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MAY 7, 2020 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Think, Feel, Grow
The Five Stages of Faith By Shmuel Reichman
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s we depart from Pesach, the holiday of faith, we must reinforce our commitment to the journey of faith. There is no greater act of emunah than living a spiritual, holistic life in an often chaotic, fragmented world. The famous words “kedoshim tihiyu” (you shall be holy) are not a call to be transcendent, angelic beings, lofty and perfect, completely beyond the struggle innate to the human condition. This is not permission to deny our humanity and restrict our sense of self. This is a calling to be human, to be the ultimate human, to bring transcendence and spirituality into this world. We don’t aim to escape this world; we aim to transform it. Kedushah is not transcendence or escapism, it’s found in the meeting between the transcendent and the immanent. This is the journey of faith, whereby each individual must embark on a quest for internal and objective truth, where we must leave the comfort of the known and travel towards the infinite, towards the future we know we are destined for, towards our own personal and collective purpose. There are five stages in this journey of faith:
1- Emunah Peshutah (Simple Faith) The first stage that we experience in life is emunah peshutah, simple faith. If you take a two-year-old child on a walk in the park, all he experiences is life itself. He’ll point at the birds and the trees and exclaim:
“Whoa!” or point at something and shout, “Look at that!” He doesn’t yet have a categorized mind, so he doesn’t give names to anything; he simply sees reality as it is. At this stage, you experience life with no questions, and no options – everything is simply pure, true, and beautiful.
2- Blind Faith Then, you learn how to speak, and the world suddenly becomes a mystery. You walk around in wonder and confusion; you have questions; you’re learning to communicate. If you’re taught to believe in Hashem, you do, not because you have any reason to, but because your parents or teachers tell you that Hashem loves you, that He created you, that He cares about you, and that “He gave you this deli-
cious cookie as a present.” As you grow older, you are taught increasingly complex ideas: Hashem sees everything you do, Hashem can forgive, Hashem gives you challenges. However, you are still at an age where you accept these facts at face value, believing them because that’s what people tell you is true. At this stage, belief is obedience, not something you’ve discovered.
3- Experiential Faith However, once you reach a certain age, you begin to want more. You want to meet Hashem, to talk to Him. You want to genuinely, deeply believe in Him, but you struggle. It’s hard. If only you could see Him, touch Him, or even hear Him, then you’d believe! You just want some indication that He’s here, watching and caring, just as you were told growing up.
Every once in a while, a “coincidental” encounter with Hashem, the sublime, occurs. Maybe your life was saved, maybe you just made your flight, or just missed it and later heard it crashed. Maybe you found your soulmate, did well on your test, or got your dream job. Maybe you had your first child, your illness was cured, or you won against all odds. Maybe you were just in the exact right place, at the exact right time. Suddenly, you believe. It’s real, at least to you. You’re convinced, and you walk around floating on cloud nine. Life is good, pure, true, and beautiful. Here, faith becomes personal, not just something foisted upon you by others. However, your faith at this stage is simplistic. At some point, this is no longer enough. You want more; you need more. Rational, logical, and philosophical questions come up. “If G-d exists then why…” and “How can G-d exist if….” or “Why would G-d do….” Maybe your life falls apart and you cry out, “How can this be happening to me?!”
4- Rational Knowledge The fourth stage is the rational stage. You need rational proofs: logic, philosophy, science, math, algorithms, and intellect. So you begin to collect proofs. - The Big Bang may explain how the world came about, but where did the Big Bang come from? Something higher must have set it into action, there must be a source of the very matter that made up the Big Bang.
