Author: freineke

Revelation makes my brain hurt, but it’s also my favorite lecture of the semester so far. I found it interesting thinking about the anti-Christ and who this person may be. It’s so hard to think about where we may be in a hundred more years as the 1920’s and now are almost two whole different worlds. This being said I don’t think the antichrist is alive merely because it is statistically unlikely. I also think that all of the different ways of calculating ones name into a number has become completely disingenuous because they don’t even know what language it’s supposed to be in or if it should add up to 666 or 616. It’s weird to hear about something so dystopian and pretty sad in the Bible, but I’ve become genuinely compelled to read the book of Revelations to more fully understand what the end of the world is supposed to look like.

I found the topic of Jesus’s siblings and family to be one of the most entertaining of the semester. It’s so odd to think about being one of Jesus’s brothers or sisters. You’d literally be living in the shadow of the most famous human of all time. Looking at things like sibling rivalries is another thought provoking idea. Assuming his siblings were followers of him, it would be beyond condescending to have your sibling also be fully God. It’s a shame that we don’t have more definite proof of their existence or their true relationship to Jesus because I feel as though their insight may be helpful in our understanding of Jesus, Christianity, and even religion in general.

One of the concepts today that I found most intriguing was talking about circumcision in the texts of the Bible. Before class I knew about the dialogue between God and Abraham, and it always seemed so weird that God would request for all of Abrahams sons to be circumcised, like it doesn’t seem like a real theological or ethical decision to make if it weren’t for the fact that Abraham said God told him to do it. This being said I now understand how it’s the “token of the covenant” and it’s an irreversible marking.

In regards to the video about Paul and his emphasis of submission of slaves to their owners, we talked about it in the United Methodist Student Movement a couple weeks back, and it’s very tough scripture to tussle with. It’s not like a lot of the other stories of the Bible where if you look at it at a certain angle you can see it’s true meaning and how you can relate it to your life to be a better person and Christian.

I always found it interesting thinking about women in the Bible. While there are some prominent figures that most casual Christians know like Mary Magdalene and Mary the Mother of Christ there surely must be more figures of note in the Bible seeing as women were 50% of the population and Jesus didn’t discriminate. This leads me to believe that there HAS to be figures in the Bible that have be “re-written” as men. Judging by how much we have progressed in women’s rights in the past 60 years I can only imagine the extents of differential treatment between the sexes 2000 years ago. There surely must be papers into the fact of what characters could be re-written as men. When you look at all the different types of men that Jesus’s apostles were before following him I think it’s safe to say that Jesus wasn’t discriminating on sex. The early authors of the books of the Bible may have had a similar mindset as the slave masters that edited the Slave Bible, where they knew they would have to change the word of God to fit the narrative of society that they want to uphold as opposed to the society Jesus wants to see.

It was kind of difficult to really do a lot of deeper thinking in regards to the Gospels and how they may be related. It’s hard to provide insight when the most knowledgeable experts in the whole world took such a long time to come up with a strong chronological order.

I enjoyed the discussion about the Gospel of John more. I like how there seems to be more misunderstanding and consensus in John, the inconsistency adds a weird layer of beauty and meaning if that makes sense.  Because of this, even though I’d say my knowledge of the Gospels is still limited, I’d say that John is also my favorite. I also like John’s usage of the word “Father” as I think it’s important for readers conceptualization of the Holy Trinity.

When we talked about Jesus’s birth and the differences in the gospels telling of it, I thought about the difference in nativity scenes all around the world. It may seem silly but the conversation makes me think about how many nativity scenes follow each gospels telling of the story and how many are completely wrong or blur different gospels together.

I also enjoyed learning about the possibility that Jesus was born in a cave, merely because it is a funny scene to imagine. When we talked about the fact of the roman calendars incorrectness in identifying the year Jesus was born brought me back to an idea I’ve had the whole semester, what year did Mary and Joseph think it was when he was born and were they on the Roman 12 month calendar. Further down the rabbit hole when was that calendar accepted worldwide and what did the process look like.

I think it’s interesting that we don’t really know what the music of the Psalms sounded like. The research into ancient instruments reminds me of the excavation of the house that showed Israelites in Israel, something else I find interesting. I especially find it cool how there may be a back and forth in the rehearsal of the Psalms in ancient times. It’s be cool to know as it may reveal new meaning in the Psalms.

In regards to the question in class regarding music and if a “cover” is the same as the original, I think as long as there is a noticeable amount of deliberate change to the song then it is a different song.

I found the dive into pop culture interesting, as someone that likes to know random facts about pop culture these were nice additions to my repertoire. This is something I’d like to see in class more, but I understand the class agenda goes outside of pop culture.

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.

In my blog post I wanted to expand upon the question of what people or people groups are most like prophets today. I have two answers, I shared one answer that suggested politicians and activists are similar as they are moral leaders, who are trying to steer us towards what they perceive as what is morally correct. I would think that this answer is really good if it weren’t for the fact that often times politicians are corrupt and rather than serving the people, like the prophets, they are serving lobbyists, their party, or their own pocket. This is why activists may be a better analogy, as there is less opportunity for profit paired with the fact that prophets were often sent for a specific reason, like how activists usually have a specialty. Another analogy that I came up with is that prophets best shadow superheroes. As superheroes aren’t real I didn’t share in class, but I see even more parallels between them and prophets. They both have strength from higher or supernatural powers (I’m not sure if it’s acceptable to call God supernatural). They also generally have a specific evil that they are targeting, superheroes targeting supervillains and prophets targeting sins/sinners. Finally they both tend to have polarizing views about them in society and have large reputations before and after death.

The Prophets almost give me the vibe of the Justice League or The Avengers. They’re this league of legendary figures with their own cool unique back story. I remember my church drama teacher telling us in approximately fourth grade that the Bible, specifically the book of acts, was like an action movie, and the prophets kind of fit into that narrative.

Another part of the lecture that I found interesting was talking about people not focusing on the afterlife for a long period of the Abrahamic religious timeline. As a person I tend to think about death a lot, I’m not sure if it’s just me or if it’s more people and society in general, but there’s no way that I wouldn’t think about the afterlife because quite frankly it’s scary to me. The afterlife is really the only part of Christianity that I ever struggle with. The morals and teachings of the Bible seem fairly straight forward and integral to life, but conceptualizing the afterlife is where sometimes my faith starts to waiver.