Do You Own Your Body?

You think your body is your own, do you? Well, know that Torah thinks differently. Here's how we know.

Torah dictates, says Maimonides (Laws of Sanhedrin, end of chpt 18), that a man's confession of a financial debt obligates him to pay up, even against the testimony of 100 witnesses. But were he to confess to murder, the court must ignore his confession! A minimum of two witnesses is mandatory to invoke the death penalty (or to receive lashes), as it states (Deut. 17:6), "By the say of 2 witnesses or 3 witnesses shall the guilty one be put to death."

Some commentaries explain that a person is master over his chattel or property and therefore his confession obligates him; Whereas his body and soul are given over to him as a deposit for safekeeping and cannot be eliminated based on his confession. His body and soul are not his own to destroy.

At first glance, this explanation makes little sense. God, creator of the universe, owns it all. He owns a man's property as well as the man's body - so why the difference in law between the two confessions?

The reason is simple. God allows man to be master of his property, but the body and soul are only placed in his care for safekeeping, and therefore man is not master of his body or soul. He cannot simply do what he chooses with his body. For example, he must not commit suicide, nor may he mutilate his body. A confession, therefore, cannot remove the body from one's duty to safekeep it for God.

How careful must we be to safeguard the health of our body and soul? When it comes to commandments, very few in Torah come with a qualification of being extra careful. Of the few that do, is the one to take care of our body and soul: "And you should take great heed of yourselves". (Deut. 4:15)

Torah's perspective of the body's ownership is purposely scorned by those who seek to divorce God from their agenda. The vile "Planned Parenthood" institution, and the support it got from recent administrations, is a case in point. They wish to promote promiscuity as well as promoting the murder of babies. They typically claim a woman's body is her own, and she can do to it, and its contents, as she pleases. Instead of promoting responsible behavior, and honoring the sanctity of the body and life, they seek to cheapen morality by defiling young susceptible minds and to defile the sanctity of the person. They are dragging America from the aristocratic, virtuous country it once was, to become just another whorish Sodom.

To take care for one's own body and to care for another person's body - amounts to the same thing, as we've seen. Another area where abuse of this principle runs rampant is our society's corrupt pharma/medical establishment, wherein, for example, they poison drinking water with flouride, resort to unnecessary surgery and body mutilation (as by removing breasts, or by irradiation), poison in the name "therapy" and run a legalized drug-pushing operation (as in vaccinating by needle, or prescribing pill-popping regimens); Wherein lifetime "treatment" - not cure - is their only intent.