This week in class we had our own wrestling match.
The Chacham starts off with his argument responding to the Yirei Elokim from Perek 7: You can only find meaning through wisdom. You get wisdom, intellect, morals and values from yourself.
Then the Yirei Elokim comes back to defend himself: He says that he is like the Chacham in that he uses wisdom-the difference though is that the source of his wisdom is all from G-d. You are obedient to G-d, you can't escape Him. You can't tell G-d what to do and death will come to everyone. Ultimately everyone will be accountable and judged for their actions.
The Chacham comes to fight back next: In a sarcastic way he is critical of the system whereby people are not held accountable until death. He encourages people to be in this world because they don't see that people are actually punished.
The Yirei Elokim comes back to finish the round: He responds to the Chacham-G-d has a reason for prolonging Mishpat. It allows the wicked to repent. But, ultimately if a person is G-d fearing he will be rewarded and if wicked will be punished.
In my opinion, I think that the Yirei Elokim has better points. His answers seem more logical to me. Because, there is a G-d and there is such thing as reward and punishment and I agree more with the Yirei Elokim. I think the Chacham is just so obsessed with wanting to be right and not wanting to believe things he can't see, he can't look further into things.
Who do you think won this match?
I liked your analogy of this past week as a wrestling match. Very true.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really sure who I agree with more. Sometimes I think the Yirei Elokim and then I feel like he's being a little obnoxious to the Chacham.
Also - I think the Yirei Elokim is also a little obsessed with wanting to be right and not wanting to believe the Chacham or see his side of things!
So for me - this wrestling match is at a tie right now!
I don't know who won the match, but I definitely think that I relate more to the yirei elokim because we have some of the same values. Though people escape punishment more than reward, it still exists in this world. The only thing that I might not agree with is that while G-d does control most of what we do, man does have control of reward and punishment.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI also liked your analogy. I'm also not certain who won the match. I think that this furthers our question we started the year off with. Which approach provides more meaning? I think it's a combination of all the values each character brought. No one character wins the match. Rather, it's everyone working together to get out of the match of pursuit and into a life of meaning.
ReplyDelete