gdp's Comments

The Berean Initiative : dirt.Peaks

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:18:18 +0000

I've been enjoying Exodus way more than I imagined I would as well. It's been fun going in with the image I had in my head of Charlton Heston as Moses and then fitting him into the actual story. There's some wild, powerful imagery in Exodus. My favorite is probably near the end of chapters 29-34 (pg. 161) when Moses was going up and down Mt. Sinai, communicating with God and the Israelites and each time he came back down to the people his face was glowing because he had been speaking with God. I don't know why, but I just love that. He was freaking everybody out with his glowing God-tan. That's just cool stuff right there. Then I was completely overwhelmed by the immense detail given in the description of how The Dwelling and all its furnishings were supposed to be prepared. I want to see photos of this place of worship. Better yet, I want to be a fly on the wall during the ceremony. I'm oddly fascinated and put off by ritual at the same time. These ceremonies sound visceral and complex and all around incredible. There must be diagrams that people have drawn out to show what some of this might look like and I plan to find them. READ. THINK. PRAY. LIVE. -- Your Christian faith is far more developed than mine, so I think the last two steps come a little more naturally to you, but I'm certainly not just reading either. What I've been doing is a whole exercise in spiritual appreciation taking on these stories. I'm coming to know the immensity of the Bible myself, which is great fun for me. So far, I'm all at once more impressed and confounded with Christianity than I was before this started. I'm impressed with people that are able to take these texts and make meaningful sense of them. I'm also glad to see that if people really embrace the Bible, then they won't likely be able to come to narrow-minded decrees for all the world about the way life should or shouldn't be. The stories I've seen thus far are so vast that they cannot be easily filtered down to simple rules for our lives about what exactly is and isn't permissible in Christian life. I'm reassured by my own reading that anything more than the most shallow understanding has to come from a deep, more than intellectual, consideration of these writings. And yet I am frustrated to know so many fundamentalists still stop with their surface-level interpretations. Thank you for sharing your passion along the way, it's been helpful to me.

The Berean Initiative : theHeart

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:04:20 +0000

Yes indeedly, all those looks at perspective are definitely helpful to keep in mind.

The Berean Initiative : theHeart

Tue, 9 Dec 2008 19:46:38 +0000

I of course can't claim to know what a loving god would do. Nice, I like what you did there. :)

The Berean Initiative : boggled

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 17:53:24 +0000

Thank you for sharing these commentaries. They are somewhat helpful to me. At the very least all this helps me to realize, as you said, "even the most scholarly minds have not mastered the Biblical text." That is something I should keep in mind as I read through other challenging pieces of the Bible. I also like the idea of intentionally leaving Scripture somewhat ambiguous. I think this forces us to really question and consider what is being said and not just quickly accept what we read on a superficial level. "The mystery of God is what my faith is all about, and I always like to contend with those who are certain of their 'facts.'" I very much appreciate your approach and am glad to have someone like you here to interact with on these questions.

The Berean Initiative : boggled

Mon, 8 Dec 2008 05:42:20 +0000

I'm glad to know you and Rosalie were both somewhat unclear about what was going on in this section as well. Also, I was mostly joking about text actually being missing, but it sure felt like the paragraph we had problems with didn't belong.

The Berean Initiative : theHeart

Fri, 5 Dec 2008 20:29:24 +0000

I wonder how much hyperbole was a factor in the story of Exodus in trying to hammer home a point about God's absolute dominion over humanity. I don't have evidence, but I imagine hyperbole was a common literary tool for Hebrew people during the time this was all written. I definitely can't literally interpret the repeated horror inflicted on the people of Egypt and still see God as a loving god, especially knowing He intentionally made Pharaoh stubborn time and time again. I'm probably not really touching on your concerns and I know I have a lot more to read before I can make much sense of this story, but trying to understand the techniques used by the person writing this story helps to diffuse some of my desire to question God's methods.

The Berean Initiative : non.Kitschy

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 21:56:22 +0000

Regarding your logging in and still having to put in your name issue: that has not been my experience. Once I log in and then come back into the blog, when I visit a post page with the comment box, it automatically shows me as "Gregory" and I'm good to go. So, I dunno. I'll think about it some more and see if I come up with an idea. What web browser are you using?

The Berean Initiative : Beginning Exodus

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 21:55:01 +0000

The kids didn't recognize the Bob Marley classic?? Oy, that's just sad. We're not old, Rosalie! I fear for today's youth. Fortunately they have good people like you keeping them in line. I watched 'The Ten Commandments' when it was on around Easter time. It's really quite a film and Charlton Heston as Moses was sweet casting. I don't remember Aaron. IMDB says John Carradine played Aaron, if that helps.

The Berean Initiative : non.Kitschy

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 19:45:49 +0000

I was thinking about your second question some more and if I were going to pick someone out from the reading so far who I've related to the most, it would be Joseph. I respected his straightforward, accepting response to impossibly difficult situations and then his very human, emotional response to his family. Despite how he had been wronged by his brothers he still obviously deeply cared for them and didn't hold grudges in the end. He's my kind of guy for those reasons.

The Berean Initiative : non.Kitschy

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 07:40:31 +0000

I totally dig and that's what I thought you were getting at. I just wanted to be sure.

The Berean Initiative : non.Kitschy

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 13:08:13 +0000

OK, my parasitic Christian friend. -- if you're going to use the metaphors, I'm going to play with them too! That was quite a post, where do I begin?... "There’s a lot of stuff that’s been ridiculously HARD to take. How God is so consistent, while we (people) are not, has smacked me repeatedly." You've brought this up before. I want to know what you mean and why God being consistent smacks you around. I certainly would have a hard time respecting a flaky God, so I'm glad to read he's more consistent so far in the Bible than many people tend to think. Is it just your inconsistency bumping into God the rock? On to your questions: 1) What's been most surprising about my reading so far is the readability of Genesis. Much credit has to go to this translation, but it's nice to see it's a readable story of its own right. The Old Testament gets a bad rap as being irrelevant and impossible to comprehend by lots of people. I'm not sure how much I've enjoyed alternating between OT and NT as the book has us doing. There's been times where I've read a section in John, put the book down for a day, then picked it up again the next day and couldn't quite remember where I was in the story of Genesis. I feel like I might have been better served by reading the whole of OT, as it seems to be setting me up for what's coming in NT. Still though, maybe it's giving me a necessary break from the bizarre OT world in switching like this. 2) I appreciate a lot of what I've read, but have a hard time relating to many of the people in Genesis. Their world and life ambitions were so very different than mine. I've never thought twice of acquiring much land, livestock or children. Even in John, I feel like I'm missing pieces and that's making it harder for me to relate to the people in that book. With very little understanding of the culture and peoples there, Jesus just showed up in the story and started setting the record straight. Yet I know very little of the people and how they were in need of being straightened out. I hope I don't sound too narrow-minded. I think I'm still very much settling in to the settings which are quite new to me. Seems I could've used a good pre-Bible or something.

The Berean Initiative : non.Kitschy

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 02:59:29 +0000

You can do cuts in your posts like in LJ. When you post, look for the button next to the Spell Check button, that when you roll over it some text appears that says: "Insert More Tag (Alt+Shift+T)". Click that and all text after the tag insertion will appear behind the cut. Also, I was convinced there must be some Biblical genealogies out there. In a quick search I found this: http://www.d.umn.edu/~jbelote/bible2.html Maybe you can create something more readable than that, but I wouldn't want you to recreate the wheel unless you are especially enjoying the work.

The Berean Initiative : Jesus and His Doubters

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 01:45:18 +0000

You explained yourself fine and I thank you for that.

The Berean Initiative : Jesus and His Doubters

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 02:03:42 +0000

"Jesus' dialog with the people back in the day, definitely can be brought forward to this generation, here and now pretty easily." Alright, maybe it's easy for you, but it's not easy for me right now. I have a hard enough time understanding how this dialogue Jesus was having with the people in His time makes sense in that situation let alone what it means (or can mean) to my life today. As I tried to express in this post, I can't yet see how Jesus and the relationship He had with the religious people of that time can directly equate to what we're facing today in our religious lives. I'm only about 5% through this Bible. Maybe it'll make more sense to me as I get further along. Sorry if I'm doing a poor job explaining what I mean.

The Berean Initiative : Jesus and His Doubters

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 06:16:39 +0000

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The Berean Initiative : a few early thoughts

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:29:31 +0000

Hi Rosalie, I'm testing a new comment system. Hopefully you get an email notification letting you know I replied to your comment. That would be the best. Also, I'm excitedly looking forward to your first post on here still. Maybe the starches of Thanksgiving will slow down your life enough so that you can find time to write. :)