Q&A: Free Choice
Free Choice
Question
Festive greetings.
I have always found it difficult: why is the question of whether God exists dependent on human choice? (Of course, even if it is a philosophical question, still the matter is subject to choice for those who are capable of recognizing the reality of God.) It would have made more sense for this awareness to have been planted in human hearts from the day they were born, without any doubt at all, and for only the observance of the commandments and morality to be left to choice. Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, see fit to make His very existence itself a matter of choice?
Seemingly, the obvious answer is that if knowledge of God were clear to us, then automatically we would also have no choice regarding observance of the commandments, since the two are interconnected. But I am not fully satisfied with this answer.
What does our great rabbi think about this?
Answer
I do not know what our great rabbi thinks, but if I may also express my opinion, I do not see a difference. Why should there be choice with regard to morality but not with regard to faith?
By the way, I think lack of faith does not necessarily indicate that there is no faith in one’s heart. Sometimes the leaven in the dough (inclination, intellectual fashions, and the like) holds it back.
Discussion on Answer
If so, when he does not know, all the more so we are doubly blessed by His knowing.
Seemingly there are two reasons why there should not be choice regarding faith.
A. Why should there be? Since for reward it is enough that there be choice regarding the commandments, it would seem appropriate that there not be choice regarding faith, for faith is not just one more commandment but rather a foundational principle on which everything depends.
B. When the choice concerns faith, if a person loses faith then he loses everything. But if choice were only about the commandments, then he would lose only the commandments with which he struggles, and not the entire system of commandments.
I did not understand the end of his remarks—what exactly was he referring to? Did he mean to say that perhaps there really is no choice regarding recognition of the reality of God, and that what we have here is only an obstruction caused by the lion crouching upon him (and if you prefer: his nakedness crouching upon him)?
I don’t know. But I do not see a problem with free choice in matters of opinion as opposed to values and morality. By the way, by choice in matters of opinion I assume you mean uncertainty, not the opposite of determinism.
Why is there free choice in matters of opinion at all?
Doesn’t it sound strange that if God wants people to do x, then it would make sense for them to believe in x? And only then would free choice operate.