Stars

After watching my two favorite movies this weekend (being sick does have it’s advantages) I realized that we are always interested in the stars. Gattaca, a movie about a guy who wants to be an astronaut and Wall-E, a story about a robot going into space, are sme of the best movies I’ve seen in a while. Something about those ‘great big balls of gas, burning millions of miles away’ inspires songs, stories, everything…

Why do we send astronauts out into the stars? Humans seem to have objectified stars to mean what we do not understand, but what we think is beautiful…  We do not understand a lot about the stars, yes we know their composition, yes we can guesstimate their ages, yes we can guess about how they were formed, but the interesting is that we rarely know exactly what they are. Unlike a micobe, it’s rather difficult to closely study a star, well if you don’t want to burn to a crisp almost instantaneously. It’s beautiful, but confusing as anything. Perhaps that is why we associate stars with Love.

What did they call Romeo and Juliet? ‘Star’crossed lovers. What do we call someone who is in awe of someone? ‘Star’struck. What do we call the person who we focus out life on? A northern ‘star.’

It is interesting to note that the stars, which can be used to describe love, are what brought the Wise men out of their tents to try and find the Christ child. For “when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy,” at least that is what Matthew said about the situation. Why did our Heavenly Father choose a star to herald the coming of his Son? Perhaps He knew that humans are always looking up, sometimes to dream of the eternities, sometimes to wish that they could be somewhere else, sometimes just to enjoy the beauty that the stars bring. Perhaps He wanted to commemorate his Son’s birth with something a little more lasting than a song. Whatever the reason, I bet it’s written in the stars.

A picture is Worth 1000 words…

Recently my New Testiment class went to the Museum of Art on Campus to see one of their more fameous paintings, the painting of CHRIST HEALING THE SICK AT BETHESDA. I’ve been to the Louvre, I’ve seen the paintings, this one reminded me of how ordinary Christ must have seemed to others. Also I liked how the the story seems to be told through of the eyes of the an in the center of the painting.

I know that he is our Savior and our Redeemer, but it is interesting that he does not appear to be anything more than a man in this painting, but I have always been slightly awed by the many depictions of Christ that I’ve seen in my life. He is wearing white, but this painting seems to be focused on how people reacted to his miracles. I’ve always wondered how I would react to his miracles if I had been there… would I have been too busy to stop? Would I have watched for a moment then left thinking ‘that’s nice’? Or would I have been one of his devout followers, like Mary, who would have followed him to the ends of the earth?  I know that this is a moot point, because it is a question that will never have an answer. But I suppose I can follow Christ now, through the study of the scriptures, through the listening to conference, through everything I do and say. Perhaps I would be like the man in the center of the painting, telling the story of Christ’s ministry to the world…

The Additional Sermon

I was reading in Matthew and Mark for a comparative essay for a test last weekend and I was analyzing the different parts that matthew added that Mark was missing entirely. The Sermon on the Mount is pretty amazing. In my humble opinion (aided and abetted by some articles that I was reading for class, I skim over the Psalms when I read through the Bible) the Sermon on the Mount is the epitome of Christ’s teaching. The most oft repeated words that you’ll hear in church talks or a preacher’s sermons are the words about the ‘beattitudes.’ Where else do we have the gospel of Christ stated so succinctly? Where else do we have what Christ wants his followers to do stated so clearly? And with promises afterwards to boot?

“Blessed are the Meek,” “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” “Blessed are those who hunger and Thirst after righteousness.” So many promises of blessedness if they would be meek, or thirst after righteousness. It was interesting to read in Thomas A Wayment’s essay about Jesus’ Use of Psalms in the New Testament how Isaiah 61 could be seen as a prelude for The Sermon on the Mount. Isaiah has always been one of my favorite tests to read and to see how it was quoted by the Savior in the sermon on the mount was pretty much amazing. if you have a chance to read the rest of the atricle it is pretty interesting. I dont know where you’d find it… I’ll add a link when I find it.

The Great Where Was It Argument

Every major has their quirks, but one quirk that I have noticed about History majors is the ever-present “where was it” argument that perpetuates around every ‘questionable’ location for a historical event. You see it on the History channel every other year or so, they will claim that an event occurred in one local, then in their next documentary on the same subject will have the event in a completely different place. Religious sites are notorious for their ‘mysterious’ locales. “Christ was tried by Pilot in this chapel.” “No he couldn’t have been because it was constructed 50 years after his death.” “Well, the church was built on the original foundations tat that church was built on.” “Where is your documented evidence for that argument?” “I found a piece of papyrus …” and so on. My religion professor (who consequently also teaches history) was going on and on the other day about Mount Tabor, one of the theoretical places for the Mount of transfiguration (Where the day of Pentecost occurred). I am more interested in the technicalities of the story, you know what did it mean, did the people involved understand what it mean?

Still it woud be nice to know where these locations are… even if it is just for the satisfaction of my own feline curiosity. Was the the immensely tall Mount Hermon? Was it the centrally located, but highly populated Mount Tabor? Or was it the Mount Sinai, the historical place for the two prophets that appeared on that day? Historians are still arguing what a scientist like myself calls a ‘moot point.’ Who cares where it happened as long as you know that it happened. I do not need to know the city and state where Griffith performed his experiement to know that the facts gained from it are correct. Nor do I need to know the actual place where the Declaration of Independence was written to know what impact it had on History. I admit it would be nice to know where these things happened, but I am of the opinion that there are more important things to discuss in the light of all of history…(although I must admit I am a fan of the Mount Hermon location for this event).

*Gasp* She was right.

It’s official, all of my English teachers are right, however much I do not want them to be. The best writers have an audience and write for that audience. You don’t believe me? Let’s take the Bible. Matthew wrote for the Jews who became Christian, while Mark wrote for the Romans who became Christian. We see in several places that they tell the same story, but with different details. One of the ones that I like is the Passion Narrative. For those not familiar with the term the ‘passion narrative’ deals with the crusifixion of Christ.

In Mark he mentions the fact that a Simon comes along and helps Christ with the cross, even mentions who he’s related to, while Matthew just mentions Simon. Mark’s audience would have known the sons of Simon, while the Jews may have known, but they didn’t really care. Matthew focuses later in that same chapter (27 if any of you want to follow along) about the prophicies that were integral to the Jewish custom, while Mark (chapter 15) continues onward through the narrative without that information.

If you are an over acheiver you can see those differenes in all of the text, Matthew validating chrish through the prophicies and Mark just putting down the basics of the story… it’s interesting to see what one puts down for their audience… makes me wonder what my audiences are looking for when they read this, because I have not been writing for any sort of audence while I am writing here… maybe I should look into that…

Where’s the limit?

One of the biggest things that drives me up the wall are when people decide that one standard is not good enough for the world. Imagine if we had changing standards for basketball. Come on, moving the hoop with every individual that came along higher for the tall guys and lower for the shorter ones… it would make basketball boring.

I noticed the same thing with the different sects of some religions, they all profess to be ‘christians’ but in some cases they are not christians. What truly is the difference between the Christ of the Baptists and the Christ of the LDS (Mormons)? Nothing that I can tell, the firm walls of legalisms seem to create rifts between religions that really are not all that different. We are honestly getting as bad as the Judiasims I am learning about in my New Testiment class. Some are more reactionary, like the pahrasees that fear anything different. You could have the priestly Sadduces that were wealthy landowners that believed that temple were where the ‘real’ religion was, and cooperated with the Romans. Some like the Zealots believed that everyone was getting too far from Torah so they decided to stop going to temple because it was ‘corrupted.’ They ended up trying to kill each other off and succedding in destroying all of the Sadduces. What makes this so different from our quabbling sects of Christianity? If we are Christians should we not believe that our Christ that saved is the same ? If we do not, then I guess there were several grand teachers and prophets that showed up in the historical record at the same time and never mentioned the other’s existence. (and yes I am aware that the real difference is actually in the details about the godhead or the trinity, but it’s still an interestingly silly docterinal issue in my opinion.)

One foot in past, another in the Future

Have you ever gone to the ‘Four corners’ of the US? Where the corners of four states come together, and if you are talented you can have one limb in every state? (I say talented in case anyone has seen me try to stand on two feet before) Have I been there? No. But it got me thinking today about something that one of my religion professors said this semester about John the Baptist. He continually says that John the Baptist had one foot in one dispensation and one in another, you know part of the old Mosaic laws where sacrifice meant actually going out into the fields and killing a lamb and another with Christ and his ‘love one another’ montras.

I’ve always wondered slightly about how this would have worked… How would you feel if your religion started changing before your eyes? One day the sacrifices were animals and the next the sacrifice was fulfilled and all you needed to give was a broken heart and a contrite spirit. It would be confusing, but still rather exciting to be a part of that dynamic ancient church. Knowing myself (and countering what most people would be saying if they were in that time era) I would not have been one of those who took to the new doctrine as well as I should. It would have taken a few miracles and several teaching sessions to really pound the new thing into my skull. My transition between religions would be about as graceful as my transitions in dance class, I’d get it eventually, but it’d take more than a couple of spills, falls, and mess-ups before i got to where I was going to go.

But John was different. He had one foot in the past, respecting the old rites and customs, but he had one foot in the future where he saw Christ’s purpose and what he needed to do to help that purpose. Kind of funny how that works… John leading the way for Christ, knowing what was to come, yet having to stay within the old bounds of the law. I have trouble keeping the old rules when I know that there is a better thing coming along. I have new respect for this John the Baptist. Do you have a foot in the future?

Mark

I’ve been reading in my New Testament for class. (Surprising, eh?) And I noted something very interesting while reading Mark. (Albeit I didn’t understand why until I took the class) Have you ever noticed how Matthew and Luke start with the birth of Christ and how Mark starts in the middle, when  Christ is in his thirties? (I never count John among the gospels, he is a category of his own in my mind) I didn’t understand it, but my professor mentioned that he has a theory about the creation of the Gospels. (Controversial he said) While many scholars thought that the gospels were put in chronological order, he says that Mark was written first.

Being a scientist means that things like dates do not matter (unless of course it is pertaining to your experiment and that other celebratory occasion that you forget half the time because your experiement takes over your life…) but I thought that his theory had merit, I’ve read the gospels a time or two and I’ve noticed the unusual conincidences between Matthew and Luke, they use the same words, and the same stories, there are times when I cannot tell the two apart. It is always interesting as a religious person to look at the ‘inspired’ documents as intellectual nuances, and in this case you can learn a lot from it.

Certainly one has to remember that religion and science know things in separate ways. You can’t really know religion the same way that you can know science. You could try, but I doubt heavenly revelation comes as predicted (Although anyone in a lab would tell you that experiments rarely work out as perfectly as planned either) and in all honesty I think it’s better that way. Who would want to take part in something predictable as a math equation? Not this blogger certainly.