I surely understand existential alienation, as I think we all surely do unless we have “fallen” for a comforting illusion as per Herrs Freud and Nietzsche—but the love of life for me is best captured by Frost in “Birches,” and that chilling line…”The earth’s the right place for love, I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.” And yes, I too have climbed those birches, but always swung back down on the good earth…
That the Hebrew Bible has little to NOTHING about life after death or the immortal soul or resurrection or the age-to-come, other than the kind of visions of the future imagined by the Prophet Isaiah (see chapters 2:1-4 and 65:17-25), which remain very much “in and of” this world. This outlook sets it apart as an odd set of documents for the late Persian, early Hellenistic world of gnostic like dualism that so pervades late 2nd Temple Judaism and the neo-Platonic ideas that were merged with Christianity in the 2nd through 4th centuries–culminating in Augustine’s City of God.
Message A: Our purpose is to find forgiveness of sins through repentance and faith in the incarnated God—made Christ—who gave his life for our sins so we can go to heaven when we die, unworthy as we are…leaving behind this dark world of sin and death for eternal life with God…
Message B: World gone Wrong (thanking Dylan here)…very much our Home and only Home, where we totally “belong,” but who will take up the Abrahamic call to model the Way of truth, love, and justice for all nations—and thus advance things toward “fixing” the mess we have made—and thus advancing things toward a “completing” of the potential of emergent creation—sentient moral creatures who echo and reflect the character of the Creator—in Hebrew terms: Merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and righteousness? Those who hear that call are “not far from the Kingdom of God,” but are as mortal as a fallen leaf.
But what about death–and afterlife? One shouts out. Is that not the main question?
May the “secret things” remain with the Force of all Forces, the “Ground of our Being,” as we get on with the business of life itself–full enough of wonder to satisfy anyone with insight and imagination.
If you have fallen or partly fallen for all the AI nonsense that ChatGTP has generated in the popular media, about computers taking over, controlling us, or in any way exhibiting the human capacities of our linguistic programming, Chomsky set things straight in clear language and straight talk. As one of the smartest computer guys I know puts it, hyperbole, but you get the point, ChatGTP is as “dumb” as this keyboard. Input, output. Nothing conscious or even near so. I think Robert Kuhn (
