Guess what! This is a topic for the Conversation, and we haven't even talked about it yet! I'm being early! The reason I know about it ahead of time being that I'm kind of doing tomorrows. So. I'm throwing my thoughts up here to try and make sense of them ahead of time, which might just be a good idea.
There are no women bishops in the Church of England, and as far as I know, there aren't any women priests in the Catholic church. In an era of equality, this seems a little strange, and the church has been criticised for it. On the other hand, people in the Church of England have threatened to leave if women are appointed as bishops.
The justification for this is taken from Paul's teachings that women should be silent in the church and ask their husbands at home, and that women should obey their husbands. Sure, Jesus taught equality, the arguement goes, but Paul, well, he wrote something like a quarter of the new testament, was a real man of God. So we ought to follow his teachings.
I really struggled with this at first. I couldn't reconcile the idea of Jesus who went to the oppressed, the despised, and lifted them up, with the idea that women should be oppressed in the church. My original idea was that Paul was writing with regard to his times, that there was a culture thing in there, that, well, he wasn't Jesus, was he?
Doing RE at GCSE, I discovered the second part of the women obey your husbands. I think it was first at Devoted. Anyway, wherever it was, it doesn't really matter. The second part goes along the lines of husbands honour your wives. The idea was that the husband would not ask the wife to do anything unreasonable, and that the husband would be prepared to lay down his life for the wife.
I also learnt that the reason it's thought Paul told the women to shut up in the church was because they were sat at the back of the synagogue (bearing in mind that the early church often borrowed the Jewish synagogues for their services), and they were shouting down questions to their husbands who were sat at the front, while the teacher was speaking. Obviously this was a bit of a nuisance. It didn't show a good image to those outside of the church either. A lot of Paul's teachings were concerned with Christians being kind to everyone, with Christians acting like the ideal. They were accused of cannibalism, so you can see why he wanted them to be nice to people.
An interesting thing I learnt very recently was that at the end of Romans, when Paul sends his personal greetings, a woman was chosen as his first in line to greet. He also said she had been a great help to him, elevating her to almost the status of an apostle. Also, he proceeded to mention various other women in his greetings, and put the woman first in a husband and wife pairing. Women traditionally weren't mentioned in Jewish writing (just look at the geneologies earlier in the Bible if you don't believe me).
Also in Romans is a section where Paul says you've not to use his teachings to create disharmony or oppression.
Like I said earlier, one of the reasons this issue has been something I've struggled with is that I don't see how the idea of oppression and preventing certain groups of people from partaking fits into the universal nature of Jesus' love. God's love is for everyone, not just select groups. I think this has been ignored by the church in a lot of situations, not just with regard to gender. Anyway, that's my take on it. If you're coming to the Conversation tomorrow, well, that's a sneak preview. Although it's more a writeup of just about everything I plan to say.
Remember: God made you special and he loves you very much.
Showing posts with label Conversation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conversation. Show all posts
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Sunday, 29 March 2009
Sin
I've said it before, I'm a bit slow at putting things up on here. This was the topic at the Conversation before last.
Sin is anything that separates us from God. In RE we said it could also be understood in a secular sense as things that separate us from other people.
The person leading the discussion had some statistics. What amazed me was how many people thought that sex before marriage was just fine, but very few people thought that having sex with someone while being married to another person was wrong. What's the difference? Ok, so in the first instance you have not made that vow yet, but still. I think this is a longer topic which I should go into in greater detail at a later point, so I'll leave it at that for now.
Another one that interested me was the number of people who thought that drinking any alcohol was a sin. I'd like to point out that Jesus turned water into wine. I'm not saying go out and get drunk, but I can't see justification for giving it a blanket label as evil.
Something that Paul said in one of his letters (Romans I think), is pretty relevant here. "Everything is permissable, but not everything is beneficial". This is the nature of free will. Think of it this way. It's permissable for me to do absolutely no revision for my exams. However, it's not going to be beneficial to me. It's permissable for me to go sleep with anyone I feel like sleeping with, but is it really beneficial? Well, no.
Gossip is listed as a sin. I'm sure that most people are guilty of that at some point or another. Why is it a sin? Well think what harm gossip can do to a relationship with someone. If I go around telling people that such and such is having troubles in this relationship, but keep it quiet because I'm not really supposed to know, doesn't that damage my relationship with such and such? And if it isn't true, and it gets back to the other party in the relationship, that could cause the problems in the first place.
Just remember. God made you special and he loves you very much.
Sin is anything that separates us from God. In RE we said it could also be understood in a secular sense as things that separate us from other people.
The person leading the discussion had some statistics. What amazed me was how many people thought that sex before marriage was just fine, but very few people thought that having sex with someone while being married to another person was wrong. What's the difference? Ok, so in the first instance you have not made that vow yet, but still. I think this is a longer topic which I should go into in greater detail at a later point, so I'll leave it at that for now.
Another one that interested me was the number of people who thought that drinking any alcohol was a sin. I'd like to point out that Jesus turned water into wine. I'm not saying go out and get drunk, but I can't see justification for giving it a blanket label as evil.
Something that Paul said in one of his letters (Romans I think), is pretty relevant here. "Everything is permissable, but not everything is beneficial". This is the nature of free will. Think of it this way. It's permissable for me to do absolutely no revision for my exams. However, it's not going to be beneficial to me. It's permissable for me to go sleep with anyone I feel like sleeping with, but is it really beneficial? Well, no.
Gossip is listed as a sin. I'm sure that most people are guilty of that at some point or another. Why is it a sin? Well think what harm gossip can do to a relationship with someone. If I go around telling people that such and such is having troubles in this relationship, but keep it quiet because I'm not really supposed to know, doesn't that damage my relationship with such and such? And if it isn't true, and it gets back to the other party in the relationship, that could cause the problems in the first place.
Just remember. God made you special and he loves you very much.
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Evil
Ok, I'm slow, I know. We talked about this the Wednesday before last at the Conversation. So, here's my thoughts:
The first thing we did was split evil into natural disaster type evil and suffering to moral evil (as in people doing bad things which hurt others).
A lot of people use the existence of evil and suffering as an argument against the existence of God. They say that how can an all-loving, all-powerful God not step in to alleviate suffering. And how come the world has been created flawed.
Now, I'll start with the moral evil. It's a bit simpler in my mind. The whole thing is, God gave us free will. That means the ability to chose for good, or for evil, the ability to say yes to God and God's laws, and also the ability to go against them. When people go against God's laws, suffering results. Oppression results. Evil results. It's that simple. I'll take a couple of the ten commandments, you tell me if you think they're reasonable. Do not kill. Well, I think you can see where that's coming from. If you kill people, you're obviously hurting them and people who love them. And you're hurting yourself too, because you have to live with the fact that you took a life. Do not steal. Again, this does hurt people. If you take from a shop, that shop loses out on the profit, the owners don't get what they need to live on. Now, you might say 'oh, it's different to steal from Tesco, they can afford it, I can't'. If you really were stealing because you were completely starving, I do think that's a slightly different matter (same with killing someone by accident in self defence, but that's not really what we're talking about). But let's face it. If you steal from Tesco or anywhere, you are breaking the law, you are doing wrong, and if you have the ability to read this, I highly doubt that you really are starving. It's still just as wrong to take from Tesco. What would happen if everyone did it?
Now, on to natural evil.
One of the things we were saying at the Conversation was that if we didn't have this suffering to alleviate, we wouldn't get anywhere. If there wasn't something to work against, there would be no point in working. Much as I hate it, some of the greatest innovations have come during times of war, originally for a military purpose. They were created to defeat opposition, but they have come into use in everyday life to help to save people's lives and make things easier.
Another theory was that suffering was the world's way of making sure that there weren't too many people on it to sustain. I can agree with that too. In an eco-system, if you get rid of the predator, you get an explosion of the prey. While this might seem nice and you might think it's wonderful that the cute little rabbits are spared from the ravages of the nasty foxes, the rabbit population will explode. When that happens, they're all going to suffer. If people didn't die, callous as it sounds, there would be no room on the planet for any more.
Another thing that was said is that if we didn't have suffering here, we wouldn't appreciate the perfection of heaven. I don't think that's the primary reason for it, I don't think it's even really a very good reason. However, I'd like to throw in a little perspective. Some people think they're suffering because they have a rotten teacher. Others see themselves as suffering because they have no teacher. I'm not saying that other people suffer so that we can appreciate what we have, but if you don't suffer some hardship, you don't appreciate just how much you have.
Famine was thrown in a lot as an example of natural suffering. There is enough food in the world for everyone. In fact, I dare say we even have the technology to get that food to everyone. The trouble is, we're too greedy. I think this is one of the primary causes of suffering. Our own greed and selfishness means that we don't help those in trouble. And another thing with this natural suffering. No offence to those of you in California, but I have very little sympathy for millionaires who moan that their wonderful mansions have been damaged by earthquakes. We know now that there's a fault line running under California. So loads of people go and live there and fear the big one that's bound to come. Volcanoes are not intrinsically evil. Earthquakes are not out to get you. They're there. We have the knowledge now to avoid them, but we decide to live right on top of them. Volcanoes, you have to admit, are pretty amazing to watch. You can't say God's evil for creating volcanoes. He put them there because they're spectacular, and then people just decided to go live on them. What was He supposed to do? I admit, that knowledge wasn't always around, but as a response to earthquakes, volcanoes etc, people have done lots of research into them. Wouldn't life be boring if there was nothing to be curious about?
A final point on natural evil. The world was created perfect. Humans then proceeded to sin. That put flaws into the world. That's where a lot of suffering came from. You know in movies when someone does something terribly wrong and the whole thing starts exploding and having mega problems. Thing of that being what happened when sin was introduced. A perfect world rebelling against the imperfection that had been inserted into it.
Just remember: God made you special and he loves you very much.
The first thing we did was split evil into natural disaster type evil and suffering to moral evil (as in people doing bad things which hurt others).
A lot of people use the existence of evil and suffering as an argument against the existence of God. They say that how can an all-loving, all-powerful God not step in to alleviate suffering. And how come the world has been created flawed.
Now, I'll start with the moral evil. It's a bit simpler in my mind. The whole thing is, God gave us free will. That means the ability to chose for good, or for evil, the ability to say yes to God and God's laws, and also the ability to go against them. When people go against God's laws, suffering results. Oppression results. Evil results. It's that simple. I'll take a couple of the ten commandments, you tell me if you think they're reasonable. Do not kill. Well, I think you can see where that's coming from. If you kill people, you're obviously hurting them and people who love them. And you're hurting yourself too, because you have to live with the fact that you took a life. Do not steal. Again, this does hurt people. If you take from a shop, that shop loses out on the profit, the owners don't get what they need to live on. Now, you might say 'oh, it's different to steal from Tesco, they can afford it, I can't'. If you really were stealing because you were completely starving, I do think that's a slightly different matter (same with killing someone by accident in self defence, but that's not really what we're talking about). But let's face it. If you steal from Tesco or anywhere, you are breaking the law, you are doing wrong, and if you have the ability to read this, I highly doubt that you really are starving. It's still just as wrong to take from Tesco. What would happen if everyone did it?
Now, on to natural evil.
One of the things we were saying at the Conversation was that if we didn't have this suffering to alleviate, we wouldn't get anywhere. If there wasn't something to work against, there would be no point in working. Much as I hate it, some of the greatest innovations have come during times of war, originally for a military purpose. They were created to defeat opposition, but they have come into use in everyday life to help to save people's lives and make things easier.
Another theory was that suffering was the world's way of making sure that there weren't too many people on it to sustain. I can agree with that too. In an eco-system, if you get rid of the predator, you get an explosion of the prey. While this might seem nice and you might think it's wonderful that the cute little rabbits are spared from the ravages of the nasty foxes, the rabbit population will explode. When that happens, they're all going to suffer. If people didn't die, callous as it sounds, there would be no room on the planet for any more.
Another thing that was said is that if we didn't have suffering here, we wouldn't appreciate the perfection of heaven. I don't think that's the primary reason for it, I don't think it's even really a very good reason. However, I'd like to throw in a little perspective. Some people think they're suffering because they have a rotten teacher. Others see themselves as suffering because they have no teacher. I'm not saying that other people suffer so that we can appreciate what we have, but if you don't suffer some hardship, you don't appreciate just how much you have.
Famine was thrown in a lot as an example of natural suffering. There is enough food in the world for everyone. In fact, I dare say we even have the technology to get that food to everyone. The trouble is, we're too greedy. I think this is one of the primary causes of suffering. Our own greed and selfishness means that we don't help those in trouble. And another thing with this natural suffering. No offence to those of you in California, but I have very little sympathy for millionaires who moan that their wonderful mansions have been damaged by earthquakes. We know now that there's a fault line running under California. So loads of people go and live there and fear the big one that's bound to come. Volcanoes are not intrinsically evil. Earthquakes are not out to get you. They're there. We have the knowledge now to avoid them, but we decide to live right on top of them. Volcanoes, you have to admit, are pretty amazing to watch. You can't say God's evil for creating volcanoes. He put them there because they're spectacular, and then people just decided to go live on them. What was He supposed to do? I admit, that knowledge wasn't always around, but as a response to earthquakes, volcanoes etc, people have done lots of research into them. Wouldn't life be boring if there was nothing to be curious about?
A final point on natural evil. The world was created perfect. Humans then proceeded to sin. That put flaws into the world. That's where a lot of suffering came from. You know in movies when someone does something terribly wrong and the whole thing starts exploding and having mega problems. Thing of that being what happened when sin was introduced. A perfect world rebelling against the imperfection that had been inserted into it.
Just remember: God made you special and he loves you very much.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
The Devil
I meant to write about this a while ago, but kind of didn't. Sorry. Anyway, we were having a discussion about whether the Devil was an actual entity or just an idea in the Conversation, and I've kind of resolved to write up my thoughts on all of the topics on here. I just haven't yet. As you've maybe noticed...
Anyway. At least I'm doing it before the next one.
My thoughts on whether the Devil is real. Well, it's kind of influenced by the non-theological aspect that I write stories with angels and demons as main characters, and the Devil is in there as a character, so that puts a bit of a spin on all my opinions. But disregarding that, yes, I do think he is a genuine entity. The reasons for that, I'm not one hundred per cent confident in giving. Hey, I'm developing and learning myself, don't expect me to have every single answer. I'm just collecting lots and lots of questions at the moment, and doing my best with them (my own questions as well as those of others). Part of the reason is in Genesis, when the Devil is clearly shown as an actual creature. Same in Job, where the Devil is portrayed as going up to God. And when Jesus was tempted, you get the impression that he's really there as an actual identity, rather than an idea. Same with Revelation (think it's there). I think the best way to understand him is as a tempter, not as the source of all evil in the world. You have to blame free choice for a lot of that (although it's quite possible that the Devil tempted someone/encouraged someone to make the wrong decision that resulted in the evil and suffering). I also don't blame him for natural disasters. That's just a reaction (in my opinion) of the world to the evil that came into it and corrupted nature.
We then got onto a discussion about demons. Again, I think they're real. Probably influenced by the fact that I write about them. However, looking beyond that, yes, I think they exist. It follows naturally on from saying that the Devil exists to say that demons also exist. This was the bit I got kind of stuck explaining at the Conversation. I've thought about it and talked about it a little bit with other people, and I think I have a better explanation now. A lot of people have said that when Jesus helped demon possessed people he was actually curing them of epilepsy. I'm not convinced that was always the case. I'm gonna lump evil spirits in with demons here, just for convinience/my sanity. Don't really see that there's a whole lot of difference (there is a difference in my stories, but that's irrelevant just now). Anyway, if there are no evil spirits, what makes a ouiji board work? It isn't God. And if what I've heard is true, it isn't people either. So yes, there are spirits. And if you put yourself into a receptive position, open yourself up to it, for example by using things like ouiji boards (and if that's not spelt right, sorry, but it's not a word I usually have cause to use) then it's quite possible they'll possess you. Then it gets onto the whole free choice issue. Which I'll go into in another post. Because that's even more complicated. But I heard a pretty good explanation of it the other day which I'll throw into the mix along with my thoughts (which are a little confused it has to be said).
To reiterate, I don't have all the answers. I'm just trying to open up the questions and explore them a bit myself.
God's crackers about you. No matter what the answer to whether the Devil is real or an explanation is.
Anyway. At least I'm doing it before the next one.
My thoughts on whether the Devil is real. Well, it's kind of influenced by the non-theological aspect that I write stories with angels and demons as main characters, and the Devil is in there as a character, so that puts a bit of a spin on all my opinions. But disregarding that, yes, I do think he is a genuine entity. The reasons for that, I'm not one hundred per cent confident in giving. Hey, I'm developing and learning myself, don't expect me to have every single answer. I'm just collecting lots and lots of questions at the moment, and doing my best with them (my own questions as well as those of others). Part of the reason is in Genesis, when the Devil is clearly shown as an actual creature. Same in Job, where the Devil is portrayed as going up to God. And when Jesus was tempted, you get the impression that he's really there as an actual identity, rather than an idea. Same with Revelation (think it's there). I think the best way to understand him is as a tempter, not as the source of all evil in the world. You have to blame free choice for a lot of that (although it's quite possible that the Devil tempted someone/encouraged someone to make the wrong decision that resulted in the evil and suffering). I also don't blame him for natural disasters. That's just a reaction (in my opinion) of the world to the evil that came into it and corrupted nature.
We then got onto a discussion about demons. Again, I think they're real. Probably influenced by the fact that I write about them. However, looking beyond that, yes, I think they exist. It follows naturally on from saying that the Devil exists to say that demons also exist. This was the bit I got kind of stuck explaining at the Conversation. I've thought about it and talked about it a little bit with other people, and I think I have a better explanation now. A lot of people have said that when Jesus helped demon possessed people he was actually curing them of epilepsy. I'm not convinced that was always the case. I'm gonna lump evil spirits in with demons here, just for convinience/my sanity. Don't really see that there's a whole lot of difference (there is a difference in my stories, but that's irrelevant just now). Anyway, if there are no evil spirits, what makes a ouiji board work? It isn't God. And if what I've heard is true, it isn't people either. So yes, there are spirits. And if you put yourself into a receptive position, open yourself up to it, for example by using things like ouiji boards (and if that's not spelt right, sorry, but it's not a word I usually have cause to use) then it's quite possible they'll possess you. Then it gets onto the whole free choice issue. Which I'll go into in another post. Because that's even more complicated. But I heard a pretty good explanation of it the other day which I'll throw into the mix along with my thoughts (which are a little confused it has to be said).
To reiterate, I don't have all the answers. I'm just trying to open up the questions and explore them a bit myself.
God's crackers about you. No matter what the answer to whether the Devil is real or an explanation is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
