Clarifying the Existence of God
I have difficulty understanding why, on the one hand, God guides me in religious (and probably moral) values, and on the other hand, He does not make it clear to me that He exists and that He expects me to uphold them.
What is the advantage of not being 100% certain that God exists? And that maybe I don’t really have a commandment?
Doesn’t this call into question the very claim that God does indeed command?
That is, the question can be formulated as follows: If God cared what you would observe and what you would not, He would at least make it clear to you.
There is a problem here, albeit a fairly weak one. Perhaps if there weren’t good considerations in favor of its existence, I would consider it more.
Did the Rabbi find a weakness in the claim?
Usually, the answer is, "We don't know what God's ways are," but to me, that's not a weakness at all, because it simply means, roughly, "I don't know."
And another question, is the assessment of the claim as being quite weak based on intuition and gut feeling? Because the question bothers me a little more.
Apparently, a fundamental part of man's purpose in the world is the very search for the hidden and unclear truth, and not just the conduct according to it. It is similar to a challenge in which part of the effort is finding the task, apart from doing it.
I don't know why God determined this, but it seems much more logical to me that this is the reality than to conclude that there are no values and no purpose at all.
Moshe,
If there is something that is important to you that someone does, you would clarify to him the details of the task, and that it is important to you that the task be completed. Especially if it is the most important task there is, for which he came into the world.
It is true that there are very strong arguments for the existence of God, (and less strong arguments for his expectation that we keep the commandments) but the lack of clarification seems to me to be the opposite of logic.
Since the purpose of the world is our choice of good, when there is also a second side to the choice, it is likely that it hides itself to increase our choice.
I'm not at all clear on what you mean,
God clearly states what He expects – after that I choose.
Quite the opposite, today there are people who have no choice because they don't even know what God expects of them. The clarification actually gives everyone a choice. It will be clear to everyone exactly what needs to be done, the question is who succeeds, and consistently.
Jonathan,
Because I had difficulty with the question presented here, I came to the conclusion that the essence of the task is not its execution, but the investment of will, time, and effort on the way to it. This makes sense in light of the fact that God does not need the execution of tasks at all and the entire purpose of the execution is the challenge, so apparently a central part of the challenge is the search for the task.
This approach is expressed in the words of the midrash, "And what does the Holy One care about one who slaughters from the neck or one who slaughters from the back? Alas, we did not give the commandments except to include the people in them."
It is still unclear,
God will clarify, and then examine all the desire and investment in the world. Why expect so much from me, and leave me in doubt? And what connects effort in the mitzvot to uncertainty and the decisive commitment itself?
If God makes it clear, I (and in my opinion many other good people) will strive much harder.
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