What does it mean to believe in something? It is hard to read VaYera, this weeks Torah portion, without confronting this issue of belief. In it we read God commanding Avraham to sacrifice his son Yitzhak. What would it mean to believe that God told you to kill your child? (This is especially crazy if you have met our four children.) While many interpreters have dealt with the faith of Avraham throughout history, I am less interested in the answer than the question of faith.
To a scientist, the prospect of faith is a puzzle. How could any rational person believe in something that has no data to back it up? The world can only be fairly judged on what everyone can perceive. Nevertheless, the scientists are left with the problem that so many people on this planet of ours do profess some sort of faith. To the faithful, they are left trying to figure out the existence of atheists or agnostics. They experience such a preponderance of evidence to the existence of a god, how could anyone choose to ignore that “fact”?If nothing else, we can appreciate the symmetry in the universe of the argument between these two camps.
Before the birth of our children, I could honestly say that I am not sure that I am a person of faith. But one way or another I know that I have Emunah in my life now. But still I have to ask myself, what is the fine line between faith and intellectual laziness? How often do I say that I believe in something when in fact I mean I have yet to think about it fully? How often do I take something that I have thought about exhaustively and instead of going with the evidence, choose to follow my faith? If I were confronted by a new perception of the world, would I be willing to sacrifice my way of life? I strive to be emotionally honest with the world and myself. I am not suggesting that we risk sacrificing our children like Avraham the innovator of our faith, rather I am asking that we not risk sacrificing our integrity.
Said to Myself 
0 Responses to “Integral Belief”