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.