Reply To: The Wicked Son, and the Kiruv System

I had been talking about people who sin deliberately – who don’t care and aren’t even trying. That seemed to be what you were talking about when you referred to your friends as reshaim.

I see. I once made the same argument in a discussion with a room full of bochurim – that I don’t understand the people who go off the derech without rationalising that they don’t believe in Hashem. When it becomes a matter of policy rather than slipping up, how do they answer themselves? If you can tell yourself you don’t believe in Hashem somehow, then you have a reasonable excuse. But if you have no reason not to, then what sort of excuse is “the system failed me” or “I wanted a real education” or the other cliche excuses that you hear.

One bochur came to me afterwards, and after making me promise not to repeat it to anybody else, he told me that he went through a stage in his life where he was so angry with Hashem, he did aveiros out of pure rage. It was an irrational “if You don’t care about me, I don’t care about You”, with full awareness of the logical idiocy of such an argument. I was shocked; this is one of the most rational bochurim I have met – by the time I met him, he was way past that stage, and is now a respected Talmid Chochom.

It was one of the times where it hit me how we are humans, and our mind is actually controlled by our emotions, regardless of how intelligent and mature we may be. #HittingTheFrogs