What does not kill me will only make me stronger!

A few weeks ago, Professor Sexton asked us to have one bad day. However, I was not able to accommodate the assignment at the time but I did make up for it by having a bad week last week. Last week, it felt like that anything that could go wrong in my life did go wrong. I would call my grandmother to visit and the first thing she would say was "What happened now?". I will not go into detail about all of the things that happened to me last week but most of the time I did not know whether to laugh or cry. I remember that Job often asked what he did to deserve the things that were happening in his life and I often did the same last week. Even now just a short time later looking back I realize that I learned nothing when I was questioning why things were happening and I started focusing on what bad thing was going to happen next. By focusing on the bad, I allowed myself to perpetuate the cycle. I might not have been able to change what things happened but I could have changed how I reacted. This was as close as I got to an epiphany. I don't think it was an actual epiphany but just a mere realization and affirmation of things that I had previously learned and forgotten. I think that everyone needs to have these realizations & affirmations because without setbacks in our life, no one can go forward. As humans we need to have failures in order to fully appreciate our successes. Job realized this when he said "he destroyeth the perfect and the wicked". This quote relates to many, if not all creation stories, because humans are not perfect and without these bad days or weeks, we would as a whole forget this concept. We would forget the concept of our own imperfections because we become so wrapped up in our own world and often try to place ourselves as gods of our environment. The bad days is the cosmos' way of giving us a reality check and as much as I hate my own bad days, I realize now that I need them.

The Creation Story: Seen in a New Light

While reading Folklore in the Old Testament, I came across an interesting passage that states that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was truly the Tree of Death, the counterpart to the Tree of Life. I had never considered this before even though it was essentially the tree that did allow us to die. The author says that "that the forbidden tree was really a tree of death, not knowledge, and that the mere taste of its deadly fruit, quite apart  from any question of obedience or disobedience...sufficed to entail death to the eater" (Fraser 48). I personally have to disagree with some of the things that Fraser said. Why does it have to be one or the other? Isn't death a form of knowledge? I have no clue what people learn when they die but I do believe that they do learn something. I do not even particularly mean the afterlife but the moments leading up to a person's death, there must come some kind of epiphany about their life or life in general. Now I am definitely not in any hurry to experience this particular epiphany for myself but I do think that is how life works. So I believe that Fraser had some good points but was very mistaken when saying that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was in all actuality a Tree of Death. These two things can be synonymous in the proper context, such as the Creation story in the Bible.
In the same area of his book, Fraser discussed how the Bible did not specify whether humans were immortal or mortal until after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree. I had never truly considered this idea before either. If Adam and Eve had not eaten of the tree, would we still be immortal? Because if they had not eaten of the forbidden fruit they would have had to eat of the tree of life thus making them immortal. But didn't they probably eat of the tree of Life before eating the forbidden fruit, so did the forbidden fruit's effects out-weigh the effect of the Tree of Life. Obviously it did but isn't it interesting that even as immortals, humans were still destined to fall from God's grace. Depending on how a person is reading this story, whether literal or as a moral story, a person can get many different lessons from the creation story. The lesson that I am taking from this time's rereading of the Creation Story is that no matter how many good choices a person makes before making a bad one, those choices can never protect you from the consequences of the bad choice. I am sure that I could probably find a deeper meaning from this story but right now I am happy to have gained a little in-sight into Adam and Eve. By realizing that Adam & Eve probably did make good choices before messing up, makes me realize that I can't just consider Eve to be either a curious woman or a gullible woman but I have to realize that she was probably a bit of both and so many more things that I am not given enough background information about her to infer.

The Slave

I personally had a hard time reading The Slave at first. I literally had to force myself to read just a few pages in this novel; however, last night I flat out told myself that I needed to finish this book by Thursday. I do not know if it was my determination to finish this book or that after reading more of the Bible I could recognize various references to the Bible. This book is very inspiring to its readers as well as illuminating when considering the struggle of various religions that depend on the Bible for instructions. The fight between not only Judaism and Christianity but between all religions and atheism. Many of the questions that Sarah asked reminded me of questions that Atheists have asked me before when they learn that I am a Christian.
One of the things that puzzled me most about this book was that the character's name was Jacob. I understand the love story of Jacob and Sarah and how it related to Jacob and Wanda but I also felt that part of Jacob channeled the story of Job. I saw various quotes that come from Job and the questions that were often asked by many people were very reminiscent of questions Job asked God. I almost felt at time that this combing of characters from the Bible was like how Singer combined many different religions. They all somehow contradict and complement each other until it is hard to say what truly belongs to one religion or to one Biblical character. I think that this may have been the point of The Slave; there is no way to choose what religion is correct because they all are intertwined at fundamental levels and no matter which religion a person belongs to there are always going to be questions that haunt us that we will never be able to answer.