I just saw an ad for GYE on YeshivaWorld.com. It reminded me of the ad I saw last August that changed my life. Wow - it's almost a year that I'm clean of the bad stuff!! (See Jack's 90 day timeline here). But, I know I could fall in a second - so I'd better not be too haughty. A person can fall from the highest heights to the deepest depths. Don't we learn that from the Egel haZahav (right after Matan Torah)? Isn't that the lesson the Holy Torah is telling us? I mean, why else write that?
Rabbi Yakov Weinberg says that the Torah spells out for us in all the gory detail how our ancestors had failure after failure. Why write this if not to teach us a lesson? If someone wants to come to Judaism they will ask, "let me read about your heroes". So we read about the Egel, Korach, the Meraglim, the Misonenim, we read that Moshe sinned, that Shlomo Hamelech was almost denied Olam Haba (see Sanhedrin daf 104b), etc, etc... Why would the Torah write all these negative things? Don't we want to attract people to Judaism? Won't they be turned off? "Look at Christianity - Yoshka was perfect! Now, that's the religion I want!!" - won't people say that? Rabbi Weinberg says, that the Torah tells the truth about life. If you want the truth, you'll take it. And if you don't want the truth - but fabrications, then you'll take something else.
(You know, maybe I should have been a Rabbi instead of a computer programmer! Is it still too late?)