My thoughts on this class so far are of total amazement. I am amazed that I will be spending the same amount of time on this class as my organic chemistry class. I totally did not expect that there would be two additional books two buy outside of The Bible for Dummies. I expected we would be referencing the Bible, the one each student currently owned and not buying a “special” Bible, quite often but I did not expect the time commitment this class will hold to do well. Aside from this, I feel the class will be very informative and enlightening for me. The class seems to be very diverse and I feel there will be many opinions had in the classes to come. I am anticipating working with my group on our Bible mysteries. I think this will be fun and a great way to get to know some of my classmates on a more personal level. I enjoy working in team environments. I like the sharing of ideas and listening to other viewpoints that are expressed in team environments. I am a strong advocate of there being no “I” in “team”.

I really did not know what to expect on the first day of this course. I just hoped it would not be boring. Not boring in the sense that biblical teachings are boring, boring in the sense that the teacher would make it boring. After having been to two classes now, I feel this class will be far from boring. I am glad the professor has a sense of humor and is not uptight (or at least that appears to be the case).
I was impressed at the fact that he co-authored The Bible for Dummies after having come to that realization. My expectations of this course are to gain a greater understanding of what the Bible is all about, understanding The Old Testament vs. The New Testament teachings, understanding the history of the Bible, along with any traditions and developments that came about during biblical times that are still very common today that I may not be aware of.

Aside from theology being a core curriculum requirement, I took this particular course to learn more about the Bible. Having to take this class forces me to take the time to do what I would always put off, sit down and study the Bible. I have attempted two times, maybe three, in my life to sit down and start reading the Bible from the beginning. Let us just say that after all the begetting I forgot who begot whom. I hope to gain a greater understanding of the Bible and its history.
I consider myself to be geographically challenged. Geography is not one of my strong suites. When I learned that we would be discussing some of the important geographical areas in the Bibles, I became fascinated. I am definitely anticipating the geography portion of this class.

I find it interesting the number of people I have come across in my life that seem to know the Bible from cover to cover compared to my shallow knowledge.
Each time I hear a Bible story that I am hearing for the first time, I am fascinated by its meaning and interpretation. When hearing these stories, it would remind me not everything in the Bible is good and that evil was always there lurking in darkness. So many bad and unfortunate things happen in this world today. I had stop watching the news at one point in time because it was so depressing. I could not believe all the bad things that were happening just during the course of 7 AM to 6 PM like apartment buildings burning down and people losing everything they owned or people being killed in fatal car wrecks because of road rage. Now that I have gotten older, I find that I am even more emotional about the littlest of things. I cry at so many more movies now that sometimes I am ashamed for people to see me crying. When I see things that are sad, I seem to feel that sadness more than others might. It is like I wish everything was right with the world and nothing bad would ever happen to anyone and also no one would do anything bad to cause any sadness. I recall procrastinating many times about watching the movie “I Am Sam”. But, one day it was on one of the premium channels and nothing else was on so I watched it. It was maybe a little past noon, definitely no later than 2 PM. I think I started crying almost at the beginning of the movie and by the end my eyes were so puffy I had to get an ice pack to assist the swelling in going down. I thought Sean Penn was excellent and the little girl who played his daughter (I forget her name). It depicted a bond of love that nothing could come between no matter the challenges and obstacles that they were faced with and at the end love conquered all. I know, I know, this sounds so sappy but now you can get a better picture of just how emotional I have become these days. I think feeling, and even feeling deeply, is a good trait to have. It scares me when people have no feelings at all about anything or if there feelings do not reach passed them. I think the world needs more love and more people that care for the well being of others. I am not discounting the people that are already doing their part like certain agencies and various organizations. I am mostly referencing the regular everyday people that may not care about the next person outside of himself or herself.

My background in the Bible is pretty simple and basic. Growing up I would attend church every Sunday and very rarely attend Sunday school. I would listen and reference the passages the preacher would teach from each Sunday at church and try to gain an understanding of the passages, the message the preacher was trying to enlighten the congregation with and how I could take that and apply it to my everyday way of living. I am hoping after this class that I will be able to understand and know the Bible in greater depth. I have seen many people that are able to quote the Bible but live in such a manner that is so unchristian-like that it truly baffles me. How is it so easy for these people to quote the Bible? I ask myself this question then think, although they maybe able to quote the Bible, I do not think they fully understand its meaning. I do not want to just be able to quote the Bible, I want to know and understand what the teachings really meant and live my life according to Gods word. I believe this will allow me to grow stronger in my faith. I hold heartedly believe that pray changes things. Sometimes people find themselves in situations they just can not seem to get out of or may be experiencing so much pain in there life they find themselves hopeless. These types of situations can sometimes lead a person to believe that there no one on this earth that can possible ease their pain. This is the time when you must have faith that the LORD will see you through your circumstances. Prayer is such a powerful thing. In times of distress, confusion, loneliness or whatever the case maybe, there is sweet peace that comes from the words of prayer. I pray that anyone who does not know this comes to know it as these words are spoken.

While Theology is a part of the core curriculum at Xavier University and there are a number of courses offered to fulfill this requirement, I feel that the amount of workload required for this class is not needed in order to commit to the class. Writing (excuse me) “blogging” 2000 words a week for this class is excessive I feel. Having to write 2000 words in a so-called journal style really disturbs me. I do not even keep a personal journal for myself mainly because of time constraints. If I did keep a journal again, I know that I would not be logging 2000 words a week. Writing the two papers alone for this class would have sufficed to sharpen our writing skills. Now that I have complained enough about having to “blog”, as for as the course commitments go for this class, I do not see me having a problem with committing to any of them. A good majority of the commitments seemed obvious but maybe from past classes, the professor may have found himself having to write these commitments, which then I can totally understand. I fully intend to be present at and punctual for every class. I would hate to miss any of teachings from this class by being absent and would not be able to bare disrupting anyone else’s learning by coming in late. I also fully intend to do my part in this class by coming to class prepared having read and done all assignments prior to class. I plan to partake in class discussions, group assignments and class projects to ensure that I get everything out of this class it has to offer. I appreciate and thank the professor in advance for trying to make this course interesting. I fully commit to coming to class with a positive attitude towards learning. Being positive is something that I try to portray in everything I do even though it gets trying for me at times. I was raised to ALWAYS be respectful and polite to others even though, in the world today, it is not always reciprocated. It sometimes amazes me when someone shows an act of common courtesy like simply saying please, thank you and most of all excuse me, to name a few. I say amaze because I was starting to think the numbers of people without manners were taking over the world! I should not be so amazed because there are many people in this world to today that have manners and respect for one another. It is just that on some days it seems that I rarely encounter these people. Along with being raised to always be respectful and polite to others, I was also taught that honesty is the ONLY policy, especially in my household. So, being honest academically falls right in line with my practice of being an honest person all around. I do not feel the course commitments for this class are unreasonable and should be sincerely accepted by all. I hope this class turns out to be one of Professor Homan’s best classes yet.

I would like to take this time before closing to say a prayer.
Dear Lord, I pray that I stay encouraged to do the things that I am supposed to for the fall 2004 semester and going forward. I pray that on my commute to school each day that you watch over me on the highways and keep me safe from harm.

I pray that You keep my niece safe from harm while away at school. Bless her Lord in all that she encounters. I pray that she does well in all her classes now and going forward. I pray that she is healthy and that she knows how much she is loved.

I pray for all the students here on campus especially those that are far away from home for the first time. Lord, please kept them out of harm’s way. I pray that they each do well there time here at Xavier and they never stop striving to succeed. Lord, give those that are unwise a since of wisdom, give those that are young a since of maturity, give those that are alone a since of family and those that are out of touch a since of reality.

All these things I ask in Jesus,

Amen.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2004 at 7:12 pm and is filed under Project Progress, Week 01: Background. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.