The Fall?
As annoyed as I am about my religious studies class tests (professors should not ask you specific questions about analogies used in class!), the class itself is really teaching me a lot.
I think it's important to learn about other religions because they all have some basis of merit. My favorite part of Hinduism is the mountain of moksha (meaning liberation from the cycle of rebirth). Hindus believe there are all sorts of paths up the mountain and people who practice other religions are just merely taking a different path. I think that's a really interesting way to look at it.
We started our Judaism unit on Monday, which I have been looking forward to. As a Christian, I want to be familiar with the basics of Judaism. While I believe Jesus was the Messiah, He lived and died as a Jew. Judaism is my history, so I should at least learn about it. There are some things about it that I really like, such as Tikkun Olam. It says that the world is broken into pieces and it's our job to put it back together again.
Today we talked about God's covenant with the Hebrews. They obey God's Law and God takes care of them. In learning about this we talked about a variety of stories that I know very well from the Old Testament (though the Christian Old Testament is a little different than the Hebrew Bible in terms of book order): Noah, Abraham, Moses.
But the one that interested me the most was Adam and Eve. Of course I know the story of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and them getting exiled from the Garden of Eden. However, because I was brought up in a Christian household, attending Sunday school and Bible studies, I've always viewed that as "the fall of man." That's how sin entered the world.
However, Jews believe that Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden was not a fall. They view it as a rise in human existence. Life in the Garden was boring for Adam and Eve. When they were forced to leave, they were able to make choices and shape their own fate. They also became God-like in the fact that once they left they were able to produce life, just like God.
I spent most of my day thinking about this. I've been thinking of it as a fall for so long that I never even stopped to consider that it could have been a good thing. I definitely believe that Eve taking the fruit from the snake was how sin entered the world, but I like the glass half-full attitude of how some good came from this.
I think it's important to learn about other religions because they all have some basis of merit. My favorite part of Hinduism is the mountain of moksha (meaning liberation from the cycle of rebirth). Hindus believe there are all sorts of paths up the mountain and people who practice other religions are just merely taking a different path. I think that's a really interesting way to look at it.
We started our Judaism unit on Monday, which I have been looking forward to. As a Christian, I want to be familiar with the basics of Judaism. While I believe Jesus was the Messiah, He lived and died as a Jew. Judaism is my history, so I should at least learn about it. There are some things about it that I really like, such as Tikkun Olam. It says that the world is broken into pieces and it's our job to put it back together again.
Today we talked about God's covenant with the Hebrews. They obey God's Law and God takes care of them. In learning about this we talked about a variety of stories that I know very well from the Old Testament (though the Christian Old Testament is a little different than the Hebrew Bible in terms of book order): Noah, Abraham, Moses.
But the one that interested me the most was Adam and Eve. Of course I know the story of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and them getting exiled from the Garden of Eden. However, because I was brought up in a Christian household, attending Sunday school and Bible studies, I've always viewed that as "the fall of man." That's how sin entered the world.
However, Jews believe that Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden was not a fall. They view it as a rise in human existence. Life in the Garden was boring for Adam and Eve. When they were forced to leave, they were able to make choices and shape their own fate. They also became God-like in the fact that once they left they were able to produce life, just like God.
I spent most of my day thinking about this. I've been thinking of it as a fall for so long that I never even stopped to consider that it could have been a good thing. I definitely believe that Eve taking the fruit from the snake was how sin entered the world, but I like the glass half-full attitude of how some good came from this.