Now, there’s something here that I know might bother some of you. And it should. We see that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is interested that people should think about Him; that they should honor Him by thinking about Him. But the question arises, why does He need that people should think about Him? What does He care? It should be immensely unimportant to Him what people think or not think.
The kashe was once asked this way: The Good One created everything as a Glory for Himself (Siddur: Yotzer Hameoros). That’s the statement: He’s good and He created everything as an honor to Him. That’s not easy to understand because if He did it for His Glory, for His own kovod, is He called the Tov? We think that’s the opposite of ‘good’ when someone does something to glorify himself.
The Best Glory
And the answer is this: The greatest tov for us is that we should recognize Hashem’s Glory. The greatest good we could achieve in this world is if we succeed in utilizing our lives to gain awareness of Hashem, emunah, yiras Hashem, deiah. The more successful we are in gaining a real tangible feeling of Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s Presence in the world, that’s the greatest good for us because that’s going to be the measure of our reward in the World to Come.
And that’s what those words are reminding us: Because Hashem is a tov u’meitiv that’s why He made this kavod for His Name, so that we should recognize Him from this world; so that we should come to be makir the Borei.
And therefore, if you spend your lives thinking about Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so He says, “You’re not doing Me any favors! If you’re righteous, what are you giving Me? (Iyov 35:7). It’s for your benefit. I made everything so that you should see My Glory because that’s your eternal greatness.”
And so if you’re intelligent and you train yourself properly, you can transform the whole world into kavod Hashem. Wherever you look, you’ll recognize the handiwork of the Expert Craftsman, the Great Designer, the Master Engineer, Who planned and created everything. That’s called living purposefully because Hakadosh Baruch Hu made it for that purpose. The entire world is made for the purpose of kevod Hashem!
