Final Blog

This semester in Religion 305 has been an interesting one for sure. I have learned a lot about the bible that I did not initially anticipate heading into the course. I have also learned a lot about myself and my viewpoints that I did not expect at all heading into this course. Religion 305 has made me question why I look at things the way I do, and the way that outside influences may be affecting my viewpoints in my day to day life. One of the biggest things that I will take away from Religion 305 is that to understand someone else and their views, you really need to try and look at something from their situation and perspective. We all have different social locations, and we cannot fully understand why someone may feel the way that they do about something until we try and look at the issue from their social location. Although that is pretty much completely impossible for us to fully do, if you can somewhat put yourself in someone else’s shoes, it will really help you understand where they are coming from in their beliefs towards a particular issue. If you cannot put at least attempt to put yourself in someone else’s social location, you will not be able to understand where they are coming from at all. My favorite thing about Religion 305 was definitely the in class discussions. We read a lot of different readings this semester, and a lot of them left you very confused after you were finished with them I felt like; however, the in class discussions helped clear up the readings each class, and they offered some very thought provoking discussions. One of my favorite things about our in class discussions was how Dr. Stein lead them. I felt like in class you could not just make a blanket statement like “I feel like…” because Dr. Stein would always question you on why you felt like that or ask more questions that provoked you to think more about what you had said, and it really led to more in depth thinking and discussions I felt like. Religion 305 definitely made me do a lot more thinking about myself and my personal social location and views than I was anticipating when I signed up for a Religion class last semester, and I feel like it has made me grow both as a person and a student.

Refugee blog

Researching into our group project topic has been quite interesting. Our topic was global refugees and their relation to the bible. At first, I thought this would be a very easy topic to relate to the bible because of the exodus story and other things like that in the bible. When I was searching for topics on Jstor though, I found out that it was not going to be that simple. Many of the scholarly articles that were on Jstor were only about the issue of immigration and only briefly may have mentioned the bible, but there was nothing that I could find that had much substance to it about the issue of refugees and the bible. However, I was finally able to find some articles directly relating refugees to the bible and what the bible says about it. It was very interesting though to see that after all of my searching, none of the articles I had found particularly spoke much about exodus which is the most relatable biblical story to refugees in my mind. Instead of talking about how we should relate to the refugees plight due to the exodus story, the articles I found discussed how Jesus’ teaching should be reason enough for us to be sympathetic towards the refugees. Jesus teaches us that compassion is needed when dealing with those that are less fortunate than us, and if we apply these teachings to the current refugee situation in the world, the articles believed that it is cut and dry very clear that we should be accepting of all refugees and offer our help instead of marginalizing them as the outsiders in our society. One article discussed not just Jesus’ sermons or particular teachings to prove this point, but it also went as far as to cite an example of Jesus interaction with another human being and how he exemplified compassion. When greeted at the well outside a town by a woman of a far lesser status, Jesus did not look down on her or anything of that nature, instead he greeted her as a human being and talked to her on a personal level and was able to connect with her even though she comes from a far different and much more marginalized background than he did. This is the approach I have come to see from my research that we should take when dealing with anyone who is marginalized or of lesser status. Instead of looking down on them, greeting them as another human being and understanding them on a personal level before casting any judgement should always be the approach taken.

Original Man Response

There were several parts of the second reading from this week that I found to be quite strange. The one that stands out to me the most was “The Original Man” story. At first, it told the story, and I thought “Okay this is really strange and most likely made up, but who knows how people originated, so I’m sure there are a lot of stories like this that could be made up.” Then the author said who created this original man story, and it instantly became even more absurd to me. At first I thought it was some type of African folk tale or African Muslim folk tale that was from a very very long time ago, but when the author said that it was made up by a black man in Detroit in the 1930’s, I immediately dismissed the story as something completely ludicrous. It blew my mind that he could actually go door to door and get people to buy into his story and get followers. I know the 1930’s were definitely a time were blacks faced a lot of oppression from the whites, so buying into a story that said that you’re oppressors were created by some kind of witch doctor or evil scientist solely for the purpose of evil somewhat makes sense, but when you think of the story and who created it, there is no way anyone could actually believe it. In a way, this story kind of reminded me of Joseph Smith and the Mormons. To me, the story of how God was revealing himself to Joseph Smith and everything that followed with him starting a completely new religion seems kind of crazy and most likely made up to me. That is how I feel about this story too. Another part of this reading that I didn’t really agree with is how the author kept saying they need to redefine what black sexuality is because it is being defined by the males in the black society and oppressing others in a way. I agree that no one should feel marginalized by their sexuality, but I do not agree that there should even be the concept of a “black sexuality”. Sexuality is sexuality and should in no way at all even be related to race. By associating something completely unrelated to race or ethnicity with it and saying that it should define that whole racial community, you are in turn marginalizing someone no matter how you look at it. Instead of redefining black sexuality, she should just remove any type of racial stigma from sexuality whatsoever and let people do what they please regardless of ethnicity or sexuality.

Weekly Response

One thing I found interesting about our readings this week was what I started to realize about the global perspective versus the domestic perspective.  Although there is some difference in certain issues I’m sure, so far I have not noticed many differences between the domestic and international perspectives on social justice issues and Christianity. The international feminism article was very very similar to the feminist article that we read for the domestic article. I guess I found it most interesting that we have similar perspectives because it is good to know that the United States is not too far off from the rest of the world in their beliefs on serious social justice issues such as these. Sometimes as an American, I feel as if we would vary greatly from the rest of the world on how we approach issues. I know certain issues such as gun control or health care and more political issues such as those we still differ greatly from many areas of the world. However, I find it good to know that on issues such as feminism or racism that deal with oppression that we do not differ greatly from a lot of the world, and we, as humans, can all agree to a certain extent that there are certain things that are not good.

The reading we did for Thursday over the HIV/Aids epidemic and its relation to the bible was very interesting. When I think of social justice issues that pertain to the bible, HIV/Aids is not the first issue that would pop into my head. I guess you can really relate any major issue in the world to the Bible though since it is such a large and diverse book with writings applicable to nearly anything depending on how you read it. I thought their take on how to treat the HIV/Aids epidemic in relation to the bible was one hundred percent correct. I would never say that someone’s suffering such as that is their direct punishment from God for their sins. I believe that God is a merciful God, and he would not blatantly go out of his way to punish someone so awfully like that just for transgressing. I also thought it was interesting how they related Job’s suffering and losing everything directly to the HIV/Aids epidemic. Although this comparison definitely makes sense now, that is not the first thing I would have thought to compare his situation to if I was to read that passage before reading this article.

Weekly Response

We read some interesting things this week. One of the readings was about Marxism and its application to Christianity. I would never ever think something like Marxism and Christianity would be compatible in any way, shape, or form, and to be honest, even after reading the article that was assigned I am still not quite sure how they are compatible. This article went over my head for a lot of it, and I had a lot of trouble grasping what the author was talking about.

                Another article that was assigned this week dealt with post colonialism. This was a very interesting article to me. Before reading this, I had never really thought about how colonization may have affected our post reformation translations of the bible into common language and how we even still interpret it to this day. One thing that stands out in my memory from this reading was something they said about the King James Bible. The author said the King James Bible was almost as synonymous with colonization as the Union Jack, and that this translation is the closest thing to an epic that the British have. This statement made me think about how much a biblical translation can affect the meaning of the word. This author felt so strongly that colonization was so deeply rooted in the King James Bible that it had altered the word in its translations so much that it was no longer just the bible, but rather an English epic used for colonization.

                One thing that stood out as really interesting to me that we learned this week was how Ethiopia was never colonized by a European power. I found this interesting because when I personally think of Ethiopia, I think of a very poor nation with starving people or how someone may jokingly tell someone who is very skinny that they look Ethiopian. It was really interesting to me that in the 19^th century they were a powerful enough nation to resist colonization from Europe, which contradicts my modern views of Ethiopia. The more I thought about this though it led to deeper thoughts about how maybe their lack of colonization has potentially led to them being in the current state that they are in. I am not trying to sound extremely Eurocentric here, but it is just interesting to me to think about how maybe if they were colonized they could potentially be better off like a nation such as South Africa. I know South Africa has a vast amount of natural resources which leads to the wealth of it as a nation, but it is still just a thought that I found interesting to ponder. 

Economics and the Bible

This week’s reading was very interesting to me. It really made me consider a lot of different things. One thought I had while reading it was about how all of this was commanding the Israelites to not charge interest while lending money, but yet, we had discussed earlier in the class about how anti-Semitic views are rooted in how Jews were able to lend money and charge interest in medieval Europe. This was very confusing to me, and I was left wondering how they could be so hypocritical to their own teachings. Later in our in class discussion this was cleared up though, the commandments in the Hebrew bible only commanded the Israelites to not charge interest to members of THEIR tribe. Although this cleared up my confusion on why they charged interest, it did not change my stance on the hypocrisy of what they were doing. To be clear, I think charging interest is completely and totally fine in the modern world, but I cannot understand why someone would find it morally wrong to charge interest to their own people and turn around and do it to others. The hypocrisy behind this school of thought in the Hebrew bible is still confusing to me, and I do not understand why they would do something to God’s other people if they are not willing to do it to their own people.

                In class we had a discussion about the different biblical passages about debt forgiveness and if they were applicable to the real world today. We had said that if they were applied today they would be revolutionary and completely change the economic system. I agree that they would change the economic system, but I do not agree that it would be a good change. I think that if we were to set a timetable until peoples debts were forgiven that it would cause people to become lazy when it comes to paying their debts. I think if we put in a system like what the biblical verses suggest that people would just make their bare minimum payments until they were able to get their debts forgiven. This would be absolutely awful for the economic system and would completely destroy anyone’s willingness to lend money at all. Although the biblical verses are nice in theory and give out a good message about helping your neighbors and forgiveness, actually completely forgiving debts in the real world would destroy the economic system and not make anyone willing to lend money for anything.

Domestic Violence

This week’s readings over domestic violence really raised some serious thoughts in my mind. In no way, shape, or form would I ever condone domestic violence, and I was very shocked to realize that you can actually very easily interpret readings from the bible to be condoning of domestic violence. To me, this was just further proof of the moral inaccuracies in certain parts of the bible and reasons why you should never take any texts from the bible literally. If the bible is capable of condoning something as horrible as domestic violence when taken literally, how could anyone ever believe that you should take biblical texts literally? I, personally, believe the bible just offers us loose moral guidelines to live our lives by and is not something that you take literally and live your life solely based off the literal messages and teachings of the bible. If you were to do this, you could easily find yourself finding domestic violence acceptable or doing other things that many of us would find morally unacceptable due to the many conflicting messages within the bible. When I thought about how you can find biblical texts supportive of domestic violence, it made me think about how you could probably find a biblical message supportive of nearly any argument. I feel as if the bible is almost like statistics in many ways. It is often said that you can twist and manipulate statistics to support yourself in any argument. I, personally, see the bible to be very similar to this. You could find a text in the bible that you could twist the interpretation to support yourself in nearly any argument I feel like. If you can find biblical texts that support terrible things such as domestic violence and slavery as we have seen so far in this class, then what types of issues would you not be able to twist a biblical reading into being supportive of? I am no biblical scholar or expert and I have not thoroughly read much of the bible, but it would not surprise me at all if someone was able to find biblical passages that you could twist to support issues, such as abortion or gay marriage, that modern devout Christians would be appalled to support. 

Tricksters

The concept of “the trickster” was a very interesting one to me. I have always agreed that there are one hundred percent justifiable reasons for lying in life as long as they are for good moral reasons, but I have never really considered biblical reasons that justify such lying as we did in the readings this week. The example of the women lying to the pharaoh about why they didn’t kill the newly born sons of the Hebrew slaves is the perfect example of situations that I believe lying is totally acceptable. However, the example of Rebekah and Jacob using deceit to get Jacob the birthright is a little bit more morally questionable in my opinion. The trickster can be a very complex issue though. There are definitely some situations where using deceit to better your cause can be the only option and be very helpful in furthering the cause of the oppressed. Using deceit in the way that tricksters do is a fine moral line to walk though. It can be very hard for someone to use deceit and remain one hundred percent moral and honest in their cause. If someone uses deceit to redistribute power in society and they are successful in distributing power to themselves, what is to stop them from continuing to use deceit and potentially becoming the oppressor themselves? For example, following World War 1 the Germans were being heavily oppressed by the treaty of Versailles that was forced on them by the winning nations of the war. During this time of oppression, Adolf Hitler rose to power by using deceit and making promises he knew he did not plan to uphold to once he had the power. Once he had the power, he used more deceit to further his cause and took Germany from being oppressed by the treaty of Versailles to being the oppressor themselves of thousands of innocent Europeans. This is the type of thing I fear of when deciding that deceit is totally acceptable to further your cause if you are an oppressed group. On the other hand, using deceit in the manner that the Methodist pastor we discussed in class did to further the cause of homosexuals within the Methodist church is completely and totally acceptable in my mind.