This post is a little bit different. Instead of writing it when I am high and elaborating on it on the other blog, I'm just going to write it sober on this blog. It would be silly to write it on the elaboration.
Just to set the whole situation, me and my friend got high and went to this christian event. They had a major worship band and my favorite speaker of all time. However, I am not going to be naming any names. All that needs to be said is that he's one of the most notable speakers in the world.
Now that you understand the situation, on to the good stuff. The experience was awesome! I enjoyed the majority of the event until it got to the invitation at the end which I knew from experience is built to draw extreme emotions out. Since I was high, there was several things that were super obvious to me. Here we go:
1.) These people are raising their hands and literally worshiping a god that they have never seen and man that lived (arguably) 2000 years ago. All that was going through my mind was how similar these worshipers are to every other "pagan" worshipper. It blows my mind to think that christians, especially in the south, are so quick to say how ridiculous these people are that worship gods that aren't theirs. The ironic thing is that they can't see that they are exactly the same as the people that worship other gods. Their hands were in the air, reaching for the sky, as if they were just trying to be closer to their creator. All the while, I'm thinking how insane this was! They are saying how much they love a person that lived 2000 years ago. Mind blowing for sure.
2. I was those people! It was totally a blast from the past. It was like I was thrown right back into the life that I lived just a few years ago. I could seemingly float back and forth between the frame of reference I had then and the one I have now. This was very cool. Some of the time I was thinking how different I was from the people that surrounded me, and some of the time I was totally feeling the emotion that surrounded the songs that were being sang. I felt very similar to how I used to, except back then I had my hands in the air with them.
3. Jesus could be the most clapped for human being of all time. I thought this was a hilarious thought....
4. There was a song that was being sang that spoke of how their god was greater and stronger...doesn't that imply the existence of other gods? This does seem to be mildly contradictory because christianity generally is of the opinion that there are/were no other gods.
5. Ninety percent of christians are full of shit and just go to church in the hopes of getting to heaven. I hate this whole insurance policy approach to christianity. With that being said, there are ten percent of them that actually believe what they are reading and try to put it into practice every day. These people are genuinely good people. I've been around a few of them in my life and its something special. A person that actually follows the moral values presented in the bible will inevitably be a good person and a person that you would want as a friend. This is assuming that they aren't trying to get you "saved" all the time.
6. Some of the people there seemed to be truly invested emotionally in the things they were singing. This is a beautiful thing. Intense emotion is something that is missed by a large percentage of the people that walk this earth. These christians seemed to be using this as an outlet to truly throw their emotions into and have them be stimulated. I mean, everything from weeping to laughing goes into this "relationship" that these people truly believe that they have with the creator of the universe. I can see why this is powerful. I know its powerful because I lived it for the majority of my life.
All in all, great experience. I'll totally do it again if I get the chance...but next time I want my phone to work so I can tweet my thoughts!
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
Genesis 5-6:1-8
Adam lived 930 years? Come on bro...where's the people living that long now?
God took Enoch to heaven...that's important. It only happens a couple of times throughout the entire bible.
God cursed the land.....WTF!?!?! Why would he do that?
Noah was a direct descendant of Adam. Overall, chapter 5 was pretty boring.
Chapter 6 is where things start getting interesting.
At the first part of this chapter, God puts the cap on human life at 120 years. Random number, especially after that whole lineage of people lived to be like 900
Wickedness is all the sudden the only thing that humans were thinking about at this time. I don't fully understand, because at this point god hasn't put forth any code of mrality. So how can anything that these people do be wicked?
The Lord actually regretted/grieved his having created us!?!?! this is BS! I mean he did make us and apparently he knew this shit was gonna happen because he is the beginning and the end. Time is nothing to him.
So he's regretting that he made us and his solution is to just wipe us from the planet? This isn't a god of love, its a child getting mad at his toys.
God took Enoch to heaven...that's important. It only happens a couple of times throughout the entire bible.
God cursed the land.....WTF!?!?! Why would he do that?
Noah was a direct descendant of Adam. Overall, chapter 5 was pretty boring.
Chapter 6 is where things start getting interesting.
At the first part of this chapter, God puts the cap on human life at 120 years. Random number, especially after that whole lineage of people lived to be like 900
Wickedness is all the sudden the only thing that humans were thinking about at this time. I don't fully understand, because at this point god hasn't put forth any code of mrality. So how can anything that these people do be wicked?
The Lord actually regretted/grieved his having created us!?!?! this is BS! I mean he did make us and apparently he knew this shit was gonna happen because he is the beginning and the end. Time is nothing to him.
So he's regretting that he made us and his solution is to just wipe us from the planet? This isn't a god of love, its a child getting mad at his toys.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Genesis 4
Now this is the story of Cain and Abel. Most people look at this story as one that highlights the reason that jealousy is bad. I've got two things to say about this before I even start reading.
1.) Jealousy is a sin, yet God is a jealous God? That seems kind of hypocritical.
2.) God caused the whole debacle between Cain and Able. If He would never have shown favor to one of the boys over the other, then Cain never would have killed able and they would have been a happy family. It was silly for god to expect them to bring the exact same portions of their respective goods. So inevitably God would have chosen to show favor to one of the brothers over the other no matter how close in quality they were. But apparently choosing one brother over the other is the best way that God could figure out to show how bad jealousy is.
Okay, now that I'm reading the scripture, I was wrong. Apparently abel brought the right amount of the best quality of his goods to god and cain did not.
I wonder why God carried on this whole dialogue with cain. I mean god knows everything so he clearly knew where abel was when he asked cain, or better yet, god could have prevented abel's death by stopping cain. It seems like a pretty shitty reward that god gave abel for doing what he was supposed to. This is especially true when abel's death is a direct result of god's choice to show favor to one and deliberately not show favor to the other. That is basic parenting knowledge, you can't show favor to one child and not the other, it causes problems. Seems to me that the ultimate parent (god) would know this.
So Cain's punishment is for god to keep people from killing him and he gets to be out of the presence of the god that indirectly caused and allowed his brother's death? That doesn't sound too bad to me. It seems pretty freaking backwards to essentially allow the good kid to die and be murdered and then save the bad kid receiving the same fate that he gave his brother
So what happens is that god allows the good kid to be killed and then sends the bad one off to repopulate the world...real smart.
Apparently god doesn't reside in the place called Enoch? How is that so when he is omnipresent? Interesting...
1.) Jealousy is a sin, yet God is a jealous God? That seems kind of hypocritical.
2.) God caused the whole debacle between Cain and Able. If He would never have shown favor to one of the boys over the other, then Cain never would have killed able and they would have been a happy family. It was silly for god to expect them to bring the exact same portions of their respective goods. So inevitably God would have chosen to show favor to one of the brothers over the other no matter how close in quality they were. But apparently choosing one brother over the other is the best way that God could figure out to show how bad jealousy is.
Okay, now that I'm reading the scripture, I was wrong. Apparently abel brought the right amount of the best quality of his goods to god and cain did not.
I wonder why God carried on this whole dialogue with cain. I mean god knows everything so he clearly knew where abel was when he asked cain, or better yet, god could have prevented abel's death by stopping cain. It seems like a pretty shitty reward that god gave abel for doing what he was supposed to. This is especially true when abel's death is a direct result of god's choice to show favor to one and deliberately not show favor to the other. That is basic parenting knowledge, you can't show favor to one child and not the other, it causes problems. Seems to me that the ultimate parent (god) would know this.
So Cain's punishment is for god to keep people from killing him and he gets to be out of the presence of the god that indirectly caused and allowed his brother's death? That doesn't sound too bad to me. It seems pretty freaking backwards to essentially allow the good kid to die and be murdered and then save the bad kid receiving the same fate that he gave his brother
So what happens is that god allows the good kid to be killed and then sends the bad one off to repopulate the world...real smart.
Apparently god doesn't reside in the place called Enoch? How is that so when he is omnipresent? Interesting...
Genesis 3
It looks like we don't have to watch the movie The Invention of Lying because we just found out. The serpent created lying in the third chapter of Genesis when he was convincing Eve to eat from the tree. It did not take much to convince Eve that God was wrong when he told her not to eat from the tree, I'm just saying. Adam didn't either. He just watches Eve eat from it without trying to talk some sense into her and then when she tells him to eat some too, he was a little bitch and did what he was told. That should say something about the power that women have over men...even when GOD tells you not to do something, if your woman tells you to do that exact same thing, you do it immediately. This is interesting because I'm pretty sure that God is supposed to be the creator of the heavens and the earth....what an idiot. This should say something about the stupidity of the human race. Even the very first members of it, the ones that populated this rock, couldn't follow one direction.
Eating this one piece of fruit fucked things up for all of us because by eating this fruit, they realized they were actually naked....WTF??
Aside: I wonder if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil actually held the knowledge of good and evil? If this is so, then there were no morals before they ate that fruit. That's the reason that its ok for them to walk around naked. Before this, nudity was ok. This is what gave nudity its wrongness. I wonder if they were covered from head to toe after they realized nudity was wrong. I say this because in different cultures and different parts of the world, different things qualify to be covered up. In africa, there are ladies walking around with their tits all out all the time. So it seems like adam and eve would have to cover themselves almost entirely to compensate for that fact.
If this tree holds knowledge, then why would God want to deprive these humans that he created from it? It would seem that if you were going to create a conscious being and give that being the ability to think freely, it would be cruel to deprive him of any knowledge. Maybe it was for a good reason…I don’t know.
Immediately, the humans start blaming other people/serpents for their fuck-ups…typical humans.
The two punishments god gave women seem a little outdated…1.) Pains during childbirth. Well, we nipped that in the bud with the advent of anesthesia. 2.) The insubordination of women below men. The nineteenth amendment and women’s rights activists have pretty much knocked that one into ineffectiveness too.
Adam’s punishment indicates farming for the earliest humans. The earliest humans were documented hunter gatherers. Farming is a relatively new thing.
Eating this one piece of fruit fucked things up for all of us because by eating this fruit, they realized they were actually naked....WTF??
Aside: I wonder if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil actually held the knowledge of good and evil? If this is so, then there were no morals before they ate that fruit. That's the reason that its ok for them to walk around naked. Before this, nudity was ok. This is what gave nudity its wrongness. I wonder if they were covered from head to toe after they realized nudity was wrong. I say this because in different cultures and different parts of the world, different things qualify to be covered up. In africa, there are ladies walking around with their tits all out all the time. So it seems like adam and eve would have to cover themselves almost entirely to compensate for that fact.
If this tree holds knowledge, then why would God want to deprive these humans that he created from it? It would seem that if you were going to create a conscious being and give that being the ability to think freely, it would be cruel to deprive him of any knowledge. Maybe it was for a good reason…I don’t know.
Immediately, the humans start blaming other people/serpents for their fuck-ups…typical humans.
The two punishments god gave women seem a little outdated…1.) Pains during childbirth. Well, we nipped that in the bud with the advent of anesthesia. 2.) The insubordination of women below men. The nineteenth amendment and women’s rights activists have pretty much knocked that one into ineffectiveness too.
Adam’s punishment indicates farming for the earliest humans. The earliest humans were documented hunter gatherers. Farming is a relatively new thing.
Translation Issues
As I am reading this, I am overwhelmed by how insane it is that people read the words in the bible and try to live their life by them. The reason for this is that this isn't really even the bible. These words are just translations into a language that we can understand. The old testament is written in mostly hebrew and a little bit of aramaic. The new testament is written in greek. How easy would it have been for these translators to put their own personal agenda into the translation? Maybe it would have been hard, I don't know. I just think its a valid question. Plus, it is difficult to truly translate any language into another. Every word in english doesn't have a perfect equivalent in every language. I assume this is true with hebrew, aramaic, and greek, but alas, I am not a language scholar. I'm just trying to get the juices flowing in your/my brain for questioning and creativity.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Genesis 2
It's a strange thing that god got tired from creating a tiny little planet like earth and had to actually take a day off, and apparently that day was important enough to mention in the holy and perfect bible. It seems to me that a god wouldn't have the ability to get tired.
It shocks me that the term "helper" is still being used in the bible in reference to women. I don't know why those girls would beat em up. It doesn't even mention the very important fact that we as a race need women to procreate...that is a pretty interesting thing.
It shocks me that the term "helper" is still being used in the bible in reference to women. I don't know why those girls would beat em up. It doesn't even mention the very important fact that we as a race need women to procreate...that is a pretty interesting thing.
Genesis 1:9-31
Its cool to think about god just moving the water into one place. I guess he had to pull the ground to him or maybe somehow make the hard ground/earth expand so as to compensate for the water being piled on top of itself. The water had to have been bulging out from the earth, assuming that the earth was pretty much spherical when it was "formless" in the last post.
It is weird to see that god deliberately instructed the land to produce food. This is strange because humans were documented to be hunter gatherer's before they learned how to grow their own food and eventually settle down into townships and what not.
In verse 14, god put time into place. I guess he did this for the human's benefit? Apparently god put the stars in the sky for the sole reason of helping the humans distinguish light from dark. I don't know why there had to be light and dark. I don't know why god decided that vision was the best way for humans to experience the world. This is surprising because I know how flawed vision really is and how much different things really are....crazy stuff. Try a vision test on youtube.
In verse 20, god let the water teem with living creatures. Maybe this refers to our micro-bacterial phase in the evolutionary chain. Verse 26 keeps saying that he is going to create man in "our" image. Who is the other besides god? Are there really multiple gods that are just like the main god. I think the reasonable guess would be the angels...but i don't know about that.
That's it for the actual biblical commentary. I just want to say that no one should be offended by my doing this blog. I just think it is interesting and it's different. I think something good will come of it eventually. Thanks to my readers. Y'all rock! War Damn Eagle!
It is weird to see that god deliberately instructed the land to produce food. This is strange because humans were documented to be hunter gatherer's before they learned how to grow their own food and eventually settle down into townships and what not.
In verse 14, god put time into place. I guess he did this for the human's benefit? Apparently god put the stars in the sky for the sole reason of helping the humans distinguish light from dark. I don't know why there had to be light and dark. I don't know why god decided that vision was the best way for humans to experience the world. This is surprising because I know how flawed vision really is and how much different things really are....crazy stuff. Try a vision test on youtube.
In verse 20, god let the water teem with living creatures. Maybe this refers to our micro-bacterial phase in the evolutionary chain. Verse 26 keeps saying that he is going to create man in "our" image. Who is the other besides god? Are there really multiple gods that are just like the main god. I think the reasonable guess would be the angels...but i don't know about that.
That's it for the actual biblical commentary. I just want to say that no one should be offended by my doing this blog. I just think it is interesting and it's different. I think something good will come of it eventually. Thanks to my readers. Y'all rock! War Damn Eagle!
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