Q&A: Faith
Faith
Question
Many people think that faith is not something that can be commanded. Rather, if I have become convinced that a certain thing is true, then believing in it is forced upon me, and if not, then not. (That is also what the Rabbi says in his lectures, and these ideas are well known.)
My question is: perhaps we could say that faith can be compelled, since it is possible for a person to repeat certain sentences and that will cause him to believe them. There are also studies about this. (And that is apparently what appears in Hasidism, that faith depends on the mouth, as in “I shall make Your faith known with my mouth.”)
What do you think about that??
Answer
A. That is still not a commandment to have faith, but a commandment to mumble something that might lead to faith.
B. If repeating something makes you believe it, then that is an illusion, not faith. By the same token, you could have mumbled something else and arrived at a different “faith.”
C. If I mumble and do not arrive at faith, have I fulfilled my obligation?
D. Essentially, faith cannot be commanded, even if I can use autosuggestion to get there. Faith is my conclusion, not the product of autosuggestion.
Discussion on Answer
You are absolutely not mistaken, but that is only one problem among several with such a command.
We argued about this not long ago, so why not bring old things back up…?
The point is not the practical implementation: as though the commandment somehow “plants” the correct faith by force in the head of the one being commanded. That is not the case, and indeed in that sense it is impossible to “obligate” a person to believe any particular faith. But the commander still has the possibility of creating a world in which those being commanded will obligate themselves, of their own free will, to believe in the norms he imposes on them. The obligation to believe remains valid even when there are no practical means to enforce it.
The question is whether you deny the very existence of the norm as long as the commanded person has not mentally chosen it. More specifically: how would you describe the divine norm (for example, the commandments in the Torah) if it has no “clients,” that is, what is its status if a person turns his back on it?
I think that from a logical standpoint it is impossible to command faith, because if I do not believe in the commander, then he cannot command me (or more precisely, he did not command me), and if I do believe, then the command is unnecessary. Am I mistaken?