QUESTION:
The Gra says that a person who commits serious aveiros but who has bitachon is better off than a person who learns Torah but who doesn’t have bitachon. How can a person who commits aveiros also be a baal bitachon? How can it be that he recognizes Hashem is with him and even so he goes against His will? Isn’t that oxymoron?
ANSWER:
A person is a wondrous combination, a complex creation of both a soul and a body together – two opposites that are integrated together. Every person has opposite aspects and contradictions within him. It is therefore very common for a person to have emunah and bitachon in one area, with less emunah and bitachon in another area. This can either be because his role and his soul root is more connected with the area that he has bitachon in, or because his life circumstances brought him there. It is very common for businessmen to have emunah and bitachon that a financial deal will work out, and this is because their very work requires them to get used to taking risks and believing that they will succeed. It is like what Chazal say about sailors, who are called tzaddikim, because they naturally rely on Hashem since they often face storms at sea. Furthermore, sometimes a person can be a rasha regarding a parituclar aspect that he has a strong yetzer hora for. For example, in the generation of the wicked King Menasheh, there was a very strong yetzer hora to worship idols. Every person has a yetzer hora for a certain thing which he can easily fall in with. And regarding everyone collectively, Chazal said that all people stumble in the sin of avak lashon hora (conversations that can lead to gossiping about others), and anyone who regularly commits a certain sin is called a rasha [regarding that sin].
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