I was thinking about what we were talking about in class yesterday about the debate between the חכם and the יארי אלוקים, and I'm still having issues with what the יראי אלוקים says about justice being served after death.
I can kind of understand what he's saying as far as G-d allowing people time to repent, because if we couldn't repent, where would we all be? I can also kind of understand and I do agree with the fact that we have a very חכם-like mindset, living in the "age of reason" and everything, though perhaps not to the same extent, so we think we know and understand "everything," but even still, the יראי אלוקים has never died! How does he know for sure what things are like after death?!
Also, what about the people who are being hurt by the רשעים, emotionally, physically, or otherwise? We should just keep letting them be hurt because G-d will judge the guy in the afterlife?! That won't help his victims or the victims of all those other people after him who are emboldened by the lack of visible, timely justice.
To give any credence at all to the view of the יראי אלוקים in פרק ח, I would have to use the idea that he has in mind a two tiered system of justice. This might be my חכם-like mentality showing through, scratch that: it's definitely the חכם-like mentality showing through, but I just don't think it makes sense that we could just leave people doing bad things to do them freely.
Feel free to leave your opinion!
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Chacham Mentality
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Your opinion is what many Jews struggle with today. We all want to see the bad people punished and the good people rewarded. This is what I blogged about this week, but from a more personal point of view, it really is a hard thing to think about. Why should the bad people get to continue doing bad things and only once they are already our of the world and have hurt lots of people do they get punished? I give some answers in my blog that help me deal with this issue but like you say, its almost impossible to give a good answer when no one actually knows what happens after death.
ReplyDeleteIt's true. How can the YireI Elohim be so sure, if he really doesn't know. How can he pretend like his argument is so solid and foolproof if there isn't really any proof one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty annoying when you think about bad people doing things and getting away with it. I don't know what to say.. I don't have the answers.