Conscience of God
The fundamental basis and first principle of inner conviction is knowing that there is a Prime Being who gave rise to all existence. All entities in the spiritual and physical realms arose solely from the reality of His Being. This Being is the God of the universe and the Master of all the earth. He controls the spheres and the entire universe with infinite and unlimited power, which He displays without interruption. This God is one and can only be one, not two or more. He is one, with a complete unification that surpasses any of the types of unity that are part of the created realms. He is completely unified, and there is no unity similar to His within the created realms. God's capacity and His power have no limitation or boundary. His power is not the power of a body, and He has no body or any other form.
Just as His existence is of a completely different nature from that of created beings, so too, His truth is incomparable to theirs. Whereas all created beings need Him, yet He, Blessed be He, does not need them.
The obligation regarding this doctrine is not merely to understand this precept once, but to agree with it and imprint it on our hearts. It is a permanent obligation for every person to think about and contemplate the existence of the Master of the universe, as well as His greatness, in order to firmly establish the knowledge of God in their hearts and minds. We should all constantly reflect on this, as King David wrote (Psalm 16:8): “I have set God always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.” This recognition of God’s existence includes the acceptance of His Majesty and His constant Authority. Therefore, through this recognition, people are obligated to accept for themselves God’s precept regarding the Seven Noahide Laws.
The Noahide Trail
Any Gentile who accepts these Seven Noahide Commandments and takes care to observe them is truly a pious individual and deserves an eternal portion in the World to Come. This applies only if the person accepts and fulfills them, with the understanding that the Holy One, Blessed be He, commanded them in the Torah and revealed them through Moses, our teacher, and that they were previously commanded to the descendants of Noah to be fulfilled.
Serving God with Mind and Heart
It is the responsibility of each person to strive to understand the Creator, according to their capacity, always meditating on the Creator's greatness and His control over all of creation. This is to awaken our hearts to the love and awe of God.
What is this love and awe? When a person understands that God is the Creator of everything and sustains everything in existence at every moment, and that God created all people, so they must honor and serve Him, and thus meditate on the infinite greatness of God, according to their particular capacity and level of understanding, in this way they will come to love God.
When we contemplate the humility of all creation in comparison to the Creator of everything, we discover the infinite greatness of God; in this way, awe and fear of God descend upon us. A person will also feel less prideful upon realizing that they are a small and humble creation with very limited understanding, standing in the Presence of Almighty God.
This also includes the effort a person should make to follow the right paths and perform actions pleasing to God, even if there are no specific applicable commandments. God expects that if a person is blessed with the opportunity to learn these ways, they will strive to follow them. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible revealed that these are forms of kindness, justice, mercy, righteousness, grace, and humility. Furthermore, each person should orient their mind and heart so that their actions are in accordance with the Creator's will.
Also included in the obligation to believe in and acknowledge the Creator of the universe is the trust that each person must place in God. A person must have sufficient conviction that God is undoubtedly concerned for them, just as He is for all His other creations, and that everything God does is for the person's ultimate good, since God is the supreme good. One aspect of this trust is that each of God's commandments will truly be for the benefit of the person to whom it was given, just as it is for the benefit of the entire world.
The main part of this service of the heart and mind is prayer. We should always pray before God, making our requests to Him for all our needs. We should also thank and praise God, always according to our individual capacity. Another objective of this process of prayer and contemplation is for the person to know that there is nothing worthy of absolute trust except the One God, who is the King of the universe.
When a person prays, they should clearly express their words to God with their lips, if possible verbally, and not just in their thoughts, so that they may gain the merit of doing a good work in God's service. A person may pray at any time of day, and using whatever words they choose, as long as it is respectful. But one should be careful not to use prayers composed by idol worshippers for their liturgies, and one should not pray to God in a house where an idol is worshipped.
Prayer should be offered honorably, in order to honor God. Therefore, it is also meritorious to pray in honorable attire. One should not pray in dirty clothes, nor naked, nor in the presence of other naked people. Furthermore, one should not pray where there is foul odor, nor in a sink or bathroom, or within 1.8 meters (6 feet) of excrement. If one finds oneself in a place where other people are naked and needs to offer a prayer to God, and the person has no other opportunity to pray, the person should turn their body (or at least their head) so as not to see them and only then pray. If this is also impossible, and the person finds themselves in the aforementioned situations, with a strong need to pray, and it is not possible to move to a place acceptable for prayer, it is better to pray in one's heart and not say God's name in that place.
Just as a person should praise and bless God for all the good they receive, recognizing that these events come from Him, it is also an obligation to recognize that hurtful experiences and painful situations are likewise directed by God. It is necessary to know and admit that God's ways are beyond human comprehension. Everything God does with a person is truly an opportunity for their well-being, as it has indeed been said (Psalm 145:17): “God is righteous in his ways.” all His ways.”
Everyone has some innate characteristics, and other traits are acquired through habituation and regular behavior. A person should always be evaluating their character traits and striving to guide them in the right direction.
In particular, one must strive to avoid anger and becoming an irascible person. If one is regularly irritable, one must train oneself to act with humility and patience toward others, developing habits until these positive qualities become permanent. The same applies to other character traits, which should be evaluated internally and honestly, determining whether we are acting righteously and constantly correcting ourselves so that we act in a way that allows us to find favor in the eyes of God and others.
The Power of Personal Repentance
Just as each person needs to examine their actions to determine if they are sinful and repent of those that are, in the same way it is necessary to examine the personality of each individual for any negative traits they possess, repenting of them and correcting these characteristics, such as traits of anger, hatred, jealousy, sarcasm, the pursuit of fame and fortune, or the pursuit of physical desires, and anything similar. These latter traits are in some ways worse than sins that simply involve action, since it is very difficult to resist them. Therefore, the prophet said (Isaiah 55:7): “Let the wicked forsake their ways and their sins.” his path y Let the man of iniquity turn his thoughts back to God, and He will have mercy on him, and let him return to our God, for He will forgive abundantly.”
A person should always consider themselves perfectly balanced between merit and sin, just as they should consider the world perfectly balanced between merit and sin. If a person commits a sin, they can tip their own scales, and thus those of the entire world, toward guilt, bringing destruction upon themselves. If they perform a good deed, they can tip their own scales, and thus those of the entire world, toward merit, bringing liberation and salvation upon themselves and others.
Selections from Prayers, Blessings, Principles of Faith, and Divine Service for Noahides
ISBN 978-1-7323735-8-7 Second Edition © Ask Noah International with all rights reserved. (Presented here with permission.)
Adapted from The Divine Code y The Divine Code by Rabbi Moshe Weiner.
It includes daily prayers authorized by Rabbi J. Immanuel Schochet.
Editors: Dr. Michael Schulman, Director, and Howard (Chaim) Reisner, Founder, of Ask Noah International and Asknoah.org
Translation assistance by Mauricio Betancur Diaz and Felisa MacDonald-Todorov.