Garden of Eden Did Adam and Eve really only think that good existed before they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? If what we were talking about in class today is true, then they must have had all the knowledge of good and evil but not have been able to access it. Is it the same way when we are born? Do we know everything good and evil already? Also, if we were able to access everything we knew, and we could see bad events coming, is there any way to avoid them or will they always come true? The idea that we know everything that is going to happen in our lives is really strange to think about. It makes sense to me but I wish I knew how to access some of the things in my mind that I cannot normally access. The other idea from class that really interested me was the idea that God did keep his promise that Adam and Eve would die if they are the fruit. They did not die in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense. They died to their old selves and were reborn because they learned of good and bad and right and wrong. In class Mr. Shaffner asked us to think about when we first learned that there was good and evil. I honestly cannot remember. I think I must have been too young to remember. I cant even place a time right now where I came across something and classifies it as good or evil. I am sure I do it subconsciously but I don’t really think about good and evil on a normal basis. If I had to guess when I knew that good and bad both existed, I would probably say it was not long after I was born. I most likely realized it when the nurses gave me shorts for the first time. I hate needles and shots with a passion. But that is just a funny guess. The truth is that I don’t think that anyone can point to a moment and realize that is when they knew bad and evil existed because their body always knew and their mind always knew. Also it is hard to remember things unless you specifically write down exactly where you are, who you are with, and what happens. Over time, memories fade and I do not think that anyone can know the true time when they realized. It seems like God knew they would be attracted to the tree because of the bad inside of them and he set up Adam and Eve to fail. God? I got into a really interesting conversation with a friend last night. I texted her asking if she thought everything happened for a reason. Her response was “I’d like to think so but even if it doesn’t it makes me feel better to tell myself it does.” Then I asked her if she thinks humans control these things or if God does. Like me, she doesn’t know if she believes in God, but she believes in fate. Sometimes I question my religion and wonder if the Bible is just a book that people put together based off of myths and legends and stories. This makes me worry that if there really is a God, I will be punished for thinking that. I then started thinking about what my friend said about telling herself things to make herself feel better Could people be doing that with God? When people say”God has a plan for you” to someone who is dying of cancer, is that just to make themselves feel better? Is God just a convenient thing to use to answer questions that would be otherwise impossible to answer? Do we use God to make ourselves feel better? If so, then religion is pretty selfish. If people had no questions that couldn’t be answered, would they still go to church every Sunday? Do people go to church on Sundays to make themselves feel better for the bad things they did during the week? I know God cannot be defined but sometimes I wonder if he is just another character in another book written by people a long time ago. Sometimes I feel like a really bad for thinking these things but I feel it’s better than blindly following something because my parents introduced me to it. Response to Job “Why is light given to one in misery and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it does not come” (Job 3:20-21). After constantly being punished by Satan, Job is driven to ask the question why do bad things happen to good people? I have often wondered the same thing. When my mom went through cancer, I wondered why God would have put my family through this. If people’s response was “it will make you stronger” or “maybe God is testing you,” I wanted to punch them. There is really no good answer to anyone except to say it will eventually end. That is the only statement that one can say. Whether it ends bad, or good, or even with death, it does end. But there is nothing I can say to comfort someone when their whole world is turned upside down and everything they believed in is challenged. There is just a constant weight of pain that sits on your chest and sometimes it is even hard to breathe. My best advice is to let your emotions out instead of keeping them bottled up. I would say talk to your friends, but from what I have seen, your friends do not seem to understand. So here is my next advice: yell and write. Go somewhere where no one can hear you and just scream. Let all of your anger, or sadness, or whatever you are feeling, out. Scream at the top of your lungs. Ask the questions you have. Even if they don’t get answered, you will feel better asking them. Writing will also help. Whether in letter form, or just a journal, write down what you are feeling. I find that just letting my emotions out helps me deal with the pain of a hard situation. Sometimes you can even answer some of your questions by yourself. I write a letter every night to one person saying how I feel about them and I put it in an envelope, address it, seal it, and put it in a box in my room. I will never send these letters, but it give me a place to vent without anyone telling me what I am feeling is wrong or stupid. Response to Response to Job Well, Job finally got his response from God. But, the response was not exactly what I expected. God never even apologized. He gave Job back twice his land and a new family, but it is not the same as what he had before. I guess I’m kind of realizing the same thing in my life. I have been waiting for someone to come back and apologize, but even if he comes back, can it ever be the same? Can it ever go back to how it was before? And would it be better or worse? Technically Job’s situation after the fact is better, at least in terms of wealth, but would he say it was better? The way God responded was not comforting and in fact, it was actually confusing. At some points He was nice and at others He would just yell at Job about how he can never live up to Him. I know it isn’t possible but sometimes I just wish God would have just turned back time but let Job remember what happened. Even though Job and God are back together, Job will most likely live in fear that it will happen again (I know I would). It is like Carl Jung said in his answer to Job. “God can be loved but must be feared” (88). Stephen Mitchell also talks about how the God in the prologue is not the same God as the God in Job. The God in Job does not live up to the God in the prologue. I think this is a human quality of God. People are bound to disappoint you and it sucks when they do. For so long you have a person in your head as one way, and when they change and disappoint you, it sucks. After they disappoint you, it’s also hard not to wonder if they ever truly were who you built them up to be or if the changed person is who they actually are. And if the changed person is who they actually are, then they must have been pretending before. If they were pretending about who they were, were they pretending about how they felt too? Did they ever mean anything they said, or was everything a lie that they fooled us into believing? What to give up... In class, we were talking about how people just seem to easily give things up when God asks them to. Lot and his wife were really the first people to question this. When God told them to leave Sodom, they asked if there were not even 10 people he could save. Lot’s wife ended up looking back, however, and was punished by being turned into a pillar of salt. It got me thinking though about what I would be willing to give up. In class we also talked about the acting exercise where people mentally have to give up the things that mean the most to them. I started thinking about what things mean the most to me and which things I would be able to give up. I would say the thing that is most important to me is family. Nothing else would mean as much without family to share it with. while my immediate family is most important (my dad, my mom, and my sister) my extended family is extremely important to me too. All of my cousins and I are close and my grandmother has been an important role model in my life. The other thing I don’t think I would be able to give up are my friends. Whenever I am having a problem, I know that I can go to my closest friends and they will be there for me. Other than my family and friends, I cannot think of anything else that I really couldn’t give up. Material possessions can be replaced but the people in your life are the ones that are truly priceless. |
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Hebrew Bible as Literature > Midrash >
Rebecca Breed |