Why Did God Experiment by Creating Man?

In R. Jonathan Sacks’ 2012 essay for Parashat Beraishit, “Why Were We Created?” (Covenant & Conversation | Bereishit | Why Were We Created? | Rabbi Sacks), he asks the fundamental question that has plagued religious thinkers down through the ages. Reading the bible closely, after other creations, the Tora states: (v. 4, 12, 18,21, 25, and culminating in v. 31) “and God Saw that it was (very) good;” however, when He Created humanity, no such approbation appears. In place of the statement that there was inherent goodness in man’s creation, we encounter:

Beraishit 1:26

And God Said: Let us Make man in Our Image, after Our Likeness…

leading many commentators to state that due to man’s freedom of choice (which may have been the “Image of God” referred to, since only God and man are “free” to choose to do whatever they wish), man is utterly unpredictable. Whereas God is by definition “Good” and “Just” and therefore utilizing His Freedom of Choice for only the “right things,“—R. Sacks interprets God’s referring to himself as: (Shemot 3:14) “I will Be what I will Be,” it could be interpreted as: I will Choose to be what I will Choose to be, representing the freedom that God is Seeking for His People– man has the capacity of choosing between the “right” and the “wrong” paths, and therefore cannot be categorized as always “good” the way that other creations can be.

R. Sacks understands the heavenly dispute presented in the Talmud as articulating this fact:

Sanhedrin 38b

Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: At the time that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, Sought to create a person, He Created one group of ministering angels. He said to them: If you agree, let us fashion a person in our image. They said before him: Master of the Universe! What are the actions of this person? God Said to them: His actions are such and such.

The angels said before him: Master of the Universe! “What is man that You are mindful of him? And the son of man that You think of him?” (Tehillim 8:5). God Outstretched His Small Finger among them and Burned them. And the same occurred with a second group of angels. The third group of angels that He Asked, said before Him: Master of the Universe! The first two groups who spoke before You, what did they accomplish? The entire world is Yours; whatever You Wish to Do in Your World, do.

When history arrived at the time of the people of the generation of the flood, and the people of the generation of the dispersion, both of whose actions were ruinous, the angels said before God: Master of the Universe! Didn’t the first set of angels speak appropriately before You? God Said to them: “Even to your old age I Am the Same; and even to hoar hairs will I Suffer you; I have Made and I will Bear; and I will Carry, and I will Deliver you” (Yeshayahu 46:4.)

In the Aggada, God Declares His Intention to “Wait man out,” i.e., to Have the “Patience”, as it were, to Wait for humanity to “come around” and use the  freedom of choice with which it was endowed upon Creation, to choose good, as opposed to evil, even though in the meantime, evil obviously continues to be an option.

(In effect, God is Running an experiment to See if one of His Creations, endowed with free choice, will in the end choose correctly. If this is so, then it was inevitable for man to eat of the forbidden fruit, be exiled from the Garden of Eden, and thereby attempt to learn to use his free choice only for good.)

R. Sacks writes:

…It is this complex capacity to speak, think and choose between alternative courses of action, that is at once our glory, our burden and our shame. When we do good we are little lower than the angels. When we do evil we fall lower than the beasts…

(A Midrash that I have cited several times previously, represents this choice that has been placed before man, since his/her Creation:

Beraishit Rabba 8:1

… If a human being merits, we say to him: You were created before the angels of service; and if not, we say to him: A fly was before you, a mosquito was before you, a worm was before you.–yb)

 In a “turn-or-phrase” with which R. Sacks enjoys ending his essays, he states:

…God created humanity because God has Faith in humanity. Far more than we have faith in God, God has Faith in us…

…The mystery and miracle – is not our faith in God. It is God’s Faith in us.

Discussion.

The fact that immortal God has “Patience” to await man “coming to his senses” and applying his/her freedom of choice properly, speaks to those who have a communal appreciation of the Jewish people, but the mortal, finite individual will often go to his grave without understanding what the ultimate purpose of the Creation is. As I have stated in the past, the modern sensibility is to place an emphasis upon the individual rather than upon the collective, as was true in the past. We are under the assumption that culture advances, although one could contend, particularly an adherent of religious Orthodoxy, that the past was “more on point” than the present. While one of our Shabbat guests many years ago, bemoaned that he hadn’t lived in the 17^th century when he could have been exposed to Rabbinic greatness, I recall that he was roundly upbraided by others stating resolutely that life expectancy was so much shorter, that public hygiene was primitive, and that there was no guarantee that he would be able to meet those whom he wished to see. However, there was a sense hundreds of years ago that the Jewish people, albeit hated and persecuted, would continue on even as there were no guarantees that individual Jews would. This sensibility it seems to me has been profoundly lost in recent years, and the “jury is out” as to whether this should be considered a cultural advance, or regression.