Q&A: A Question from the Perspective of Someone Who Believes in Meticulous Providence
A Question from the Perspective of Someone Who Believes in Meticulous Providence
Question
Why pray for specific personal matters?
From the viewpoint of someone who fully believes in individual providence, if a person is sick, then apparently God brought that about. This believer’s faith is that everything is exact and precise, and that God even goes beyond the letter of the law—in mercy.
We have the requests that the Sages instituted in the prayers, which are a halakhic obligation, and perhaps that is enough, since in any case they cover almost all areas of life on a general level, or maybe even all of them.
Of course I would feel compassion for the sick person or for someone experiencing financial distress, but to ask God for some specific thing after He has already decreed something justified seems excessive to me. What do I understand, after all?
It is like asking a judge to shorten the sentence of an offender who was given exactly the punishment he deserved in court, or whom the judge already treated with a certain degree of mercy. Why would I want to ask that he be treated with even greater mercy, or even full leniency, if the basic assumption is that his sentence is indeed just?
Answer
You’ve come to the wrong address (because of my view of providence). But I don’t see any principled problem. You ask from your own point of view, and the Holy One, blessed be He, makes decisions according to His own considerations.
You once believed in providence.
In any case, when I see a sick person and my compassion is stirred, I separate between my feeling—which of course wants him to recover—and the fact that in the end God has to do what is good for the world. And if it was decreed that the person should be sick, then apparently there is a reason for that, and it doesn’t seem serious to me to try to change the will of the One who spoke and the world came into being, and who is Himself good even if right now it looks less so in my eyes. Therefore Jewish law is that one must also give thanks for the bad (what appears bad).