BackThe Real Driver
By: Rabbi Barak Bar-Chaim
The spies that were sent into Eretz Yisrael return from their mission and inform the people that, in their opinion, there is no possibility to militarily defeat the local inhabitants of the land. Moshe Rabeinu, Yehoshua, and Kalev dispute the opinion of the other spies and encourage the people to have faith in God. They explain that God had commanded the people to enter the land and that God would surely assist them to be victorious. The people believe the spies’ negative report, become disheartened, cry, and mourn. Although Moshe Rabeinu had led them out of Egypt, shown them God’s miracles, and brought them to Divine revelation at Mt. Sinai, the people chose to believe the negative report of the spies and lost their faith. How are we to understand the people adopting the negative opinion of the spies?
I think the answer to this question is both simple and incredibly profound at the same time. When Moshe Rabeinu recounts this event to the nation in the Book of Deuteronomy, he states: “But you did not want to go up, and you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord, your God.” (Deuteronomy 1:27) When we really want to do something, we tend to choose the opinions that support what we want to do. While decisions should be made from the ‘head’, they are most often made from the ‘heart’.
How do we avoid falling into the trap of following our ‘hearts’ rather than our minds? There are two complementary valid approaches. The first approach is self-awareness. If we are acutely aware of what we want and how we are finding arguments/opinions to support what we want, we then have the chance to choose to follow what we know to be true and correct. The second approach is to train our hearts to truly desire to do what is good and correct in God’s eyes.
The lifelong work of being truly self-aware and instilling the desire for good in the recesses of our hearts is the recipe for being on the correct path in life. Let us work diligently in this regard, and may God bless our efforts.