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Everything is foreseen, yet free will is given.
The world is judged with goodness, and all is according to the majority of
deeds.
Last week we began
discussing the concept of man’s free will — as referenced in our Mishna’s
second statement. We asked to what extent is man truly granted free will.
Don’t the Sages teach us that G-d controls the world and every event which
occurs therein — down to the smallest detail (“short of catching cold” — as
we discussed last week)? If so, man’s free will would have to be severely
restricted. He can’t really do anything not included in the Divine plan.
Thus, if person #1 wants to harm person #2, theoretically he should not be
able to do so without Divine sanction.
And this created a
dilemma for us. We don’t need to search very far and wide to see a world in
which man is constantly perpetrating terrible evils on each other, ranging
from suppertime telemarketers to the Holocaust. Now if G-d is truly behind
such behavior — or is at least acquiescing to it — we are left with a very
frightful image of our G-d. Where is the kindly, loving, all-merciful
Creator Judaism has preached to the world ever since Abraham?
Conversely, say we
remove G-d from the picture: G-d is not
behind all the evils of the world. They are all the fault of man, who is
grossly and blatantly abusing his free will. (This runs contrary to many
statements of the Sages on the matter, but for argument’s sake…) If so, a
very dark and evil image of the world emerges. The world has run amok; it
has gone out of control — even the control of the G-d who created it. And
G-d is perhaps watching helplessly as man destroys the world beneath Him.
Man, misusing his free will, is undermining all the wonderful plans G-d had
for His universe, perhaps even making the world unworthy of the era of
Messiah which G-d had so openly promised.
And finally, if G-d is in control all
along, practically speaking how does He restrict man’s free will? Can’t I
harm, kill or insult my fellow if I so choose? The world is not as afraid
of nuclear holocaust as we were 30 or 40 years ago, but what’s to stop man
from destroying the world? And even short of that, how is it possible that
G-d is orchestrating the course of history, bringing the world to its
fruition, if man is a very unwilling accomplice to the Divine scheme? Who
is directing the drama of world history? G-d may have written the script,
but who’s to say man will follow it?
Before I begin to
address this, I should state that there are drastically different
approaches to this even among the classical commentators. Where do we draw
the line? To what extent is man granted free will? Where does G-d’s
providential control begin? And how do these seemingly-contradictory axioms
coexist? Even before we answer, we must accept that there is no simple and
unequivocal response — even among the great Jewish thinkers. There are
approaches and theses — and below I present what I feel is the most
accepted — but there is simply no intellectual magic bullet. For better or
worse, some of the deepest and most nagging issues of Jewish theology must
simply be approached with the recognition that they may well be beyond our
ability to fully comprehend. It certainly behooves us to make the effort,
but we may simply have to accept that it is not for us to fully know the
ways of an unknowable G-d.
That said, let me
pose our dilemma once more, taking a more specialized instance. Say Joe
wakes up one day and decides to kill Bob. Joe takes his gun, walks up to
Bob and shoots him dead. Joe exercised his free will. A man who may have
otherwise lived another 50 years has just died. Where was G-d? If we
believe that everything that occurs in this world is a part of G-d’s plan,
does this imply Bob would have had a heart attack and died just then
anyway? And again, if not, did not Joe just defy G-d’s will?
This question,
tragically, was posed in a non-hypothetical situation by a thinker of no
lesser stature than Elie Wiesel. In _Night_ he describes a particularly
gruesome hanging in his concentration camp — of two adults along with an
innocent young boy with angelic face. Unlike the adults, the boy was too
light to be strangled instantly by his own weight. The inmates filed past
while the boy struggled agonizingly between life and death for over half an
hour. Wiesel writes that behind him he heard a man muttering: “Where is
G-d? Where is He?” He heard a voice within him answer: “Where is He? Here
He is — He is hanging here on this gallows…”
Far be it from us to
judge a man who saw and suffered so much. The human element of tragedy and
holocaust, both personal and national, can never be properly addressed in
the written word. But we must attempt to offer at least some words of
explanation, if only on an intellectual level.
Let us return to our
hypothetical situation. The premise of practically all traditional Jewish
thinkers is that nothing in this world occurs outside of G-d’s purview. G-d
does not direct the evil man perpetrates on his fellow — that is man’s
doing and his responsibility — and for it he alone will be held
accountable. Yet G-d would not have allowed it to be successful if it were
against His wishes. Thus, if G-d wants Bob alive, Joe will not be able to
kill him. How so? G-d will see to it that Joe’s plans are not successful.
The gun will not fire, Bob will miss his bus, Joe will oversleep etc. G-d
has an infinite number of natural means at His disposal to control the
outcome of events. In the most extreme case — if all natural means fail
–G-d may even perform an open miracle to save the victim.
(A number of years
ago I read the story of a great rabbi who was fleeing a mugger. The
assailant shot him point-blank from a few feet away. The rabbi kept
running, only to discover later that the bullet had lodged itself in his
coat and went no further. He insisted on wearing that same coat with the
bullet hole for years after, long after it wore out, as a reminder of the
great kindness G-d had performed for him.)
Let’s say, however,
Joe does kill Bob. This means that G-d acquiesced to the murder. G-d must
have determined that on some level Bob “deserved” to die. And this of
course raises two important questions. First, can we really say every
innocent bystander, every child who dies violently deserved his or her
fate? Second, if Joe kills Bob, it certainly seems that he snuffed out a
life which would have continued for many more years. Are we forced to say
the victim would have died just then anyway? And if not, hasn’t Joe just
changed the course of G-d’s world — killing someone who would otherwise
have continued living?
The first question I
will deal with only very briefly. Did Bob really deserve to die? On one
level we must say yes. There are a number of approaches to this issue, each
valid in its own context. Yet here I feel we must accept that G-d’s justice
is not something truly understandable to man. Why every unfortunate victim
“deserved” it — what is the answer to Wiesel’s “Where is G-d?” — is clearly
beyond our ability to discern. And so, I will only suggest a few of the
basic approaches, and we will have to content ourselves with that.
One answer is that
G-d’s justice is exceedingly strict. We all carry some degree of guilt, and
G-d alone knows the proper compensation for each wicked deed. Even the most
worthy among us might well have brought upon himself sufficient guilt to be
deserving of death.
Second, it’s possible
the individual did not deserve death himself, but suffered as an atonement
for his generation. (I realize people view this as a Christian concept, but
it is actually quite Jewish (see for example Ezekiel 4 and Talmud Sanhedrin
39a) — although we certainly believe the Christians blew it way out of
proportion.)
Third, the concept of
reincarnation — though barely hinted in the Talmud (to my knowledge) — is
well-established in Kabbalistic sources. Perhaps even a child deserved
death as atonement for sins of a past life.
Fourth, the Sages
state that G-d may take away small children from this world as a punishment
to the parents (see Rashi to Deuteronomy 24:16).
Finally, there are
times — and this is supposedly rare — in which G-d has no way of saving a
victim from his assailant via natural means. And performing an open miracle
is not viable because it would reveal G-d’s Presence too openly in this
world — something man is hardly prepared for. Thus, to preserve G-d’s
concealment, G-d at times must allow unfortunate victims to perish. There
is supposedly a special place reserved in the World to Come for innocents
who are sacrificed for such.
We now turn to our
second question. If G-d truly wanted Bob to die, would he really have died
then anyway without Joe’s bullet? And if not, didn’t Joe just terminate a
life which surely would have continued?
The answer is that
the Torah describes G-d as “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6). He does not
punish a person as soon as he sins. As above, we must assume Bob bears some
guilt on the Divine scales. But he, as all mankind, is given the
opportunity to repent. G-d
would have granted Bob more years –perhaps a lifetime — in the hope he will
make expiation before his death. But let’s say Joe has it in for Bob. By
the laws of nature Bob’s death is inevitable. The only thing that would
save Bob is G-d’s “going out of His way,” so to speak, to save him —
whether through hidden providence or open intervention. Would G-d do such —
impinging on Joe’s free will — to save a man who really deserves death
anyway — only preserved to begin with through the good graces of a patient
G-d? Perhaps not.
Well, at this point
we have presented the beginnings of an approach. Have we answered satisfactorily?
Can we really feel good and content about the many evils we see in this
world, the suffering of innocents, accidental murders which seem so
avoidable? Have we really answered the “Where is G-d” of Elie Wiesel? We
have only just begun to make sense of a senseless world. And perhaps this
week you, esteemed reader, will walk away disappointed. We made many valid
points, but can we even pretend we have a workable and soul-satisfying
theory of “how G-d runs the world?” Perhaps we’ve even raised more questions
than we were able to answer.
Yet there is
something of great importance I feel we did accomplish today. We were not
afraid to ask. And this is one of the great lessons of Judaism and of
Pirkei Avos in particular. The Sages were never afraid to raise such
issues, even if they could not fully fathom the responses. For G-d expects
us, as thinking human beings, to be plagued by such issues. No question is
too challenging — or too stupid — to be raised. And if we sincerely seek
G-d, we may not become philosophers who foolishly believe they can answer
all, but we can be certain G-d will be patiently awaiting us, slowly
guiding us towards the Truth.
There is a midrash
which compares G-d’s control of this world to a rider on a horse. The horse
may decide precisely how to place its foot down, but the direction and the
route is wholly in the rider’s hands. We only hope and pray that G-d hold
steady His course, and that the day soon be when all wrongs are righted and
all questions answered.
Text Copyright © 2004
by Rabbi Dovid Rosenfeld and Torah.org.
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