JOURNAL 2 THE HUMAN CONDITION

“the situation, or condition, in which every human being finds himself or herself by virtue of being human. In other words, what experiences do all human beings share, regardless of their sex, age, culture, religion, social status, or time period in which they live?”

This is the specific term in philosophy known as the human condition. In our study of the human condition we ask ourselves, “What is it about religion that satisfies us?” We realized that religion does not ignore the experiences that we all have of loneliness, anxiety, alienation, evil, and concupiscence. Pascal says that all men seek happiness and that throughout the years no one has reached their goal. Man tries his entire life to gain what it is inevitable that he should never have: happiness. Aurelius has his own similar ides about the human condition. He says that each man’s life is so small in comparison to the universe and that the same things happen in one man’s life that happen in our lives now; that happened to the man that lived a hundred years ago. He says that “you will soon forget everything. Everything will soon forget you.” Then there is Buddha’s concept that life is suffering and always has been suffering and we just have to deal with it. These there men’s ideas sum up the human condition. It is also important to realize that there are many other parts of the human condition such as: original sin, death, concupiscence, and wounded intellect. The human condition it unknown to many; spread the word.

The problem of evil has to do with the character of God. We know God as all-good and all-powerful. So therefore, if God is good he wouldn’t want there to be evil in the world that could harm us and if he is all powerful then he would be able to stop evil. The question is then why is there evil in the world?

Eschatology is the term in Christian theology which denotes the study of the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Judgment is inevitable. It is when we come face to face with God. Jesus taught that there are two moments of judgment for each person. The first moment is Particular judgment which comes immediately after death and the second is Final judgment which occurs at the Parousia when the body reunites with the soul.

Concupiscence is the part of the human condition where humans are compelled to do things that they know they really don’t want to do. It is when you know something is wrong and you tell yourself that its wrong and that you shouldn’t do it, yet you go ahead and do it anyway. St. Paul describes it as “I do not understand what I do. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate…”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/familyjefferson.html

Rabbi Kushner in the part of the movie that I saw (I missed the second part) says that maybe God isn’t all powerful. Yet, he also said that God did create the world. He suggests that maybe he can’t control natural law. So my question is then why would he create the world with nature? Again this is going back to the problem of evil and the question: Why would God allow evil in the world?

Now I know that I am not the only one that experiences the feeling of concupiscence. I know that I’m not the only one that struggles with knowing I’m doing the wrong thing but yet still doing it. Now I can strive more fully to do the right thing knowing that I’m not only in my struggle and that there is others out there who can help me.

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