Q&A: The Burden of the Commandments
The Burden of the Commandments
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi,
I contacted you by email yesterday to clarify what the reason is for accepting upon myself the yoke of God.
You told me that you cannot answer the question of how I should act if I were to think that God is bad,
and therefore for some reason you avoided answering the first question as well.
Why should I observe the Torah and the commandments just because God commanded it?
If you can answer or refer me to your material on the subject, I would be grateful.
Answer
I wrote about this in the first book of the trilogy. An initial version appears in the fifth booklet here on the site.
In short, I do not know how to answer your question. If you mean utility, there are benefits (which are described there). But that is not a good reason to obey. The correct reason is that this is the truth. How can one explain to someone why he should do what is true? Once I explain, you will ask why one should listen to that explanation.