Q&A: Our Mission
Our Mission
Question
Hi Michi,
While I was licking my breakfast dessert—[cheese with cocoa]—it occurred to me that I now need to share with you the insight that took shape this morning. Actually, it’s an insight we already discussed in the past. We need to instill in the human race the insight that we should not expect reward from God. It is permitted, and necessary, to hope. God does not operate in our service. God has His own timetable. Therefore our role is to do everything in our power to preserve the world that He created, and to do so without cultivating expectations.
If we internalize this, we can gradually point toward an alternative mode of thought to Islam—because Islam ties belief in God to reward.
But for that to happen, Judaism has to adopt this insight. When will that happen—if ever…
All the best, and sorry for the nonsense.
Answer
Hello A.,
First of all, you absolutely have to share your culinary insight with me: cheese with cocoa?? 🙂
As for what you wrote, why is the question of reward important here? The question is what God wants and what He does not want, not what the reward is and what it is given for. In religious conceptions, reward is given for doing His will, and therefore people do the acts because it is God’s will, and even if they did not act for the sake of reward, it would not change their actions (except perhaps their devotion to the divine command). If you are claiming that God wants preservation of the universe and not other acts, you have to convince people of that, again regardless of the question of reward.
Discussion on Answer
That is of course true, but it is not important for our discussion. In the end, you have to convince people that this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants—not what one is rewarded for or not rewarded for. If that goes through the Sages, then deal with that. The question of reward is not relevant.
The prohibition against going up as a wall is not from the Written Torah but, if anything, a prohibition from the words of the tradition (=from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)), or perhaps not a prohibition at all but a recommendation. The halakhic decisors do not cite this “prohibition.”
Am I mistaken in claiming that once the Sages interpreted the 613 commandments, it became hard for us to understand what the Holy One, blessed be He, actually wants? And after all, these things roll over into our political reality today. The bluntest example is: “Is it permitted or forbidden to go up as a wall,” which is itself, at most, a rabbinic prohibition, and not from the Written Torah.