A Serious Man - A Serious Thought

I want to bring up one aspect of the new Coen Brothers movie "A Serious Man."

I personally liked it. The friends I saw it with liked it. My wife hated it. I know many rabbis who loved it and many who also hated it.

It was that kind of movie that evoked such visceral reactions and emotions.

I don't want to give away anything about the movie for those of you who haven't seen it yet, but I want to highlight one particular aspect of the movie.

You see in this movie, when the protagonist, a Jewish man named Larry, has problems with his life, he turns to his Jewish faith and he seeks out spiritual guidance from his rabbi.

And what does his rabbi say?

"These questions that are bothering you, Larry, maybe they're like a toothache. We feel them for a while, then they go away."

Larry responds, "I don't want it to just go away! I want an answer!"

To which the rabbi responds - "The answer! Sure! We all want the answer! But Hashem doesn't owe us the answer, Larry. Hashem doesn't owe us anything. The obligation runs the other way.

Larry - "Why does he make us feel the questions if he's not gonna give us any answers?"

The rabbi smiles at Larry and says "He hasn't told me."

Now in the context of the entire movie, this bit of dialogue might not get noticed. But I believe that this dialogue might really just be the whole point in our seeking God and seeking answers to our questions.

And that answer sometimes is, we just don't know. God hasn't told us. And besides, who are we to think that God owes us any answers in the first place.

We don't know what life has in store for us and we don't know what God's master plan for us is.

But I also believe that the rabbi did share an important piece of wisdom with Larry. He said "the obligation runs the other way."

In other words, instead of blaming God for not getting back to us, we should rather focus on our own lives and figure out what we owe God.

Because if we take the attitude that we owe so much to God, that we should be grateful to God and yet not expect anything from him, then maybe, as I've said a few times this week in my classes, then maybe, by just being good and moral and ethical, God will answer us, he will give us that new bicycle for Christmas!!

But the bottom line here is that everyone has trouble in life. Not just Larry. Not just bad people. Not just people who don't believe in God. But good people, God-fearing people, observant people, all people, have troubles in their lives.

Even Rebecca had trouble with her children and family, as did Abraham, Jacob, and yes, even Moses and King David.

So who are we to say that we shouldn't have any trouble in our lives?

The question is how do we react when we face those troubles. How do we deal with these problems?

Do we turn to God and to our faith, or do we run away from it?

Hopefully, it's the former.

But this is what I believe to be true. We must always continue to seek God. We must always continue to seek his hand in the solutions to life's problem. But whether you seek these solutions from a rabbi or from some other source, remember that even if you don't get the answer you want, or even if you don't get any answer for that matter, by seeking, by continuing to search, you are saying, loud and clear, that you still want the answer, that you are still willing to look for it, and that you are still open to the possibility that there is an answer out there.

It means that you haven't lost faith. It means that despite everything, you still have faith in God.

And that is why we must always keep searching for these answers. That is why we must always keep searching for God, even if God or his earthly representatives aren't able to give us the definitive answer, or any answer for that matter.

But I will leave you with this one piece of advice, a starting point on your own search, if you will.

As I quoted earlier, during the movie Larry asks what is perhaps the most important question of all, "why does God make us feel the questions, if he isn't going to give us the answers?"

One answer from the movie is a quote from Rashi, which just might be the best advice we can have in life.

And that is "receive with simplicity everything that happens to you."

May everything that happens to us be for good and for a blessing. But if not, then let us learn to receive the bad not only with simplicity, but with faith in God that it will ultimately turn out for the best.