Month: April 2024

Vanish the model role for high school environment

eejoseph,

Describe something you learned in high school.

My high school education is as strange as it comes.   I was not aware of any impression from the teachers that contributed to my learning or character.  The  functional and essential lessons for life did not come from the context of math, science and the humanities in the classroom, but rather from a single figure demonstrating that young people needed to be true to themselves and the community to which they belonged.

Stand up the struggle for social justice

The power and diversity of languages and the combination of music with sober reflection touched me more deeply than anything else.  It seems now that I took with me the idea that the best use of anything I learned was going to need friends and teamwork.  As a result, my greatest joys come from the lasting friendships,  the  music, and the courage to protest anything, anything at all.

Creation is no parallel to salvation

eejoseph

When the narrative of Genesis becomes a tool for putting law on the same reflection platform as grace, we see how unreasonable Bible interpretation has become.   How quickly people can step outside the circle of love to despise their neighbours’ food, to judge and condemn the very things of which they are guilty! It does not matter which part of the Mosaic law one holds up as Christian value there is impoverishment and juvenile emptiness in the outcomes. As surely as humankind would not proceed without a female component so the love of God could not proceed without the sending of the Saviour.

No eternal life rises from God’s creation

The meditation on creation slips quickly into unprofitable comparisons to Adam and Eve. The elephant in the room is the thin line between pride in one’s capacity to pass where Adam failed and agreement with God that a flaming sword blocks the way to immortality. This is especially true when one commits to hundreds of commands from God compared to the single prohibition Adam had to deal with.

Who wants a do-over of creation?

God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

(Genesis 1:31, NASB)

Creation is a starting point. The conditions are not going be duplicated. The outcomes of creation are pretty devastating. The evaluation goes quickly downhill from very good, to not good, to expulsion from Eden, to destruction by a flood.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”

Genesis 2:18, NASB

I can only imagine returning to portions of a few books

eejoseph,

What book could you read over and over again?

Some books I have read do thrill me from cover to cover, but they are mostly fantasy and fiction.  I do not see myself returning to read them.  I can only picture myself returning portions of certain books to see what other deep mysteries of life or what mix of emotions I may discover. I owe you a book, by name, since I am responding to the prompt.   Esther, Jewish story, explaining the Feast of Purim and a whole lot more.