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.

Weekly Response

This week’s readings and in class discussions were some very interesting ones. They really made me reconsider some things that I had never looked at in my life before this week. I had never really questioned anything such as bible verses being translated in the eyes of only Eurocentric males to display a message that benefits them or anything of that nature. Although I do not think the way the bible verses were translated have really had any great effect on how people perceive whites or blacks like the book may have suggested that it did, it was still very interesting to read about. It would be interesting to see other areas of the bible that may have been translated to benefit a Eurocentric perspective. This subject also made me consider a few other things about biblical translations. It spurred thoughts about if all modern different language bibles were translated from the former Latin Roman Catholic bible that was universal before the Reformation, and if they are generally all the same messages in them because of that. I think it would be interesting to see if you translated a Spanish or some other language bible into English if the messages you see in them would still be the same or if they would be slightly altered to potentially benefit the dominant culture like this biblical example we looked at.

                One of the most interesting things that came up in class this week was when Jacob brought up his belief about how women being able to bear children still directly affects their worth in our modern society.  When he said this, I was in absolute shock and just waiting to see the reactions of the women in the classroom to his statement. Unsurprisingly, no one else in the class really supported this belief. Although I in no way shape or form agree with his belief about women’s value in society being related to their ability to produce children anymore, I can somewhat understand his reasoning for his personal beliefs although I still believe you cannot make sweeping generalizations based off of a few personal experiences like that.

                Another thing that really made me reconsider some of my perspective from class this week was when I said that I believed that the first article we read may have been out of date and that I personally never really saw any issues like this growing up in the 21^st century. When I said this, Dr. Stein questioned me from the author’s perspective and said that the author would argue that I was so used to growing up in the social location that I was raised in that I would be blind to things like that and never even look for them in my day to day life. Although I can not one hundred percent confirm or deny whether or not I was actually totally blind to these occurrences in my childhood, I can say that after that I will try and see how something would feel from someone else’s social location while judging a situation after that.

Weekly Blog

While reading the chapters of the book this week, I often found myself uncomfortable or disagreeing with the stance the author took. I did not disagree on the basic facts such as the oppression or how it was not right how they used to the bible to justify the oppression, but I felt like some of the things they said may have been slightly embellished or very “liberal” as a conservative would say. One thing that I still remember from the reading Tuesday that still stands out in my mind as ridiculous was one of the stances they took on the oppression of blacks during segregation and still today. At one point, the author said something along the lines of segregation was based solely around keeping the blacks uneducated, and this practice has still not been fixed today. I found this statement completely ridiculous. Not because I disagree on segregation being bad or that being a major factor in it, but in the fact that the author genuinely believes that in 21^st century America that we are still keeping blacks uneducated and that they do not have the same academic opportunity as other Americans. I went to school with many African Americans, and for someone to say that they are not receiving the same educational opportunities when in many places across the country blacks and whites go to the same public schools and have the exact same educational opportunities is ridiculous in my mind.

                Another thing I found hard to agree with or imagine was the many different ethnic Jesus’s that they presented. I know the author was mainly trying to prove the reasons that the people from these ethnic groups should identify with Jesus, but for me personally, imagining Jesus as these things made me uncomfortable and I found it very hard to imagine Jesus as such. Although in my mind I often do find myself picturing Jesus as a white man like myself, I am not ignorant enough to not realize that this image of Jesus is very unlikely. I realize Jesus was most likely of olive color skin and looked like what a middle easterner looks like today, and I have no problem with that. I just found it extremely hard to fathom Jesus as a woman, homosexual, or even of African origin as they made a case for at one point.