Let My People Know

"Making the leap of faith"

 

Accepting a tenet of faith is not difficult; the hard part is accepting the attendant consequences. 

There are certain facts that we do not know from our own experience, but they are certainties. 

When a person becomes aware of them, that changes his life. 

Take, for example, mortality. 

We do not know about mortality from firsthand experience; we know about it from other people, but they do not count. 

We are alive, and we do not acknowledge our own mortality. 

When we become aware of this fact—whether at the age of two or at the age of sixty-two—then of course life is affected. 

Plans change, expectations change, priorities change.
 
The belief that death exists is not, in itself,startling; accepting it, and coping with the implications, is always important and may sometimes be painful.

The second difficulty in making the leap of faith is that it is indeed a leap. 

One must be willing to decide to make the jump, and people do not make that leap unless they are compelled to do so. 

The compulsion is usually an inner drive triggered by questions that will not go away.

Some people have philosophical-existential questions; Descartes' Discourse on Method and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland use two different styles to deal with the same question, "What is real existence?" 

The prophet Isaiah (40:26) starts out from an entirely different point of departure, saying, "Lift up your eyes to Heaven and see who created these: He who brings out the starry host and calls each one by name." 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Simple Words by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz