Often, however, the truth \u201cof the inward being\u201d must come at the expense of heartache, for surely the heart must ache, tremble, and despair before it comes to accept the truth about its condition. This sort of truth is “existential,” meaning that it is known only through the process of living life itself. \u00a0As Kierkegaard said, \u201cThere are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.\u201d Yes, and they cheat themselves, too, since they somehow believe that \u201cknowing the answer\u201d given by another is the same thing as \u201cknowing the answer\u201d of their own inward being… Kierkegaard continues this thought: “The truth is lived before it is understood. It must be fought for, tested, and appropriated. \u00a0Truth is the way… you must be tried, do battle, and suffer if you are to acquire truth for yourself. It is a sheer illusion to think that in relation to truth there is an abridgment, a short cut that dispenses with the necessity of struggling for it.”<\/p>\n
A man who was afflicted with a terrible disease complained to Rabbi Israel that his suffering interfered with his learning and praying. The rabbi put his hand on his shoulder and said, \u201cHow do you know, friend, what is more pleasing to God – your studying or your suffering?\u201d (Buber: Hasidim).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Note that the \u201cinward being\u201d (\u05d8\u05bb\u05d7\u05d5\u05b9\u05ea) refers to the \u201ckidneys\u201d which were thought to be \u201cthe reins\u201d or the concealed (i.e., te\u2019ach: \u05d8\u05b4\u05d9\u05d7\u05b7) source of the will within the person. \u00a0Interestingly, the word te\u2019ach comes from the verb tachah (\u05d8\u05b8\u05d7\u05b8\u05d4) that means to \u201cshoot with a bow,\u201d alluding to the idea of inner Torah as a directive power. \u00a0God wants purity of the heart \u2013 passion, singleheartedness, and earnestness \u2013 as we live and practice the truth. \u00a0God wants \u201cthe inner parts,\u201d the concealed parts of the soul, to be filled with his Torah, and therefore David asks God to make him to know wisdom there – in the \u201csecret heart\u201d – so that he might apprehend God\u2019s truth and do teshuvah that purifies the heart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is written in our Scriptures: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” We often see what we want to see more than what is really there. \u00a0That\u2019s called wishful thinking. We overlook much, and we often ignore what might challenge our own preferred interpretations. \u00a0For example, we may think that we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-dvar","category-hebrew-reading-practice","category-torah"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3855"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3859,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3855\/revisions\/3859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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It is written in our Scriptures: “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” We often see what we want to see more than what is really there. \u00a0That\u2019s called wishful thinking. We overlook much, and we often ignore what might challenge our own preferred interpretations. \u00a0For example, we may think that we are trusting God for our lives, but we worry, we attempt to control others, we get angry, and so on. We have a blind spot regarding the question whether we really trust God, perhaps because seriously investigating what we really believe seems too threatening (John 16:31-32). After all, what if we don’t really know what to believe? What if we struggle to believe? What if we are confused? What does that say about who we are? So we ignore the real problem (namely, our lack of truth and our little faith in God) and continue to think we are something we are not. We fool ourselves and trade a sense of \u201csatisfaction\u201d at the expense of truth. This is a common failing of human nature. During the Nazi years, many ordinary Germans refused to investigate reports of atrocities at the death camps because it was too costly to discover the truth (the same might be said about any patriotic citizens who rationalize the actions of their government regardless of the moral issues involved). By willfully hiding from the facts, we pretend we are not responsible, and therefore we justify passivity in the face of injustice and evil.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hebrew4christians.com\/training\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/psalm51-6-analysis.gif?resize=545%2C564&ssl=1\")
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