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Alex Burfeind

#1

The first text we are studying in Bible Lit is the Book of Job. Job demonstrates Gods power and will. In this reading, God challenges Satan by telling no matter what he does to Job that Job will not curse God in any way and remain true to him, God then takes everything Job owns away from him. He kills all his livestock along with his children and servants. Job then still does not curse God so God covers his body with awful boils to further prove his point, but Job still does not curse God. Then as Job sits and sorrows, his three friends come to try and comfort him, which they do a faulty job of.

Throughout the reading Job asks questions to God and his three friends, all of which are left unanswered. In Job 3:20, Job asks God why it is that the ones who want to leave this life that are granted with it and those that have not wronged get punished. God wants to see what those who are truly unhappy do with their lives when they are given another chance, and for those who are punished it is a test of their true faith in God, that he will grant him well in the end. In 6:24, Job wants God to tell him what he has done wrong and after that, Job will “be silent” and no more be confused or confused or questions Gods choices. Job just wants to know how he has wronged and questions why God is not giving him a reason or a sign. 7:17 is Job asking what humans are there for or what is wrong with them tat God spends time being with us. If he created us the way he wanted then why is he checking up on us and testing our abilities. God created us all as he pleased but as we grow and learn we are influenced by those around us, and everything that is going on in the world, so God feels the need to test how faithful we are and how well we are protecting ourselves. In 9:2, Job asks, “how can a mortal be just with God?” in other words, how can a mortal be present or in the presents of God? Because we are not perfect we can never be physically close with God. He cannot be near anything or anyone who is not perfect. 9:24, Job is asking who it is that performs wicked if it is not God. It is Satan who is the control of Hell, and it is him who wrongs people. God is letting Satan do things to prove a point. In 21:7, Job asks, “why do the wicked live on, reach old age and grow mighty in power?” why is God letting sinners live on and live their lives fully, and let some eventually gain strength? Again, God wants to see what those can do with the opportunity/opportunities they are given. He wants them to correct their wrong doings. In 21:4, Job asks his friends if his complains are heard by mortals, or are their opinions given. Is God letting everything Job says being an example or heard by everyone else? Job has now passed the point of sorrow and gone onto anger, he is confused as to why God has done this and is now complaining that God lets others such as “the wicked” live on and lead lives without bother.

Job has three friends that come to visit him, Ellphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. These friends come to be at his side and comfort him, but they never end up doing so. They tell Job that maybe he is complaining too much. And they provide no help or comfort at all, but in fact go off about everything he is doing wrong. If I was a friend of Job, I would never tell him what he was doing wrong, but comfort him the best that I could. I would tell him that Gods reasons and intention are not to hurt us, he knows what’s best, and will comfort us in the end and provide us with guidance. Also, that perhaps God never intended for it to be that way, he just let some things out of his reach and fate took a turn itself. God would never make such a drastic change in our lives if he did not have a plan for us, or purpose. God is always changing our lives, but for the better. He wants us to trust that what he is doing is nothing bad, but an improvement or meaningful change to our lives.


#2

We are currently still reading the book of Genesis. In this book, God and Abrahams “relationship” is born. God sends Abram to the land of the pharaoh, where Sara had to convince the pharaoh that she was Abrams sister. This was the case because Sara was so beautiful that if the Egyptians new she was the wife of Abram, they would kill him. Sara and Abram have their names changed to Abraham and Sarah, by God, and were the “leaders” of the Jews in the beginning. Sarah and Abraham have a child whom they name Lot. Lot and Abraham are forced to split the land that they are to live on. Eventually, Lot and his daughters are sent away from the land and the daughters get Lot drunk and rape him. From this, they all become pregnant which oddly; God does not punish them for.

God cannot seem to make up his mind about anything. He demonstrates two sides of himself, the first in Job, and the second in Genesis. God punishes Job for something that we still do not know. He treats Job awful for nothing. Job had been a faithful follower and had stayed true to God. In genesis, Lots daughters rape him and become pregnant by him and God does not punish them. God contradicts himself throughout the beginning of the Bible. God seems to think he is a greater being, which he is, but confuses us by not treating everyone equally. His actions are questionable and so far we see that he is in favor of the wrong doings we perform. He challenged Satan and then lot Lots daughters to horrible things to him. In my opinion, God's choices are not consistent.

 #3

First I want to talk about my dreams before they leave my head. Last night I dreamt about my grandfather who is to undergo surgery to remove a cancerous tumor that has grown on his neck. I dreamt that he was to go into surgery at lunchtime and be finished in two hours, but right before surgery he miraculously recovered. After he recovered, he began to marry all these younger woman and then divorced them only a few days after. This part of my dream was surprising because it was very similar to what happened to Jacob in our previous reading. Jacob slept with four different women and got them all pregnant, becoming the father of eleven children, not including his only daughter. After marrying all these women, he decided that he would become a minister again. After he became a minister again, strange things began to happen to him. He lost all his money and the cancer came back, and all his children that he had, began to disappear. In the dream the scene completely changed from my grandfather looking for all his children to him having a heart attack. Right when the heart attack began I woke up. I have had dreams similar to those before where someone undergoes something life threatening like a surgery. Every time I have these types of dreams I wake up right before that bad thing takes place. After that dream, I had one where I talked to a guy that I have not seen in over four months, now 6, because we had a huge fight. I had gotten the guts to finally text him but when I did the number was disconnected and I could not get a hold of him. I spent the rest of the dream trying to find a way to get in touch with him again but I never could, until one of his friends brought me to him. And as in the previous dream, right before I was about to see him, I woke up again. I always seem to wake right before important events are about to take place. Maybe it is possible that that I am not supposed to know the outcomes but figure them out myself.

Genesis: In Genesis we just read about Jacob and his relationships with his wives and their servants. Jacob slept with all these women and they all conceived and bore him children. Jacob ended up with eleven children, all boys. I found this story a little ironic because in the Ten Commandments, God states that one should not be unfaithful to their spouse. But with Jacob, God helps and encourages it. God allows Jacob to sleep with all these women. He even opens the womb of Leah for Jacob. God is encouraging Jacob to have many wives and a significant amount of children with them. Jacob did indeed have to work for these wives, but it was not right of God to allow him to have so many and be so publicly unfaithful. It became a competition between the wives. God sat back and watched. Though the Ten Commandments had not been set yet, God must have still had the idea of right and wrong in the back of his thoughts. On other questionable action that God performs, is letting these women suffer and be jealous over Jacob and whatever wife he happened to be with. God seems to make the women look like they are the ones causing all the problems. The women suffer and are blamed. I feel God sometimes likes the men better and grants them with multiple wives and or wealth.


#4

Last night was the first time I have had a dream that I felt would be somewhat easily interpreted, or I felt had some sort of relevant meaning. I was in K-Mart, which I have never been in before, which I found strange. I was the only one in there at the time because it was after closing hours. There was a tent display set up in the middle of the store, and for some reason I was extremely curious about what was inside it. Out of curiosity, I walked over to it and reached to open it but as soon as I reached my hand down, a light went on inside of it. I kind of stumbled backwards when this happened. I kept staring at it and while I was doing so I had flashbacks of what had happened in my actual life. The flashbacks consisted of one with my neighbor, running around the beach at sunset taking as many pictures as we possibly could and me. The other was December 14, 2006 when I was at some Christmas Garden show with my best friend. The two of us walked around for at least two hours talking about everything we could think of. It was below freezing, and in the flashback I could feel the dead cold. I soon feel out of that flashback/daydream and focused my attention back on the tent, which now flashed different colors. I suddenly became scared to open it and started shaking. I finally mustered up enough courage and stood directly in front of the tent. When I went to pull the zipper, it would not open! I tried for what seemed to be at least an hour of pulling on it. I started getting extremely frustrated and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t being allowed inside. I stopped trying and sat down on the ground in front of the tent. I started to cry because I wanted so desperately to find out what the light inside was, or what it was meant for. I never seemed to want something so bad in my life. It was possible that the light made some of the best memories come back that I had almost began to forget about. I sat on the floor for a while, staring at the tent guessing everything that it could possibly be. The tent then lit up brighter than it had all night, and as it faded back to dark I began to wake up.

I have tried to think up possible meanings for this dream but I have been lacking in that area. I definitely think that the light is significant. Also, I think the fact that the tent was locked is very important. Maybe it was locked for a reason; maybe there was something I was not supposed to see. Often God is seen in light, so maybe it had something to do with God being present. God is possibly trying to tell me something. All the flashbacks were related because they were all good memories. The colors that flashed in the tent also confused me. I thought maybe they stood for the different emotions I had while experiencing the flashbacks.


#5

Paper idea(s): This week we have our Moses essays due and I was thinking about doing mine on the relationship between God and Moses. I am aware that a large amount of people are writing their papers on the same topic but I feel that I have a good understanding of their relationship and evidence for it. I was going to use a few key was that God favors Moses as the skeleton of my paper, and the body paragraph topics. I was going to prove how Gods treatments towards Moses display Gods favoritism towards him. The ending would possibly compare other humans that God has mistreated and or treated well to the way God treats Moses, relating back to Gods treatment of Job. I would like to have enough evidence to prove that God has an obvious favor for Moses than anyone else. Potential evidence would be, the birth of Moses and his childhood all the way up to the Ten Commandments. (AFTER MEETING WITH MR. SHAFFNER) I decided that I wanted to change the direction of my Moses essay. I have changed it to the comparison of Gods relationship with Moses, the Israelites and the Egyptians. God has a different relationship with every group or person. His closeness and distance vary with the people depending on Gods favor of them. Gods’ relationship with Moses is the closest among the three groups. With the Egyptians, God has almost no relations other than punishment because they have many other Gods than Yahweh. The Egyptians also do not follow the order that God would like. Gods’ relationship with the Israelites is less distant. He disapproves of the Golden Calf but this is the only false idol that they have, so the anger is not as strong as with the Egyptians. God is always with Moses and uses him as his voice on earth. I believe my paper would be stronger if I focused on Gods relationships with a different variety of people rather than just Moses. My evidence would come from everything that God has done to each group, whether beneficial or punishment. For some reason God favors Moses over anybody else. I would like to argue why this is. In the conclusion I would state that Moses is indeed in Gods favor and of greater importance. In this book, god has “tricks’ he performs through Moses such as; turning Moses’ staff into a snake, turning his hand white and creates a series of plagues. The plagues that God sends consist of, gnats and rats infesting Egypt, famine, killing the animals, and the murder of every first born Egyptian son. When Moses is leading Gods people back home, God parts the sea for him to cross through. When the Egyptian warriors follow, the sea is closed upon them, killing them. 


#6

Recently we watched magic tricks by David Blane in class. In them he made a woman’s wedding ring disappear and re appear in a completely random place. Then, in another he made a homeless mans cup of coffee turn in to a cup of coins. Then Mr. Saffner showed us how he could “levitate” by raising his right foot while pushing up on his left, giving us the illusion that he could really do it. I will admit that I was a little disappointed to figure out how he did it. If I were to look up the solutions to other tricks out there, I would be let down knowing how they are done.
    Both dreams of mine last night were extremely random, not to mention confusing. In the first, David Dwyer and I were at my house for some reason and were sitting on the floor by the end of my bed. He had just broken up with his girlfriend and was really upset. He started to cry and it turned into violent sobs. He was crying so hard that I told him I would take him to the water park where we could stay all day and not think about anything else. After hearing this, David stopped crying and agreed to go. When we arrived, the park was closed and David started crying again but would not stop for anything. I tried thinking of other things that we could do but nothing came to mind. In the midst of thinking, it began to snow and David suddenly became happy again. Over the course of two hours, it snowed, melted, snowed, melted, snowed and melted again. The weather changed, as David would cry and stop. Eventually, over some period of time, he stopped crying for good. He told me of how he missed the beach and all his friends that were there and how he wanted his girlfriend back even if it meant all their problems coming back. I woke up just as he was about to tell me the secret of all his problems and crying.
    The second dream that night consisted of me and almost every member of the class of 2009. We were outside practicing for graduation but none of us were paying attention at all. When we went up on stage we fell through into the mall, which was extremely weird. Surprisingly though, we were all walking around shopping and acting completely normal like this was something ordinary. All the guys decided to play a game of hide and seek because there was no one else in the mall except for us. All the girls hid in the girls’ bathroom because we thought that they would never look for us there. While we were hiding, one of the girls began to get scared and started hyperventilating. To calm he down we tried fanning her down but no matter what she said we could not let her out of the room. The dream turned into a horror movie. The lights went out and the mall went silent. The girl who was freaking out fainted. The rest of us heard the loud noises like gunshots coming from somewhere in the mall. We assumed that the guys were just playing around with guns to scare us, but then they started shooting at the bathroom door. Some girls got hit with bullets and disappeared. After two forty five seconds of shooting only seven of us remained, including the girl that had fainted. We heard the boys laughing and we became terrified for our own lives. I could not tell who the other girls were and I did not dare ask for fear of being heard by the boys. One of the boys opened the door and stared straight at me but could not see me. He pointed to gun up to the ceiling and shot.