Week 8: Response to Darren

I disagree!  I believe the church offers release and deliverance–even if the world does provide salvific offers everywhere we turn.  Just because the world desires to express salvific offers in forms of music, novels, movies, and art, doesn’t mean that the church is not a valuable source of release and deliverance and that people will not turn to the church and God for these.  I believe that often times it is just a matter of the person feeling like they can’t go on anymore, that there is nowhere else to turn, that leads them to God and God’s release and deliverance.  The world has taught us to fight until we cannot fight any longer and often times God is the last option for many people.  The church can show that God offers release and deliverance by being messengers of God’s love.   This just takes time.  Sometimes a lot of time.

Week 8: Paper Outline

I am writing my paper on race.  I will start the paper by explaining what race is and how it has played out in the past and what race means in societies today.  I will then proceed to explain how I see racism in my local community (i.e., how most of the homeless people in Pasadena are black) and how I see it in my church community.  However, I am happy to say that racism in my church is not evident to me.  Next I will hypothesize about how to use the anthropological model to evangelize to either a black or hispanic group of people.  Then I will explain how I would like to see my church community address the issues of race equality in the church (continue as they are doing and implement an “international service”), locally (by inviting locals to church and helping them in their struggles), and globally (by protesting).

Week 8: Cobb Ch. 8

I really appreciated Cobb’s summary of the history of confessions or guilt and how they relate to salvation.  Cobb started by explaining that guilt (or evil) was viewed as impurities.  He went on to say that confession then turned into public confessions of sin.  Next, a Christian only had to confess serious sins once over their lifetime but that led to the periodic making of confessions in private to a priest.  This turned into a lot of work so the priests made a manual to care for the souls by making sure the burden of the penance fit the weight of the sin, which became the model of the moral life.  The reason for these confessions were to obtain salvation.

Week 8: Bevans Ch. 8

The transcendental model attends to the affective and cognitive operations of people.  I have realized that the transcendental model has been used on me and that I did not realize it was being used.  This is evident because my theologizing has been sharpened and challenged by other’s questions over the past year.  After reading this chapter I think that my faith is largely due to the transcendental model and I would not be at Fuller today if it were not for this model.

Week 8: Wednesday

I found the concept of deconstructing the event of hospitality interesting.  I have always thought that the way churches usually do hospitality is wrong.  People need to go out into their communities and bring people in and just be social with them.  Churches need to have the intent of understanding and simply being kind and loving—without the intent of getting something in return.

Week 8: Monday

Today we spent a lot of time discussing myths and how myths are taken to be absolute reality.  However, in reality, myths are not reality.  They do however hold an element of truth for some people.  Myths can be hurtful and negative because people begin evaluating their lives and actions based on what they think is normal, which is the myth.  An example of a myth is the “American dream.”

Week 7: Cobb Ch. 7

This chapter was not at all what I thought it would be.  I had no idea that the Gothic culture plays a big role in society.  I do believe that what we do today affects future generations.  However, after reading this chapter I still do not know what to say in regards to sin and if my sins may affect future generations.  I enjoyed reading about sin being preached in the pulpit and I wonder if much has changed in regards to preaching since the Puritans?

Week 7: Response to Annie: “Wednesday”

I agree with you that a person does not need to have everything “figured out” in order to participate in doing the gospel. This thought brings me to think about the tradition of taking communion within the Churches of Christ, a church in which I am a part. For as long as I can remember hearing that only those people who were baptized could partake in communion. I never quite understood this because I believe that children have much to offer the church and it would be good for them to take communion as well. Recently I heard about a member in a Church of Christ that was upset that children were taking communion. Are not there more important things to discuss within the church? Should not the member just be happy that the child is at church in the first place? When did Jesus ever say that children could not take communion unless they were baptized or “holified” (your words)?

Week 7: Barker Ch. 14

When did Jesus promote invisibility and namelessness?  Never.   Why did our culture decide that it was  acceptable to dehumanize someone by  pretending they are not there or by not acknowledging that they have a name?  I believe the strategies found in Barkers book that will help correct this problem are positive and will promote equality.  These strategies are: the demand for positive images, the search for multiculturalism, the adoption of anti-racism, and the politics of representation.  I believe that if we start living by these strategies, we can promote that which Jesus promoted.

Week 7: Barker Ch. 13

I think it is unfortunate that women youth have faced the stereotype of reading girly magazines and posting pictures of models on their walls.  I, a woman, have never bought a magazine (and have hardly looked at them) and have never put a poster of a man on my wall.  I find it interesting that the only magazines I could find in Fuller’s academic advising office were “manly” magazines about sports.  Is this because the majority of students at Fuller are males and Fuller believes that women are a subculture?