When God's Role Becomes Obvious

A portion from Rabbi Daniel Lapin, in his book America's Real War, 1999 Rabbi Daniel Lapin, p138-139:

The opening sentence of Maimonides' monumental work "Mishne Torah" reads: "The foundation of the entire structure and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there is a Fundamental Cause (God)" The important word is not "believe" but "know." The eternal challenge to the person of faith is to acquire so clear an understanding of how the world works, that God’s role becomes obvious. In the Jewish view, it has nothing to do with fervent proclamations of faith or serendipitous moments of epiphany. It has everything to do with years of disciplined intellectual dedication. It may not be easy, but neither is body building. In both cases, devotees consider the effort worthwhile; what is more, both provide highs along the way. For this reason perhaps, the Hebrew term for God-fearing is similar to the phrase "seeing God."

At quite a young age, my number-three daughter was once candid enough to tell me that she did not believe in an afterlife because she knew of no proof for its existence. She explained that she felt immeasurably saddened at the thought that when she died, there was to be nothing else. I pointed out to her that she accepted many things for which she had no independent proof, in fields such as science, medicine, and economics, simply because experts whom she trusted told her so.

We all accept that neurosurgery, ballet, and plumbing are examples of fields in which he who has studied extensively possesses an advantage. Somehow the error has crept in which allows us to suppose that the deepest mysteries of God are accessible to the ignorant. We are all certainly entitled to a profound and loving relationship with God; we are not all vouchsafed His secrets equally. Those secrets are available to all but remain the reward of individual effort. The knowledge and data is certainly accessible to each of us just as anyone who really desires to master neurosurgery, ballet, or plumbing can also do so. But whoever does invest the time and effort will know and understand more than those who do not. I explained to my daughter that she needed to locate an expert in religion whom she trusted and modestly submitted my candidacy for consideration. Over time this helped to reduce her anxiety.

I often think that the depression which has become endemic in our teenage population is another consequence of the secular world view with which we have indoctrinated our young people. We teach the textbooks of science, medicine, and plumbing; it is baffling to me that we would decline to teach the textbook of God.

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Rabbi Lapin is an Orthodox Rabbi, not a Christian and not a Messianic Jew. As such, he demonstrates himself to be learned and well considered regarding the way of the god of Abraham; the god of Abraham commonly called God by Christians and Jews.

Upon musing the above notion of personal effort in study, people as a society of North America, seem to have been schooled since the mid twentieth century, toward and seem to have learned a condition of “Entitlement.” In the condition of Entitlement, one has “rights” and no personal effort or responsibility should be required to acquire; typically acquire a mere perception of happiness. Thus, for example, people lazily default to reliance upon so called “Experts” to do their research and their thinking, and even their choosing. As such, fewer and fewer people, including, the Experts, cultivate basic skills of research and of logical consideration. Rather, they accept or reject the dominate sound bite opinion through a filter of emotion, seeking to feel good, suppressing logic, and do not know, actually know, what is true.

In short, people in a condition of Entitlement tend to remain adolescent. Consider, for example, the well known tale of a person seeing a butterfly struggle to escape its cocoon. The person assists the butterfly such that the butterfly does not meet its struggle, does not mature, does not realize its beautiful potential, and dies early in its undeveloped state.