[Avodah] "The Spirit He breathed in Man is free"

[Yitzhak Grossman]

On Thu, 7 May 2009 15:06:42 -0700
Saul.Z.Newman at kp.org wrote [on Areivim, cited with permission]:

...

>     is it not a bit like when a jay walker is hit by a car, and 
> hospitalized , what was his sin -- shabbos , loshon horo, tznius? or 
> primarily violating the RBSO's Law of Nature { car vs man, laws of 
> momentum, etc}....

Rudyard Kipling's "Natural Theology":

PRIMITIVE

I ate my fill of a whale that died,
And stranded after a month at sea....
There is a pain in my inside.
Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith?
Look how the Gods have afflicted me!


PAGAN

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
Anything more than a harmless flea?...
The burning plague has taken my household.
Why have my Gods afflicted me?

All my kith and kin are deceased,
Though they were as good as good could be.
I will out and batter the family priest,
Because my Gods have afflicted me.


MEDIAEVAL

My privy and well drain into each other
After the custom of Christendie....
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer--
So are the clergy I used to fee
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
Because the Lord has afflicted me.


MATERIAL

I run eight hundred hens to the acre.
They die by dozens mysteriously....
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker.
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
Not to mention the L. S. D.!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
Because this God has afflicted me!


PROGRESSIVE

Money spent on an Army or Fleet
Is homicidal lunacy....
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat.
Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the _Times_, deriding our parson
Because my God has afflicted me.


CHORUS

We had a kettle, we let it leak;
Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week....
The bottom is out of the Universe!


CONCLUSION

This was none of the good Lord's pleasure,
For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure
And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
Is now and evermore shall be.
Thou art delivered to thy own keeping.
Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/8504/

Theologically fraught, to be sure, but compare Rambam:

The numerous evils to which individual persons are exposed are due to
the defects existing in the persons themselves. We complain and seek
relief from our own faults: we suffer from the evils which we, by our
own free will, inflict on ourselves and ascribe them to God, who is far
from being connected with them! Comp. "Is destruction his [work]? No.
Ye [who call yourselves] wrongly his sons, you who are a perverse and
crooked generation" (Deut. xxxii. 5). This is explained by Solomon, who
says, "The foolishness of man perverteth his way, and his heart
fretteth against the Lord" (Prov. xix. 3). ...

(3) The third class of evils comprises those which every one causes to
himself by his own action. This is the largest class, and is far more
numerous than the second class. It is especially of these evils that
all men complain, only few men are found that do not sin against
themselves by this kind of evil. Those that are afflicted with it are
therefore justly blamed in the words of the prophet, "This hath been by
your means" (Mal. i. 9); the same is expressed in the following
passage, "He that doeth it destroyeth his own soul" (Prov. vi. 32). In
reference to this kind of evil, Solomon says, "The foolishness of man
perverteth his way" (ibid. xix. 3). In the following passage he
explains also that this kind of evil is man's own work, "Lo, this only
have I found, that God hath made man upright, but they have thought out
many inventions" (Eccles. vii. 29), and these inventions bring the
evils upon him. The same subject is referred to in Job (v. 6), "For
affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring
out of the ground." These words are immediately followed by the
explanation that man himself is the author of this class of evils, "But
man is born unto trouble."

-- Guide to the Perplexed, III:12, Friedlander's translationedition pp. 269-271,
available here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/gfp148.htm

Yitzhak
--
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