Chasidut for Genesis 6:22

Still another facet of the line:‎אלה תולדות נח, נח איש צדיק, תמים ‏היה בדורותיו‎, may be appreciated by the reader after we have ‎‎“digested” Rashi’s commentary on Genesis 7,7 ‎ויבא נח..... אל ‏התבה מפני מי המבול‎, “Noach (and family) entered the ark on ‎account of the waters of the deluge.” Rashi uses this verse ‎to state that Noach was deficient in his faith in G’d. [Rashi based ‎himself on Bereshit Rabbah 32,6 who explains the extraneous ‎words: “on account of the waters of the deluge,” as telling us that ‎Noach did not enter the ark until the rising waters of the flood ‎made this unavoidable.”] This exegesis appears to fly in the face ‎of an explicit verse in Genesis 6,22 according to which Noach ‎carried out every single one of G’d’s instructions without ‎exception. How could the author of the Midrash accuse Noach of ‎being lacking in faith? If someone spent 120 years building an ‎ark, anticipating a deluge, because G’d had told him to do so, how ‎can this be interpreted as “lack of faith?”‎We must bear in mind that all the holy “sparks” are possessed ‎of an urge to serve their Creator, just as do the different ‎categories of angels all of whom vie to fulfill the wishes of their ‎Creator while being in awe of Him. The tzaddik, being a ‎mortal human being and burdened with an evil urge within him, ‎may not always serve his master with a similar degree of single-‎mindedness. He may be sidetracked by thinking of money, or the ‎allure of secular attractions, including good-tasting fruit, etc. One ‎of the causes distracting the tzaddik from serving his ‎Creator with the same degree of single-mindedness as the angels ‎is that in order to bring the sinners closer to G’d, he must first ‎befriend them. The sinners are sinners because the have within ‎them some of the 288 sparks that “fell off” the Shechinah, ‎as we explained on page 21.
‎[A ‎רשע‎, sinner, who too has been created in the image of G’d, ‎contains within him some of these sparks, though they have ‎become tainted through their close association with the sinner. ‎Ed.]‎‎
In the process of “outreaching,” as it is commonly known in ‎our time, the exposure of the highest ranking type of ‎‎tzaddik to the lure of secularism is such that he may ‎momentarily forget his true calling, feeling drawn to these ‎‎“perks” of olam hazeh, as advertised by Satan in eye-‎catching colors. A tzaddik engaged in such activities may be ‎viewed as being engaged in a ‎מלחמת מצוה‎, “a holy war,” on behalf ‎of his Creator.‎