You decide to listen to your conscience, and you stop the madness immediately. Defeated and exhausted, you leave the casino floor and journey back to your hotel room. Your children are safe, for the meantime, but you have still squandered a quarter of a million dollars in less than five hours. You will have a lot of explaining to do to your spouse and your business partners. You are now visualizing how you will look pushing a shopping cart around town collecting bottles and discarded clothing.
With nowhere else to turn, you call out to God Himself. You speak to Him freely, without the aid of a prayer book. You don't care if anyone overhears your conversation or not. Here are two versions of the monologue.
Version A: Fear
Master of the Universe, King of Kings, have mercy upon me. I have no right to even speak to you, much less ask anything of you. I am deeply embarrassed, and I know you are going to punish me with even more than I already brought upon myself. Please, I beg of you, allow me to somehow replenish the money that I lost. I promise you I won't do it again. You provided me with material gain, and I can't believe I threw it all away. Please, your humble servant implores you to temper Your wrath.
The manager of the casino happened to be walking down the hall when he heard you offer this prayer. He was so impressed by your words that he decided to return $10K of your losses. You can use this modest sum to invest in a business and build yourself up again.
Version B: Love
Dad, I love you. Your own child strayed off your path and should have known better. However, I'm proud to be in the family. You will see that my love for you is deep and pure. The pain that I felt while I was distant from you was so intense that I'm now motivated to get even closer to you than I was before. In fact, if it weren't for this little falling out, perhaps I would never have had the opportunity for this renewed closeness. My love for you and your Torah is eternal.
The manager of the casino overheard your supplication. He was so touched by your words that he not only returned your gambling losses to you, he sent you home with twice the amount of money that you lost. Your net worth has doubled since you hit Vegas.
Sincere repentance (tshuva) that is motivated by fear transforms our intentional sins into unintentional ones. Sincere repentance (tshuva) that is motivated by love transforms our intentional sins into merits.
Of course, you can't violate Torah law with the mindset that you will be able to repent at a later time. Furthermore, we are dealing with commandments between human beings and God. Infringements of Torah law between human beings must be worked out between the injured party and the one who caused the damage.
During these 10 days of repentance, when our very lives are hanging in the balance, we must look at our motivation and style of repenting as honestly as possible. As we approach the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), when our fate for the coming year is sealed, we have the opportunity to examine our deeds carefully and candidly. With the stakes this high, playing games with ourselves is simply not worth the gamble.
* The above scenario was inspired by a similar story found in the book "The Garden of Emuna," written by Rabbi Shalom Arush.
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Ben Goldfarb was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, and is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He moved to Israel in 1988. He divides his time between his yeshiva studies and his coaching practice. His life calling is to help others understand their personal mission and accomplish it with humor, creativity and spirituality. He lives with his wife and children in Jerusalem. His book "Double Feature" will be published in the winter. For more information about his coaching practice, visit the Paradigm Shift Communications website, or send an email to ben@pdshiftcoaching.com. © Copyright 2007 by Ben Goldfarb.
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