Finally week 15!! The last required blog of the semester, it seemed as this would never come but it came sooner than I thought it would. Now that we are through I’m kind of happy and sad, I am finish with this school year, but I will miss many of my friends. This semester was quick and tough, it started really fast and continued to pick up during the duration of the semester, i think that this semester was one of my hardest semesters because I took it to be easier than last semseter which I was wrong. and continued to pick up during the duration of the class. With all the readings and the different bibles this course gives the student a level of fulfillment and enrichment about the bible. It breaks down many things that some people might not understand and brings it to a level that most can interpret. This course also taught me how to look at things behind the words and think critical, I also learned how to write my name in hebrew. I grew up in church and know quite a bit about the bible, also i find it easy to understand when i read the bible. This class made me realize there is more to the bible than what is being read and the interpretation, it is about the history of the Israelites. With the knowledge of other books such as the dead sea scrolls and the Apocrypha this made me open my mind to other readings and know that there are other things out there for us to understand what God wants us to do as his created people. This does not take away anything form the Bible as i know it but this just adds on to what i can read to broaden my view of the world and religion. God reveals thing to people when he wants them to come out. He won’t put more on you than you are able to bear, I know that no matter what the Bible stands above all other writings because it was inspired by God even though it was written by man. A lot of things that i thought to be odd i began to understand as the course went along. Most improtantly I was able to help the world that i live in. This course taught me how to write critically and how to analyase things before making a judgement on it. When we first started and i read all the requirements I thought man this is a lot but now that I am finished i appreciate all the readings and required projects and writings. Dr. Homan taught us well even though he makes a lot of corney jokes i enjoyed the class. I still feel that the bogs every week is a lot but I am happy that i got threw it and I’m finally done. In the beginning of the course i was about to drop it because i wasn;t really open to change and to believing some of the things in the bible were written as ways to scare off their enemies and make the israleites feel superior over those that were considered gentiles.
Faith against works is about Paul believeing tha christianity should be for every human and James that believed if you were a true believer then you would follow the laws given to the Jews. The porblem with that was it was a different dispensasion of time, we now live in the despensasion of Grace where everyone has a chance at heaven. I think that they both were right just in different ways. Paul was right that christianity should be for everyone because if you are following what God’s word says then you should have a chance at heaven even if you are not considered a Jew. I thnk that James had the right mindset but just was a little harsh on the rules of salvation. He was not implying that the gentiles shouldn’t get preached to because who was he to say who desreves to go to heaven. The bible says judge not that thou be not judged. Meaning the way that you jusge others then you shall receive the same judgement that you dished out. I just think that James was trying to say if the gentiles are going to be saved and worship Jesus then they should follow the laws of Moses and be circumcised. Paul’s argument was that works are fine and if you chose to follow the dietary laws then tha is alrite, but just following the laws is not what is going to get you saved. The reason is because many people on the outside appear to follow all the laws and can battle anyone in a scripture recital, but what salvation is all about is what you do behind close doors. How hard do you believe on Christ and know that God is real. This was why Jesus had a problem with the Pharasiees, because they followed all the right laws and ate the correct foods but we hypocritical in their hearts. Man looks at the outward appearance, what you have on, how tight your clothes are, if you went to church on Sundays. God looks at the heart, He knows if you truely love him and by truely loving God your actions would show it. If you truely loved God you would do things that would please him, Faith with works, that is my take on the whole argument. I think that Paul was more correct because if you have faith, workd go along with it, but you can have works without faith.
Now that i am finish i know that i can tell any teacher a ten page paper is nothing compared to writing more than a thousand words a week which adds up to about 15,650 on estimate because i went over the requirements weekly. If i can finish this i can write anything!! Thanks Dr. Homan and have a good summer!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 5th, 2007 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Week 15: Reflection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.