Q&A: How Can a Religious Person Truly Arrive at the Truth
How Can a Religious Person Truly Arrive at the Truth
Question
Hello and blessings, Rabbi,
Thanks to your books and so on, I’ve gotten much more seriously into philosophy.
But I always doubt my ability to arrive at the truth,
because I don’t see myself becoming secular.
Faith in God and Jewish law fill my soul and add life to it,
and I think that if I reach a conclusion that contradicts faith itself or the central teachings of the Torah,
I’ll dismiss the thought with the excuse that I haven’t researched enough, or that it’s just the evil inclination’s advice.
I’m simply so attached to the Torah that I feel I can’t really reach conclusions that contradict it,
if that’s where the inquiry would require me to go.
I also feel that this exists in the opposite direction too:
that it would be psychologically hard for a secular person to accept religious truths if his conclusions led him there.
But it exists with less intensity than it does for a religious person.
How can I remove these barriers from myself
and proceed honestly according to the intellectual conclusion?
Answer
You have to distinguish between two situations in which you would not abandon faith even though you became convinced that you were mistaken: 1. Because it’s comfortable for you to be religious. 2. Because intuitively you are convinced of your faith. The second is completely legitimate, and the first is not intellectually honest. If you are working on removing the barriers from yourself (and that is a good thing), it is important that you distinguish between them: you should remove the first type, not the second (don’t dismiss your intuitions). And don’t ask me how to tell the difference, because I have no answer. The heart knows its own bitterness.