The Talmud tells of Elisha ben Abuyah, called afterward Acher — "Other" — one of the four sages who entered the mystical Garden and the only one who emerged a heretic. Somewhere in the middle of his long spiritual unraveling, he told a story about his own childhood.
"When I was admitted into the covenant of Abraham — my brit milah, my circumcision — my father Abuyah made a great feast. Many guests came. Some sang. Some danced. But the rabbis at the feast did none of those things. They sat together and spoke of God's wisdom, and of His laws, and of the mysteries of the Torah.
"My father listened to them, and he was pleased. But he was pleased for the wrong reason. He turned to them and said, 'When my son grows up, you shall teach him, and he shall become like you — and my name shall be famous through him.'"
Elisha looked back on that moment with grief. His father had not made him a student of Torah lishmah, for its own sake. He had made him an investment, a vehicle for the family name. And Elisha believed this foundational crack was why he had eventually broken.
"In my latter days," he said, "I have become wicked and an apostate."
The rabbis preserved his confession unblinkingly. A child raised on Torah taught for glory will grow up to doubt every verse he ever learned. The motive behind the teaching is half the Torah itself.