Christians are human and humans are egotistical. This is a universal fact because everyone’s experiences are their personal experiences. What a person goes through shapes and molds the perceptions and attitudes they have about life and how life affects them. People view and analyze life through their own perceptions and how they conceive of the world; Christians are no different. People love their ten minutes of fame and to have the world end - the apocalypse - in their life time would be the ultimate historical moment. People do not realize that when the world comes to end, yes, it would be the pinnacle event, but there will be no one to tell their story or tell their story to. Some people live with a naïveté that life is like a video game - when one person dies, one can push the reset button or restart the game and have another chance. Christians just want to feel special, feel like they have some worth or value, and feel like their life has meaning in the long run, and to have their world end would be a confirmation of the purpose they had in the world. To have the world end in one’s life time would give someone a sense that they had a role in the world and were a part of God’s plan in a real and physical sense instead of simply through faith. Some Christians believe that the world is going to end in their lifetime because they have been repeatedly told that Jesus will come again with the father to judge the living and the dead, so in the end, to believe that Armageddon will happen in one’s life gives one something to look forward to. This notion or feeling that the end of the world is coming in one’s lifetime gives one a sense of hope, ironically.
Other people firmly believe that the world will end in their lifetime because there are numerous “documentations”, “reports”, and “signs”. Leaders have been credited with being the Anti-Christ and labeled with the mark of the beast, yet life continues to persevere and move on to the next generation. The world is still trying to predict when the world will end, saying that the world is going to end on this date or that date. The whole world, at one point thought that the world was going to end because the year was going to become two thousand, a round number. The media was publicizing the “Y2K” bug and that all electronics would be disrupted; however, the year two thousand came and nothing happened. The ball dropped in time square, people made their annual resolutions, and life continued. People naturally worry and the end of the world is another event to worry about. Christians worry about the end of the world because they hear in church that one must continually be prepared for the second coming of Jesus. They are taught to prepare their souls so that when Jesus comes again they will be caught up in the rapture and taken to eternal paradise.
Another reason that some Christians believe that the world is going to end in their lifetime because they hope to escape death. Death is the eternal rest and people fear death because being six feet under is the ultimate mystery still undiscovered. No one wants to die and by being caught up in the rapture, one can avoid dying. Christians always say that the world is going to hell in a hand basket because of all the events that occur in the world. The numerous wars, deaths of many people, the physical hunger that is in the world all seem to lead up to the second coming of Christ. These so called signs are interpreted to signify the coming of Armageddon, yet in life people live through many devastations. Christians in the nineteen forties believed that World War II was, symbolically, the beginning of Armageddon because of the persecution of Jews through the Holocaust and because Adolf Hitler was assumed to be the Anti-Christ; however, even through this catastrophic event life continued giving birth, literally and figuratively, to a new generation of promise. Christians, as well as all people of the world, believe that their life is the worst that this world has to offer and that life cannot get any worst than this, but another horrific event comes to pass and people continue to think that this is the worst and life cannot get any worst than this. A cycle of denial continues to occur until one forces one’s self that life can always get worst, but this does not necessarily signify the coming of Christ and the judgment of the world.
The movie of Jeremiah, shows the life a Jeremiah from his induction in the life of a prophet to the fulfillment of the prophecies. The movie showed his humanity which parallels how the Bible portrays him. God selects various prophets to reach his diverse audience, but many times the prophets do not want to be prophets and the audience that God is trying to reach do not want to hear the message. This is the same scenario that describes Jeremiah’s career as a prophet. Jeremiah was living his life, destined to join the priesthood like his father. The movie shows that Jeremiah had a life with hopes and aspirations like many of the people of his time. He hoped to marry, join the priesthood, which would honor his father, and live a life that was anything, but the life God had designed for him. The storyline in the Bible and in the movie show how God selects people to do his work. In everyone that God selects there is a potential that is not always visible to the naked eye because it is not a superficial characteristic of a person. God always sees the potential in everyone and he uses that potential to do his work.
According to the grading criteria for the blogs, my blog grade should be a B. The writing was more than a thousand words for all of the blogs except the short project blog for week three; however, even then, I did a week three blog that was more than a thousand words and created a second project blog for those in class to comment on. I read and researched the topics given and paid close attention to the lectures in class. My blogs are free of grammatical errors and I have a sense that I grasped the concepts discussed in class. I attempted to apply the critical thinking skills taught in this course to analyze the various topics of the blog. My project had a large scope, in that, I accomplished various community service activities and a lasting during, regarding the impact of the service.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Class Comments, Week 14: Grade. 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.