Goring Another Sacred Cow

I will cut to the chase, right off the bat. I am going to use the word 'stupid' in the same thought stream as I speak about a religious belief. That is a bigger no-no than almost any other convention. I don't give a rat's ass.

Mary and I have been reading thru the Perek Shirah, the Song of the Universe, translation and commentary by Rabbi Nosson Scherman. (Mesorah Publications, 2006).

It is the songs of praise by the creatures of our small blue dot in the universe, for God. We read one each night, and while they did not lift one to the heights of insight into God, they were good to think about. Until we got to the mice that is. The mouse owns up to 'causing wickedness'. That is when it began to go south on me. The commentary says that mice are the 'very symbol of wickedness' according to the Talmud. They are further excoriated because "they gather in multitudes and plunder whatever food they find."(pg 132) As a sidebar, I might warn against reading Joshua and Judges in the Bible, right after reading this commentary. It goes on to say that figuratively,mice know they are wicked and they deserve the hatred and hunting, so they just acknowledge that 'God is just in letting them be treated that way."

WTF??

Mice suddenly have a moral conscience? They "know they are wicked", and deserve to be exterminated. Well, if mice have a moral conscience and judgement, then they are our equals and we had better treat them a whole lot better than we do.

The belief that mice are wicked (and I will grant that they are really annoying),and that they KNOW they are wicked is stupid.

A lot of the religious proselytizing I run into is a heckuva lot more annoying, presumptuous, and negative than a small mouse gnawing on my bag of organic flax seeds, yet mice are wicked, just for doing that?? Shall we extrapolate here??

Tim