The Hovot HaLevavot continues to explain why we should not have the attitude of the Baal Mashkon (wanting collateral from G-d) who isn’t willing to lay out money for G-d unless He gives a pawn to hold on to.
Yesterday we discussed the first error of this outlook.
The second mistake is that anytime you take Mashkon/collateral, it comes with a limit. For example, if we want to borrow $100,000, from someone, we might have to hand over our mortgage as collateral in order to borrow the money. But when we’re dealing with G-d, we want everything down, before we go forward, but there’s no end to this. How much money do we need for ourselves, our families, our children and grandchildren and for how long? How long will we live, how long will they live?
In the Hovot HaLevavot’s words,
ואילו היה לו ממון כפלי כפלים ממה שיספיק לו לא תנוח נפשו
Even if you have double and quadruple of what you need, you still won’t be calm.
You could be sixty years old, and if G-d gave you 10 million dollars, would that be enough?
I’ve often heard of a phenomenon where people who have a good business and make money (let’s say 1 million a year), cash out when they’re sixty, for 20 million dollars. Suddenly, they start spending less money and give less charity, because they think, that’s it. They only have that 20 million and they don’t know how long it will last. They feel they have to slow down their spending. They get scared- will it last? It’s so strange because they have 20 million dollars in the bank, but they don’t have the cash cow any more. With that attitude, says the Hovot HaLevavot, you can never get enough. We can’t know how much we’ll need because no one knows how long they’ll be here. Not even David Hamelech, who was very close to G-d, was able to find out when his time would come. He knew it would be a Shabbat, but he didn’t know when.
No one knows how long they’ll live. Therefore, a request without a limit is a foolish request. We just have to dive in and live life.
We can’t expect to have it all in the bank. Not before marriage, not before learning, before having ten children, or before taking any risk in life. You have to rely on Hashem that He’ll give it to you when you need it. It’s a leap of faith.
The third error in this attitude is that it’s like if someone wanted to borrow $10,000 from a person that owed him $100,000. How could that lender ask for collateral?? Even if the borrower offered the collateral, it would be Chutzpah to accept it! It makes no sense!
כל שכן הבורא שיש לו על האדם מן החובות הראויים
All the more so, for G-d who has such legitimate claims on man,
שאלו היו מקבצים מעשי כל בני אדם בכל ימות העולם לאיש אחד מהם לא היה מספיק הכל לגמל טובה אחת מטובות הבורא עליו.
So much so that if all the deeds of all the people that ever lived (Abraham, Yitzhak, and Yaakov included) could be gathered and credited to a single man, the total would not be enough pay off one favor that a man owes G-d for.
ואיך לא יתבייש זה העז פנים לבקש מן הבורא
How can this person not be embarrassed, after all that G-d gave him, to then say, “ I can’t lay it out for You G-d, because You may not pay me back.”
You can’t trust G-d?
It doesn’t make any sense!
We will continue with this third reason not to ask collateral from G-d tomorrow beH.
Have a great day.