The Sin of Refusing to Look at Oneself

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Artwork: Agonizing Remorse, by Robbie Trevino

The Sin of Refusing to Look at Oneself

The first of the Neviim Acharonim (Later Prophets) to prophesy about the destruction of Bayis Rishon (the First Temple) and Galus Bavel (the Babylonian exile) was Yeshayahu, in the first prophecy he received:

[Hashem] said: Go and say to this people, "You surely listen, but you do not understand; you surely see, but you do not know. The heart of this people has become fat, its ears have become heavy, its eyes have become covered over – lest it see with its eyes and hear with its ears and understand with its heart, and it return (i.e. engage in teshuvah) and be healed.” (Yeshayahu 6:9-10)

Radak explains:

You listen with your ears to the words of the neviim who rebuke you, but you do not understand; you see the wonders of the Creator but you do not know. In other words, you do not apply your mind, and you do not pay attention to Me. You intentionally fatten your heart and make your ears heavy and cover over your eyes so that you do not hear, and do not see, and do not understand, and do not know, for you desire neither teshuvah nor "healing," which is the forgiveness after teshuvah.

Yeshayahu does not focus on the people’s sinfulness per se. Rather, he rebukes them for their refusal to look at themselves with a critical mind, since doing so would prompt them to do teshuvah.

There are two ways to understand the intent of this message. The first is to assume that the navi is primarily concerned with the sinfulness of the people, and he is simply pointing out that their impediment to doing teshuvah and being “healed” is their refusal to look, listen, and know themselves. The second reading is that the navi is primarily concerned with the people’s resistance to the type of self-knowledge which leads to teshuvah, and the oblique reference to their sinfulness is merely the backdrop of this focus.

I believe that the second understanding is correct. The strongest evidence for this reading is that no sin is explicitly identified other than the refusal to look, listen, and know themselves. This sin is expanded upon by Anthony de Mello in Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality:

The first thing I want you to understand, if you really want to wake up, is that you don't want to wake up. The first step to waking up is to be honest enough to admit to yourself that you don't like it … We don't want to look, because if we do, we may change. We don't want to look. If you look, you lose control of the life that you are so precariously holding together. And so in order to wake up, the one thing you need the most is not energy, or strength, or youthfulness, or even great intelligence. The one thing you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new. The chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away. How much are you ready to take? How much of everything you've held dear are you ready to have shattered, without running away? How ready are you to think of something unfamiliar?

We often resist doing teshuvah because we are attached to a particular behavior and don’t want to stop. But there is another reason why we may resist doing teshuvah: because we are terrified of seeing who we are in the present, or of who we may become in the future if we allow ourselves to let go of the life and the narrative about ourselves that we so desperately and precariously cling to.

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