I have been looking at Musar (Ethics) books for a while and at some point I started to notice that they divide a persons obligations into two parts. בין אדם לחיברו and בין אדם למקום- Between man and his fellow man and between man and God.
You find some people stress one area over the other. But from what I can tell the books of Musar have the viewpoint that both areas are important.
What that means in a practical vein is that if you want to repent, you would have to look at each different area individually. That is probably so hard that you can see why some people stress one area over the other. And there might not be any choice but to take that approach. Still it is important to realize that at least in theory ones' obligations are divided evenly between these two areas.
Though the source of obligation is Divine the approach in Musar that the obligations between man and man precede those between man an God. See Nahar Shalaom of Shalom Sharabi where he gives a mystic reason for this.
The evil inclination is also divided into two parts. One physical and the other spiritual. The spiritual is the tricky one. That is the one that gets and impersonates a Torah scholar and gets people to sin as they think they are doing a great mitzvah.
"The evil inclination is dressed in Mitzvot." That is the evil inclination does not try to seduce people with "Let's go and do a sin." It says rather, "Let's go and do a mitzvah."
You find some people stress one area over the other. But from what I can tell the books of Musar have the viewpoint that both areas are important.
What that means in a practical vein is that if you want to repent, you would have to look at each different area individually. That is probably so hard that you can see why some people stress one area over the other. And there might not be any choice but to take that approach. Still it is important to realize that at least in theory ones' obligations are divided evenly between these two areas.
Though the source of obligation is Divine the approach in Musar that the obligations between man and man precede those between man an God. See Nahar Shalaom of Shalom Sharabi where he gives a mystic reason for this.
The evil inclination is also divided into two parts. One physical and the other spiritual. The spiritual is the tricky one. That is the one that gets and impersonates a Torah scholar and gets people to sin as they think they are doing a great mitzvah.
"The evil inclination is dressed in Mitzvot." That is the evil inclination does not try to seduce people with "Let's go and do a sin." It says rather, "Let's go and do a mitzvah."
