Limits and a Higher Authority

This week we learned something that I found very interesting and would like to share with everyone.

We learned that people cannot mourn excessively (Pasuk 28). Why? Shouldn't people be able to be sad when someone they know has died? We learned that in old pagan cultures, when a person died people would go crazy. They would cut themselves and cry for days and be excessive. This was because they did not believe there was an afterlife, and the people were gone forever. The pagans were a very self centered people, and by mourning excessively they showed that they thought people were the most important thing. It was a practice that totally lacked anything to do with G-d.

I thought that this was a nice idea because people shouldn't think that they are the most important things, and there should always be this idea that there is a G-d and we have to answer to a higher authority.

It is important to note that religion is important in many ways, and one such way is that it kind of puts us in our place. We should try to realize that we are only human, and that we are not the highest power or the greatest beings. Something needs to limit us and we need something that will remind us that we are not all that. Even if, as some people say, there is nothing after we die, we need something to keep us in line, and that something is the fact that we have to answer to a higher authority. Religion can help limit us, even when it makes no sense. Like kosher- it doesn't make sense to us, but in a way, even though it's annoying, it's good because it gives us a boundary. We should have limits even on good things because it helps us focus on what is actually important.