The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Babylon (7) – Heavenly Reboot
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28 NASB
Rule over – One of the reasons Christianity flourished after the Bar Kokhba revolt was the ease with which one could enter the fold. To be Christian was essentially to be Roman. Citizenship in the Kingdom (whether Roman or Christian) removed the restrictions of Shabbat, a kosher diet, circumcision, sacrifice, and Jewish religious rituals. With the introduction of “free” grace, changes in behavior were no longer necessary. To the Hellenistic mind, this seemed like a good thing. After all, strict requirements are anathema to free choice. One might have to cooperate with civil authorities for the sake of society, but anything else seemed more like slavery than personal freedom. How much easier it was to join a religion that promised eternal reward just for signing up. On Judgment Day, those whose names appeared on the approved list could look forward to a complete reboot, the erasure of all past peccadillos and a new blank slate moral status. No wonder the religion grew quickly. It was so easy.
Not so Judaism. In fact, serious consideration of the Jewish perspective entailed excruciating consequences. “If you will penetrate further into this matter, you will observe that this world has been created for man’s use. This is why the fate of the world depends upon man’s conduct. If a man is allured by the things of this world, and is estranged from his Creator, it is not alone he who is corrupted, but the whole world is corrupted with him.”[1]
Stone comments on Luzzatto’s insight, calling it “ . . . a quintessentially Jewish idea that the world was created for the use of humanity. Humanity is at the center of the universe and, more importantly, human action affects the universe itself, directly and profoundly. . . Being human matters. We are not merely infinitesimal organisms in a vast sea. We are not powerless against evil.”[2]
“If human beings act in consonance with the commandments, then they uplift not only themselves but also the world. . . What does it mean to uplift the world? According to Ramchal, in the uplifted world, nature serves the ‘whole person’ (in Hebrew, ha-adam ha-shalem, which Kaplan translates as ‘perfect man’), who in turn carries something of the holiness associated with God, which itself is drawn from the light stored up in the world to come for the righteous. Thus, once again we see the fluidity of this idea, where the world to come is not temporal but more a state of being.”[3]
What does this mean for us? First, it explains our current world condition. We made it so! That is to say, insofar as human beings did not follow God’s instructions, we corrupted ourselves and the world, just as in the days of Noah. The Devil had nothing to do with it. In biblical parlance, everything is connected. Since men gave up Torah, religious or not, the world has been slipping into chaos—and it will continue to do so until at last God intervenes like He did before. Why? Because men are responsible for the creation. As Heschel noted, “ . . . the divine pathos is motivated by regard for man’s dignity, nobility, and the quest for human righteousness. It is, therefore, inextricably involved in human history and human affairs.”[4]
“To Jewish religion . . . history is determined by the covenant: God is in need of man. The ultimate is not a law but a judge, not a power but a father.”[5]
“The Bible is not a system of abstract ideas but a record of happenings in history. . . . Events rather than abstractions of the mind are the basic categories by which the biblical man lives. . . . The God of the philosopher is a concept derived from abstract ideas; the God of the prophets is derived from acts and events. The root of Jewish faith is, therefore, not a comprehension of abstract principles but an inner attachment to those events; to believe is to remember, not merely to accept the truth of a set of dogmas.”[6]
And there is no history without humanity. We don’t get a clean-slate start-over second-chance reboot in our responsibility in the next world. What happens here happens now. Luzzatto goes so far as to say:
“‘In the 10th chapter of the Sanhedrin we have explained that after death there is neither perfection nor addition; rather, man will achieve perfection and add virtue in this world . . . However, that state in which man departs will remain with him for eternity.’ In other words, what we achieve in life determines the state we will be in when we die and pass into eternity. Thus, one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world potentially extends infinitely and is, therefore, better than all the life of the world to come without such an hour.”[7]
There is no reboot. You do take it with you.
Step 7: What I do now lasts forever. Use that as your guiding principle.
Topical Index: heaven, commandments, clean slate, rule over, Genesis 1:28
[1] Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, p. 21.
[2] Ira F. Stone, in Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, pp. 21-22.
[3] Ibid., p. 22.
[4] Fritz A. Rothschild, “Introduction,” in Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 24.
[5] Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 51.
[6] Abraham Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, pp. 12-13.
[7] Ira F. Stone, in Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim: The Path of the Upright, pp. 23-24.
