Tefillah - 075 How To View Sickness and Suffering

The Only Reliable Doctor We Can Trust: Hashem

In the end of the blessing of Refoeinu, we sayכי א-ל מלך רופא נאמן ורחמן אתה– “For You Are The Almighty King, the Trustworthy and Merciful Doctor”. Hashem is the only Doctor Whom we can truly rely on.

Hashem is trustworthy, which is hinting to our power of emunah (faith) in Him. If we don’t place our trust in Him that He heals us, we aren’t able to daven properly to Hashem to be healed. We need to first establish firm emunah in Him, to place our trust in Him.

Do We Really Believe That We Have A Merciful Doctor…?

In addition to how Hashem is our ‘Trustworthy’ Doctor, a רופא נאמן, He is also called a ‘Merciful’ Doctor, a     .רחמן   

We see much sickness in the world today, however. It does not seem to us that Hashem is being a Merciful Doctor to us. People wonder: What is going on?? Where is Hashem’s mercy?

There are millions of sick people in the world, who are inflicted with terrible diseases. There is almost no one who completes the year without getting sick. Anyone has heard of others who are sick, unless he is totally self-absorbed. Even if he is self-absorbed, he still knows of family members or close friends who are sick. It is too much to bear when we hear how many people are sick. There are yet people who were born with illnesses, or people who have been sick for many years already.

If a person doesn’t make sure to constantly work on his emunah, when he hears that people are sick, he will react with no emunah. He hears pain, suffering – it’s all too much too bear – and if he hasn’t worked on his emunah, he will definitely lose emunah every time he hears of something bad.

Our nefesh habehaimis (animalistic soul) and our rational intellect we are born with does not react with emunah to all these situations – and that being the case, we are apt to feel that Hashem is cruel, chas v’shalom. Without working on our emunah, our eyes will see all the suffering of the world, and our nefesh hebehaimis is thinking inside: “How cruel this is!”

Of course, no one will say it straight out, but in that is how a person will naturally feel when we hear of people who are sick or suffering.

Questioning Hashem’s Ways

Reb Yisrael Salanter wrote about our conscious (hakarah) and our subconscious (tat-hakarah). We believe, deep down, that everything Hashem does is for the best; that is what we have been taught since we were children. But this belief is pushed away into our subconscious. In our consciousness, we are filled with questions when we hear of others who get sick; our reaction is to question Hashem.

The word choli\sickness comes from the word chilul, from the word Chilul Hashem, because when we hear that others get sick, it can cause us to have a Chilul Hashem in our own soul, when we question Hashem.

When a person visits someone who is dangerously ill, there can be a danger of catching the illness. In the same vein, if a person doesn’t work on himself to reveal emunah, he ‘catches’ the choli\sickness, because a Chilul Hashem is awakened in his own soul; he sees the suffering of people, and “he can’t take it” – his nefesh habehaimis can’t take it.  

It’s like the person who sees a sotah (wayward wife) in her ruination, who must become a nazir. The meaning behind why he needs to become a nazir is because if he doesn’t become a nazir, his soul will connect with the sotah and he will want to be evil like her. In the same way, without emunah, a person connects to the choli, to the chilul Hashem, when he hears of someone else who has a choli\sickness. It becomes a chilul Hashem to him because since he did not develop emunah beforehand, hearing about another’s sickness causes him to lose belief that there is a Merciful G-d.

Without building one’s emunah beforehand, when a person hears that someone else is sick, he might [superficially] believe that “it’s all from Hashem”, but although he attributes the choli to Hashem, he forgets that Hashem has rachamim. In his heart, he does not view Hashem as a Merciful G-d. He knows that the person’s sickness came from Hashem – but he forgets that Hashem is aרחמן, a Merciful Doctor.

Hashem’s Mercy

One of the middos of Hashem is that He is called Rachum, the Merciful One. We can see compassion of Hashem all the time, if we take a look at the world and we reflect into Creation. Hashem supports and feeds the whole world, including every animal and every plant, all the time, round the clock. We can’t go into this in detail; it is endless. Any person knows that the world is full of Hashem’s awesome compassion.

But even if we are aware of Hashem’s great compassion that He bestows upon the world, still, we also see so much suffering in the world. It all seems so cruel. People have suffering in their health, with their children, all kinds of physical suffering, as well as emotional and spiritual suffering. How should we view this?

Understanding The Role of Suffering

Cruelty was created by Hashem. It is a middah which Hashem created. Cruelty is not some happenstance force that exists. Hashem created it; we need to understand why it exists.

How many people are murdered each year? How many people were robbed this year? How many people suffered at the hands of others? How many people died this year by fire, by water, by sword, by hunger…it’s endless. The suffering in the world is astronomical.

Hashem sends endless compassion onto the world. At the same time, He also sends cruelty to the world, and we must know how to view this. If we don’t have the proper perspective towards this, our emunah will greatly weaken when we hear how others suffer, and we will come to think that Hashem is cruel, chas v’shalom.

It will weaken even if we are aware of Hashem’s great kindnesses that He does in Creation; we won’t be able to ignore all the suffering, and it will overpower whatever emunah we do have in Hashem’s mercy, because the suffering in the world seems much more stark and palpable than the signs of Hashem’s compassion that we see on this world.

Emunah In Times of Darkness

It is written in the possuk, “To speak of Your kindnesses in the morning, and of your faith at nights.” We speak of Hashem’s kindnesses in the “morning” – in other words, when all is clear and bright like the morning, times in which we can clearly recognize Hashem’s great compassion that He has upon Creation. But there is also a kind of faith which we can reveal “at nights”, in a time of darkness, in a time of suffering. It is a time of darkness in which we can reveal emunah.

Of course, there are many other reasons why we suffer. We might be suffering as an atonement for our sins in this lifetime, or for a previous lifetime, or to rectify the sin of Adam or the sin of the Golden Calf, or because it’s part of the suffering of the final exile. There are many reasons for suffering, and they can all be true. But one of the major reasons that people suffer is because suffering is the time in which a person can reveal emunah. It is precisely a time of darkness – “your faith at nights” – in which a person can uncover emunah.

Coping In Trying Times

Our brain, our intellect, our senses, and our nefesh habehaimis cannot handle all the suffering that is in Creation. How, then, can a person be able to handle all the suffering he hears about in the world?

He can be able to handle it when he makes use of both concepts in the possuk: to realize Hashem’s mercy regularly, to see His enormous goodness and compassion that He has on the entire Creation, as well as to strengthen his emunah when there is a time of darkness.

We are asking Hashem in this blessing of Refoeinu to awaken His trait of compassion. We are saying to Hashem that He is a Trustworthy Doctor, רופא נאמן, and then we say that He is the רחמן, Merciful Doctor. Now we can understand why we say it specifically in this order. First we need to strengthen our emunah in Hashem - and only upon that can we understand how Hashem is Merciful.

Our nefesh habehaimis cannot accept how Hashem is Merciful when we don’t ingrain emunah in ourselves. After we reaffirm our emunah in Hashem – as implied in the words רופא נאמן – now our nefesh habehaimis can be calmed, and we can then understand that Hashem is aרחמן, now that we have worked on our emunah. We need to take our nefesh habehaimis, our natural feelings of negativity, and attach it to the light of emunah.

Emunah First, Davening Second

Without first attaching ourselves to emunah, a person might be davening in the blessing of Refoeinu that others should have a recovery, but he’s really upset at Hashem and accusing Him for being cruel! He is davening to Hashem from the perspective of his nefesh habehaimis, which perceives all suffering of this world as nothing but ‘cruelty’ allowed by G-d…

If a person hears that others are suffering and he immediately turns to Hashem in prayer, and he doesn’t first awaken his emunah that Hashem is a רופא נאמן ורחמן, deep down he’s really full of complaints to Hashem. He’s really feeling: “Hashem, why are You acting so cruel?!”

Of course, he won’t say this straight out with his mouth, but in the depths of his soul, he thinks Hashem is cruel. This is the reality of someone who doesn’t try to awaken his emunah before he prays to Hashem to end suffering.

If someone never reflects deeply, the words here seem strange to him; he won’t agree that this is the case. But if someone is at least little bit in touch with his soul, he understands that if he doesn’t awaken his emunah when he hears of suffering, that he can’t daven to Hashem in a truthful way.

The Key To Recovery

When a person reveals how Hashem is the Merciful Doctor, through awakening his emunah that Hashem is the Trustworthy Doctor – in spite of the fact that we see many situations in which Hashem allows cruel suffering to go on – herein lays the root of getting healed.

Yaakov Avinu represents the trait of rachamim. He was also the first person in the Torah to get sick. This shows us that it is precisely when a person is sick that he can reveal and awaken rachamim.

How does a person derive the inner strength to believe in Hashem’s mercy when he asks Hashem in Refoeinu to heal the sick and to be a Merciful Doctor? It is when he realizes that Hashem is the Trustworthy Doctor. Upon believing in that, a person can awaken the rachamim of Hashem upon the one who is sick.

But without awakening this emunah in the rachamim of Hashem, chas v’shalom, then davening in Refoeinu is not a tefillah to Hashem - rather, the person is basically expressing his complaints to Hashem on His ways.

Having emunah in Hashem is not just to believe that Hashem can send the recovery. When we reflect into this matter, we see that it is more than that. It is because when we make sure to awaken our emunah as we daven for the sick, our tefillah to Hashem will then be coming from the perspective, and herein lays the key to the sick person’s recovery.

So we must begin to feel more Hashem’s mercy in the world and become aware of His kindnesses. At the same time, we see how much suffering is going on in the world, and the more that we see the increase of suffering and the troubles in the world, if we don’t reflect to awaken our emunah, all we see is more and more Chilul Hashem, more and more choli\sickness.

In Conclusion

We must certainly not take our mind off all the sickness and suffering that we hear about; it should definitely be on our minds all the time. But we must awaken ourselves, as we feel all the suffering that goes on, to feel emunah in Hashem, precisely because we are in a time of darkness: that Hashem is the Trustworthy and Merciful Doctor, the רופא נאמן, and because He is the רופא נאמן, that is how we can come to understand that He is the רחמן.

Through this, may we indeed to merit the meaning of Hashem’s mercy that He has upon all His creations.