Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
Lately, we've been speaking about spirituality and specifically, the concept that spirituality is an instinct. We've brought that down from Rav Wolbe and we discussed a little bit the, so to say, negative side of an instinct, which is that instincts are selfish. But the positive side, as we mentioned yesterday, is that instincts are necessary for a person to start his religious process. That's his connection.
Today I want to share another, very timely concept. We are currently in the Israel-Hamas war, and an interesting phenomenon is showing up. I've heard from those who witnessed it live, that when people ask the families of the hostages what they can do to help, their standard answer is, You can do Mitzvot and you can pray. These people are not necessarily what we’d call actively religious, and yet they are asking for this spiritual help. Similarly, soldiers have been putting on tefilin and praying in ways that they never did before.
There's even a shortage of tefilin in Eretz Yisrael currently. I think the number of tefilin that were given to soldiers who committed to wearing tefilin was in the area of 15 or 20,000. How do we explain that? Is some kind of external force possessing them?
As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes. This suggests that extreme times of stress or fear, prompt a belief in a higher power.
Why does that happen? Some, in the outside world of psychology, explain that when someone has no choices left, and no human being can help him, they will revert to God as a last-ditch effort.
We see this with non-conventional medicine. ‘I never believed in vitamins or holistic medicine but when the doctor tells the cancer patient, there is no hope, he goes to holistic herbs and any other thing out there, just to grab at something. So, there's no atheist in a foxhole. I'm in a foxhole. I have no one to rely on, so let me grab onto that.’
But based on what we're learning from Rav Wolbe, that's really not the case. The reason there is no atheist in a foxhole is because really there's no such thing as an atheist-period. Everyone instinctively has a need to connect to what we call a higher force, a higher power, realizing there's a creator, something bigger than them, even though they can't put it into words. Even though they're not Avraham Avinu, they naturally know there's something.
But there's a concept called suppression, which means we have other instincts and drives that suppress and cover up that instinct. They take that instinct out of the forefront of our minds, although we are not cognitive or conscious of this.
Then comes along the foxhole, and a person suddenly realizes the reality of death. He realizes the futility of man. He’s no longer chasing his desires or any other stronger force, and he’s not impeded by peer pressure or anything else. All of the outside factors which cause this suppression are no longer there. Now the true believer comes out.
That is the deeper explanation of the concept that there's no atheist in a foxhole. It really means there are no atheists period. It’s just that the foxhole removes the impediments that cause the suppression.
This is important for us to know now. During these stressful times, we can also tap into our inner instinctive connection to Hashem. That's why saying tehilim and doing mitzvot and all these things, besides actually helping, are therapeutic.
They help because I am connecting to a higher force. I'm connecting to Hashem, and that feeds my instinctive need, and that will bring a calm.
So let us tap in.
Have a wonderful day.