LOVE IS THE PROOF.

Are you really serious in claiming as true that unless one believes in life after death with Jesus and eschews the notion that death is “the end” of one’s existence,   he has no right to bring a child into the world,  let alone that he will be devoid of the ability to experience joy or have any good reason to pursue love because, given what death does to all things,  one knows that those experiences cannot be permanent?      
      
You do know, don’t you, that the Ancient Greeks and Hebrews thought and believed that death is the permanent end of one's life, that there was no vital and joyous post mortem existence for human beings, especially in a bodiless state up in the sky,  and still felt with great gladness that it was a worthwhile endeavor, if not a welcome duty that would give them purpose and bring into their lives a sense of pride for fulfilling,  to give birth to and to raise children, to find and try to savor love,  and to pursue and enjoy as fully as possible earthly pleasures despite their knowledge that their experience of these things is that they are finite and will come to an end?
     
Or are you ignorant of this fact, not to mention the fact that over the years there have been many people who were/ are atheists and have never felt that a joyous life and love were unobtainable and foolish to pursue, not to mention that they died in a state of contentment and happiness, often because they had their children and their lover/spouse by their bedside?  This seems to be the only way I can account for you claiming apodictically what you claim here.   But then again, you’ve shown that making false claims about the nature of the world and of human beings and what they believe so that you have grounds for making claims that are not true to fact or experience but serve your interest in praising Jesus and in advancing your heresy laden gnostic theology is something that you feel free to do.    
     
Cue the complaint(s)  that this message is boring (without any substantiation that it is),  based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of the composition,  nonsense (without any substantiation that it is),  too long to read,  and/or not worth the time it would take to do so.

Very thoughtful poem.

Yes,  but the problem is that all of its thoughts are fallacious

What proof do you have for the validity of this claim:

Love's the proof that [SIC an] afterlife
is quite certain as the Lord
is the endless love that joins
life on earth with that above.

And didn't you say that love is something foolish to seek out since it only causes pain?

And isn't the expectation in orthodox (not heretical) Christianity that the divinely decreed ultimate destiny of righteous human beings is a renewed bodily life that will be played out and enjoyed on a renewed earth, NOT (as the Gnostics believed and apparently you do as well) some disembodied existence in some nonmaterial celestial,  earth's goodness denying, celestial realm?

Thank you very much, Lozzamus, for your liking and choosing my poem for your reading list. l appreciate that highly as l see the close taste and understanding between us.

Here is something that I hope you'll be willing to do, especially since it seems clear that you think my assessment of your submission has no value and is way off the mark.  
 
Post it to the critical poetry site, Poetry Free For Alll to see if, after reading your piece, any of the good and well-informed poets who populate and post to that site disagree with my view that your piece is not poetry and certainly not good poetry.  
 
If anyone does disagree and, more importantly, goes on to note how well your submission is written and how its subject is a deep and meaningful one -- and thereby, by implication,  notes that  I am wrong in what I've said about your composition,  I will admit that  I have poor critical skills, that what I said about your piece was not in any way worth taking account of, and that I will cease writing to you about my perceptions of the way you write.  
 
And please do not tell me that you won't do this because you already know how good your piece is and how off base my comments on it are.  The purpose of you posting your composition to PFFA  would be to see if someone **other than yourself**,  someone who is well versed in what does and does not make a composition a poem (as, especially,  the moderators of, and many of the contributors to, that site are),  would say, if not also demonstrate by implication, how I've misunderstood your composition and that I don't know what I'm talking about in my assertion that your piece is preachy and way off base in its basic claim that unless there is an afterlife, the finitude of earthly life always and inevitably makes "man" perceive that joy is not worth pursuing and that love, being only temporary, should never be sought
 
Here's the link to the website:   http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/  
 
I look forward to your response to this message.  I hope, though,  that it will   not be one  in which you  beg off doing what I ask of you and by noting that you don't have the time to do so, especially since it takes only a minute to post something to the site.

You are wrong about the ancient Hebrews. They believe in life after death.

And your evidence for this claim is?  Sheol was hardly considered to be a worthwhile "life".  It's only around 165 BCE or so that the idea of resurrection began to be proposed by some within Judaism

You would have to understand the Bible to fully understand all it teaches. The Bible was written and given over thousands of years of Israel history. The Bible says God is not the author of confusion. I Peter 1:12, "Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you...

Leaving aside the fact that you have no knowledge of how much I am or am not familiar with the contents and the teachings  of the Bible (let alone the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha or the Mishna and the Talmud)  and therefore that you possibly (and arrogantly) overstep yourself in claiming what it is that I have to do to see that before the Maccabean revolt, ancient  Israelites believed in a joyous, let alone disembodied,  life after death,  your message is not an answer to my question.  In fact, it's an evasion of it.

Please provide me with your evidence from the Hebrew scriptures written before the second century BCE that those who wrote them believed in personal life after death.

BTW,  what is the earliest book of the Hebrew scriptures and when was it written?

And the whole Bible does NOT say what 1 Peter does (which is not about God not being the author of confusion).  And even if it did,  it would be only 1 Peter (which is a Christian document and not something from the Tanak)  would say that.

I'm sorry If  you feel arrogancy.

No worries.  But whether you knew it or not,  the tone of your message implied that you were claiming to be someone who has a superior knowledge of matters biblical, and especially about what the various writers of the Hebrew scriptures believed about life after death,  that was brought into question for me by the fact that you not only quoted a passage from the New Testament to support your previous assertion about what ancient Hebrews believed instead of providing evidence for your claim from Tanak, but also claimed that that quoted text said something that it doesn't say, as well as by your false claim that the Hebrew scriptures were composed over thousandS of years..

I have a B.A. in Theology. Studied Greek and Hebrew in Graduate school and am an ordained Minister. So Yes I know what I'm saying is accurate.

Then you should have been able to do what you did not do, i.e., provide evidence for your assertion that Ancient Hebrews belived  that there was a vital life after death **from the Hebrew Scriptures**,  not to mention to have answered, instead of ignoring,  my question about when the earliest of the Biblical books was composed. and know the books of that collection were not written over thousandS  of years.

In any case,  and ignoring the fact that being a pastor is not a guarantee that one's Biblical "knowledge" is sound,  I have an MA and a DPhil (Ph.D) from Oxford University in Theology, so I'm not devoid of knowledge about the things you claim.  

Your rather philosophical. I have to admit I think your wrong especially about children. God love's children. I think God gives people the freedom to have children if they want too. They are made very easily after all.

"Your rather philosophical."

YOU'RE

And given the false and arrogantly stated premises in which his submission is grounded - i.e.,  (1) that if it's true that death eventually swallows up everything, then "man"  can never be happy or view the world as full of grace worth accepting and reveling in (2)  that human happiness, let alone how having children would not be a criminal act,  is dependent upon (and arises from) the existence of a joyous but bodiless afterlife up in the sky and (3)  that it is the subjective experience of love that comes from a celestial being that proves that there is one of this nature -- he is a badly informed dogmatic and heretical preacher, NOT a competent philosopher.

I take it that you've never read Camus' _The Myth of Sysiphus_.

In any case,  the real issue that needs examining and spoken to is whether the way J-Z sets out his thoughts displays the poetic art that has a chance of making a reader come away from this submission with a sense of awe at how enchantingly and beautifully he writes.

A person doesn't have to be right to be philisophical...

True.  But when one starts from bad and untrue and question-begging premises,  how good of a philosopher is he/she?

And when that person thinks that Gnostic theology is to be adhered to and proclaimed, thinking that he/she is orthodox and adhering to the pronouncements of the classical creeds, how good of a theologian is he/she?

well, not believing what someone else believes has nothing to do with a persons IQ or ability to reason a reason or debate a debate

So what?  The issue is whether this submission is something that is well written and doesn't make those who read it think that J-Z is so way off base here that they say "this is stupid (and so poorly phrased. that I've wasted my time reading it."  
 
And does one really debate a debate?

Thank you very much, william, for your very kind comment. I agree with you that God loves children, and l love them, too. God is love and He loves us all.

But according to you, the issue with respect to children isn't whether God loves them,   but the truth of your claims (1) that if indeed death swallows up everything, then it would be a crime to bring any into the world, and (2) that the only way of bringing children into the world wouldn't be a crime is if there is a joyous afterlife up in the sky.

As expected, no answer from you, J-Z, to my questions about the whether you are serious in making the claims you make in your submission.  That's not surprising given that the premises of the claims your make are demonstrably false.  What possesses you to write such philosophical and theological nonsense, let alone believe that what you say is true and will not make readers think that the submission is stupid and is a waste of time to read?

Baldwin again? Wow, this person needs to chill. :D

This poem suggests the importance of love's endurance and the upper hand of God in terms of meaning of life, love is worthy only when it lasts, otherwise it's a phantom of a greedy necessity that tries to resemble love but has a lot to learn

Very dear Aaron,
Thank you very much for your great interest and support.