The Goodness of the World - Rabbi Benzion Shafier

one of the most important questions that a thinking person could ever ask himself is what was it like before God created the world right the Torah tells us voracious bouroullec him in the beginning a Shem created the world well what was it like before God created the world no trees no oceans the rivers no stars no Sun absolute absence of anything and when you think about that key moment you can then begin looking at the world with wide-open eyes and ask yourself the single question of why did God make the world the way he did and I think when you study the world and you ask why you begin to discover many many things and that are I opening let me begin with something very very simple if you look out at the world there and you'll see a tremendous array of colors if you pass the trees a forest on a fall day you'll see oranges and reds and yellows if you look out at the ocean you'll see gorgeous aqua colors a world replete with so many colors well here's the question why did God create color black and white would function as a child I grew up watching TV in black and white and you could watch the full drama within the gray spectrum the good guys wore white and bad guys were black but you were able to see and experience all of life why did God create color and the answer is from utilitarian from a functional standpoint there is no reason and the world would exist you and I would exist and our life would be the same but it will be lacking a certain dimension you see color is beautiful color adds Beauty to the world and the reason that God created color in the world is so that you and I should enjoy it so that we should look out at an ocean we should look at a flower and say that's beautiful the beauty was created for our enjoyment and if you begin studying the world and you'll find so many features that God put into the world not for a functional benefit but strictly for our enjoyment let's take something called food by all rights food which is needed for nutrition needed to exist should all tastes like brown beans it should all be one color and all taste may be like cardboard yeah that's not the way the food tastes there are so many different flavors and aromas and textures in food and if you begin studying the food that we consume and you'll see a tremendous amount of wisdom and for thought went into it let's start with the orange if you peel the orange and bite into it you taste the delicious citrusy sweet sort of flavor why did God design and that orange to taste that way we probably would have eaten if we were hungry but there's a tremendous amount of enjoyment that you take when you consume that orange but let's dig in another layer and sort of uncover some of the wisdom there I remember very clearly as a young child in elementary school being bored in class and peeling that orange and finding the many wedges and then taking that one single wedge and then if you peel the membrane of that wedge you'll note that there are hundreds of juice sacks why is it that that wedge is made up of hundreds of juice sacks you see the answer is because when you bite into that wedge you get a burst of flavor if you look at children's candies they advertise bite in for a burst of flavor you see it wasn't enough that the delicious sweet citrusy flavor would be there God wanted to enhance our enjoyment and so he designed the tiny little juice sacks to contain the juice so that when you bite into it you get the burst of flavor watermelon has an equivalent amount of water but it's a very different experience and when you begin studying the different flavors textures aroma's in the world you begin seeing so many of them are created strictly for our enjoyment but let's begin focusing on another little element over here do you ever notice that foods come in vastly different colors why is it that the oranges orange and the Apple is red the answer to that question can be easily found if you go into your local supermarket and you find I'm tide detergent Tide detergent is in that neon colored container and it's been that way for quite a number of years and because the manufacturer of tide did a tremendous amount of market research and that color has an eye appeal and the reason why it's packaged in that color is because a consumer sees it enjoys it will buy it more quickly Cheerios has been in that faded yellow color for almost 60 years now because it has a certain I appeal and when you think about the fact that the orange is orange the banana is yellow the Apple is red not because it enhances your enjoyment when you eat it but that it should look beautiful it should have an appeal you should enjoy even beginning to look at it but let's take one more step to begin understanding this when you bite into that Apple you don't get that burst of flavor you get a very different experience why is it that when you bite into the Apple you get that crunch the answer again can be found in your local supermarket go to the breakfast aisle and you'll see 75 feet floor-to-ceiling breakfast cereals bragging to be crunchy crunchy crunchy crunchy or ours is so crunchy we even give you earplugs why is it that each cereal is bragging to be crunchy ER than its neighbor and the answer is quite simple when you take a spoon of corn flakes and you crunch there's an enjoyment that you get from the texture my kids if the milk is in the cereal 20 seconds too long oh it's soggy I don't want to eat it there's a certain enjoyment that you get when you bite into something crunchy so God designed the cellular walls of the Apple to be brittle unlike the experience of the orange I'm different than the experience of appear for the life of me I can't quite figure out the banana but each one of the foods that God designed was given different colors and different experiences for us to enjoy different textures and it doesn't just end there do you ever notice that when you have a cold food doesn't just just doesn't taste right now scientists now explained to us that most of our sense of taste really comes through our sense of smell and we really only taste by smelling if you have a cold and you're congested you really can't taste it you ever noticed that the foods that we eat have so many different aromas and let's go back to that orange for a minute and when you peel that orange you get that missed you ever notice that the mist smells just like the orange but if you get it on your finger and you taste it it's bitter why is it that that mist has the aroma of the orange but not the taste the answer is because when you break the peel and you get that spray you smell the orange you hunger for the orange and that enhances your experience if you'd like to understand what that means God microencapsulated sent into the peel tiny little capsules with liquid that contain the aroma but not the taste because you don't need to eat it and when you think about the fact that the outside of the peel is orange because that has the eye appeal to the inside of the peel is white because you don't need it and when you study the world that we live in and you study so many features that God created one purpose and one purpose only for us to enjoy for us to benefit from flowers are magnificent and they come in so many different designs in so many different forms and do you know that the B is largely colorblind the color of the flower was not put there to attract the B the B is attracted by the sense of smell and it's attracted to pollinate because it smells but the beauty of the flower the arrangements the colors was created for you and I to enjoy and when you begin studying the vastness of this world and you begin studying the amount of care and effort that God put into this world strictly for us to enjoy you begin to realize something that God is a benefactor God wants to give God is a giver and created the entire world and all that it exists for us to enjoy for us to accomplish God has a real mission for each one of us and our mission might be much bigger than just living in a temporal world we live in and but in this world itself God wants us to enjoy and when you begin studying the features the foods the aroma is the site the beauty of this world you see a good giving God and you begin on some level to understand your relationship to your Creator you