God left the world unfinished. That’s not a flaw in the design — that’s the design.
When the city of Sodom loses its way, God lets Avraham know that its doom is near. Avraham Avinu — the man who left everything at God’s command, who walked with the Almighty in a way almost no human being ever has — plants his feet, lifts his face to heaven, and says:
חָלִלָה לְּךָ מֵעֲשֹׂת כַּדָּבָר הַזֶּה לְהָמִית צַדִּיק עִם־רָשָׁע וְהָיָה כַצַּדִּיק כָּרָשָׁע חָלִלָה לָּךְ הֲשֹׁפֵט כׇּל־הָאָרֶץ לֹא יַעֲשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט – It profanes You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. It profanes You! Will the Judge of all the earth not do justice? (18:25)
There can be no mistake that he is arguing with God. Not politely. He is arguing, and he means it.
The obvious question to ask is, how does Avraham have the nerve to argue with God?
Rav Yitzchak Berkowitz gives an answer that is one of the most fundamental ideas in all of Jewish thought: He’s supposed to.
The world is a mess. Not without beauty — but a mess, genuinely, unmistakably. Children get sick. Good people suffer. Teachers who pour their souls into classrooms can’t make rent. Friends go through things that keep you up at night. You have your own list. We all do.
But belief gets dangerous when we twist it.
When confronted with the world’s brokenness, there’s a temptation to reach for what sounds like a very religious answer: Emunah. Bitachon. Ratzon Hashem. Bashert. It’s God’s will. Who are we to question? We fold our hands and call it faith.
But that’s not faith. That’s fatalism. And Judaism fights fatalism like it fights idol worship — because fatalism is idol worship. It takes the living, demanding God of Avraham and turns Him into a statue that sits there while you do nothing.
Notice something about Avraham’s argument over Sodom. He never says a word about what he wants. He doesn’t say, “This doesn’t sit right with me.” He says: This is wrong. He invokes the language of values, not preference. He is making a moral argument. And God does not rebuke him for it.
Because God builds the gap on purpose.
The world’s flaws are by design. The world is unfinished, not because God ran out of time, but because the next move is ours. Every injustice you notice, every situation where you think — this shouldn’t be like this — is not an accident. That is God tapping you on the shoulder. That is your soul recognizing something that needs to be made right.
Think about what the alternative would mean. If God wants things exactly as they are, then shut down the chesed organizations — God wants those people poor. Shutter the schools — God prefers ignorance. Throw out your glasses, skip the surgeon, let the fire burn.
But nobody lives this way, because nobody actually believes this. Nobody! But we sometimes speak this way, which gives us cover to do nothing.
Anyone who has spent enough time with people in real pain quickly learns the same thing: we don’t know why things happen the way they do. Our primary experience teaches us that the simple moral ledger we wish existed — where bad things happen to bad people — simply isn’t the world we live in.
But, as R’ Jonathan Sacks teaches, we shouldn’t want it to. Because if the calculations were transparent, we’d observe and nod. There’d be nothing left to do. So instead, we are left with the gap. With the audacity of a man who loves God so much that he cannot look away when something seems wrong. Will the Judge of all the earth not do justice?
That audacity is the gift.
None of this is easy to hold. It is much, much simpler to fold your hands and call it faith.
Don’t silence the feeling. When something bothers you — a kid struggling, a family going through something awful, that friend you’re worried about — don’t talk yourself out of it. That feeling is the assignment. That is your moral compass. The worst thing you can do is sophisticate yourself into feeling nothing.
Do something. Avraham didn’t just feel bad about Sodom. He argued, he pushed, he tried. He didn’t save the city, but he established what a Jew does when he sees injustice: he tried to do something about it. You may not fix everything. But you try.
And don’t let Ratzon Hashem be an excuse. The will of God is not a destination; it’s a starting point. God’s will is the prompt, not the conclusion. To use Ratzon Hashem to justify doing nothing is to turn it inside out. It means: God has arranged this reality, with all its brokenness, and He is looking at you. Now what are you going to do about it?
We’d be mistaken to think that Avraham Avinu argued because he doubted; he argued because he believed. He cared. He looked at Sodom and couldn’t accept it. He was, in the deepest sense, bothered — and he let that feeling drive him into action.
We carry that in us.
The world has gaps. God put them there on purpose. Each of us, in our own circle of influence — in our families, our communities, our work — can see something that needs to be better. So ask for help. Pray hard. And then go do something about it.
Don’t accept the world as it is.
That refusal is not a lack of faith.
It is the faith.