12. If G d is supervising everything, what difference does it make In any case to G d what I choose? In any case G d is directing everything?
Every detail that happens to us comes from Him, but one of the basic tenets of faith is that a person has free choice as to how to behave in a given situation. That is up to us. For example; I was walking, I bumped into something and I fell. I didn’t fall by coincidence, I fell by Divine Providence. How I react – will I curse the stone that tripped me up or will I remember (as Rabbi Akiva used to say) “All that The Merciful One does is for the good” – this is my personal free choice.
I was walking in the street and I met a poor person. It wasn’t co-incidence, G d caused it to happen that I should see him. Now I have the choice whether or not to help him or to ignore him. The situation is brought about by Divine Providence, but as the Ramban writes in ‘Laws of Fasting’ (Chap. 1) that if there is a difficult time for the Jewish people, it should arouse us to turn to G d. As he phrases it: “For if they will not cry out, not shout out, but will say that this thing happened to us as is the way of the world for such things to happen – this is treacherous., and causes them to remain in their evil ways of behavior, and this will bring about increased difficulties. As it is written in the Torah ‘If you walk with me (as if) in happenstance, I will walk with you in wrathful happenstance.’ Meaning that I shall bring troubles upon you, so that you may return (to Me). If you say that it was (just) happenstance, I will increase the wrathfulness of the ‘happenstance’.”
If we already mentioned troubles, what happens when a person has a personal trouble, or when there is a general public time of trouble and people don’t realize that it is Divinely ordained?
The Torah refers to the situation of exile; “And I shall surely hide My Face on that day”. The Baal Shem Tov explains that even when the Holy One Blessed be He hides Himself, a Jew needs to know that this situation of hiddenness stems from the Divine statement “I shall surely hide “. Knowing that it is coming from G d helps to reveal the Divine from amidst the concealment (the troubles).
When a Jew stands up to the trial despite the concealment and acknowledges that everything is supervised by the Creator and that there is a reason for the difficulty, as quoted above from the Rambam, this in itself causes G d to reveal Himself more.