deepundergroundpoetry.com
Mortality
I am aware that I someday will die.
Should that awareness be a thing
that stops me from delighting in
what God, in all his hesed, foresight, and
his graciousness, has placed within my hands?
Would I, in letting this perception of
my earthly finitude, my fated temporality,
deplete me of enjoyment of this life’s divinely given joys,
not be a person set upon
insulting him?
Is not the using of the fact
that I'm a being trapped in telic entropy
and fleshed within contingency,
a breath filled, clay made body that
is destined to end up returned,
resolved, to Sheoled dust
as grounds for spurning, thinking worthless, all
the bountied gifts of sustenance and sensuality
that God has been, and is, so willing and
so eager to bequeath to me – which he himself
created for my benefit and rained
his blessings on and called them good --
idolatry?
Should that awareness be a thing
that stops me from delighting in
what God, in all his hesed, foresight, and
his graciousness, has placed within my hands?
Would I, in letting this perception of
my earthly finitude, my fated temporality,
deplete me of enjoyment of this life’s divinely given joys,
not be a person set upon
insulting him?
Is not the using of the fact
that I'm a being trapped in telic entropy
and fleshed within contingency,
a breath filled, clay made body that
is destined to end up returned,
resolved, to Sheoled dust
as grounds for spurning, thinking worthless, all
the bountied gifts of sustenance and sensuality
that God has been, and is, so willing and
so eager to bequeath to me – which he himself
created for my benefit and rained
his blessings on and called them good --
idolatry?
Published 21st Nov 2021
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Anonymous
- Edited 19th Jul 2023 3:46am
27th Nov 2021 11:11pm
<< post removed >>
No. Any afterlife that Judaism affirms people will experience after they die is not a disembodied one, it's a resurrected one. It is grounded in the belief that there is no life except bodily life and that at some point in the future God will raise their bodies from the grave and restore them to wholeness and to sentience so that they may live again on the earth.
In any case, how would the belief that human beings "have" souls that are released from the fleshy encasements they inhabit up to the point in time when their bodies die answer my question of whether human beings were meant to enjoy God's good gifts while they are "on the earth" and that refusing to do so is an example of spurning God's graciousness and to insult him?
In any case, how would the belief that human beings "have" souls that are released from the fleshy encasements they inhabit up to the point in time when their bodies die answer my question of whether human beings were meant to enjoy God's good gifts while they are "on the earth" and that refusing to do so is an example of spurning God's graciousness and to insult him?
Anonymous
- Edited 19th Jul 2023 3:46am
28th Nov 2021 4:28pm
<< post removed >>
This is rank Gnosticism. Bereshith, let alone any other book of TaNaK, does NOT speak about how humans are essentialy "ghots in a machine" or in any way say, or give credence to the claim, that any "spirit" that humans may have was made in, or is, the image (and likeness) of God. And it is God, not some evolved human spirit, who according to the standard beliefs of Judaism, raises bodies from the grave to live again on his good earth. And as a host of biblical and post-biblical texts attest, God raises those who have shown themselves in public to be righteous, especially in the face of persecution, not because their "spirits" have evolved. It's also said in some texts that at the dawning of the "age to come" he will also raise the wicked (who obviously do not possess evolved "spirits"). So the idea that it is because someone's "spirit" has approached the status of divinity is one that plays no part in Jewish eschatology.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Anonymous
- Edited 19th Jul 2023 3:46am
28th Nov 2021 7:32pm
<< post removed >>
Psalm 1 does not speak of a spirit, let alone a soul, that humans possess. And there's nothing there that speaks of anything evolving.
Psalm 1
1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
Psalm 1
1 Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
2 but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
3 That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.
