Our Bodies on Loan

By Stephen Walter
Cornell College

It is our mortality that defines us as a species. "Ashes to ashes" offers a clear message signifying the ever-working dichotomy that ensures balance and natural order. Although our physical bodies return to the dust from whence they came, our souls are our connection to God and return to God after our deaths. Therefore we should consider the afterlife even at our age.

As Rabbi Eliezer said, "On the day when a person’s time arrives to depart from the world…three messengers stand over him and provide a report of all the person’s deeds in this world and the individual admits all and signs an account." (Zohar I, 79A). This account of a report after death of all your deeds makes it important to consider your actions while alive as an opportunity to perform God’s mitzvot, commandments. So although I think it would be pointless to constantly think about every action you might do everyday, certainly one should consider in the overall scheme of things whether one has been a positive light in people’s lives, whether to strangers, friends or family.

I’m currently in a course at my college called Health Psychology. In one session the professor made it clear that at around the age of 25, shortly after leaving college, all of the body’s major functions begin a downward slope and so we are past our peak, both physically and mentally. However depressing and frightening that may seem to us, we should take heart in knowing that we are connected to God through our soul. Therefore, the soul may be thought of as more of a metaphor of our covenant with God that we receive as a reward for the fulfillment of mitzvot and leading the life of a righteous person.

I personally believe in a soul and, therefore, an afterlife. The afterlife signifies another plane of existence. God is present in a different existence entirely from mortal man. We Jews believe in God without definitive proof, because faith doesn’t require that. For those very same reasons, just believing that one has a soul, one that will live on in the afterlife carrying the deeds one performed in life, is a source of comfort.

Some people I know tend to look at death as a villain waiting to strike them down. Instead, I prefer to look at death as merely an inevitable fact of our existence, something to remind us to cherish every minute on Earth, and to make the most of our time here and perform deeds that will benefit humankind.

When death does occur, we can look at it as nothing more than entering a new phase of existence and take heart knowing that having followed God’s teachings, you will be cared for. If, in fact, the soul symbolizes a covenant, would it not make sense that it serve as a manifestation of our pledge to follow the laws given to us by God? Perhaps the afterlife is the fulfillment of the covenant, that after walking in the path of righteousness, one gets the reward of an afterlife.

Stephen Walter is a senior at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, majoring in computer science. He grew up in San Diego, California, before moving to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he attended high school. He hopes to acquire an IT job after college and to eventually receive an MBA.

[Posted 11/28/05]