Wisdom In Job

Job is a mixture of many things, it talks about faith, temptation, fear, anger, many values and feelings humans experience everyday. The chapter I liked the most was 28, in which the translation talked about wisdom, and where to find it. It gave great examples, which made me realize we have alot of wisdom. We know where to get gold, how to molt brass and how to make bread. Such simple things had to be discovered at one point, and I think that as soon as they were discovered, they were considered s0me great invention.

But, where did the wisdom to learn all these things come from? It can't be bought with gold or traded for silver. It isn't made of pearls or coral. "The gold and the crystal cannot equal it". According to the bible, wisdom comes from fearing God and only listening to him. "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding." I believe wisdom comes from experience and perseverance. When you need to survive, when you need to make a progress, you keep trying and don't give up until you have achieved your goal. In the way to success you may fall and make mistakes. These mistakes are the ones that help you gain more wisdom, which also helps you gain experience.

God's purpose was to be feared, I believe this is because he thought that is he was feared, he was respected. God manipulated men making them believe they could gain such things as wisdom from fearing and respecting him. This made humans depend on God, follow and respect him, but we acquired wisdom and found out we didn't need to depend on God, therefore, there was no reason to follow or fear him anymore.

Absence Of God

I heard Einstein once said that cold is the absence of hot and evil is the absence of good. If this is so, then Satan is the absence of God. What I don’t understand is, If Satan is the absence of God, why did he appear? I mean, wasn’t Job a man who “feared God, and eschewed evil.”? It’s the same thing that happened with Abraham, there was no reason for God to test him and here, I believe is happening the same.
God has shown to be a double-faced character. He makes people believe he is all-mighty and feared but his actions make us think he is unsure about himself; it’s like if he was the one that feared that humans would forget him. If this did happen, if humans were to forget God, then there would be absence of him and Satan would appear.
I’ve hit a dead end. How could there be absence of God in Job? Is there absence of God in everybody? Am I jumping to conclusions and leaving the text behind? Reading the bible us somewhat difficult, especially because I was born to believe in Christianity and have to leave everything they have told me to believe behind. I guess I have to start looking at God as a character from another story, just as I would look at any other character from any other text… Am I?

More Violence

So, basically, what I've learned so far from the Old Testament is that the strongest one survives. Its funny because I'm starting to read things I didn't know about the bible, things that I was never told. No wonder they hide most of the Old Testament from little kids, if they knew about all the violence that went before Jesus, they would freak out and be really confused (I know I would!).
Sometimes, I get the impression that God just gave up on us and let us kill ourselves, other times, I think he's trying to help, and he ends up making matters worse. I think we have started to look at God and an equal to us, that's why we question him so much. But how can we not question him if all he does is contradict himself? "Thou shall not kill", he's sure following this commandment when he helps David, isn't he? (That was sarcastic). So, he tells people to follow his rules, otherwise they'll turn out worse, and later he tells people to break the commandments he just gave them... Basically, the commandment God is telling people to follow is eye for an eye, violence for violence.

Good Bless Rhetoric

You can be a democrat, and be pro-Obama, or be a republican and vote for McCain. Either way, you have to admit Obama is great in doing Rhetoric speeches. I watched this video twice. The first time, I found myself agreeing with what he was saying, totally convinced that he knew how things had to be done. The second time I watched it, I was amazed at how great Obama is in mixing rhetoric with his words. Obama uses a lot of logos in his arguments. He blames McCain for past actions and accuses him of ignorance. “Its not that John McCain doesn’t care, it’s that he doesn’t get it.” In other words, Obama is trying to convince people he is the one that gets it, the one that knows what’s right for America. He also uses logos when he refers to the actual proposal of the republicans. What republicans offer, according to Obama, is that you are always on your own.
Obama does a very smart thing. He proposes change. He convinces the people that change is what America needs. He argues that after 8 years of the same thing, it would be useless to vote for a person who will keep following Bush’s footsteps. He refers to McCain as the past and himself as the future.
One of the most interesting, rhetoric things he does comes up next. He brings up his family examples and makes people believe he has lived what they are living. As soon as he says he’ll make everyone have a medical insurance, so that there wont be people like his mother, fighting cancer and have a difficult financial time, he has half of the people convinced (including me, I have to say). Obama used Ethos in a great way. He had people convinced he had lived their reality, he made people feel they were understood, their prayers were being heard. He mentioned his heroes were his grandparents and mom, who never had it easy. Most of the Americans too have had to struggle and this made them feel understood, they related to Obama’s story. Obama has people believe he wants to “make it easier to Americans.”
Obama’s speech only goes uphill. He starts using pathos and brings up “moral obligation”, which people get exited and has them even stand up. He starts talking about how he wants “his daughters to have the same opportunities as their sons.” He talks about there being equality to all and improvement in childhood education, topics that are very important for Americans.
After talking about both great and past democratic presidents, accusing McCain for being pro- war in Iraq and saying he’ll restore “the sense of common purpose”, Obama ends his speech using Ethos. He says, “This election has never been about me, it’s about you”. With this, people end up feeling important, as if they were being heard by him, a sensation of times of change, of something different, which is what Americans want, what they desperately need.

God Over Did It

There are many moments in which God's actions seem illogical. Why did God put man in such a hard situation with the tree of the prohibited fruit? Why did he make Abraham believe he was to kill his son? As Sarita said, God is a king of bully, playing with man's emotions.
In chapters 8-15 of the Exodus, we can see how the LORD (again), does things that are unnecessary to give out the message he wants to transmit. He puts Moses in a very harsh situation. God or the LORD used good people to do the things no one wants to do. Why does he punish his messengers? The answer I came up with is that if he asked the people who don't follow him to do such horrible things they would just not do it. God picked out the people who were good and loyal because they wouldn't dare to disobey. We could say God manipulated the naive followers and had them do things he himself didn’t want to do. For example, God told Moses the Pharaoh's heart was to be hardened and gave him all the instructions to what to do when the Pharaoh dared God's power. The LORD already knew what was going to happen but made Moses deal with everything. In a way, the LORD provoked all this just to show how powerful he was. "20: But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go." This is SO contradictory!! Why would God harden the Pharaoh's heart if he sent Moses to set the Hebrews free? This really pisses me off, again we can see how God over did it with his ilogical, unnecessary actions.

God In The Eyes Of The People

God's image changes according to human's actions. There is a point in which God is very angry and feared by human beings. This fear is used to manipulate people and have them do what God desired."17: But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive." I think that at this point in history, the rulers realized that religion was a very powerful thing which controled people's minds. you could say this had an effect in the later power that mixed the church and politics.
In theses chapters of the Exodus, there wasn't anyone who didn't fear God. Extreme situations demand extreme solutions. I belive the message this point of the text is trying to transmit is that due to the lack of respect and the wars between people, God had to become mean, beacuse it was the way he knew to become respected. "Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God"
Was God really mad at his creation, or was he mad at himself? Until now, every action he took had only made things worse. Expelling man from Eden only created jelousy, which lead to violence. Changing people's languages only generated confusement and differences, which lead to more violence. In a way, God pushed human race to become what he feared the most. His own creation turned his back on him, and instead of reversing the damage, he made things worse.

God, Lord God or Lord?

In class, my group agreed that "God" refered to the God that created everything, from light and dark to creatures and humans. This Gods is seen as distant, somewhat mean. "Lord God" refers to the creator of Eden. He is the one that makes rules, the one that explains to man "how to live". After humans eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and expulsed from Eden, appears the "Lord", a compationate friend to us. We can see the difference between the Lord and the Lord God un the following passage: "[1] After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.[2] And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?" After all, The God, the Lord God and the Lord are the same God, but in different points of view. The also describe the different needs of people. At the beginnig, we only needed a creator. As time passed, we started to need a friend, a support, someone who we could talk to, a savior we felt that listened.

Poem

Barely touching, human and divine,
The only connection from heaven to Earth.
God made him, one of a kind,
To rule the world that gave him birth.
About to part, creation and God,
till they meet again, father and son.

Was It Suppose To Be Like This?

The bible, leaves a big space to interprate. As I said in prior blogs, the bible can either be seen in a literal way or as a metaphor. I try to see it metaphorically beause it's hard to believe what the literal cotext tries to say. The tree of the prohibited apple is used as a symbol for tempation. The things that tempt the most are those that we know we shouldn't do. Of course, the point of the whole story is for us to see that we are vunerable to temptation, we don't believe fire burns unless we touch it. Adam and his wife were warned by God and told that the tree was prohibited. Adam's wife was very easy to be convined; tempted. She didn't trust the God that made her and tried to be superior, tried to be a God. Instead of becoming one, she worked her way down. "For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return". At least before she ate the fruit of the prohibited apple, they had eternal life. This shows two things: humans are destined to be tempted, destined to touch fire even though they know it burns, and sometimes when you try to achieve some goal in a way you aren't suppose to, you end up worse than before.
We can also see how guilt plays an important part in our life. When god asked Adam if he had eaten the fruit of knowledge, he blamed his wife. When God asked Eve, she blamed the serpent. We never want to accept guilt beacuse it's a very heavy weight in opur concious. I interpretated this part of the bible as an explanation to why we feel guilt, why we follow temptation and why we have that urge to be superior. After all, the bible says that's how things were suppose to be.

You win some, you loose some.

who: King James
what: wanted to translate the bible to english
when: when he ruled in time of struggle
where: England
why: to unite the english
how: by having a counsul work in the translation.

The "what" was accomplished and very well done, the "why" failed. King James won and lost, but if things wouldn't have been this way, if King James had never wanted to translate the bible, what would things be like? Sometimes, you loose, and sometimes you later realize that lost led to great things.

Translating

Many times, I start watching a movie that has been translated and don't finsh it beacuse it is so poorly done. It's nerve wrecking to see how they only change words from english to spanish and don't look at the context. After reading the small parts of "Gods Secretaris, the Making of the King James Bible, I realized it is not an easy task. You have to be careful to change it from one languaje to the other, without messing around with the context and leaving an open space for the reader/viewer to interprate.
I think when King James wanted to do the transation, he didn't think of how people would have different opinions. I think he believed they would all agree and the issues between protestants and "typical" catholics would be solved. The fact that the translation was so well done, gave people the oportunity to see things how they wanted to and this made the differences grow stronger.
In the end, King James ended up winning and loosing. He made a great transalation possible anbd even though it didn't help with what he wanted, the accomplished part of the goal and helped people , giving them the opportunity to read the transalted bible.

Uniting?

The purpose of the translation of the bible, according to James, was to unite the people of England. Due to the hard political moments of the time, there was a need to find a solution, a way to unite the country and keep it stong. What better way of uniting it than having everyone think the same way? If everyone agreed in rleigion, their faith would be stonger. The king had enough problems with the war and din't need disagreements inside his country.
even thoough James' planned seemed to work, it failed. Why did this happen? People of these tmes had already realized there was more to life than just heaven. There were disagreements between the catholic church some time before the translation of the bible, and this made it difficult for the counsel to translate it.
we may all read the same text but it will influence us personally. Everyone faces different things in life and these are the events that end up influencing the way you interpret something. The bible is a text in which interpretation has a big role. People can either interprate it in a very literal way, believing everything that is said happend and others who see it as a metaphore to apply on in daily life. Even though it didn't unite the English, and seemed like it didn't full-fill his job, the translation of the bible helps us today to understand and interprate it personally.