Q&A: Faith and Inquiry
Faith and Inquiry
Question
Hello Rabbi, I have a question about faith and investigating it:
It seems that most people believe without deep investigation or through philosophical inferences; they simply believe.
Is a person required to investigate even if he says that he believes? And if he does not investigate, can he be called a “real” believer? Because ostensibly one could argue that he believes because he was born into it, because that is how he feels, because he experienced something, etc.
Answer
I do not think there is an obligation to investigate. Each person arrives at his conclusions in his own way, and not everyone needs to be a philosopher. Someone who has doubts should try to examine and resolve them. But if someone believes, then he believes. That is, of course, so long as he truly believes and is not merely continuing by inertia what he was educated into. Even when you investigate matters of faith, the arguments are based on fundamental assumptions about which you have to form an intuitive position. So why can’t faith itself be such an assumption?!
Discussion on Answer
I don’t know what a logical or illogical believer is.
I don’t know whether this is what Daniel meant, but I am acquainted with a person who, in my opinion, would agree to die for the sanctification of God’s name, and he believes, by his own account, because he was born a Haredi Jew. He has no doubt that faith cannot be proven, that the proofs are false, and that one can believe only through inner spiritual work (a choice of a leap of faith). And certainly, if he had been born Muslim, he would have remained there (with the information he has at present).
Is such a person considered a believer?
Most people adopt the faith of the home in which they were raised. Even if this is done through philosophical consideration (it can enter through the fundamental assumptions). Therefore I do not think one can define such a person as someone who does not believe. The question of how much value this has is something that can be discussed.
I wrote here in the past about the self-sacrifice of ordinary householders and its questionable value in my view (the Chasid Yaavetz).
Its value is questionable when, if he were to examine things, he would reach a different conclusion. But assuming that the investigator too would believe intellectually, yet in his heart his faith would weaken, then there is a conflict between values, but the value is still a value, ostensibly. Isn’t that so?
Sorry for bringing in things that are not so directly related,
Ezra
I didn’t understand.
Fine, intuition regarding God.
But a religious person who does not investigate—what other ways can he believe?
Does he have intuition regarding what was given at Mount Sinai and regarding the authority of the Oral Torah?
Does he also have intuition regarding the Zohar?
If he does not investigate and study, I do not see what tool he has for deciding to believe other than inertia.
???
I’ll explain with 2 examples:
A person in a time of religious persecution who learned and saw that he was permitted to remain among the “forced converts”—not only is there no value in “remaining stupid,” there is value in his knowing the truth. (Even if it is fitting that he give up his life.)
By contrast, a person who investigated thoroughly and reached the conclusion that he believes in the Torah, but exposure to the various opinions, to the various sages who deny it, and to the “big wide world” that denies God / the Torah, caused him not to be devoted to the service of God because his faith in his heart was weakened—then there is great value in “remaining stupid” and not damaging something so important.
Example: a married man who occupies himself with reading studies about unfaithful women. The harm he has caused to his personal life is obvious.
There is, of course, also value in wisdom, and in knowing the complexity involved in faith, but that is already a clash between 2 values, and one has to discuss which prevails. Maybe it depends on the individual.
But is that believer a “logical” believer? What I mean is that if you ask him why he believes, he probably would not be able to explain exactly why or what it means, but that would not really bother him, because he believes and that’s that. Is that kind of faith logical?