Important Factors Affecting Life span (Part 3)
What factors affect man’s life span? Many people speak of healthcare and physical exercise. But in fact, human beings have two main aspects in their creation: physical and spiritual. Human physic is under the influence of his psyche or his spirit.
God the Almighty who is the Creator knows man’s needs better than him. Hence, according to the revelation man must pay attention to his physic, as a trust of God, and his spirit, as God’s spirit. In order to do so, God the Almighty has given man certain instructions. For example the Almighty God revealed to Moses on tablets: “… Express thy gratitude to Me, and Honor thy father and thy mother so that I protect you from destruction and delay thy death, and bestow upon thee a clean life and take you to the better side of this life.”
On the basis of these teachings, the following factors are considered as the ones that affect man’s life span adversely or favorably.
First Factor: Sin
One of the most important factors for calculating the length of our lives is calculating the times and sizes of the sins we commit throughout our lives. The higher the number of sins we commit, the shorter will be the length of our lives, and we will be deprived of blessings and our lives will be in vain.
Imam Sadiq (A.S) says: “The number of those dying as a result of committing sins is higher than the number of those who die in bed” (Bihar al-Anwar, Vol. 5, P. 140). Also Imam Sajjad (A.S) alludes to some sins shortening life span of the human beings: “Sins that speed up destruction of man are: cutting off kinship relations, false swearing, lying, adultery, obstructing path to Muslims and false claim of Imamate and Islamic leadership.” (Maani Al Akhbar, P. 271)
Translated by: Sadroddin Musawi
Other links:
Do Not Belittle Sin (Part 2)
Avarice, the enemy of life’s comfort
The liars Lose Their Credit
