Get a 'Clue'

Literally. Any Bal’more folk own the game Clue and want to teach me how to play? I need to code up a game based on Clue, and I’ve never even played the original! (This is b/c it required writing, so we couldn’t play on Shabbos, hence we never played…) Anyway, one of my classmates was trying to explain the logic to me.

She said, “All the information available to the players is false; all the information that is hidden is true.”

“Hmm, sounds like an aphorism about life,” I responded.

She laughed, but it got me thinking. Perhaps my off-the-cuff remarks weren’t utterly specious. The idea lingered in the back my mind and crept into the forefront while reading the following on another blog:

Bertrand Russell (a British philosopher and mathematician who was a foremost proponent of atheism in the early twentieth century) once was asked what he will respond if after he dies he meets God and He will judge him for his lack of belief. Russell responded that he would ask God, why did You not provide sufficient evidence of Your existence. Hashem might respond, why didn’t you exercise your common sense and look beyond the secular surface of the world, and see the overwhelming evidence of My existence and of My Holy Torah.

And even many of us refuse to look beyond the surface as well. But why?

In his sefer Sha’arei Orah, R’ Avigdor Miller suggests that one of the reasons we are lazy in our efforts to come to a more profound understanding of Hashem’s exaltedness is because we erroneously think that since the aspects of Hashem that are hidden from us are infinite, it is impossible for us to truly fathom his greatness His greatness. Furthermore, we defend our behavior with the argument that we shouldn’t be attempting the impossible, especially if He hid Himself! Rationalize it as we might, we cannot deny the fact that we have a tremendous obligation to contemplate, to reflect, in order to continuously increase out recognition of Hashem bit by bit. Granted, this obligation knows no bounds, but we must do everything we can. We should follow the example of Dovid HaMelech. Though he declared "ולגדולתו, אין חקר" (Psalms 145:3) he nonetheless said " וגדולתך אספרנה"(Psalms 145:6).