God Owes us Nothing

At the beginning of our Parsha, Moshe must pray on his own behalf. It’s almost time for the Jews to enter Eretz Yisrael and God has decreed that Moshe won’t join them.

So Moshe prayed: Va’etchanan El Hashem. Rashi comments that the word VaEtchanan is related to the root meaning “free gift”. Rashi writes, “Even though the righteous may base a request on the merit of their good deeds, they request only a free gift of the Omnipresent.” We might expect righteous individuals, Moshe chief among them, to appeal to God with an expectation of a positive response due to their righteousness and fidelity. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Moshe approaches God asking for a free gift. He does not expect anything from Hashem.

Over the years I have met many people dealing with challenges. In my experience one of the best indicators of how a person will weather a challenge is what their expectations are of God. Do they feel that God owes them something? Or do they feel that God owes them nothing? If we feel that God owes us something, then we will often feel short-changed, angry at God, and we might even question the trajectory of our life. A sense of Divine entitlement may lead us to ask: why did I bother being a good person if God wasn’t going to reward me in the fashion that I had hoped for and expected?

But if we feel that God owes us nothing, then our overarching mood will be one of gratitude. So long as there is life, there are opportunities to be grateful. Things might not be working out the way we had hoped for or expected, but that’s never the entire story. The way things are going might be far from expected or ideal, but they present us with opportunities and experiences that we otherwise would not have confronted, and these experiences tap into strengths we may never have known that we possess.

“God owes me nothing” is a mantra that leads to feelings of gratitude. It challenges us to find strengths and prospects in even difficult circumstances. It was Moshe’s motto. (“God owes Me Nothing” is also the title of an unpublished autobiography by Rabbi Joseph Lookstein.) We are primed for accomplishments and satisfaction when we are not fixated on what we think we are owed.

The Baal Haturim notes that the Gematriya of the word Va’etchanan is the same as the word Shirah (515). Moshe’s prayer begins with praise to God for all the great things that He has done. Only after this praise does Moshe make his ask: entry into Eretz Yisrael. The Gemara in Brachot learns from Moshe here that before requesting anything from God we must first praise Him. In our Amida on weekdays we first offer Shevach, praise, and then Bakasha, requests. The purpose of Shevach first is to remind ourselves that no matter how many requests we have, no matter how many problems we have, there are reasons to praise Hashem. God owes us nothing, so anything that is going our way is an opportunity for Shirah.

This Shabbat is called Shabbat Nachamu, referring to the first words of the Haftorah. Nachamu means to be comforted. Nachamu can also mean a change in attitude (ie Shemot 32:14). When we shift from an attitude of “God owes me something” to “God owes me nothing”, from a sense of entitlement to a sense of gratitude, then we can be assured a degree of comfort in the face of any adversity. Let’s commit to more Shirah in our lives. In so doing we can expect to feel more grateful, more joyful, and better prepared to confront and life’s challenges with faith determination.