Ethiopia

This version of the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba dwells mainly on the importance of wisdom. The importance that Ethiopia has is eventually expressed near the end of the story. The light that moved from Israel to Ethiopia could signify a multitude of things. Israel has always been considered the promise land and the Israelites were God's chosen people. The light maintained its position over Israel for a time to represent that idea, however, the light then moved to Ethiopia and stayed there, shining brighter "for it willed to dwell there." Ethiopia, in this reading, appears to be the new chosen place, the new promise land for the followers of God.

This idea is suprising to me because I had never even considered Ethiopia to be a strong religious power. I was unaware that it was a Christian state. This story counters that ignorance quite strongly, the vision that Solomon received was, to him, apparently directly from God. The sun followed the light of God, or was perhaps instructed by God to no longer shine on Israel. The story shows that the Israelites hated the Sun for ignoring them and this hatred permanently ruined their relationship with the Sun, which is a representation for the light of God. The Sun ends up illuminating the whole world, besides Israel. This does not really make any sense.

The light of God, without warning, decides that Ethiopia is more worthy than Israel and leaves that state forever. It does not explain what Israel nor what Ethiopia did to deserve their respective kinds of treatment. There had to be a distinct reason for God to completely and utterly abandon his chosen people. He basically indicated that his intention was to leave Israel forever. Does God mean the land, the people, their way of life, or a combination of all of them is upsetting him enough to move his light and love to Ethiopia? The fact that it was a dream and Solomon was more concerned with how beautiful the Queen of Sheba was in some ways undermines this apparent warning. Or is it a warning? If the Israelites change something will they not be banished forever into darkness? Or is this event inevitable? There was no timeline given for this light exodus either.

Conceptual Blending and Analogy

I was wondering while reading this article about the "obvious dissimilarity that enhances the learning efficiency," in relation to holding the champagne glasses while skiing and how, if at all, this could connect to religion. Maybe because religion itself is such an intangible thing that humans are trying to connect to in a tangible world. If there were more aspects of religion that were not based off of faith, would it be such a powerful force? Maybe because there can be no absolute proof to any religion or lack there of, it makes the reasons to believe in faith stronger, in a skewed version of reverse psychology.

Also the idea of the mirror network was interesting to me, "because the same organizing frame is common to all spaces in the network" which continues on to discuss the connection of blending. I think this could also fit into religion. If the "network" can be considered to be all religious and spiritual people, then there is a similar organizing frame that most of them can be categorized into. There are many different religions in the world, however, many aspects of them are "blended" and have many basic ideas in common. To put this into a perspective in relation to how I am thinking about this, imagine all the religions of the world in a huge ven diagram, with each religion having its own circle for its own specific conditions, yet sharing parts with its neighbors and ultimately, every other religion in the world. Just as a side note- I did just try to google a religious ven diagram and apparently they actually exist. Not to the extend I was hoping for, since most of the ones that showed up involved religion in comparison to politics and stupidity.

Cognitive Linguistics By Dirk Geeraerts

This is a book I found on google books that talks about mirror networks more in depth with the same conceits. The information starts on page 341 if the link does not go there directly.
Here is a link to the religion ven diagram.
I figured I would put it as a link in case it offends anyone.

"Warlocks are Enemies of God"

For this week, I was thinking about the movie "Jesus Camp" and though I have not seen it, I thought I would take a look at some parts of it online. This is what I found.

This is an interesting video debate that mentions "Jesus Camp" and does some comparisons between religions. For me, the most poignant part is about 8:15 seconds into it.



Reza Aslan, who is a middle east analysis for CBS news, is saying that religion does not create bigots or misogynists, people are just bigots and misogynists. "religion it is a powerful language through which you can justify any ideology." I think this point is dead on. People use religion as an excuse for many things, war being one of the most extreme.

Also, here is the trailer for "Jesus Camp," which to me, personally, looks like one of the scariest movies ever made.



Here is another "Jesus Camp" video that denounces Harry Potter. Sorry for all the videos, but this is pretty intense. According to the leader of the "Jesus Camp, "Harry Potter would have been put to death in the old testament.



There were plenty of other videos on "Jesus Camp" and I eventually want to watch the entire movie. There are some scenes shown in clips where the children speak in tongues while praying to God. Kids are lying on the floor in what looks like a seizure. They pray to a cardboard cut out of George Bush. A five year old was saved because he wanted more out of his life. A FIVE year old. They destory mugs with "government" written on them. They denounce evolution. They are being trained to "be God's army." Has anyone actually seen the movie?

Here is a link to the movie's website
Article review of Jesus Camp
This is an interesting article, first of all because it comes from RichardDawkins.net, and secondly, because a lot of people posted responses to the article.

On Christain Teaching in Relation to the Pslams

The part of Saint Augustine's On Christian Teaching that immediately caught my attention was the lines "but no one disputes that it is much more pleasant to learn lessons presented through imagery, and much more rewarding to discover meanings that are won only with difficulty." This reminded me of the Psalms because the ones that were most interesting to discuss involved intense descriptions of God coming down from the heavens basically breathing fire or God giving the speaker enough strength to utterly destroy his enemies. Imagery does make the Psalms more intriguing, which in turns makes them more exciting to analyze. The second part of the quote indicates that the message is much more likely to stay with the reader when it has to be deciphered. Here the Psalms varied. Some were more straight forward, but does that then mean that they are less important and less time should be spent reading over them? Some Psalms involved understanding historical meanings and certain rituals relating to the time period. Understanding the background helped to appreciate the meaning more fully. Not only through how the Psalms can be interpreted on a personal level now, but how they might have been viewed in the time that they were written can combine to offer a meaning "won only with difficulty."

Also the question of translators comes up in Saint Augustine's On Christian Teaching, which I found to be another connection to the Psalms. Since they were written in ancient Hebrew, there are some open ended lines that may have been interpreted maybe not wrongly, but maybe not entirely correctly either. This is an interesting concept. These Psalms have been around for hundreds of years, yet, some religions may be instructing their members on Psalms that have been translated in a different way than their original intention. This brings up the question of if there was a mistake, whether it is better to not know that the translation was wrong and continue to teach the wrong message from the perspective of the original author, or is it alright to accept this varied view?

Saved!

Has anyone seen the movie Saved!?



I am not sure how well this trailer portrays the actual movie plot line, so here is what IMDB has to say:
"Mary is a good Christian girl who goes to a good Christian high school where she has good Christian friends, mainly Hilary Faye, and a perfect Christian boyfriend, Dean. Her life seems perfect, until the day that she finds out that Dean may be gay. After "seeing" a vision of Jesus in a pool, she does everything in her power to help him turn straight, including offering up her virginity. But none of it helps because Dean's caught and sent to a "degayification" center and Mary ends up pregnant. It's during her time of need that she becomes real friends with the school's set of "misfits," including Cassandra, the school's only Jewish girl; Roland, Hilary Faye's wheelchair-bound brother, and Patrick, the skateboarder son of the school's principal, Pastor Skip; whilst Hilary Faye turns her into a social outcast."

I was thinking about Happy Feet and how religion is portrayed in the movies and immediately thought of this movie. It is a satire of the Christian faith. The media has a lot to do with the characterization of certain religions, from newspapers and magazines to movies and books. Many people are solely exposed to some religions from the news and other decently unreliable sources. Religions are associated with things heard about in the news. People react differently to different depictions. I am sure there are some Christians who find Saved! absolutely hilarious while others are probably horribly offended. The way religions are shown in the media ranges from mocking and degradation to support and necessity. It is interesting to think about how people respond to watching others' religions mocked and how they react when the motives of their own religion is questioned.

Here is a movie review from the L.A. Times

Psalm 18

I find this image of God quite intimidating. The speaker shares how God helped him defeat his enemies in two ways. First God came down riding a cherub and was basically on fire, both of which are interesting things to think about. I do not really know why God would have wanted or needed to ride a cherub (pictured to the left) but the speaker claims he did. Also, I am not sure when heaven and hell comes into play with these psalms, but the description given to God seems much more like something related to the fiery pits of hell and the devil than the pearly white gates of heaven. God then destroys the enemies but not really because the speaker has to do that later in the psalm. Apparently they were not as pious as the speaker who at great length describes how blameless he is before God, which gives him the right to call on God's help for this fight. So after God saved the speaker from "drowning" by throwing lightning bolts, he gives the speaker enough strength to go back and crush his enemies without the use of God's arrows. Even though the enemies cried out for God's protection, he ignored them and continued to supply the speaker with the ability to kill them. This is a conflicting point of view and it gets tricky to question this matter, let alone explain it, but it does not make sense that God would be so adamant about helping this one man destroy many, even though he was pious. Here is where it gets confusing. If there is only one God, and the many different religions with different beliefs end up all praying to the same higher power, then God would not be able to help them destroy each other because they all worship the same higher power and are all pious in their own right. This then throws into question if there is only one higher power or that the Jewish God is different from the Christian God who is different from the higher power from all other religions. It is incredibly scary to think of God assisting someone in battle, especially sense in this situation it was one man against many.

(Disclaimer- I'm sorry to bring this up and I do not know too much about it and if I am wrong please correct me and I of course do not condone any terrorist actions but I do think this is a valid point.) The terrorists that were responsible for the 9/11 attacks were under the distinct impression that God was on their side and was supporting them in their actions. "The majority of terrorist attacks have been committed by groups claiming to act on the basis of religious motivation"(Burns). On the flip side, I am sure that some of the innocent people who died that day were devout individuals who believed in God. So who was in the right if both sides believed that they had the support their God? Religion has been the cause of many violent acts, which always seems contradictory, but again, if two religious groups of people with the belief that God is on their side, especially with the way God fights in Psalm 18, what is the outcome going to be like?

Work Cited:
Burns, Charlene. "Terrorists base motivation on beliefs Religious, political commitments are powerful allegiances." The Spectator. 2009. 21 Apr. 2009 .

For this week's blog, I entered "Religion" into Google and found a website that has the basic views of forty different religions. The first one on the list is on the Bah

à'i Faith. This is how it was described:

"We desire but the good of the world and happiness of the nations....That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race be annulled... Yet so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the "Most Great Peace" shall come.... These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family.... Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind." Baha'u'llah, (1890)

I actually was able to see and walk around inside the Bahà'i temple near Chicago over fall term reading period. We were not allowed to take pictures of the inside, but here are some of the pictures from the outside. It was absolutely gorgeous. There was an elaborate walkway up to the entrance and there were pamphlets offered in many different languages in the enterance. The outside was very intricately designed. What I did not understand was that one of the symbols on the side of the Temple had what looked like a modified Star of David interlocked with what appears to be a Nazi Swastica. This is shown in the picture below. I looked up what symbol represents the Bahai faith and it is a nine pointed star, which does not really correspond to the symbols seen on the temple itself. I do not really know what to make of that, but I will try to do some more reasearch to try and decipher the meanings. There are only eight Bahai temples in the entire world, so having one in Chicago is amazingly special, not to mention acessible!

Religious Tolerance Website
The Bahai Temple in Chicago's Website