Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
We are continuing with cognitive distortion number 10. Mesilat Yesharim (perek 19) tells us that
that one should love God like a son loves his father, which is natural. It's natural for a child to love their father. And God asks that of us.
In Hazinu, it says we're an ungrateful nation. We're not wise. He's your father. He is your nest. He is your base.
Mesilat Yesharim is telling us that we should have a natural love for our father. Furthermore, the sefer Tanya (section 1 chapter 44) says that inside of every Jewish heart, a tremendous love is hidden. He quotes a Zohar that says that the love that a son has for his father and mother, is the love that every Jewish person has in their heart for God.
So why don't we have it?
The answer is based on a mashal. Imagine a child who was adopted. All his life, he loves his adopted parents and doesn't know that he has biological parents.
But some adopted children want to find their biological parents, and when they do find them and meet them, there are stories of them hugging and kissing this person that they never knew. Now that they found out that this person is their parent, they feel affection.
But what happens if they find out that they stumbled onto the wrong person, that they hugged and kissed the wrong person. That would feel odd.
We see from here that a person has a natural love for their father, whoever their father is, when they find out that it's their father. I recently had an experience like that, with someone in our community, a nice man. I like him, and I like his family and I found out, based on a family tree, that he was actually my 3rd cousin! My great grandfather and his great grandmother were brother and sister. Now I look at him and say, “Hey cuz!” Because he's my 3rd cousin, I like him even more.
It was interesting when, a few weeks after that, his brother called to tell me that my family tree was wrong. I said, “Okay. I don't really like this guy that much.” But then he got back to me and said that he misread his family tree and that, yes, in in truth, we were related. So now I like him again!
What's going on? It's the long-lost cousin theory. When you find out that he's your cousin, you like him. And the same is true with God. Cognitive distortion number 10 is that we don't realize that God is our Father. If we realized that God was our Father, that would change everything.
Tiferet Yisrael (a commentary on the seder) and other sefarim say, The pasuk says, 'Arami Oved Avi/ The Aramiyan destroyed my father. What does that mean?
The Aramiyan refers to the Yetzer Hara. What's he trying to do? He's trying to destroy my Father, so that I shouldn't realize that Hashem is my father, that I shouldn't feel that I'm a son of God. That’s the job of the Yetzer Hara. That's why it says that on the night of the seder we say, “This year we are slaves and next year we should be sons of freedom.”
This year, when we're slaves, we don’t realize that God is our Father. Part of the job of the Seder is to help us realize we're Banim L’Makom/children of Hashem.
Another mistake is the child who no longer recognizes his father. All of his mistakes are rooted in that.
Once he realizes his father, he knows his father only does good. He knows that father knows best. He knows that his father cares about him. The Reshit Chochma says the only reason why God created us with physical parents is so that we realize what it is to have a parent. Our physical parents are just a mashal for our real Father in heaven.
We have to remember; He is our Father. As we once quoted from Rabbi Ades in the name of the Chafetz Chaim, when you say, Avinu Malkenu, the stress has to be on Avinu. Forget about what we ask for. Realize He's my Father. He's my King.
Have a wonderful day.