Wherein Joseph is reunited with his brothers, sort of
For Courtney's sake, I'm trying to go easier on ol' Joe. So, I'll be generous and chalk up his slightly schizophrenic behavior in this chapter to conflicting emotions about his brothers. You'll notice that he switches from "Nice Joe" to "Mean Joe" pretty quickly:
Feeling the effects of the famine like everyone else, Jacob sends all but one of his sons to Egypt in order to buy grain (the distance from Egypt to Canaan was somewhere between 250-300 miles, btw. Hardly a trip 'round the block to the convenience store). There they are faced with Joseph, now a powerful ruler and administrator of the food reserves. Joseph recognizes his brothers, but they don't recognize him. He pretends not to know them (Mean Joe). The brothers bow down to him, just like in the dream Joseph had as a kid.
In a turn of the proverbial tables, Joseph throws his brothers into prison, accusing them of being spies (Mean Joe). After three days he releases them (Nice Joe). But to prove they aren't spies, the brothers are forced by Joseph to return to Canaan and bring back the last of their brothers, Benjamin (Mean Joe). Joseph gives the bros grain, provisions for their journey, and surreptitiously places silver in their bags (Nice Joe).
Before they leave Egypt, the bros discuss how they are most likely being punished for their misdeeds against Joseph years ago, and Reuben gets all "I told you so!" about it. Joseph is moved to tears by this (Nice Joe). He then sends them on the beginning of the their 600 mile round trip journey across the desert (Mean Joe).
They return to Jacob and give him the bad news: Benjamin must go back to Egypt with them. Jacob is less than thrilled with the idea.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
A Word From Courtney
Regarding my last post about Genesis 41, my friend Courtney sez:
Maybe my problem with the Joseph story has more to do with how passive he is. I feel the other heroes in Genesis made more choices, and then either suffered the consequences or reaped the benefits of those choices. Adam chose to bite into the fruit of knowledge. Abraham chose to sacrifice his son. Ol' Joe on the other hand seems to be lead around more by circumstance than choice.
I've heard it said before that one of the keys to writing a good story is to make sure that your characters are actively choosing to do things. So maybe this is why the Joseph story is falling flat for me.
That, and I still think he's kind of a spoiled blabber mouth.
Follow me on twitter! twitter.com/bibleorama
"Wait a minute here... God isn't testing him? his brothers want to kill him but settle on selling him into slavery? then he gets thrown into jail? you're right, piece of cake :) But Abraham never got thrown into jail..."Okay, I'll admit. A couple of years in the slammer is no easy ordeal. I'll give Joseph that.
Maybe my problem with the Joseph story has more to do with how passive he is. I feel the other heroes in Genesis made more choices, and then either suffered the consequences or reaped the benefits of those choices. Adam chose to bite into the fruit of knowledge. Abraham chose to sacrifice his son. Ol' Joe on the other hand seems to be lead around more by circumstance than choice.
I've heard it said before that one of the keys to writing a good story is to make sure that your characters are actively choosing to do things. So maybe this is why the Joseph story is falling flat for me.
That, and I still think he's kind of a spoiled blabber mouth.
Follow me on twitter! twitter.com/bibleorama
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
GENESIS 41, or, "Dream On"
Wherein Joseph soothsays his way into Pharaoh's good graces
Here's the basic rundown of Genesis 41:
Pharaoh has a disturbing dream involving cows. The next day, he sends for all the wise men and magicians of Egypt, but unfortunately they are unable to interpret the dream. The magicians were heard to say:
"I've made a huge mistake"
Then the chief cupbearer remembers Joseph and tells Pharaoh about his talent for dream interpretation. Joe is summoned and tells Pharaoh that his dream means that there will be seven years of prosperity and then seven years of famine. So it's best if they stockpile food during the years of prosperity.
Pharaoh makes it so, appointing Joe as his right hand man. When the famine comes seven years later, Egypt has their food surpluses ready and are able to make it through the harsh seven years.
---
As far as Biblical forefathers go, Joseph is kind of a wimp. God isn't him testing him all that much. He isn't asking Joseph to sacrifice his own son, like Abraham. God isn't wrestling with him in the desert, like Jacob. God just seems to give him this great gift of being able to interpret dreams without Joseph really earning it in any way.
I'm just saying: the story of Joseph so far is a bit of a snoozer, and I'll be glad to move onto the next patriarch.
Follow me on twitter! twitter.com/bibleorama
Here's the basic rundown of Genesis 41:
Pharaoh has a disturbing dream involving cows. The next day, he sends for all the wise men and magicians of Egypt, but unfortunately they are unable to interpret the dream. The magicians were heard to say:
"I've made a huge mistake"
Then the chief cupbearer remembers Joseph and tells Pharaoh about his talent for dream interpretation. Joe is summoned and tells Pharaoh that his dream means that there will be seven years of prosperity and then seven years of famine. So it's best if they stockpile food during the years of prosperity.
Pharaoh makes it so, appointing Joe as his right hand man. When the famine comes seven years later, Egypt has their food surpluses ready and are able to make it through the harsh seven years.
---
As far as Biblical forefathers go, Joseph is kind of a wimp. God isn't him testing him all that much. He isn't asking Joseph to sacrifice his own son, like Abraham. God isn't wrestling with him in the desert, like Jacob. God just seems to give him this great gift of being able to interpret dreams without Joseph really earning it in any way.
I'm just saying: the story of Joseph so far is a bit of a snoozer, and I'll be glad to move onto the next patriarch.
Follow me on twitter! twitter.com/bibleorama
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Donation Exploration
Wherein I go all non sequitur again
You may have noticed that I started writing about things other than Genesis within the pages of this blog. Sometimes I feel like I come across a religious-related article or I'll have random thoughts that I want to share, and I don't know where to put them. So, if it's alright with you, I'd like to be able to once in a while blog about something that might not be exactly pertinent to the chapter of Genesis I happen to be exploring in a given week. I tried starting a "Bonus Articles" blog separate from this one to be the catch-all for this kind of thing, but I think it's asking too much of you, dear readers, to always be checking two blogs rather than one.
Please feel free to leave feedback in the comments section about this decision (the three of you who actual read this blog. Hi Erin!)
Anyway...
As a few of you may have heard, Conan O'Brien recently took over for the Tonight Show (yay!). I've been catching almost every episode so far, and there was something in a bit last Tuesday that caught my attention:
Conan's a donor! For those of you who may not know, being a donor means that after you die, your organs and tissue may be transplanted into others who need them. The most commonly transplanted organs are the kidneys, liver, heart and lungs. Skin, bone, heart, and other types of tissue are used for myriad medical reasons.
This has always been something that I've been meaning to look up, and possibly do. Then, this very week, I just so happened to get my new license in the mail. Included in it was a little informational brochure on becoming a donor, which told me that I can "save up to eight lives as an organ donor and improve another 50 lives as a tissue donor."
Sounds pretty good to me. Though there's something a little creepy about the thought of my body being carved into spare parts after I die. But I guess at that point I'll be, you know, dead, so you I't really care.
Further, there are religious implications to consider. That's one thing that I found compelling about Conan being a donor. Isn't he Catholic? And don't Catholics have something against being a donor? Something about "your body is a temple" or something like that?
Let's check!
For the most part, organ donation is fine under Catholic dogma. What I was surprised to learn is that it's not so much post-mortem organ donation that is problematic, but donation that occurs when you are still alive. You see, back in the day, Thomas Aquinas put forth the "Principle of Totality", which goes a little something like this:
"An individual may not dispose of his organs or destroy their capacity to function, except to the extent that this is necessary for the general well-being of the whole body. Destroying an organ or interfering with its capacity to function prevents the organ from achieving its natural purpose."
But at the same time, he proposed the concept of "Double Effect", a somewhat complicated doctrine that essentially permits good actions with bad side effects, so long as the good outcome of the good action outweighs the bad side effects.
The Catholic church's position is that it is permissible, admirable even, for a person to donate an organ so long as it does not cause serious harm to the donor. In other words, if you have two kidneys, and donating one won't kill you, go for it. You can't, however, donate both your kidneys at once. Principle of Totality can be overruled (in part) by Double Effect.
What if donating an organ doesn't kill you, but merely mutilates you? This is a gray area. According to www.catholiceducation.org:
"Because these donations require a transplant from one living person to another, a moral dilemma involving the principle of totality arises. According to this principle, the parts of the body are ordered to the good of that specific body. Therefore, the surgical mutilation of a donor for the good of the recipient must not seriously impair or destroy bodily functions or beauty of the donor.
For example, both eyes are necessary for certain visual functions. A living person would seriously impair his ability to see if an eye were donated to another. Such a sacrifice would detract from the wholeness or full functioning of the donor's body. It would be a bad means to a good end, and therefore morally wrong."
In other words, no mutilation.
Another gray area? While it's perfectly permissible to donate an organ after you die, there has been a lot of debate over how to determine when someone dies. You see, the Church has this thing with people killing other people - they're against it. But what exactly defines "killing" another person? To know that is to know how to clearly and specifically define living beings versus non-living beings. And how do you do that? Do you categorize life as "things that have a consciousness"? What is "consciousness"?
You can see the philosophical rabbit hole that this line of thinking can lead us down. Suffice to say that defining death is tricky. But that doesn't stop people from trying.
In an address to the International Congress on Organ Transplants in 2000, Pope John Paul II gave the scientific community a big ol' raspberry by stating, "[Death] results from the separation of the life-principle (or soul) from the corporal reality of the person. The death of the person, understood in this primary sense, is an event which no scientific technique or empirical method can identify directly."
Read again, "no scientific technique or empirical method can identify directly."
To Johnny's credit, he does go on to state that there are certain scientifically measurable and observable events that happen after "death", in the vague "soul shuffling off the mortal coil" Catholic sense of the word, occurs. This includes the total cessation of brain activity. Which, actually, is the common medical definition of death anyway.
So if you're Catholic, and you want to donate an organ, just remember two things: If you're alive, don't mutilate or kill yourself, and if you're dead, make sure you're dead.
Of course, the emphasis of this blog is on what's actually written in the Bible. What does the scripture say about organ donation?
The answer is, not much. While there is much written in the Bible about the virtues of charity in general, it's fair to say that back when the Bible was written, people couldn't even conceive of organ transplants. I did find a few sites promoting donation that suggested some lines of scripture, including "we can enter heaven without having every part of our bodies present" (Mark 9:47). One suggested that the first transplant took place in Genesis - God taking Adam's rib and creating Eve. That seems like a bit of a stretch though.
Alright, if Catholics are on board with organ donation, what religions aren't? As far as I can tell, just one: Shinto.
The BBC sez:
"The Shinto faith is very much bound up with the idea of purity, and the wholeness of the physical body. Organ transplantation is comparatively rare in Japan because the body after death is impure according to Shinto tradition.
Shinto traditions also state that interfering with a corpse brings bad luck Families are concerned that they might injure the relationship between the dead person and the bereaved (known as the itai) by interfering with the corpse. This means that many followers of Shinto oppose the taking of organs from those who have just died, and also would refuse an organ transplanted from someone who has died."
---
Know when I update my blog and feel cool doing it by following me on my new Twitter account!
twitter.com/bibleorama
You may have noticed that I started writing about things other than Genesis within the pages of this blog. Sometimes I feel like I come across a religious-related article or I'll have random thoughts that I want to share, and I don't know where to put them. So, if it's alright with you, I'd like to be able to once in a while blog about something that might not be exactly pertinent to the chapter of Genesis I happen to be exploring in a given week. I tried starting a "Bonus Articles" blog separate from this one to be the catch-all for this kind of thing, but I think it's asking too much of you, dear readers, to always be checking two blogs rather than one.
Please feel free to leave feedback in the comments section about this decision (the three of you who actual read this blog. Hi Erin!)
Anyway...
As a few of you may have heard, Conan O'Brien recently took over for the Tonight Show (yay!). I've been catching almost every episode so far, and there was something in a bit last Tuesday that caught my attention:
Conan's a donor! For those of you who may not know, being a donor means that after you die, your organs and tissue may be transplanted into others who need them. The most commonly transplanted organs are the kidneys, liver, heart and lungs. Skin, bone, heart, and other types of tissue are used for myriad medical reasons.
This has always been something that I've been meaning to look up, and possibly do. Then, this very week, I just so happened to get my new license in the mail. Included in it was a little informational brochure on becoming a donor, which told me that I can "save up to eight lives as an organ donor and improve another 50 lives as a tissue donor."
Sounds pretty good to me. Though there's something a little creepy about the thought of my body being carved into spare parts after I die. But I guess at that point I'll be, you know, dead, so you I't really care.
Further, there are religious implications to consider. That's one thing that I found compelling about Conan being a donor. Isn't he Catholic? And don't Catholics have something against being a donor? Something about "your body is a temple" or something like that?
Let's check!
For the most part, organ donation is fine under Catholic dogma. What I was surprised to learn is that it's not so much post-mortem organ donation that is problematic, but donation that occurs when you are still alive. You see, back in the day, Thomas Aquinas put forth the "Principle of Totality", which goes a little something like this:
"An individual may not dispose of his organs or destroy their capacity to function, except to the extent that this is necessary for the general well-being of the whole body. Destroying an organ or interfering with its capacity to function prevents the organ from achieving its natural purpose."
But at the same time, he proposed the concept of "Double Effect", a somewhat complicated doctrine that essentially permits good actions with bad side effects, so long as the good outcome of the good action outweighs the bad side effects.
The Catholic church's position is that it is permissible, admirable even, for a person to donate an organ so long as it does not cause serious harm to the donor. In other words, if you have two kidneys, and donating one won't kill you, go for it. You can't, however, donate both your kidneys at once. Principle of Totality can be overruled (in part) by Double Effect.
What if donating an organ doesn't kill you, but merely mutilates you? This is a gray area. According to www.catholiceducation.org:
"Because these donations require a transplant from one living person to another, a moral dilemma involving the principle of totality arises. According to this principle, the parts of the body are ordered to the good of that specific body. Therefore, the surgical mutilation of a donor for the good of the recipient must not seriously impair or destroy bodily functions or beauty of the donor.
For example, both eyes are necessary for certain visual functions. A living person would seriously impair his ability to see if an eye were donated to another. Such a sacrifice would detract from the wholeness or full functioning of the donor's body. It would be a bad means to a good end, and therefore morally wrong."
In other words, no mutilation.
Another gray area? While it's perfectly permissible to donate an organ after you die, there has been a lot of debate over how to determine when someone dies. You see, the Church has this thing with people killing other people - they're against it. But what exactly defines "killing" another person? To know that is to know how to clearly and specifically define living beings versus non-living beings. And how do you do that? Do you categorize life as "things that have a consciousness"? What is "consciousness"?
You can see the philosophical rabbit hole that this line of thinking can lead us down. Suffice to say that defining death is tricky. But that doesn't stop people from trying.
In an address to the International Congress on Organ Transplants in 2000, Pope John Paul II gave the scientific community a big ol' raspberry by stating, "[Death] results from the separation of the life-principle (or soul) from the corporal reality of the person. The death of the person, understood in this primary sense, is an event which no scientific technique or empirical method can identify directly."
Read again, "no scientific technique or empirical method can identify directly."
To Johnny's credit, he does go on to state that there are certain scientifically measurable and observable events that happen after "death", in the vague "soul shuffling off the mortal coil" Catholic sense of the word, occurs. This includes the total cessation of brain activity. Which, actually, is the common medical definition of death anyway.
So if you're Catholic, and you want to donate an organ, just remember two things: If you're alive, don't mutilate or kill yourself, and if you're dead, make sure you're dead.
Of course, the emphasis of this blog is on what's actually written in the Bible. What does the scripture say about organ donation?
The answer is, not much. While there is much written in the Bible about the virtues of charity in general, it's fair to say that back when the Bible was written, people couldn't even conceive of organ transplants. I did find a few sites promoting donation that suggested some lines of scripture, including "we can enter heaven without having every part of our bodies present" (Mark 9:47). One suggested that the first transplant took place in Genesis - God taking Adam's rib and creating Eve. That seems like a bit of a stretch though.
Alright, if Catholics are on board with organ donation, what religions aren't? As far as I can tell, just one: Shinto.
The BBC sez:
"The Shinto faith is very much bound up with the idea of purity, and the wholeness of the physical body. Organ transplantation is comparatively rare in Japan because the body after death is impure according to Shinto tradition.
Shinto traditions also state that interfering with a corpse brings bad luck Families are concerned that they might injure the relationship between the dead person and the bereaved (known as the itai) by interfering with the corpse. This means that many followers of Shinto oppose the taking of organs from those who have just died, and also would refuse an organ transplanted from someone who has died."
---
Know when I update my blog and feel cool doing it by following me on my new Twitter account!
twitter.com/bibleorama
Saturday, May 2, 2009
GENESIS 40, or, "Do not interpretations belong to God?"
Wherein Joseph takes up dream interpretation
Joseph is still stuck in jail when Pharoah's chief cupbearer and chief baker are thrown in with him. One night, the two new prisoners each have strange dreams. When they awake, they lament to ol' Joe that there is no one around to tell them what the dreams mean. Joe chides them, saying "Do not interpretations belong to God?" and then he proceeds to make interpretations.
I won't bore you with the details, but essentially, Joe tells the cupbearer that his dream was a good sign: in three days he will be freed and restored to his old job. The news isn't so good for the poor baker. In three days, he will be executed.
In three days, Joe's interpretations prove to be true.
---
As I noticed in the previous post, Joseph's story is shaping up as a more lyrical, well-told part of Genesis than the stories previous. Evidently, I'm not the first person to notice this. Quoteth Wikipedia:
"Structurally, Genesis consists of the "primeval history" (chapters 1-11) and cycles of Patriarchal stories - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel.[2] The narrative of Joseph stands apart from these. Scholars believe that it reached its final form in the 5th century BC, with a previous history of composition reaching back possibly to the 10th century."
Aha! The story of Joseph may come across as more polished because it was written later and evolved more. Truth be told, I diligently tried to find a secondary source to backup Wikipedia's claim, and failed, so take it as you will. But it does make sense.
This brings up an important question: If historians can empirically prove that the Bible has been changed since it was first written, how must that alter our reading and interpretation of it? Most people would like to believe that POOF the Old Testament appeared and then a couple of thousand years later POOF the New Testament appeared. But, according to a many historians, that just doesn't seem to be the case.
This will be a topic of great discussion on the virtual pages of this blog, and I'm only going to devote a short amount of time to it right now, but this is as good a time as any to get this subject rolling.
I dug up two competing quotes on this topic for sake of comparison:
"How does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don't have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes-sometimes correctly but sometimes (many times!) incorrectly? What good is it to say that autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don't have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways" -- Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus
In his book, Fabricating Jesus, author Craig A. Evans takes direct aim at Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, hoping to debunk it:
"The truth of the Christian message hinges not on the inerrancy of Scripture or on our ability to harmonize the four Gospels but on the resurrection of Jesus. And the historical reliability of the Gospels does not hinge on the inerrancy of Scripture or on the proof that no mistake of any kind can be detected in them."
Personally, I take issue with the logic of Evan's claim. He says that the important thing isn't to believe that the Bible lacks errors, but to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. But, if he accepts that the Bible does have errors, then how can he be sure that Jesus was indeed resurrected? I'm not saying that Jesus wasn't resurrected, only that Evan's argument won't be convincing anyone who doesn't already believe in the resurrection.
More to come on the Biblical inerrancy debate in future posts.
FYI: Since Genesis 40 is about dream interpretation, I thought it would be fun to look up the dream meanings of various things from the Bible. All these come from dreammoods.com
GOD - To see God in your dream, signifies your spirituality and expression of your feelings about divinity. God also symbolizes an untouchable, unreachable, and unattainable notion of perfection. Thus such a dream may highlight your struggles and attempts with trying to be perfect.
To dream that you are worshipping God, signifies repentance of your actions and errors.
To dream that God speaks to you, signifies feelings of guilt, eternal punishment, and damnation.
To dream that you are a god, implies your own special talents which you have not yet recognized or have not fully developed. Alternatively, it suggests your feelings of superiority over others. You think you are above others and have a tendency to look down on people.
JESUS - To see Jesus in your dream, foretells that your greatest desires and goals will be realized. This dream serves to console and strengthen you in your times of adversity, hardship and struggle. You will rise above any situation and circumstance and become victorious.
To dream that Jesus speaks to you or that you are praying with Him, signifies that you will be blessed with true peace of mind, joy and contentment.
CROSS - To see a cross in your dream, signifies suffering, martyrdom, death, and/or sacrifice. Perhaps your dream is telling you that you have a cross to bear. Ask yourself what is causing you to suffer or what is causing you great difficulties.
Joseph is still stuck in jail when Pharoah's chief cupbearer and chief baker are thrown in with him. One night, the two new prisoners each have strange dreams. When they awake, they lament to ol' Joe that there is no one around to tell them what the dreams mean. Joe chides them, saying "Do not interpretations belong to God?" and then he proceeds to make interpretations.
I won't bore you with the details, but essentially, Joe tells the cupbearer that his dream was a good sign: in three days he will be freed and restored to his old job. The news isn't so good for the poor baker. In three days, he will be executed.
In three days, Joe's interpretations prove to be true.
---
As I noticed in the previous post, Joseph's story is shaping up as a more lyrical, well-told part of Genesis than the stories previous. Evidently, I'm not the first person to notice this. Quoteth Wikipedia:
"Structurally, Genesis consists of the "primeval history" (chapters 1-11) and cycles of Patriarchal stories - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel.[2] The narrative of Joseph stands apart from these. Scholars believe that it reached its final form in the 5th century BC, with a previous history of composition reaching back possibly to the 10th century."
Aha! The story of Joseph may come across as more polished because it was written later and evolved more. Truth be told, I diligently tried to find a secondary source to backup Wikipedia's claim, and failed, so take it as you will. But it does make sense.
This brings up an important question: If historians can empirically prove that the Bible has been changed since it was first written, how must that alter our reading and interpretation of it? Most people would like to believe that POOF the Old Testament appeared and then a couple of thousand years later POOF the New Testament appeared. But, according to a many historians, that just doesn't seem to be the case.
This will be a topic of great discussion on the virtual pages of this blog, and I'm only going to devote a short amount of time to it right now, but this is as good a time as any to get this subject rolling.
I dug up two competing quotes on this topic for sake of comparison:
"How does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don't have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes-sometimes correctly but sometimes (many times!) incorrectly? What good is it to say that autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don't have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways" -- Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus
In his book, Fabricating Jesus, author Craig A. Evans takes direct aim at Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, hoping to debunk it:
"The truth of the Christian message hinges not on the inerrancy of Scripture or on our ability to harmonize the four Gospels but on the resurrection of Jesus. And the historical reliability of the Gospels does not hinge on the inerrancy of Scripture or on the proof that no mistake of any kind can be detected in them."
Personally, I take issue with the logic of Evan's claim. He says that the important thing isn't to believe that the Bible lacks errors, but to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. But, if he accepts that the Bible does have errors, then how can he be sure that Jesus was indeed resurrected? I'm not saying that Jesus wasn't resurrected, only that Evan's argument won't be convincing anyone who doesn't already believe in the resurrection.
More to come on the Biblical inerrancy debate in future posts.
FYI: Since Genesis 40 is about dream interpretation, I thought it would be fun to look up the dream meanings of various things from the Bible. All these come from dreammoods.com
GOD - To see God in your dream, signifies your spirituality and expression of your feelings about divinity. God also symbolizes an untouchable, unreachable, and unattainable notion of perfection. Thus such a dream may highlight your struggles and attempts with trying to be perfect.
To dream that you are worshipping God, signifies repentance of your actions and errors.
To dream that God speaks to you, signifies feelings of guilt, eternal punishment, and damnation.
To dream that you are a god, implies your own special talents which you have not yet recognized or have not fully developed. Alternatively, it suggests your feelings of superiority over others. You think you are above others and have a tendency to look down on people.
JESUS - To see Jesus in your dream, foretells that your greatest desires and goals will be realized. This dream serves to console and strengthen you in your times of adversity, hardship and struggle. You will rise above any situation and circumstance and become victorious.
To dream that Jesus speaks to you or that you are praying with Him, signifies that you will be blessed with true peace of mind, joy and contentment.
CROSS - To see a cross in your dream, signifies suffering, martyrdom, death, and/or sacrifice. Perhaps your dream is telling you that you have a cross to bear. Ask yourself what is causing you to suffer or what is causing you great difficulties.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
This I Used to Believe
The most recent episode of This American Life involves a phone conversation between a deeply religious and a deeply non-religious person. What they talk about covers a lot of the tough, gnawing questions that I also have.
EXCERPT
Ira Glass and his non-religious guest talking about why people die when they do.
IRA: What if it's as simple as, for people who believe in God, God takes people at different times and that doesn't mean that God doesn't have some plan for you?
GUEST: See that makes more sense to me than anything he ever said in our conversation.
IRA: Well that's very sad because I actually don't believe in God.
GUEST: [laughs]
---
Check it out HERE (listen to the whole thing, or skip to act 2 for the story on religion)
EXCERPT
Ira Glass and his non-religious guest talking about why people die when they do.
IRA: What if it's as simple as, for people who believe in God, God takes people at different times and that doesn't mean that God doesn't have some plan for you?
GUEST: See that makes more sense to me than anything he ever said in our conversation.
IRA: Well that's very sad because I actually don't believe in God.
GUEST: [laughs]
---
Check it out HERE (listen to the whole thing, or skip to act 2 for the story on religion)
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
GENESIS 39, or, "Mrs. Potiphar, you're trying to seduce me"
Wherein we witness the Bible's first account of sexual harassment in the workplace
The Ishmaelites who captured Joseph take him to Egypt where he is sold as a servant to Potiphar, the captain of the guard for Pharaoh. Though now a lowly servant, God is still with Joseph, blessing everything he does. Because of this he exceeds at his job and becomes Potiphar's most favored and trusted servant.
"Joseph was well-built and handsome" the Good Book tells us, and so he quickly catches the eye of Potiphar's wife, who tries to get Joseph to sleep with her. Joe, being the stand-up guy he is, refuses. The wife gets more aggressive, grabbing Joe by the cloak. Joe (in not exactly the most manliest of moves in the Bible) runs away from her, leaving the cloak in her hands.
The wife later shows the cloak to Potiphar, claiming that it is evidence that Joe tried to seduce her. Furious, the captain throws poor Joe into jail. While in jail, Joe is treated well because God is still with him.
---
I suppose there's a lesson to be gleaned from this chapter - be righteous and God will stay with you. But most of all it's just a good story.
Chapters like Gen 39 reinforce my growing belief that the Bible is not a rule book - not entirely, anyway. Sometimes it just wants to entertain.
The Ishmaelites who captured Joseph take him to Egypt where he is sold as a servant to Potiphar, the captain of the guard for Pharaoh. Though now a lowly servant, God is still with Joseph, blessing everything he does. Because of this he exceeds at his job and becomes Potiphar's most favored and trusted servant.
"Joseph was well-built and handsome" the Good Book tells us, and so he quickly catches the eye of Potiphar's wife, who tries to get Joseph to sleep with her. Joe, being the stand-up guy he is, refuses. The wife gets more aggressive, grabbing Joe by the cloak. Joe (in not exactly the most manliest of moves in the Bible) runs away from her, leaving the cloak in her hands.
The wife later shows the cloak to Potiphar, claiming that it is evidence that Joe tried to seduce her. Furious, the captain throws poor Joe into jail. While in jail, Joe is treated well because God is still with him.
---
I suppose there's a lesson to be gleaned from this chapter - be righteous and God will stay with you. But most of all it's just a good story.
Chapters like Gen 39 reinforce my growing belief that the Bible is not a rule book - not entirely, anyway. Sometimes it just wants to entertain.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
GENESIS 38, or, "Masturbation is (not?) a crime"
Wherein we detour into the life of Judah and his sons.
Taking a break from the story of Joseph, Gen 38 focuses on his brother Judah, who leaves his family and gets hitched to a woman named Shua. They have three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah.
Er is married to a girl by the name of Tamar, but shortly afterward God puts Er to death for being "wicked." Judah then tells Onan to sleep with Tamar to produce an offspring for Er. Onan has some scruples with this, and so let's just say that he "pulls out" when he is with her. Because of this, Onan is soon put to death by God (for wickedness, of course).
Tamar goes to live with her father at Enaim. Later on, Judah is passing through and Tamar decides to disguise herself as a prostitute and sleep with him (only later does Judah realize he had sex with his daughter-in-law. Oops!). She becomes preggers and gives birth to two sons: Perez and Zelah.
---
Okay, this chapter has special significance to me. When I was a teenager, my clique consisted of both religious and non-religious folks and there was great debate about whether it was right or wrong to masturbate. The "wrong to masturbate" side cited the fact that the Bible classified it as a sin. The "right to masturbate" side cited the fact that masturbation is "totally awesome."
One of my friends was on the fence about the issue so he went straight to the source - good ol' Genesis 38. As it turns out, a group of kill-joy Roman Catholics in the medieval era interpreted Gen 38 as illustrating that both masturbation and coitus interruptus are sinful, and that interpretation has stuck ever since. But, as my friend and I discovered when we looked it up ourselves, that reading doesn't really hold water.
Here's Gen 38:6-10
"Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death.
Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also."
You can make up your own mind, but the passage seemed to us to be saying that it was Onan's disobedience, not the fact that he "spilled his semen", that got him put to death. And thus a giant weight was taken off our shoulders.
GENESIS 38 in pop culture: In David Foster Wallace's magnum opus "Infinite Jest" the United States has been renamed "The Organization of North American Nations" or O.N.A.N.
P.S. Thanks to MumDoris for motivating to get off my butt and blog some more.
Taking a break from the story of Joseph, Gen 38 focuses on his brother Judah, who leaves his family and gets hitched to a woman named Shua. They have three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah.
Er is married to a girl by the name of Tamar, but shortly afterward God puts Er to death for being "wicked." Judah then tells Onan to sleep with Tamar to produce an offspring for Er. Onan has some scruples with this, and so let's just say that he "pulls out" when he is with her. Because of this, Onan is soon put to death by God (for wickedness, of course).
Tamar goes to live with her father at Enaim. Later on, Judah is passing through and Tamar decides to disguise herself as a prostitute and sleep with him (only later does Judah realize he had sex with his daughter-in-law. Oops!). She becomes preggers and gives birth to two sons: Perez and Zelah.
---
Okay, this chapter has special significance to me. When I was a teenager, my clique consisted of both religious and non-religious folks and there was great debate about whether it was right or wrong to masturbate. The "wrong to masturbate" side cited the fact that the Bible classified it as a sin. The "right to masturbate" side cited the fact that masturbation is "totally awesome."
One of my friends was on the fence about the issue so he went straight to the source - good ol' Genesis 38. As it turns out, a group of kill-joy Roman Catholics in the medieval era interpreted Gen 38 as illustrating that both masturbation and coitus interruptus are sinful, and that interpretation has stuck ever since. But, as my friend and I discovered when we looked it up ourselves, that reading doesn't really hold water.
Here's Gen 38:6-10
"Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the LORD's sight; so the LORD put him to death.
Then Judah said to Onan, "Lie with your brother's wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the LORD's sight; so he put him to death also."
You can make up your own mind, but the passage seemed to us to be saying that it was Onan's disobedience, not the fact that he "spilled his semen", that got him put to death. And thus a giant weight was taken off our shoulders.
GENESIS 38 in pop culture: In David Foster Wallace's magnum opus "Infinite Jest" the United States has been renamed "The Organization of North American Nations" or O.N.A.N.
P.S. Thanks to MumDoris for motivating to get off my butt and blog some more.
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