posted
Post your perfectly well-reasoned questions and hope for an answer. _____________
The Jewish people are God's chosen people. They're the citizens of His kingdom, neh? Therefore, they have a passport to heaven. Get in free pass, right?
But where does this put the rest of us? Are we the immigrants who sneak across the border in the dead of night and get jobs landscaping and washing dishes?
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posted
Oops. Sorry, rivka. I've just heard the Jewish people called citizens of God's kingdon so many times and idly wondered about the implications of that statement.
Well, assuming you guys do have passports, are we destined for landscaping jobs?
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Being God's Chosen People hasn't left Jews many opportunities to sleep peacefully in their beds at night.
In fact, the Prophets (and the Histories) are full of references to wicked kings and wicked people among the children of Israel (the whole people was Chosen, not just the descendants of Judah and Benjamin in the southern kingdom who became "Jews" in modern parlance) and just how God feels about them. So it seems to me as if God holds his chosen people to an even HIGHER standard than the mere gentiles who, after all, can't be expected to know any better, being uncircumcised <wince> and therefore not within the covenant of Abraham.
In short: Jews have far more ways to get to hell than the rest of us do, at least if you listen to Isaiah and Jeremiah. I wouldn't envy them their "ticket."
posted
First, ya hafta assume that Jews believe in an afterlife. Then ya hafta assume that Jews believe in Heaven. Then ya hafta assume that Jews believe that they were Chosen for special privileges rather than Chosen for greater responsiblities. Etc, etc, etc... until ya get something somewhat approximating some rather simplistic Christian teachings about God and death: the simplistic teachings being by no means encompassing the entirety or even a majority of Christian thought on the matter.
None of those assumptions is a defining characteristic for most religious Jews; let alone for the more secular Jews.
To the extent that there is a defining characteristic of being Jewish, it is that life is for living. And that life is not a time to be spent speculating about, preparing for what happens after death. And some of the more exotic branchings of Judaism have been so heavily influenced by Christian evangelicalism that even the last statement isn't true for all religious Jews.
Hahaha. I think someone posted that on here. It made me laugh Darned if I don't remember the site, though.
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Darned if I don't remember the site, though.
