The Black Hole

A couple of days’ ago, my husband brought home a shiur that someone had sent him by an American Rav, Rabbi Avrohom Lipszyc from Chabad of North Miami, who is teaching the Garden of Emuna, chapter by chapter. The title of the shiur was ‘Does G-d love me?’ It immediately caught my attention, because I still wonder about that a lot.
 
It was a great shiur, not because it answered that question, but because it made me realise that the question itself is the problem.
 
The Rav explained that he could have given a shiur going on and on about how much G-d loves me. But really, I wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it because that gnawing doubt about ‘whether G-d loves me’ is a black hole, and by definition, a black hole sucks in everything you throw at it. You simply can’t fill it up or plug it, no matter how much Torah you send its way, how much ‘proof’, how much evidence, words or speeches about how much G-d loves you.
 
If you are also one of those people who also wonder ‘does G-d love me’ you know exactly what he was on about.
 
So then, what’s the answer? How do we get pass that ‘black hole’ that just swallows up all of Hashem’s goodness and shefa, and leaves people like me with the permanent feeling that we are always precariously perched on the edge of disaster?
 
The Rav explained that the only way to ‘answer’ the question is to look at the reasons why a person would ask that question in the first place. Why do I doubt that G-d loves me?
 
There are two main reasons: firstly, I don’t really love myself. Secondly, I don’t really love G-d.
 
I was quite stunned when he said that. Then, I burst into tears.
 
In London, I was completely arrogant. I didn’t fear G-d, because I didn’t attribute anything much to G-d’s doing. It was either me, or it was someone else, or it was random. G-d didn’t come in to the picture, really.
 
It was only when I got to Israel that I started to realise that everything, absolutely everything is in G-d’s hands. And that’s when my ‘fear of G-d’ went off the scale. I started to worry that if I didn’t do everything 100% according to Halacha, I was giving G-d a ‘reason’ to send me some terrible soul corrections, G-d forbid.
 
It was a very strong motivating force, and it got me to clean up my act all over the place. I started to dress more modestly, I started to make blessings properly, I started making more of an effort with the ‘details’ that I’ve always found a bore and a pain, but that I know G-d wants me to pay more attention to.
 
And I thought that all these things were enough to kind of keep Hashem happy, and give me some spiritual peace and quiet. Except, that hasn’t been what’s happening. What’s been happening is that every time I hear about some ‘bad news’, in particular illnesses, G-d forbid, I’ve been going into panic mode, trying to work out ‘why’ this ‘wont’ happen to me. But each time, even after I’ve calmed down, I’m really not convinced. It’s my spiritual black hole.
 
Things came to a head again last week, when there was an impromptu tehillim session held for a young mother in the UK who was on the verge of dying from an undiagnosed brain tumour. One day she was fine, the next day she went into severe cardiac arrest and had a brain haemorrhage.
 
I came back from that tehillim session shaking all over. By all accounts, this person was an amazing person. And it hadn’t stopped this terrible tragedy from happening to her.
 
I slept terribly that night, and started to feel physically ill again. I could feel all the worry and anxiety from the last few months surging back up again, and I was on the point of despair. I felt and feel that I just couldn’t go through it all again. Words can’t describe how incredibly horrible it is to be constantly fighting your fear.
 
Last year, that fight with my yetzer hara took around 90% of any spiritual energy I have. I still haven’t really recovered, and I knew that if I had to go through another bout of that, I simply couldn’t last the distance.
 
Which is when my husband brought home this shiur.
 
The Rav explains that most of us in modern times simply don’t know what it means to be loved unconditionally. For whatever reason, we were loved for ‘doing’ something for someone else, whether it was being a star pupil, eating our brussel sprouts, doing our chores or being a ‘good’ kid.
 
But then we grow up, and we start to relate to Hashem as an infinite version of the authority figures that we had when we growing up. Who didn’t tolerate ‘bad’ behaviour; who punished us for going against them; who made it clear that if we didn’t follow their rules, their way, we would be persona non grata.
 
Can you imagine an infinite version of this? An all-powerful, punishing, vengeful G-d that as soon as you step out of line, whacks you with some terrible event to ‘teach you a lesson?’
 
That, for me, is what’s been going on. How can I love Hashem, when I feel that He’s constantly looking for a reason to ‘punish’ me? And I know I do a lot of things wrong all the time…
 
But the essence of Hashem is love. That’s why I loved Chassidut so much, as for the first time in my life, I started to learn that Hashem’s mercy nearly always outweighs His strict judgement.
 
But I realise, I still have such a mountain to climb. It was a real shock to hear that Hashem doesn’t love me more when I keep mitzvas, or less when I don’t. So then, what’s the point of keeping mitzvas? If mitzvas are not going to keep me safe, if mitzvas are not going to buy me a ‘special place of protection’ near Hashem, what’s the point?
 
G-d was kind, and quickly helped me to realise that I keep mitzvas for me, not for Him. He doesn’t need anything from me. He wants me to keep His torah so that I have the best possible chance of getting a share in the world to come, and to keep my yetzer hara from completely destroying me in this world. Full stop.
 
But the root of the problem is that I don’t love Hashem. I don’t trust Hashem. I don’t believe that He really has my best interests at heart – and this is an absolutely ginormous spiritual handicap.
 
What can I do? I didn’t create my own paradigm, and the last year showed me that if there was an ‘easy’ way of changing my terrible fear into love, I would have done it already a million times over.
 
All I can do is pray. A lot. All I can do is ask Hashem to help me to love Him, to help me to love myself, and to not pass on this warped way of seeing Hashem to my kids. It’s enough that one person in our family is trying to get past a black hole; we don’t need any more of them. Oh yes, I almost forgot – you can listen to a certain Breslev Israel CD over and over again until you can really tell yourself, Hashem Loves Me.