...There are two ways to make a decision. One could think about the pros and cons, weigh their options and consider what would be best for the situation and circumstances. One could also not think by doing completely irrational and absurd actions. How then Should We Choose provides three views from three different writers on how to decided what God’s will is for one’s life. The three views: the specific-will, the wisdom, and the relationship views help one understand the process of making decisions rather than making thoughtless and careless decisions. Within each view the authors support their position by discussing three case studies: determining where to go to college, who to marry and what church to attend. All three views are helpful to...
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...about his belief in God and how people perceive the situations they get in as an act of God himself. The author explains that when unfortunate happenings occur people tend to blame it on God or the simple fact that the unfortunate happened because “the person must have deserved it”. The author also reflects upon the feelings that many people have when something bad happens to them or a loved one. They begin to question their faith. Why didn’t God answer my prayers? Is God real? What is God her for anyway? The main point the author illustrates is that the things that happen are not God’s doing. There is one point in the book that Kushner makes about how flight 205 crashed instead of flight 209. The plane crash caused people to die. God did not choose what families to afflict tragedy and pain on. If it was God’s choice he wouldn’t have had any of the planes crash. God gave flight 205’s families the courage to live on and look forward to the future. He did not cause the plane crash. Kushner says that, “Adam and Eve ate from the ‘forbidden tree’, also known as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”. Adam and Eve were given a test to see if they were going to be human or animal. Humans face choices. Animals have instincts. Adam and Eve became human. Humans are given the freedom to do right or wrong. People have the freedom to steal, kill, and cheat each other. God just sits back and hopes we can make the right choice, and when we do not, he sits in pity wondering why we still do not understand...
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... Man’s search for understanding why bad things happen to people have raised many issues and challenges resulting to some questioning their faith. When tragedy occurs many are quick to ask why, and begin to question God for allowing those things to happen. We often blame others, ourselves, or even God, resulting to bitterness, hatred, and even loneliness. How tragic the news is when we hear something very distressing or how awful it is when it hits so close to home. Why do we react in that manner? Why must we blame God? Why do bad things happen to good people? Harold Kushner’s, When Bad Things Happen to Good People allows one to better understand why he wrote the book and his positive insight bringing light to a seemingly dark matter. Kushner is a Rabbi, a man of God, whom “spent most of his life trying to help other people believe, and was compelled by a personal tragedy to rethink everything he had been taught about God and God’s ways (p.3)”. Hence, it was difficult for Kushner to fathom why or how this could happen to him, his son, and his family. It is easy to sympathize with Kushner because we would probably have reacted in the same way if we were in his shoes. True, it seems unfair how bad things can happen to some, more than others, especially if one attempts to live a life led by God and believes in the goodness of the world, we ask, "how can God let this happen? Kushner contends that the main reason he wrote this book was to “affirm life”, to fulfill...
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...Judgment The last judgment in the bible talks about how Christ comes to pass judgment on those who have sinned. The person would need to repent for their sins in order to be saved and be able to rejoice in the light of the Lord. There are many ways to interpret the passages in the bible pertaining to the last judgment. It mainly depends on the person and what he or she can draw from the passages that gives them the most meaning to their life and how to apply it to their current situation. I found a few passages that helped me get a better understanding of what the last judgment is about. I feel that, as with many things from the bible, people can take passages from the bible that refer to the last judgment too literal sometimes. Sometimes when I walk down the street, in certain parts of San Francisco, I usually end up running into someone who has a cardboard sign that says "the end is near." I believe that the last judgment is there, in many ways, to help make sure that Christians as a whole try to stay on a path of good. I felt that when I read passages that talked about the last judgment it made me think outside of my normal realm of thinking. This particular passage from Revelations 20: 11-15 that peaked my interest and caused me to reflect on it a bit: " Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were...
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...Introduction ` Religion is one of the most influential topics in today’s society. When focusing on three different types of topics that necessary to me and my life, I decided to choose the three that The topics I chose to write on are: Did Jesus need to be born of a virgin, 0 Why are personal testimonies important in sharing the gospel, and If a person is a Christian, or does it matter how they live their lives? Yes, in order for Jesus to die for our sins He had to go through the birth canal so that He could be of temptation and human flesh and overcome it without sin. I think that personal testimonies are important in sharing the gospel because who better to show or tell you what God can do, than someone who has experienced it themselves. Yes they are. When a person is a Christian, they have to have a normal attitude about themselves, that they are loving and caring people who are God loving. I. Section One Did Jesus need to be born of a virgin? Yes, in order for Jesus to die for our sins, He had to go through the birth canal so that He could be of temptation and human flesh and overcome it without sin. From the day He was born until the day He died, Jesus was without sin to be a perfect sacrifice. Since, we are born into the world as sinners, a miraculous entrance into the world was required, and that’s why the virgin birth occurred. “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin...
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...Life Span Christopher Cook Point University Life Span I can say that my life has not been prefect all these years, but I must still consider that I have had a good life compare too many others around the world. I have seen several ups and downs throughout life, but through them all I’ve managed to turn the negative situations into positive outcomes, and the positive situations into greater achievements. There are several reasons why I feel that I have had a wonderful life and will explain what factors contributed my success and happiness in life. I am sharing several key events that happened while I was growing up that influenced my adulthood. I truly believe I became separated from a lot of my parental influences and depended on reading books, and the influence of friends from church, which strayed me into the right paths for my life. My life started thirty-five years ago on October 22, 1977. I was born in Carrollton, Georgia to Mike and Sherry Cook. I had somewhat of a typical childhood parents, brother, and a dog. When I was born both of my parents were very young at the age of nineteen, and had no money at all. Both of my parents had just got out of school, and had just started working their first real full-time jobs. After I was born my mother decide that she what to be a stay at home mother, which really put a finical strap on our family. So my dad had to pick of the difference of her income by getting two jobs to support our family. After about...
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...about people loving and helping each other? Does the news on television show a world in which everything is happy and peaceful? We live in a world that has a very real need for policemen, soldiers, judges, and prisons. Every car is equipped with locks on the doors. Homes are built so that doors and windows can be locked. All the evidence points to the unmistakable fact that we live in a world that has been spoiled and polluted and defiled by SIN. Where and when did sin ORIGINATE (see Chapter 1 for the meaning of the words "origin" and "originate")? Where did sin first begin? When did sin first begin? When did sin first begin on planet earth? Who was the first sinner? Was there ever a time when there was no sin? Today God’s sinful creatures (men and angels) are at war with God. They rebel against God, disobey God, dishonor God, and turn aside from God’s ways. Was there ever a time when God’s creatures were in perfect HARMONY with God, and, enjoying perfect FELLOWSHIP with Him? How did sin first originate? Where did it all begin? Complete the following sentence by circling the correct answer: SIN FIRST BEGAN . . . a. With Eve who ate the forbidden fruit. b. With Adam who ate the forbidden fruit. c. With Satan who deceived Eve in the garden of Eden. d. With Cain, who murdered his brother Abel. The correct answer is neither a, b, c, nor d! Sin began before any of these events took place. The origin of sin took place even before Adam and Eve were created (Genesis...
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...Carla Jensen CWV November 13, 2011 Todd Forrest My Very Own Worldview The three components that make up my worldview are God, Knowledge, and Ultimate Reality, because they shape shaped my thoughts, experiences, education, and life decisions. Therefore, my belief in God has shaped my entire life through my thoughts, experiences, and life decisions. My Thoughts: My thoughts have always included God, for as long as I can remember. I can remember feeling the presence of God around me as a very, very small child, and He has always been there to support me with His love and guidance. I don’t think of myself as a religious person, but as a person who would like to live my life the way God wants us to. I have always been a “Pollyanna” type, because I always believed that there is good in everyone and everything. It is really not practical to believe that people will always think and behave the same as me, which is why I have spent many years learning about others – how they think, what they do, and why they do it- as a way to better understand the human race. I have learned that many self proclaimed Christians can be the most evil of people, because going to church and reading the bible does not make a person act like Jesus Christ. People should not have to act “as if”, but just be like Him. I am old enough to have seen some pretty hypocritical folks in my lifetime that would chastise others for not going to church...
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...servant, according to God’s administration that was given to me for you, to make God’s message fully known, 26 the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to His saints. 27 God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 We proclaim Him, warning and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 I labor for this, striving with His strength that works powerfully in me. No one can live a Christian life and do it with their own strength. It took me many years to realize that it is only Christ that gives me the strength to endure, cope and deal with the chaos of this life. For years I thought that God had saved me but it was up to me to ensure that I lived a peaceful, joyful and successful life. I had read Galatians 5:22-23, heard it preached and studied it in Sunday School but still it did not register. The answer to living a Christian life is allowing Christ to live your life for you. But, that is not as easy as it sound for a selfish, stubborn Gilmer born and bread Turner. When Galatians explained “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” I turned around and looked at the other guy and said, “You get that?” cause to me it was the other guy who needed self-control, and oh that patience thing, that was way to close to home. The preacher had just stopped preaching and...
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...story, everything that leads to Wiesel and his family entering Auschwitz, the most notorious death camp to this day, and the aftermath of liberation. Night is an incredibly well written novel. It twines together the power of fear and the loss of faith. It touches on how humanity changes in the face of power and oppression. This novel is able to not only testify, but discuss the atrocities of events that are not easily spoken about. Wiesel manages to takes many difficult subjects like murder, religion, and false hope and force people...
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...loved and respected in the community, always exchanging greeting with the townspeople. He comes upon a newcomer to the town, Radical Enchain, whom he does not recognize and starts a polite conversation with him.) Rabbi: Top of the morning to you sir. My name is Rabbi Samuel Goldfarb. I would like to welcome you to town. What is your name? What brings you to this lovely town in Ukraine? Radislav: Nice to meet you Rabbi and good morning to you as well. My name is Radislav Venchkin. I just emigrated here from Poland. I was looking for a fresh start so I’m here trying the town out and trying to get a feel for the town and its culture. Rabbi: Radislav, you made an excellent choice. This town is a diverse town with a tight knit community. There is a close relationship between everyone in town even though it looks as if everyone is all over the place. I’m sure you will find it quite nice here. Radislav: Well Rabbi, I would love to hear more in detail about the community and what it has to offer. May I speak with you in a more formal setting? Rabbi: It would be my pleasure Radislav. I happen to be on my way to Temple in the center of town. I have scheduled an emergency prayer service for my congregation. With all the bad things happening in the world; hurricanes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, wars, disease outbreaks and so on, many people are in the “dumps” so to speak. I feel that my congregation needs a time to come together and pray for the ones affected, and...
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...February, 1968. In this article he speaks about if God is real. Even though we cannot see God in person does that mean he is not real? There are some that does not have a belief in God even those there is no proof stating there is not a God. This does not mean that one should not listen to others then they try to tell you that there is not a God. But the best thing to do is listen to them and see what proof that they can show to state as to why they think that way. Then there are some that believes that there is a God but does not believe in all that is said that he had done. McCloskey stated in page 62 that, “Philosopher colleagues attribute to much importance to the role of the proofs of the existence of God as a basis for religious belief, that most theists does not come to believe in God as a result of reflecting on the proofs, but come to religion as a result of other reasons and factors.” (McCloskey, 1968) McCloskey used three arguments to support his claims; these three arguments are cosmological argument, teleological argument, and Argument from design. McCloskey had went on speaking about the cosmological argument and about the universe. McCloskey was more into the idea of a big bang. This can be broken down into three ideas from Evans and Manis on their non-temporal form of cosmological argument. The first one is the contingent beings meaning that there is a lot of evidence proving that a powerful being like God exists but there is no real reason as to why God or the universe...
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...they emerge in the realized oneness of god, ourselves and all things. Although I am not God, I am not other than God either. That there is a oneness that wholly pervades the divisions and fragmentations of our lives, and the realization of this oneness the divisions and fragmentations loses their tyranny over our heart for we live in the intimate experience of the oneness that wholly pervades the divisions and fragmentations. And they live with a sense of joy and sense of freedom from fear, that fear has no foundations, a sense of peace in the midst of life as it is. Its not the peace that’s dependent on the outcome of our efforts to have the situation turn out the way we want it to. Rather it is a peace that invincibly pervades the whole process and the outcome itself regardless of the outcome. Mystics bear witness to this realized oneness with a sense of respect even reverence for life, for all things, manifested most concretely as love. As the Buddhists say, compassion is the body of emptiness, Aquinas, charity is the form of faith, that love is the shape of our faith, that faith configures itself as love. The mystic is hidden in the world as God is hidden in the world, but some are called upon to be mystic teachers, called upon to offer guidance and encouragement to us who feel interiorly called to this path of realized oneness. To be amazed and humbled that this applies to you, to be interiorly awakened in this way to this oneness and to live in fidelity to it. ...
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...abandoned God or if he in turn have abandoned us. In a research conducted by “Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam on religion in American it was noted that between 30 to 40 percent of Americans within their 20s declares lack of religious affiliation”. (While faith and trust may still be present our younger generation is growing up away from the church. Within that same research some additional findings were as follows: “Two-thirds of former Catholics who have become unaffiliated and half of former Protestants who have become unaffiliated say they left their childhood faith because they stopped believing in its teachings, and roughly four-in-ten say they became unaffiliated because they do not believe in God or the teachings of most religions. Additionally, many people who left a religion to become unaffiliated say they did so in part because they think of religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, because religious organizations focus too much on rules or because religious leaders are too focused on power and money”. (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=7513343&page=1) I agree that society has changed the way that religion is conducted. Speaking from my own personal beliefs there are may times that I question whether religion and the church has moved away from the Bible. It seems to me that most mega churches that I visited are so concerned with political views and building the church that it lacks the focus of fellowship. Again, could this be a sign that...
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...THEO104: Module Seven Reflection Essay 2 I. Introduction To define yourself as a Christian is to believe in God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the text of the Holy Bible. Many believers think that this is all it takes to be welcomed into Heaven and enjoy the afterlife in peaceful bliss with their maker. Much of what has been learned in this class these past two months has given me the opportunity to explore Christianity beyond face value, as it should be explored. The true model Christian delves into the inner workings of the scripture and promotes the promises made by God when one lives their life as a messenger of that scripture. Education is the only way to make a person aware of what it truly means to be a Christian. In reflecting on the concepts learned in this class, a series of questions were presented, three chosen, then answered on the basis of what I have learned. The first question I chose was, Does the Bible have authority? Through the Doctrine of the Bible and arguments that the Bible is the Word of God, this question will be answered along with the information in Towns book. Secondly, I chose, Why are personal testimonies important in sharing the gospel? This topic was of great interest to me because I am capable of explaining it from a personal viewpoint. Lastly I chose, If a person is a Christian, does it matter how they live their life? According to Towns (2007) “There are a...
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