Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Violent Bear it Away, Chs III-VII

Something I noticed when I started to read chapter three was the name "Habakkuk." I did not know who this was and how this was significant , so I decided to Google it, and this is a brief synopsis of what I found in a nutshell: Habakkuk (his name means "wrestle" or "embrace") was a prophet in 620 B.C. and wrestled with the issue of if God is good than why is there evil in the world. According to bible.org (love that web address!), the story of Habakkuk is supposed to teach us that, "1)God sometimes seems to be inactive, but He is involved, 2)God is holy, 3)God hears and answers prayers, 4)God sometimes gives unexpected to our prayers, 5)God is just and God is good, 6)The righteous live by faith and faithfulness."

Unfortunately, since I did not know who Habakkuk was, I had to look this up online. Maybe someone has more to add to this explanation?

Anyway, this brought up what we were talking about in class about what is a prophet? I do not have a good answer for this yet, but I thought I might start working through one. When I hear the word "prophet" I usually think of someone that tries to spread the word of God and interpret what God means. With this story, I started thinking about which characters are considered prophets (I think they all three could be considered prophets, or consider themselves to be prophets). All three are trying to interpret the word of God, and trying to spread the word of God and baptize each other.

Another thing that I think is interesting that goes along with religion is how the characters in this story all seem to be making religion their own. This got me thinking down a really philosophical path of how much is religion made up of what we choose to believe and how is faith formed by what we believe? In this story, the characters seem to be making a religion all their own and they seem to think that they are the ones that are right.

Here is the website I used to look up Habakkuk:
http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=975

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