In his brilliant opus “Guide for the Perplexed” (“Moreh Nevuhim”, Heb.) Rabbi Moshe Maimonides, Rambam, highlights the importance of the applying our sincere reasoning and our own intellect to find and try to get closer to God. In his book he suggest a metaphorical classification of individuals and groups, based on their desire (or it’s absence) and on their individual sincere efforts to know the Divine Truth and to know God.
Quoted from Book 3, Chapter 51:
I will begin the subject of this chapter with a simile. A king is in his palace, and all his subjects are partly in the country, and partly abroad. Of the former some have their backs turned towards the king’s palace, and their face in opposite direction; and some are desirous and zealous to go to the palace, seeking to ” inquire in his temple”, and to minister before him, but have not yet seen even the wall of his palace. Of those who desire to go to his palace, some reach it, and go round about in search of the entrance gate; others have passed through the gate and walk about in the ante-chamber; and others have succeeded entering into the inner part of the palace and being present in the same room with the king in the royal palace. But even the latter do not see the king or speak to him immediately upon entering his room; for after having entered the inner room of the palace, another effort is required before they can face the king – at a distance or close by – hear his words or speak to him.
I will now explain the simile which I have made.
The people who are abroad are all those who have no religion, neither one based on speculation nor one received by tradition. Such are the extreme Turks that wander about in the north, the Kushites who live in the south, and those in our country who are like those. I consider those as irrational beings and not as human beings; they are below mankind, but above monkeys, since they have the form and shape of man, and mental faculty above that of the monkey.
Those who are in the country, but turned their backs towards the King’s palace are those who possess a religion, belief, and thought , but happen to hold false doctrines, which they either adopted in consequence of great mistakes made in their own speculations, or received from others who misled them (doctrines passed as tradition, ed.). Because of these doctrines they recede more and more from the royal palace the more they seem to proceed. These are worst than the first class (first class – people living abroad – the atheists in this metaphor, ed.), and under certain circumstances it may become necessary for God to slay them, and exterminate their doctrines, in order that others should not be misled.
Those who desire to arrive at the palace, and to enter it, but have never yet seen it, are the mass of religious people; the multitude that observe the Divine commandments but are ignorant. Those who arrive at the palace, but go around it, are those who devote themselves exclusively to the study of the practical law; they believe traditionally in true principles of faith and learn practical worship of God, but are not trained in philosophical treatment of the principles of the Law, and do not endeavor to establish the truth of their faith on their own by proof. Those who undertake to investigate the principles of religion, have come into the inner chamber; and there is no doubt that these can also be divided into the different grades. But those who have succeeded to find a proof to everything that can be proved, who have a true knowledge of God, so far as a true knowledge can be attained, and are near the truth wherever an approach to the truth is possible, they have reached the goal, and are in the palace where the King lives.
