Reply To: Great??

“That sounds to me like a different point”

You’re right. They are not really connected. But your point was somewhere in my drawn out thought process.

“It sounds now like you are saying we cannot know how special it is to be frum. That doesn’t bother me. Does it bother you?”

Yes. It does. Why wouldn’t you want to appreciate Judaism as much as you possibly could? But just to be clear, I’m not saying one has to be a Baal Tshuva to fully appreciate being frum. I’m talking about letting your children make their own choices (within reason of course) and let them come to understanding the beauty of Torah on their own.

“And what does that have to do with choices? I thought you were saying that we are not properly serving Hashem because we haven’t made a choice–to which I responded that I have made a choice.”

I did not say ‘not properly serving Hashem’. But your choice is a choice within a non-choice. Take the food example- You feed your child Oreos day in and day out. And he can decide how many Oreos he wants to eat, when to eat them… But that’s not really a choice. Same thing with your ‘choice’.

Don’t get me wrong. Living a sheltered life is safe. It’s amazing if someone is completely blocked off from any secular influences. I just think that their major choice in life was made for them. Even if they were to come to the same conclusion, it’s different when you yourself make that decision.