Faith

A wise man once said that "Pain shrinks the world." One who is experiencing the acute pain of a toothache, for example, is not capable of relating to anything except the alleviation of that pain. NASA could land a man on Mars and he could care less. For many, our lives are perceived as trying to avoid one adversity or pain one after another. Indeed, the opposite of pain would be pleasure, and, inasmuch as the species homo sapiens has a proclivity to pursue "paths of least resistance", experiencing bliss or nirvana is everybody's innate goal.

How, then, do we comprehend and reckon with tragedy and suffering? It is important to understand that the greatest challenge to a person's faith in God is when things are not going the way we expect them to. The historical course of national Jewish tragedies is enough to convince even the skeptic that our people have been dealt a hand disproportionate to that of the other peoples of the world. Nothing has gone the way we would have liked it. We have become agitated and perplexed in one way or the other. In fact, this phenomenon compelled one of our great prophets to proclaim about us, "Behold, his soul is defiant; it is unsettled in him…But a righteous person shall live through his faith" (Habakkuk 2:4).

Tradition records a dramatic confrontation of sorts that occurred between the angels and the Almighty while one of the greatest sages of Israel was being gruesomely executed at the hands of the Romans 2000 years ago. The angels asked, "This is Torah and this is its reward?" In response, a voice was heard to say, "If I hear more, I will turn the entire world back into its original nothingness." What is the meaning of this enigmatic passage and how does it affect our understanding of faith?