Where do you struggle in your emunah?

PinkFridge

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 8:41 am

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

I believe in a creator, but I can't help but wonder if alot of the things we believe in are not real. This includes everything from olam habba which the torah makes no mention of, to whether god truly and really cares whether I floss my teeth on shabbos or cares about if I turn on my bathroom light on shabbos when my baby turned it off. I just wonder if half the things we follow and accept are made up.

I'll duck now.

Once I believe in a Creator, for me, everything follows. He had to have had a reason, wants to connect to His creations and told us how. And the soul, which is the part of us that is immortal, has to live on somehow since, after all, it's immortal.
There's an expression, G-d is in the details. For us this is so true. It's not picayune details*, it's countless regular opportunities to connect to Him. As for Shabbos, there are the 39 melachos.

*There's a famous joke about little Chaim Schwartz who plays with his neighbor Jimmy O'Rourke. One December he was in his neighbor's house and saw the tree. Soon after Mr. O'Rourke pounds on the Schwartzes' door, holding little Chaim by his ear, railing about the impudent little boy with his incessant questions: How tall does your tree have to be, how close to the window does it have to be, do you have to collect the fallen pine needles and what do you with them, etc.

PinkFridge

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 8:45 am

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

This idea that you wrote is often used as a proof. I won't write the rebuttal or point out the various flaws in this argument, but if you do even a little research you'd learn that this argument is far from a "proof". I'm actually a little bothered that when rabbi YY and rabbi Kellerman present this proof, neither of them point out the problems with it. They present it as if the debate is over. I'd imagine they are both very aware of what the holes are. I feel that if we choose to believe, that's fine. But concrete proof? I've never heard it.

Lately I've heard people like Rabbi Tatz and Rabbi Gottlieb say that there is no hard proof, just more than enough reasonable evidence to make an informed decision to choose to believe.

Mommyg8

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 8:52 am

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

Actually? I think the rebuttals have way more holes than the "proofs". I'm not going to get into a theological argument about this and I will not respond to any responses, but I'm just pointing out that your "facts" are not too factual either.

It's always so much easier to destroy than to build. A story that is said about Rav Wolbe:

There was an excellent speaker who just finished an inspiring hour long speech. One of the participants turned to Rav Wolbe and said - this is a speech that nobody can rebut. Rav wolbe said, actually it's very easy to rebut it, all you need is one person saying "ha!", and the entire speech, inspiration, proofs, the works - is gone.

amother

White

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 9:49 am

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

No one claimed to have concrete proof (or if they did, they shouldn't). I guess theoretically a charismatic leader could have convinced everyone that their grandparents all had a public group revelation. Seems like a stretch for millions of people, but ok. Is that where you're going with this?

amother

Babypink

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 10:58 am

amother [ Apricot ] wrote:

I answered past traumatic experience. Specifically I am so angry at someone who hurt me that I am still spewing venom / years later. This is even knowing that nothing happens without Hashem’s permission and that what happened to me was really from HaShem but I think it’s one thing to know it and another to really internalize it and feel the other person was just HaShem’s puppet in a sense. I feel like if I had deeper emunah I wouldn’t be so angry at this person anymore.

I struggle with this concept as well, what helps me feel ok about my emunah in this struggle is that a bad person is a bad shaliach & good person is a good one, therefore if this person was chosen to hurt me like this they are not good...

amother

Lilac

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 11:00 am

PinkFridge wrote:

Really? It's usually life challenges that cause crises in faith. One can read books of people in all sorts of tzaros (Holocaust being most available) and what kept them going but when one is faced with serious illness in the family, there's usually some time of questioning and anger and grief before all that we've learned kicks in, if and when it does.

It's complicated. It's hard to logically reconcile that a benevolent G-d would create a world like this one, where pain is constant and everything else is fleeting.

PinkFridge

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 11:07 am

amother [ Lilac ] wrote:

It's complicated. It's hard to logically reconcile that a benevolent G-d would create a world like this one, where pain is constant and everything else is fleeting.

It is. And that's why I found it necessary to say what I did. We can know all the right things, and really believe them. But when we face life's challenges, we have exactly the struggle you describe. And that's the purpose of life: the struggle. And I wish you and all well, with whatever the struggles.

amother

Chartreuse

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 4:11 pm

amother [ OP ] wrote:

I'm just curious to see in what areas people struggle in their emunah. I've voted children (conception) - I had a miscarriage that threw me lately!

I struggle with the belief that a god that we are supposed to believe is all powerful can inflict so much pain in the world and to so many individuals.
I have so many hardships in my life and I know, life is not supposed to be easy, but my life is so completely opposite to easy that I have not had a relationship with god is a very long time. Im just not able to.

amother

Seagreen

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 4:52 pm

I believe that everything is from Hashem, and that everything that happens to me is for my good.
I just sometimes wonder, if it's so easy for Him to give me money to live comfortably, why not?
If He can give me a child of any gender, why not the one I'm davening for, and why couldn't He switch it with my friend, who davened for what I'm having?
I know that this is best for me, it's just hard sometimes, and I do question....
As a mother, I would love to give my kids the best of everything, and to shower them with everything they wish for. I don't have that ability, and end up saying no to them a lot because of finances. But Hashem has no limits at all!!!
I just have to remember that if this is my situation, then this is the absolute best for me, because He loves me at least as much as I love my kids.

amother

White

Mon, Feb 24 2020, 5:02 pm

amother [ Lilac ] wrote:

How is it any different from a charismatic leader convincing everyone that he had a revelation?

Because it's an additional two things to convince everyone. First, that there was a revelation. Second, that their grandparents all had participated in the revelation and no one ever mentioned it and yet somehow this leader alone knew about it.

Third, that no one every blew his cover but instead, passed the message down from parent to child AS THOUGH the message had been received that way and no mention ever of this leader as intermediary.

And this would have gone on for more than 1,000 years longer than x-ianity has even existed.

Idk if this is impossible, but to me, it's not credible.

amother

White

Tue, Feb 25 2020, 9:16 am

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

Here's an interesting discussion on this,
https://ohr.edu/explore_judais...../1013

amother

Turquoise

Tue, Feb 25 2020, 10:34 am

I guess this is not directly an emunah thing but I think it's connected. I'm bothered when people take an isolated event in their lives that has some semblance of good in it, even though often the event as a whole was terrible, and say things like "see? god knows what he's doing". As if somehow this event demonstrates that hashem is good to us. I see it here all the time. 2 examples I saw recently:

I women didn't get into seminary and was heartbroken . Turns out that she got engaged that year. See? Hashem knows what he's doing.
My feeling is that this logic is completely absurd. We still have no idea why her shidduch had to come about with suffering. Not to mention the million other examples where people suffer and there's no silver lining.

A second example I saw here recently. A woman got divorced. I would imagine she suffered terribly. Now, she is able to use that awful experience to offer support to women going thru similar circumstances. See? Hashem had a plan. This makes zero sense to me.

I feel that we are so desperate to make sense out of things and identify hashem as a loving father that we can take almost any awful situation and twist it around to make it appear as if it makes sense.

amother

Lime

Tue, Feb 25 2020, 10:45 am

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

You're right But this shows more on the strength of a person who is given a challenge and takes it to a new level by turning it into something positive. This is the best way to pass Hashem's tests and exactly what He wants from us. To take our challenges and difficulties and use them as wings to fly. Then you can look back and say that indeed Hashem had a plan.

amother

Turquoise

Tue, Feb 25 2020, 11:46 am

amother [ Lime ] wrote:

99% of the time we don't understand hashems plan. Not now, not later, and not ever. We don't understand why there is sickness, poverty, depression, people who can't find shidduchim, infertility issues, and many others. I think we fool ourselves when we see a silver lining to a challenge and pretend that the entire circumstance was actually a positive.

Do you honestly feel that in most circumstances we have an understanding of hashems plan and why various things are happening?

amother

Lime

Tue, Feb 25 2020, 12:32 pm

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

No we dont understand Hashems ways. That's true. And we don't look around and say we know the reason for xyz around us. That would be fooling ourselves and arrogant too.
But when it comes to ourselves and our own challenges, if we are in touch with our inner selves and self aware, and we have overcome the challenge and not just got through it but used the challenge as a springboard to get somewhere even better than we ever imagined- if we take the lessons we learned with our new standing, then yes we can say without fooling ourselves or pretending that the experience was positive in the end. Because the good is so good, it massively outweighs the bad.
Again, not about other people's challenges. But about our own, yes.

It is very hard to accept and understand but if we believe in hashgacha pratis, that everything happens to us for a reason, and that Hashem is all good and does only good, that everything Hashem does is for the best, then we are definitely not fooling ourselves when we find personal challenges to be a positive experience after it's all said and done.

I heard Emunah and bitachon is like a muscle- the more you practice it, the stronger it gets. The stronger it gets, the more you understand. I've had this proven to me on a small scale, in my life experiences.

I also have an unproven theory that the memories of difficulties get less painful over time so we are essentially left with more positive than anything else.

Obviously I'm talking about my own experiences. If it's different for someone else, I can accept that and am open to discussion. But this is how it's worked for me.