Memories from the past

I think I was around 14 at the time when someone approached me with his theological question. I don't know exactly why he asked me of all people, because I wasn't particularly pious at the time, but for some reason he thought I could help him answer his problem.

The question he had was regarding the rabbinic idea of yetzar harah (evil inclination). He told me that he understood that there was no outside entity that tricked people into doing bad, rather we did bad things due to our own natural inclination. His problem was that he understood that chazal (the Talmudic rabbis) seemed to understand it as some outside agent such as an angel and not some thing which is innate in us. This seemed to bother him greatly.

My response was that you should take the Rabbis words allegorically (although, I probably didn't use such fancy language at the time) and not literally. And it doesn't even matter if the rabbis themselves actually took it literally, all that mattered was what wisdom we can take from them and apply to our lives to make it better. You have to look beyond the surface and try to see the truth and wisdom of their words if you want to remain in their spiritual tradition. I didn't mean to say that we should interpret their words in a way that contradicted their intended meaning. Rather I meant to say that whether or not the evil inclination is an external or internal force, there may be still value in their words in how best to overcome it.

I still think this is the best approach a person should take if he wants to think rationally and at the same time remain within the tradition of the Rabbis. I think it was Rambam who said that any one who takes the words of the Jewish sages as literal is a fool. Now I don't think Rambam was a fool either, so I think he probably understood that the sages believed in some irrational things too, but I think his intention was that we should try to take the essence of their spiritual message and not dwell on the superficial aspect of their words. This, of course, depends on if the words of the Jewish sages contained any real truth. I don't have as much faith in them as Rambam did, I'm sure, but I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt when possible.

My friend agreed that this was a wise approach, but he still had a problem with the sages way of expressing their words. His problem was that when they talk about the yetzar harah as an external cause that takes away our moral responsibility. If we are the cause of our own actions then we are responsible, but if the cause is from outside then some of the responsibility is taken away from us. He felt the Rabbis expressed themselves in a misleading way that would hinder rather than help a person spiritually. At the time I had to admit he had a valid point.

But the fact is I think that our passions (yetzar Harah) is nothing more than external causes acting upon us. No, I don't understand it as an angel sitting on our shoulder whispering to us to do wicked thing. But when we see or experience something which we think will benefit us we automatically desire it unless there is another thing which has a stronger attraction on us. We really don't have a choice in whether we are attracted to something or not. It's not like we directly create or control our own desires. So I guess there is something to be said for the way the Rabbis expressed themselves after all.