AY76 God doesn’t make junk
We continue with the Bet Halevi, who quotes from Avot D’Rebi Natan (chapter 12) where it says that Shimon Ben Elazar said,
This statement was said with a great swear, (Others explain it as “At a great moment God said this) V’Ahavta LeRe’echa Kamocha Ani Hashem/Love your friend like you love yourself because I am God.
Avot D’Rabi Natan gives two explanations for why it says, “because I am God,” but we will focus on his first point, which is that it says “I am God” because God created him.
In other words, you should Love your friend like you love yourself because I created him.
It says in a famous Gemarah in Masechet Taanit (page 20a) that Rabi Eliezer b’Ribi Shimon was once traveling. He was in a very good mood, overly happy, when he saw a very ugly man.
(“Very ugly’” simply means that the man had a very ugly face. But the Ben Ish Chai says that it means he was a great sinner.)
The ugly man said hello to the Rabbi, but the Rabbi didn’t respond.
Rabbi Eliezer felt that the man has been improper in his informal way of greeting, and he responded, “How ugly is that man. Are all the people ugly like you?”
(Of course, this is not how the rabbi should have acted but we won’t get into why he spoke this way.)
The man responded, “ I don’t know, but tell the craftsman who made me how ugly I am.“ In other words, “You may think I’m ugly but it was God that made me.”
At this point, the rabbi realized that he had made a mistake, and he got off of his donkey and begged for mechila/forgiveness. But the man refused to forgive the rabbi unless he went back to the “craftsman who made him,” to tell him how ugly he was. The man then followed him until the city, and when everybody came out to greet the rabbi with great honor, the man commented, “This is the Rabbi?”
Finally, the man forgave him, on the condition that he would never do that again.
Rashi explains that this was Eliyahu HaNavi, and the purpose of the story was to test the rabbi and teach us all the lesson that God created him, and, as I once saw in a poster,
“I know I am somebody because God doesn’t make no junk.”
Meaning that if Hashem made him, then he’s not junk, even if he doesn’t look like you, or seems to be on a lowly level.
Of course, everyone is responsible for their actions, but the point is that
even people with weak Middot, (in areas that they aren’t responsible for as in, My creator created me this way) were created by God.
So regardless of how a person looks or acts within his abilities, we still have to love him.