What Happens When We Treat HaShem With Casualness

0:29A person gets sick and ignores it; a person loses money and ignores it; has marriage problems and ignores it; has health issues and ignores it—all types of tests that Hashem sends them, and they ignore it. That's what it means to treat Hashem with casualness—meaning that we always rationalize. "No, I only got sick because I didn't wear a jacket. I only lost the money because I made bad investments. I only lost the money because of the bad market or it's a bad economy." I got sick. That means Hashem made me sick. I lost some money. That means Hashem took the money. Something bad happened. That means Hashem did this. The question that you should be asking yourself is why? Why did Hashem cause this thing to happen to me? Do not try to explain it with all types of rational things because that question will get you closer to the truth.

1:55But if a person treats Hashem with casualness and he refuses to do teshuva, then I shall lay a further blow upon you seven times like your sins. So, the Chachamim say, wait a minute. What do you mean, seven times? I did one sin. Are you going to punish me seven times? That's not measure for measure. Measure for measure should be one for one. One for one, not one for seven. So, the Alshich HaKadosh, one of the greatest sages that we ever had... Gives a commentary: That's truly unbelievable. He says if you notice in the same chapter, but in verse number 14, HaKadosh Baruch Hu says six different things that you're supposed to do with His Torah and mitzvot. He says, "Im lo tishme'u elai, velotase'u et kol hamitzvot ha'eleh..." He says, if you will not listen to me, and you will not perform the commandments, if you consider my decrees loathsome, meaning you despise mitzvot, somebody says to you, so what, this holiday, it's one day or two days? And the Rabbi says, it's two days. Ah, no, come on, two days, the whole holiday, two days?

3:14Can we just say it's one day because I'm going to Israel for a week? Can I just keep it one day over there? By the way, any person that lives in the diaspora, which means anywhere outside of Israel, even if you go to Israel for a holiday, you still have to keep two days of Yom Tov. The only time you keep only one day for a holiday is if you live in Israel, which means that if you're going to visit Israel, that's not living; that's just visiting. When a person receives a mitzvah and he doesn't appreciate it, he actually gets annoyed by it. His friend encourages him, saying, "No, come on, let's go daven." He responds, "Again, daven? We davened already in the morning. Do we have to do it again?" Yes, we daven three times a day. His friend suggests going to the shiur, but he retorts, "Ah, a shiur? It's too long. We'll just watch it on YouTube tomorrow." This means you're presented with a mitzvah opportunity, yet you don't truly appreciate it. Hashem says that's not good. That's not good. You're treating my diamonds like they're fecal matter. He says, if you consider my decrees loathsome, if you're rejecting them, if you don't perform all of them and you annul my covenant, then I'll do the same to you. So, Hashem says, if you violate them in six different ways, then the same will happen to you.

4:39You reject them, you hate them, you annul them, and so on and so forth. Hashem says, "I'll do the same thing to you." One of the greatest sages that Am Yisrael ever had says, "Look at this." Hashem says each time—each time you reject one of His mitzvot, each time you find one of His mitzvot disgusting. You don't feel like doing it. You'd rather go play basketball instead. You'd rather go watch the movies instead. You'd rather play with your phone instead. You'd rather do something else instead of one of His mitzvot. This is rejecting His mitzvot. Each time, He's going to send you some type of difficulty in your life. Now, as it says, each time He's giving you a warning shot: "Please, My son, come back to Me, do teshuva." Now, if you do teshuva after one, we're good. It's as if nothing ever happened. But if you don't do the teshuva, then He has to send you another test, another difficulty, another flat tire, more money lost, more problems in the marriage, more problems with the kids, more problems in life. Six different times, you still didn't get the sign. Then you get the seventh one. What's the seventh one? The seventh one is the one that breaks the person.

5:54Now, those first six should have made you do teshuva. Had they helped you do teshuva, guess what? That suffering would have been very valuable for you because it would have replaced the suffering that a person would get in Shamayim, in heaven. Well, not heaven, Gehenom. Suffering a person encounters here can replace suffering over there. So, how is it that you don't? After the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh time, we should be good. Then you don't have any account or balance to pay over there. But if you didn't do teshuva then guess what? Even if you did teshuva after the seventh one, the first six don't count. The suffering you endured all this time for the first six times doesn't count for anything. You simply just suffered for no reason. Anyone that truly suffered in their life knows this is miserable. Why? Because at the very least, you find out that suffering is called kaparat avonot. It's as if you brought a sacrifice, a replacement where your suffering is in place of your sins. So you think that every time you suffer, it replaces the suffering you might experience over there.

7:09But Hashem says, "No, no, my friend. If the suffering led you to do teshuva, then yes, you're right. You go straight to heaven. But if your suffering is just simply suffering, then the Alshich HaKadosh says it doesn't help you at all up there. It doesn't help you at all. So, now that we understand a little bit more about how Hashem..." deliver his reward and punishment. We have to try to understand why does He do all of this? Does He get any pleasure out of making somebody suffer? Absolutely not. What is He trying to do this whole time? He's trying to get our attention. He says, "Son, you're going the wrong road. You want to marry a non-Jewish woman. If you marry a non-Jewish woman, guess what? Your kids will not be Jewish." So now you think, what's the big deal? What do I need, like somebody told me a few days ago? This guy from New York said, "Listen, I tried being religious for ten years, but I don't know. It's too difficult of a lifestyle. I found a woman that's a doctor, and she's really nice. She has a lot of money, and she's pretty, and she cares about me. So what if she's not Jewish? If that's what Hashem sent to me, then that's what Hashem wants." He rationalizes it as if Hashem is doing this, not him, not his desires. The challenge here is the misinterpretation of divine will in terms of personal desires. We often see people confusing their own desires for what they believe Hashem wants for them. This is a common rationalization people use to justify actions that may not align with Torah values. It's important to understand that our desires and the conveniences of life might not always be what Hashem truly desires for us. Decisions should be made in alignment with the teachings and wisdom of the Torah.

8:36Guess what? If that person doesn't do teshuva in his life, the amount of suffering that this person will have is endless. And the reason why is this: number one, one day he's not going to think like this. One day, he's not going to be 25 or 35 years old, full of desires. One day, he is going to be 45 or 55 years old, and the desires decrease as you get older. Ask any old man; sexual desires decrease as you get older, and... One day this 25 to 35-year-old doctor is not going to be as attractive as she was when she was 25 or 35. Just look at your grandmother and look at her when she was 20. They don't look the same. You don't have to be a genius to see this. You need that vision. They are not the same; 20 and 75 are not the same, so that means what he's basing his eternity on is something that's temporary and fleeting. that temporary decision will decide eternity. Now, one day he's gonna have a little kid, or two kids, or five kids; and those kids, they're gonna be babies in the beginning. You're gonna make all the choices for them, but one day, they're gonna grow up, and they're gonna want to make their own choices. Then the kid's gonna be 13, 14, 15 years old with an attitude and say, "Uh, so, uh, listen..."

9:58Decided that Christianity is for me and the dad, even though his wife is Christian. He's not exactly approving of Christianity. He just thought that it's just between him and the girl, but he figured no, no, I'll raise my kids Jewish. And the kid says, no, no, Abba, you are dad, you married a non-Jew, I'm going to marry them. What's the difference? And all of a sudden, the kids want Christmas trees, and all of a sudden, they want to eat pork for Shabbat. And all of a sudden... Start bringing all types of Buddha statues into the house and all types of other things into the house that they don't think there's anything wrong with. And he starts realizing, well, I guess I should have thought about this 15 years ago. That's just what the kids, then there's... In general, we see that when the physicality is no longer the same, you start seeing, "Okay, so what else do we have in common other than the fun, the fun we had 15 years ago?" What else do we have in common? You start seeing that the Jewish mentality, the Jewish ideology, the Jewish perception of the world is always going to be different from the rest of the nations, even if you're not religious, and...

11:16Jews, by nature, are always going to be different from non-Jews. There are no exceptions. Just look, for example, at some of the Jews in this generation. Some can't stay still like others; sometimes they are entrepreneurs, sometimes they are regular people, sometimes they are innovators, and sometimes they are just average Joe's. Jews can't be average; we always have to cause a scene or do something. If the Jew wants to be going, he will always be different from everybody else. Just look, for example, at some of the Jews throughout history and even in our current generation. They can't stay still; sometimes they're entrepreneurs, sometimes innovators, and sometimes just regular people. Jews can't be average. We always have to cause a scene or do something. So a Jew can't just accept the fact that he doesn't like Judaism; he has to advertise it. He becomes public enemy number one of God, makes a whole website about atheism, or better yet, he joins Christianity and starts leading a whole ministry to convert Jews to Christianity. What do you think, is it a coincidence that the biggest missionaries in the world are Jews? Biggest missionaries, Christian missionaries in the world, are the ones that are around Donald Trump in his cabinet, the ones that put Donald Trump in power. Everybody's a big fan of Donald Trump. Just so you know, he says he loves Jews. Why does he love Jews? Because all the Jews that he knows are heretics. I don't have anything against Donald Trump, but that's a reality. All of the Jews that he knows are heretics. They're missionaries for Christianity. Why?

12:42Because a Jewish neshama cannot stay still. Now, if a person starts to think about what happens after this life, he starts realizing that maybe, just maybe, I should think twice before I even take a sip out of a drink without saying a bracha. Maybe, just maybe, I should think twice before I bite into this burger that may not be kosher. Maybe, just maybe, I should think about saying thank you to Hashem for giving me food by reciting Birkat Hamazon. At some point, this life ends for all of us—I'm not wishing bad on anybody; I'm just telling you that at some point, it ends. The longer you live, the more people you know that have passed away. I already know about half a dozen or so who have died from my high school class, and... It happens that they didn't expect to die at 25, 35, or 40. They don't want to expect to die tonight. It just happens; Hashem decides time's up, finished. So now, at some point, you have to ask: what happens then? What happens after this life? If you think that life ends and that's it, you can go do whatever you want. There's no point to life. You're no different than a plant, no different than a cow that lives to be slaughtered or to be milked until it's been slaughtered.

14:07But if you think that there is an afterlife, because that's what the Torah says, then now you have to start being concerned about what you will do to prepare for this afterlife. What's going to be there? Because some people in this world today, they have houses, multi-million dollar houses, beautiful houses. I mean, I've seen some houses in my life. I mean, you see these things, it's mamash, unbelievable. Their bathrooms! I have a friend, old friend, who still owes me half a million dollars. Nice friend he is. But, anyway, this friend who owes me half a million dollars for about 15 years and he's never going to pay it back until Hashem forces him to. This guy, he spent, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of $250,000 to $300,000 on his bathroom. On a bathroom. A bathroom! Now just imagine, I mean, $250,000. If I put $250,000 in front of you guys, everybody would say, "Whoa, how can I get that?" That's a lot of money. Now imagine spending a quarter of a million dollars on a bathroom. That's some bathroom. I saw the bathroom, and the shower has six different knobs. I wanted to live inside the shower when I saw it. I asked, "Can I move in here?" He responded, "How much is rent?" This shower is nicer than my house. Then you see the stones, mosaic and stones. I could have sworn they were diamonds.

15:28Unbelievable bathroom. The bathroom was beautiful. Some people have bathrooms even fancier than this. Their bathrooms are so beautiful. But guess what? Their olam haba (the World to Come) smells disgusting. Their life after this life still stinks. Why? Because all of their effort they invested into the world here, into the bathroom here. Instead of investing into a world that actually matters, that lasts much longer than the 70, 80, 90, or even 120 years that a person will live here. This is what a Jew is supposed to think about, not just what can I get out of this life now, today, today, today. What am I doing today? And how will it affect that next world? Instead of investing in a world that actually matters, which lasts much, much longer than the 70, 80, 90, or 120 years that a person will live here, this is what a Jew is supposed to think about. Not just, "What can I get out of this life now, today, today, today? What am I doing today?" And how will it affect the next world? Because there are plenty of people with fantastic houses here, but over there, they're homeless. Beautiful bathrooms here that you can eat off the floor in, you can cook in there. But over there, they're all on a bus, it smells gross. That's what a Jew needs to think about. Because if you only think about this world, it's impossible for a person to truly understand their purpose and existence in this world.