Question:
Hi, I have a very famous question. As we know there is bechira in life, but how is that so? If hashem knows what we are going to do then why is someone who sins called a Rosha and likewise with a tzadik, Hashem made you do it so I cant get any blame? How can I get punished for sinning If hashem knew I was gonna do it? That means that he decides who is a Rosha and who is a Tzadik
Answer:
Hello,
Correct, this is a famous question, called the yedia -bechira question. Before getting into anything philosophical, let’s be practical. When you walk into an ice cream store and choose a particular flavor, who chose the flavor, you or Hashem? Did you have the option to choose whatever flavor you wanted? Yes. When you have meat and potatoes on your dinner plate, who is deciding which spoonful you will eat at any point, you or Hashem?
So it is clear that we have free will, the question though is just how could it be that Hashem knew about it beforehand?
I once heard from R’ Noach Weinberg zt”l, Rosh Yeshiva of Aish Hatorah, that we have an issue of before during and after, only because us humans on planet earth are in a creation called time. Us humans cannot see a movie of something until after it happens, but before it actually happens, we cannot see it because the time for it to happen didn’t yet occur. However, Hashem is not bound by time, therefore he sees, he sees before, during and after from His angle, even before we know about it. Therefore, to Hashem, He can see the movie before it happens in our realm of “time”, even before we see it. (This is a hard concept for us to grasp, because we don’t know what it means not to be bound by time, but it is an idea that we can intellectually understand.) Therefore, we actually do have the bechira, even though Hashem knows, the “after the fact”, even before the person actually reached that int in time, when he decided to do it this way on planet earth.
In the final analysis, as stated it is a theoretical question, and the answer doesn’t really matter, because the facts on the ground are, the we do choose what we want, and we do have bechira.
Best wishes
