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G-d Does Not Want Obedience
Last week there was a terrible fire in a home in Israel. Two children, ages 2 and 5, were killed. Three older children in the same family, all girls, escaped. But at what cost? Can you imagine their lives going forward? How many times will they ask themselves: What could I have done? What if I had…? Why didn’t I try ….? The mere thought of it shakes me to my core. Can you imagine going through your whole life with these kinds of regrets?
The psychological name for this is “survivor’s guilt,” and it can be crippling enough when you know there was nothing else to be done. But if you even imagine there was some other way you might have saved a life, but did not, it would be crushing. Survivor’s guilt is what hammered Noah after the ordeal of the Flood – it led him to drunkenness and disgrace. Because the truth is that he actually should have felt guilt: he dropped the ball.
