Tuesday, February 3, 2009
I thought that Rabbi Flip was the man. His views on the bible and life were pretty amazing. I really enjoyed how he didn't try to glorify anything in the bible and just told it how it was. I agree with him in the sense that not everything in the bible should be taken literally and that the Bible was written by humans inspired by God and not by God himself. I really don't read the bible at all, though one time when I got back from Church camp I read the whole thing. I really didn't understand anything at all and I think Rabbi Flip had a good idea on how to look at many stories of the Bible. I liked the Jewish terms he used to show how the clergy tries to dissect the Bible and find hidden meaning, but even more I enjoyed his way of putting the Bible into today's perspective because we are more than 2000 years past the time it was written. I wasn't able to check out Ecclesiastes, but I did read Esther. I tried to follow the technique that Rabbi Flip had been talking about but had a little trouble. I got the main story down cause it's pretty straight forward, but I was having trouble figuring out what the "hidden meanings" were and how to apply them to life. In my opinion, it seemed to me like the Jews were kind of hypocrites when it came to them stopping Haman's decree and making their own. They straight up killed all of these people and it seems like an unjust act because as we all now "two wrongs don't make a right". But anyway, anyone have better luck with Esther?
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We'll definitely discuss Esther more in class, because it is a problematic story, particularly the part you mention about them lashing out at their oppressors.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed having Rabbi Flip to talk to us. I really believe that when the clergy talks about their issues with religion and religious texts in can make others feel more at ease. No one has all the answers and parts of the Bible are difficult to understand and contradictorty. When people like Rabbi Philip say, "as a person of God, I have issues with this part of the Bible because ...," I am more receptive. I feel that there are parts of the Bible that I have trouble accepting, because they don't fall into accordance with other things that God said. Like when God preaches love and forgiveness of others and then "commands" people to lash out and slaughter their enemies, I want to believe that this was a group of people trying to justify their actions against another society and not just "doing God's will." That is not the kind of God that I choose to worship.
ReplyDeleteRabbi Flip was in one word, fascinating. Not coming from any sort of religious background it is only very hard for me to be receptive to most religious speakers because of two main problems i usually encounter. 1.) They either have a "hoiler than thou" approach to the discussion or as i typically phrase it "my opinion is not just an opinion, its actually the only opinion you will ever agree with" or they fail to bring up anything problematic or controversial. I think any good Christian knows and is fully aware that a healthy dose of discussion on the "taboo" topics may actually help a person GROW in faith rather than traumatize it.
ReplyDeleteRabbi Flip had a very human quality about him in that he never hesitated to stop his presentation and make it clear that he "loved interruptions" that he would clear anything up that we didn't quite understand (which is unique because i believe Judaism is a somewhat more 'mysterious' faith here at Belmont) but also he didn't hesitate to say "this part of the bible troubles me". He was very human and genuine. It also didn't hurt that I agree with his view that the text were divinely INSPIRED rather than divinely written.
However, as a final point I will say that the thing I personally took away from his presentation (and was briefly discussed in Dr. LaLonde's class) was this idea of his that anything that deals more with barbaric violence,revenge, vengeance, and anything else that has typically made me very apprehensive about organized religion, is not God, that is merely the HUMAN quality of the bible truly coming because humans are the one's who are imperfect, and we are the one's who are capable of that and because these texts were written BY us rather than FOR us, those qualities are bound to come out, but do not reflect the loving human qualities of the God we all would love to know. This was a great new perspective that I never would have came to if I didn't get up that morning and decided "yeah, let's go to class".