When my oldest daughter was 12, she was an avid Yankee fan. And she influenced the rest of the children, and the whole family on a certain level were Yankee fans. One day we were driving and we were passing what was then Shea Stadium, where the Mets play. And my five-year-old daughter starting booing, boooh! Her older sister turned to her and said why are you booing? To which the five-year-old responded why am I booing, that’s the Mets, they’re bad, the Yankees — we’re Yankees fans, the Mets are bad. So my older daughter turned to her and said tell me, do you know what they do in the stadium? No. Do you know how to play baseball? No. Do you know what the Yankees are? No. So why are you booing the Mets? Because the Yankees are good and the Mets are bad.
Now, it’s okay for a five-year-old to have that sort of attitude we’re Yankee fans and we’re not Mets fans, even though she doesn’t understand much about it. But if you ask people some of the basic concepts about the way Hashem runs the world, some of the basic concepts about what Hashem expects from us and what Hashem does and you get the same sort of attitude, listen I’m a Hashem fan, I’m on the good guy’s side, I believe in Hashem, I trust in Hashem. But that person has a fundamental lack of understanding of what Hashem wants from them, what Hashem guarantees. It’s okay to be a very simplistic five-year-old and just say I’m a Yankee fan, but if you’d like to be a baal bitachon (a person who trusts), if you’d like to trust in Hashem, you have to understand how Hashem runs the world, you have to understand the systems that Hashem uses, and you have to understand what Hashem wants from us. To do that you have to study, you have to learn the systems of bitachon, you have to learn emunah (belief), you have to really work on these issues so that you don’t remain just a Hashem fan and never really understand what it is that you believe in.
