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gentson
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Name: Gentson
Expertise: Relaxing, making things out of tape, and analyzing the writing techniques of people.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Medical
Message: message me
Member Since:
3/17/2004
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| History. We can learn so much from it.
I had the chance to read a book recently about the history of the Reformation. "Refo-what?" You know... 1500's, Roman Catholic Church, Martin Luther, 95 theses, all that stuff. I have never been much of a history buff, but this book gave me some interesting insight into the past - and shed a little light on how it can illumine our paths even now.
The book is called The Reformation: How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World. Easy to read, concise yet thorough, and above all: NOT BORING.
It was a world-wind tour of the various historical peoples and events that led to the formation of the Protestant movement. Basically, the Roman Catholic Church, in the eyes of Martin Luther, had strayed from what was good and pure and true. And he had a number of points to bring up with the church leaders. Ninety-five, in fact. So, on October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther made his 'beefs' known to the Roman Catholic Church with the 95 theses.
It was interesting to read about all the struggles that the various people of the past went through for what they believed to be the truth. Some were ridiculed, others ex-communicated, and some were even put to death. And we're not talking about lethal injection or hanging or any of the "finish me quickly" methods. It appears people in that age enjoyed the "burning at the stake" method of doing away with those that opposed the status-quo. Hard to imagine being tied to a stake and burned alive.
Luckily that doesn't happen in our day and age, at least in Canada. But what is interesting is the disagreements and the debates still rage on. Some are trivial, while others are paramount to our faith. It seems there is an endless search for truth.
I was reminded of our constant desire to pervert the truth, to run into the darkness in a another book I am reading.
"...according to the Bible the first religion of man was monotheism, belief in one God... This helps us to understand the subsequent history of religion. The Old Testament gives examples of how again and again men were tempted from monotheism into polytheism (worship of more than one god)... Similarly there is a constant temptation to change God's gracious provision of sacrifice into a ritual that has value in itself. The Brahmins of India and the priests of Egypt and Greece claimed that sacrifices were pleasing to God, and could obtain blessings for the worshipers. This false view - not sacrifice in itself - is what the great prophets of Israel spoke against. From priestcraft it is only one step into magic and the religion of the tribal witchdoctor. There is thus a constant process of degeneration of religion into lower forms of polytheism, priestcraft and magic...
"The Bible therefore illustrates the historical process of the degeneration of religion, and the sending of prophets to restore and reform true religion."
It would seem that we must constantly protect against the 'process of degeneration of religion', or we may succumb to worshiping something or someone other than the One True God. We may not be running to Toys-R-Us for our very own personal Ouija ("wee-gee") boards, but perhaps the 'degeneration' is more subtle - our security and hope shifted onto our careers, our joy and pleasure apparently satisfied by another human being... all subtle processes that shift our attention and focus away from God and onto idols. May we continually remember the truth of the Good News and proclaim it wherever we may go.
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| Christmas holidays: Fast approaching. ETA on mainland, 21/12/06, PM. Message me if you would like to schedule a pleasurable activity during this time. Plans during break: Eat, sleep, and do things non-medical related. Health: Three to four days of prodromal coryza, followed by sudden onset fever, myalgias, arthralgias, malaise, and severe headache, likely secondary to a flu-like viral illness. Thank goodness, my suffering was brief - less than a day - and symptoms were managed with extra strength tylenol (500 mg PO q6h). Exams: 2 days before the moment of truth begins. Music: "Lead of Love' by Caedmon's Call. Very good song for those times of discouragement. http://download.yousendit.com/1F2C35C358746E52 http://www.lyrics007.com/Caedmon's%20Call%20Lyrics/Lead%20Of%20Love%20Lyrics.html | | |
| Victoria, BC: Insanely windy occasionally - unflippable unbrellas are the way to go. Courtship: good. For more information, perhaps a non-web-based form of communication would be better. School: Anxiety-provoking subject as the percentage of failing is at a life-time high. Otherwise, patients are nice and rewarding, refining the clinical skills/knowledge base/common sense slowly but surely. New pass-time: Cooking. Trying new sauces and techniques and ingredients. Spicy-peanut satay very enjoyable. Ragu spaghetti sauce, not so much. Basement suite: good. Roommate and I functioning well. Food supplies in home have reached critical mass. Bathroom needs cleaning, if any of you are interested. Future career choice: uncertain. The response of "I will find out in third year med school" does not seem to work anymore, being in third year and all. I hope and trust for direction from above. To be continued... break over, time to see patients. | | |
| This is a follow-up to my previous post. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch much of the talk show - it was on at around 11:30pm on Wednesday night on CBC, for those of you who are keen enough to try to find it - but if you do, please don't hesitate to forward the link to me!
The show was quite interesting because the spokesman for Christianity, in my perspective, *was* quite 'pushy' with his opinions, and appeared to lack the desire to hear out and understand where the other's opinions and views were coming from.
My take on the exchange that I wrote about earlier was that the whole 'setting' of the show was not ideal for a discussion/debate. People were cutting each other off, tensions were running high, and people were getting emotional. The host was intentionally trying to ruffle the Christian representative's feathers, and it was working - the Christian rep appeared to be quite upset at the tone of the host's questions and in the heat of his response, started contradicting himself - answering both 'no' and 'yes' to a question in the same sentence - to which the audience started laughing, and in essence, mocking him.
One of the things that I took away from that clip was that in discussions/debates, it's important to take the time to actually think through our thoughts and not to respond too quickly out of emotion, because often our emotions cloud our thinking. I trust that it must have been difficult for the Christian rep *not* to respond emotionally since his faith was being mocked. Anyways, Ifelt I gained some insight into the perspective that the 'world' takes on Christianity through that show. From the world's perspective, Christians have Scripture, which is believed to be the inspired Word of God. In the Word, there are many commands, of which we ideally know much about. However, we openly claim to obey some of them, taking them literally (ie. do not murder, homosexual behaviour is sin) yet do not fully follow through on others. Some quick examples I found: "A woman must not wear men's clothing, nor a man wear women's clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this." Deut. 22:5 (Girls wear suits, right? Or is that a 'unisex' thing?) "If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel." Deut. 22:22 (There would be a lot more deaths in our country if we took this passage literally.) (Please let me know if you disagree with me using these examples.) Thus, there is an issue at hand - assuming Scripture is the Word God, we must not only study and understand what the Bible means, but what it means to us, today, with our present circumstances. My basic understanding is that in the language of theology, issues known as exegesis (meaning of Scripture) and hermeneutics (application of Scripture) come into play. Yet all of this ultimately calls for one thing: interpretation. Us Christians must interpret the meaning of the biblical texts to our daily lives, for it makes all the difference to how we live. Can a man wear a dress? Can a woman wear a suit? Why or why not? How can we rationalize our response in light of what Scripture says? To me, it would be understandable for a non-Christian to ask the tough and honest questions: How do you interpret the Bible? Isn't it inevitable that two people will have different interpretations? And if two people have different interpretations of the same passage, doesn't that blur the meaning of the text, turning the objective Word of God into something that is subjective, shifting its meaning with our changing society? | | |
| During my break from on-call at the hospital, I was watching an interesting talk show on CBC where experts in various fields were debating about the role of religion in the world and particularly in Canada.
I found this particular exchange quite thought-provoking (reconstructed from memory) :
Setup: Discussion on same-sex marriage in Canada's legal system
Host = H
Chrisitian Representative = C
Audience = A
H: "Do you believe in the literal truth of the Bible?"
C: "Yes I do."
H: "So you believe in stoning women for committing adultery and offering sacrifices on alters for our sins and..."
C: "No, no, no, of course not! You can't take one snippet here and one snippet there from the Bible and skew its meaning; you have to look at what the Bible says as a whole and take into account the broad and overall message from the entire Bible!"
H: "So you think it's okay to take one snippet here and one snippet there from the Bible and condemn homosexuality and same-sex marriage? So you take one command literally and another symbolically?"
C: "Well, no! It's not taking snippets here and there, it's not the same thing! This is an issue that is covered as a whole in the Bible and... and..."
A: *laughing and chuckling at Christian representative's lack of words*
H: "Answer this: How do you Christians decide which passages from the Bible are to taken literally and which to be taken symbolically? Who decides which commands are to be obeyed and which are considered to not apply today? Wouldn't the issues of homosexuality and same-sex marriage be a matter of opinion, then?"
Did anyone else see that show?
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