Month: October 2020

In class on Thursday, we talked about proverbs and the story of Job. God put forth awful things on Job’s life to prove to Satan that he will still worship and love him. We thought about how God and Satan were basically making bets with each other on Job, which feels weird to me, but I also think that it’s just to help get the message across and help tell the story. Dr. McGrath called it a “philosophical thought experiment” which I think describes it very well. In the end even with bad wisdom from his friends, Job chooses to continue to worship God. In class we questioned if good things only happen to good people and vise versa. Obviously we know from our everyday lives that this isn’t the case, but why? Why do bad things happen to good people? It is more complex than what we think. Personally, I think the story of Job is trying to convey that we might have to struggle a bit in order to prove ourselves to God.

I’m a part of the United Methodist Student Movement at Butler and Wednesday night when we met we talked about the first 5 chapters of Ecclesiastes just as we did in class. We assessed how it goes back and forth between suggesting life is meaningless to the stance that there is meaning in life. When you see the Bible saying that everything is meaningless whether the goal is to convey that everything is meaningless or not the message is not reassuring. I’m interested as my Methodist group dives more into it how our analysis compares to the mostly secular analysis we did in class. The poetic nature of Ecclesiastes is extra confusing when you’re trying to decipher the real goal of the scripture. The poetic nature does add an extra element of beauty to the writings, and it’s interesting to think of what the true meaning of this style is. There is really nothing that comes to my mind but I’m sure there have been twenty thesis papers about it.

We talked about the different proverbs in languages and then connected these to how Job was speaking about his troubles. Proverbs are little sayings that are based on observation rather than much knowledge of something. These usually connect with real life and have a deeper meaning. Some of these even remind me of little ‘life hacks.’ For example, honesty is the best policy, actions speak louder than words, and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It highlights an obvious action and offers the audience to learn from it to create a better community where they find themselves in society. I see this in the book of Job. He speaks of his tragedies in poetic form and is speaking to God in the questions that he poses, especially in the last verses of the book. However, these questions can be viewed from the reader as questions for themselves to answer. Specifically, in chapter 38:31-35, the questions point towards what you can do and ask impossible actions from a human. Then he answers by asking questions from chapter 38:36-38 about who can do these impossible actions. It is by that point that readers try and think of someone or something that could possibly do what is being posed. Which turns the reader to God; he can do all these things. This is where Christians find their hope and faith. They know who can form everything, so they believe in God with greater faith. The emphasis of the poetic verse gets the reader believing in God so that they will turn to him in troubled times. Therefore, the reader uses God as an answer to their questions in life. Like a proverb, in real life, people will experience hardship, and when they are posed to act, they turn to God to help them through their trials.

In class we discussed the difference between monotheism and polytheism. Monotheism is believing in one God whereas polytheism is believing in multiple Gods. In a paper I previously wrote, it discussed the idea that the Exodus from Egypt started the trend of Monotheism. Moses’ ideas from God about believing in solely one God started the movement. They took away from Egypt and went on their own to believe in their own religion. They moved away from Egypt’s ideas of multiple Gods to worship. Moses lead the trend in beginning to focus on one God with Judaism, with Christianity and Islam to follow in his footsteps.

On Thursday’s class, we discussed proverbs and the story of Job. I always knew what a proverb is but found it hard to define. They are defined as short sayings that offer some type of advice or wisdom. I had never realized that proverbs aren’t only religious sayings but natural sayings that I use in everyday life! Some of my favorites are:

“Actions speak louder than words”

“If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”

“Early bird gets the worm”

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover”

We also discussed the story of Job, which I have always found interesting in my previous religion courses. The discussion around suffering in the Bible is intriguing. I think the best part about the story of Job is that it is basically a philosophical thought experiment along with a wager. The idea of 2 deities making a bet based on the actions of a human is comical but also makes me feel a little uncomfortable. It doesn’t sit right with me that deities could just be seeing us as little pawns to mess with.

For Tuesday’s class, we read some articles that discussed the difference between monotheism, atheism, and polytheism. Monotheism is defined as the belief in only one God. Atheism is defined as the disbelief of any God. Lastly, polytheism is the belief of many Gods. Before this class, I was aware of all of these beliefs and their meanings. While reading something new I learned is monolatry, which is the belief that there are multiple Gods/deities, but only one is worshipped. I think this is an important distinction to make.

In class, we discussed the idea of Prophets. I find it difficult to define a Prophet but, the definition that makes the most sense to me is a messenger or contact of the words of God. Dr. McGrath asked us to come with ideas of Prophets in recent history and they didn’t have to be religious. My group came up with MLK and scientists like Dr. Fauci (especially in COVID19 times). I see the resemblance between MLK and Prophets because not only did MLK directly quote the Bible, but he is a person that was held with high respect and many people listened to him and still do years after his death. Similarly, scientists are held with high respect and people listen to their opinions and directions. However, both MLK and scientists aren’t always listened to but Prophets also weren’t.

When it comes to wisdom many people might come to mind. Parents possibly, celebrities, authors, philosophers and more However, in class we didn’t mention those people instead we mentioned the idea of Proverbs. many proverbs were thrown around in class such as “The early bird gets the worm” and “with great power comes great responsibility” The amazing thing about proverbs for the most part is where do they originate? for the more common saying no one knows. Excluding a few of course. However my favorite Proverb comes from proverbs 13:20. He whom walks with the wise man becomes wise. I remember when my pastor told me this after getting in trouble at church and it lead me to surround myself with people who would push me to do and be better. But in all Proverbs no matter their origin the ideas are considered timeless. Going back to “The early bird gets the worm” you could trace that back to its literal meaning or in comparison for humans the time of hunters and gathers. Today it has the meaning of drive, ambition, and success. Proverbs provide us with not necessarily exact way to success but give us guidance on the path of success.

The story of Job brings forth the ideas of wisdom and if any man could be truly righteous in an imperfect world. A person who is righteous is someone who is morally correct, which is different that self-righteousness, which is when a person believes they are more virtuous than others due to self love. This story of Job revolves around the idea that God believes Job to be the most righteous man in the world, and because of this, he lets Satan test Job. This test includes Job losing everything his has earned in life, and basically ruins Job’s life. In the end, Job is shown to be a blessed man who loved and had the fear of God inside him.

God chose to believe that Job was perfectly righteous. But, is it possible to be perfectly righteous? Job was incredibly righteous, but he also knew that he was righteous. This allowed for a little bit of self-righteousness to seep in. He questioned why God would punish him when he was so incredibly righteous. However, he could only question this if he knew how righteous he was. That is where it falls apart a little bit. I don’t think that any person could be completely righteous, there is always going to be some slip up in their actions or beliefs. No person is perfect. So, Job might have been the closest person to being perfectly righteous, but he was not completely righteous, and all that came when he started questioning why bad things were happening to him.

Monotheism has been around for a long time. The idea of Monotheism is thought to have started in Egypt in the 14th century. Monotheism is known to be the belief in one God, and is frequently placed with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
However, the question has been asked if these religions, especially Christianity, are actually Monotheistic or if they could fall into a different category. That category being Henotheism. Henotheism is the worship of a single God, but also the acknowledgement that there could still be other deities out their. This especially comes into question when you look at the Ten Commandments. The very first commandment is “You shall have no other Gods before me.” Know is that a statement of trust in one God, or stating that there could be other Gods, but one is more almighty than the others?
Most people believe that these three religions are Monotheistic, and I don’t disagree with that statement. I, however, think that people are free to believe what they want to. Everything is up to interpretation in my mind, and I think that people should be allowed to believe in whatever they want to when it comes to religious practices.

One of the main resources of wisdom we talked about in class were proverbs. Not just the book in the Bible, but also short sayings that are nonbiblical, which people still go by everyday. One of the main things that I learned or that has never really caught my eye is how wisdom can be used in a negative way if it is in the wrong hands. It is actually a proverb in of itself: “Like a thornbush in drunkard’s hand is a proverb said from a fool.” We see this in Job and how his friends try to use wisdom to help him in his suffering, but in reality they were only making the situation worse.

One of the most fascinating things about the story of Job and one of the biggest things to take away was, not how faithful he stayed after the first bout of suffering came his way, but after going through so much more and coming to a point where he wishes he was never born, then seeing so much growth when he ultimately reveals his unwavering faith in God after going through so much pain while being as impressive of a human being as possible. It is such a good lesson on how to handle suffering, which is to come to the realization that God is bigger, better, and more consistent than anything in the universe and that the suffering one is going through doesn’t even compare to the goodness of God.