Q&A: Prayer as an Intuition of Providence
Prayer as an Intuition of Providence
Question
Hello Rabbi, I wanted to ask about your well-known view that there is no providence. When a person gets into trouble, he usually asks for the situation to change; it seems that almost everyone has this. Why doesn’t that prove that there is providence, since we have the intuition that God watches over us? And what is your attitude toward intuition, which we certainly ought to rely on?
Answer
Because opposite that stands an even stronger intuition: that He is not really involved. From this it follows that the intuition that He is involved is a product of educational conditioning and not a genuine perception. We also know that this is the product of very intensive education. I have written more than once that you can see from the behavior of people who declare confidence in the Holy One, blessed be He, and in His providence, that they themselves do not really believe it. No one even considers setting up a commission of inquiry to examine the functioning of the yeshivas and the quality of the prayers that brought us to the terrible massacre on Simchat Torah.
Moti, even if people do have an intuition to pray in times of trouble, that doesn’t indicate what you’re saying, but rather the feeling that the Holy One, blessed be He, hears and is able to help. On that, it doesn’t seem to me that any believer disagrees.