<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet it is human instinct to forget what we once knew in favor of what is in front of us.<\/span> Researchers Ayelet Fishbach and Xianchi Dai show<\/span><\/a> that \u201cdesire depends on the length of non-consumption of a good and the presence of salient alternatives.\u201d Meaning, if we really want something but we have a suitable alternative, our desire for the original thing we wanted wanes over time; but if there is no substitute for what we wanted, then our desire tends to grow over time. And, of course, it is in our nature to seek substitutes. Most of us don\u2019t want to suffer from unfulfilled desires when we could find something to fill our lives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Israelites easily fall into this trap, and Ezekiel spends much of this chapter observing their abhorrent substitutes in shock and horror. In place of worship to God in the Temple, Ezekiel sees the Israelites worshipping creeping creatures and worshipping the sun and the Mesopotamian god Tammuz. God is furious with the Israelites, and Ezekiel himself is stunned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet God understands their actions, even if God abhors them. In verse 12, God speaks for the Israelites, saying \u201cThe Lord does not see us, the Lord has abandoned the country.\u201d Apparently, the Israelites have not learned their lesson from the Golden Calf, and once again take an \u201cout of sight, out of mind\u201d approach to God. Though God and Ezekiel consider bugs and celestial objects a sorely inadequate substitute for the One True God of Israel, the Israelites do not, or they have convinced themselves that their substitute is adequate.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The problem is that when we lose access to something we love and want, we face a terrible conundrum. Do we live with our longing, and suffer the pain of absence? Or do we turn to a substitute, knowing full well it may not be good or good for us? This chapter would have us wait, relying on our faith and imagining the sweetness of our eventual reunion to get us through hard times. We should take solace in knowing that, just as God will eventually reconcile with the Israelites, we can pray to eventually be reunited with what we have lost, and we will savor the sweetness of the reunion when it happens.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":false,"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Accept No Substitutes","main_caption":"When we lose access to something we love and want - do we live with our longing, and suffer the pain of absence? Ezekiel, and God, say yes...","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":false,"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""},"links":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73328,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73323\/revisions\/73328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}