As Rav Herzl Hefter (one of the Maggidei Shiur here at our yeshiva) is fond of saying, learning Torah is all about "living with tension." Instead of assuming that one opinion must be correct, we need to understand the truth in both-of all-of the opinions and live in the tension of paradox. Of course, practically, most of the time, we have to make a decision eventually as to what we do.
Ramban on this week's parashah (Bamidbar 1: 45), comments on the puzzling question of why it is that Hashem would want the Jewish people to conduct a census in the first place? Of several answers which the Ramban presents, the one most in accord with 'common sense' is that Am Yisrael needed to know how many troops they would have in each 'brigade' for when they would arrive in Eretz Yisrael and make war to conquer the land. Essentially, according to the Ramban, this was a matter of military strategy, in which we must engage because, "the Torah does not rely on the miracle of one chasing a thousand." Essentially, we don't rely on miracles, but rather plan to win the battle by 'natural' means, and hope and pray that Hashem will grant us victory.
Of course, nothing in Torah is so simple. When Am Yisrael arrives at Eretz Yisrael, and decides - due to the unsettling reports from the spies-not to enter the land for fear of being destroyed in battle by the giant Canaanites, the entire generation is sentenced to die in the desert, never to set foot on Eretz Hakodesh. Given Ramban's reading of the census in Bamidbar, it would seem that we were supposed to make judgments based on military tactics, not rushing blindly into battle. But here, when time comes for the very battle we were preparing for, and we exercise our rational faculties and do what seems reasonable, we're punished.
One could argue that we were supposed to use our rational faculties to run the battle, but we were supposed to fight when Hashem told us to no matter what we thought about it. This solution, once mentioned, seems an obvious synthesis. But one needs to look past the enticingly easy answer to realize that there is a complex dichotomy at play here, a deep tension between living in the world practically, and relying on help from Heaven to get us through. No clear answer is granted either way in the Torah. For one who wants a clear answer, the Torah itself is often absolutely infuriating. In the end, what should one do?
The truth is, like in most such issues, neither extreme is what the Torah wants from us. Sometimes, in some ways, Hashem wants us to 'take care of ourselves.' In other times, in other ways, we are meant to rely on His infinite goodness to overflow and take care of us without any physical effort on our part. Awareness of the tension between these two poles-as well as all the grey in between-is what conditions us to be sensitive to critical subtleties when points of contact between a world in which theory can often 'live' on its own, and our world of the practical present, in which we make decisions and take actions to live by. This is part of the dialectic process by which we refine and perfect our souls, bouncing back and forth between the two seeming opposites, but always upward in the direction of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.