Q&A: Philosophical Gratitude
Philosophical Gratitude
Question
Hello Rabbi, in the fifth notebook on faith / belief you wrote about “philosophical gratitude,” on the basis of which one should serve God today, and you compared it to the ontological bond that parents have to their child who was taken from them through no fault of their own. But here (unlike the case with the parents), God “abandoned” us by His own choice, so it seems the comparison is incorrect… so why is it correct?
Answer
(For some reason, it seems to me that I already answered this.)
He did not abandon us; rather, He allowed us to grow up. The comparison I made was not between His abandonment and the abandonment by parents, but rather I used the situation of an abandoned child to sharpen the point that the child’s obligation toward the parents is not only by virtue of gratitude.