Faith Is About Perspective

Faith is a matter of perspective. It centers around the questions of am I strong enough, do I have enough.

There are people who have all the wealth in the world but are never content and there are likewise people who have little means but see their lives as blessed. There are people who regularly eat only a morsel of food and still give thanks to God and others who only eat the fanciest of foods and yet curse God.

Judaism wishes to inculcate the feeling that our lives are blessed regardless of how much or little we have. Think about the following commandments. Even the person dependent on tzedakah must give charity. And even before eating the smallest portions of food, we are instructed to say a blessing of thanks.

This contention stands in contrast to the messages of contemporary culture. We are inundated with advertisements urging us buy this or that with the promise that our lives will become more blessed. We are urged to up our game, fine tune our competitive drive and increase our work ethic to achieve more. Such inner drive is good but only to a point.

If the drive stands in the way of contentment, then it is for naught—at least as far as our tradition is concerned. If we are all drive and no thankfulness then, the rabbis suggest, we cannot achieve success. They counsel, only a soul filled with gratitude can stave off the terrors the world continues to throw at us.

The Torah offers the spies as an illustration. Moses commands twelve spies to reconnoiter the land of Israel. Joshua and Caleb offer only positive reports. The other ten come back with negatives. They say, “All the people we saw in the land are of great size… and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.” (Numbers 13) They are so overwhelmed by fear that they no longer see the delicious grapes and beautiful pomegranates they discovered. They quickly forget that they also gleaned that the land of Israel flows with milk and honey.

Fear pushes aways even the most wonderous of blessings. Even though the taste of grapes and pomegranates is still in their mouths they become blinded by fear. They see themselves not as strong—God is on their side as Joshua and Caleb remind them—but small.

This is why Rabbi Meir urges us to recite one hundred blessings every day. His theory is that saying thank you over and over again strengthens the soul. If people repeatedly say I am blessed, then they feel strong—or at least strong enough. Seeing oneself as strong enough is the secret recipe our tradition wishes to teach.

I have known people of great stature and renown who appear small and others of little fame and prominence who stand tall. And I have come to understand it is all matter of choice. Does one see the grapes and the pomegranates and recall the land indeed flows with milk and honey or does one fixate on how overwhelming our opponents seem?

It is all about perspective.

And the most important ingredient to building a life of faith is how one sees oneself.

The path to seeing oneself as tall enough and strong enough, or even wealthy enough, is to say thank you.