Wednesday, March 18, 2009
podcast
out of all three of the clips, i definitely liked the podcast the best. throughout the interviews they mentioned a lot of stuff about heschel that i already knew from what we have heard in class, but for some reason it just made so much more sense when they were talking about it. one thing they talked about that really stood out to me was the fact that all throughout the Bible we are waiting for God to do huge, miraculous acts and we don't see that the whole time God is actually waiting for us to act. i guess i had never really thought about it like that before. heschel describes that "the God of the Bible is the parent of humanity. God needs his other children to take care of the suffering." i think that many times people think that oh, God will take care of that and it's not really my problem to worry about, but they don't realize that we are the hands and feet of Jesus and it is up to us to help those in need. like heschel says, "the opposite of good is not evil, but indifference," so even by us not doing anything, we're in some way agreeing with the injustice. i think this really helped me to understand heschel's quote that we've mentioned so many times, "some are guilty, but all are responsible." while the majority of us did not exactly cause the suffering in the world today, it is everyone's responsibility to help those that are suffering to the best of our ability. i also never realized that heschel and king were such good friends and how much of an impact heschel made on him. i'll leave you guys with my favorite quote by heschel from the podcast, "the meaning of life is to live life as if it were a work of art."
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I enjoyed all of the three things we had to watch/listen to. It was really interesting to hear more about Heschel that made him seem more like a actual human being. I loved the quote that he said, "some are guilty but all are responsible." It was really intriguing becuase this statement is very true. Although we may not be the ones committing the injustice, we are responsible for it becuase we are not doing anything to stop it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this post and with what we discussed in class. Many times, particularly during prayer, people use it as a means to not only reach god, but more often then not, they use it to ask god for something. It reminds me of Bruce Almighty when Bruce grants "yes" to all the prayers he hears, and then the next morning he wakes up to find (almost) entire city of Buffalo has won the lottery. This may seem like a silly point, but it's definitely possible. This is not to say prayer is silly, it can even be a source of great strength and healing. But I just wish there was a world of people who used prayer as a means to ask "God what can I do for you, what can I do to help the world" not "God, please tell me this weeks winning lotto numbers". A world that believes in justice is not completely utopian, great change only comes if we change the WAY people think. It makes me think back to a quote Dr. LaLonde said earlier this semester. "The holocaust is a terrible crime and it is not justice, but we need to change the way we think so that we never have to experience another holocaust in the first place". If we continually view things as "the way it is" then we'll never see justice, only idleness. Justice starts with us, but we can't do it by always using prayer as a means to advance our own personal lives, we should instead used things like prayer as a means to advance the lives of the children of the WORLD, not just our own backyard.
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