Question:
Why did Hashem have to create the feeling of embarrassment when we receive a gift without having done anything?
If he hadn’t create it then we could have gone to the world to come straight away
Answer:
Interesting question, in fact I was also bothered by this question . I think that the answer is, that being embarrassed for getting something free is very basic and natural and not a matter of being created this way. When a person earns something, then the item is his, and it is his truthfully, however when a person gets a present, the item is not really his, rather in his possession. Yes we would have the pleasure, but it would be missing in depth and in truth. Yes in a way it would be more convenient for US if it would be this way, but we are forgetting that Hashem created the world in order to give in the best way, and He feels that giving in a way that a reward that is honest will the best type of reward. If hashem would want to give a reward that is not earned He didn’t have to make us… He already made billions of animals that He could shower with pleasures, and He could have left us out of it. But He created the world with us being the recipients of the great reward because we are he only ones who can really work and use our free will.
Best wishes
B’rshus Harav,
It’s really a fantastic question, and any answer needs to be prefaced with the fact that at a certain point we cannot understand why Hashem did anything, or why he chose any option over other options. Both because the nature of bechira is that it is really impossible to say why anyone was bocher something, and more fundamentally, as the Rambam says in Hilchos Teshuva, Hashem and his daas are one. All we can understand is what he has given us to understand through the Torah.
With that preface, IIRC Rabbi Tatz said the nature of the reward requires that it is worked for. The reward Hashem wishes to give us is “layhunos mziv shechina” through being like Him. Through working, through creating, tov in the hester of this world we can keilu be like Hashem and connect to him in Olam Haba. So giving us the reward without work would negate the nature of the reward. He says it better, but that’s his basic idea I think. I believe he writes about this in Letters to a Buddhist Jew.
Yes, you can still ask, “So let him create the reward in a way where we could feel like we created without creating and still not be embarrassed?” But it’s a start. I suggest you check out the first Meshech Chochma on bereishis where he talks a little about how Hashem created the world with chochma.
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