Human Traits and their Social SignificanceEdman, Irwin
Philosophy
Human Traits and their Social Significance
Edman, Irwin
Social psychology
Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?
Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring
before their eyes.
Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.
Their bull gendereth and faileth not; their cow calveth and casteth
not her calf.
They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance.
They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ.
They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave.
Therefore they say unto God; depart from us, for we desire not the
knowledge of thy ways.
What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit
should we have if we pray unto him?[1]
[Footnote 1: Job, chap. XXI.]
In contrast, in the religious experience man feels himself to
be a part of a world scheme in which justice and righteousness
are assured by an incontestable and invulnerable power;
"God's in his Heaven; all's right with the world." Despite
the grounds he has for doubt, Job robustly avers: "Though
he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Calamities are but
temporary; God will bring all things to a beautiful fruition.
Or a man may feel that the evils he or others experience
here are not real evils, that, seen _sub specie oeternitatis_, they
would cease to be regarded as such. He may feel that God
moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform, that
"somehow good may come of ill." He may feel, as does the
Christian believer, that all the evils and pains unjustly
experienced in this world will be adjusted in the next. Whatever
be my privations from earthly good, "in my Father's house
are many mansions." Immortality is, indeed, the religious
man's faith in a second chance. The surety of a world to
come, in which the blessed shall live in eternal bliss, is a
compensation and a redress for the ills and frustrations of life in
this world. Whatever be the seeming ills or injustices of life,
there is eventual retribution, both to the just and the unjust.
Once more to quote Emerson:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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