Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

I randomly came across some clips from general hospital and they got me thinking. The show itself looks like a typical sitcom or soap opera, and therefore probably not worth watching (not that I know much of anything about the show). It did, however, make me think. The clips that I saw were about the drama that happens when people sin. A marriage falls apart because the man is in drugs and is unfaithful. The woman turns to her best friend, who happens to be a guy, and they end up sleeping together. Not to unusual in the land of TV melodrama. What happens next is what made me start thinking though. The husband checks into rehab. The woman finds out she's pregnant, and it is her friends child, not her husband's. Now what? There are no right answers. Her husband is back, and has straightened out. They have a son from before their marriage hit the rocks. Her friend knows that it is his baby, but has agreed to what is best for the baby, whatever that is. Should she marry the father of her baby, separating her son from his father, and probably causing her husband to go back down the tubes? Should she just not tell her husband whose baby it is? Should she tell, and stay with him anyway? There is no right answer. No matter what they do, someone will be ripped apart. And no one other than the children is innocent. Everyone deserves to be ripped apart.

That is what sin does. That is why our world is what it is. When we disobey God, we rip the fabric of our lives and those we love, and it cannot ever be the same. God's mercy mends our rips and tears and creates something beautiful, but the consequences are still there. Our lives become a patchwork, and something of the original beauty is lost.

God's rules aren't about thou shalt and thou shalt not. They are about saving us from self destruction, saving us from destroying everyone we love. His mercy isn't just about fire insurance, it is about mending our lives now, healing us now, so that we can live as whole selves, not tattered shreds of who we were made to be.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

My utmost apologies for having neglected my blog so. I lost track of how long it had been since I had posted an essay here. Hopefully I will be able to continue posting them every week. I also apologise for the lack of an essay on Dante's Paradisio. I was assigned to read about Bernard of Clairveaux instead of writing an essay.

Paradise Lost:: Who is responsible for the fall of humanity?

There are two aspects to humanity’s fall: whether it is God’s fault or the sinner’s, and whether it is the tempter’s fault or the sinners. The first question must be answered before the second can be attempted.

If God is omniscient, then he knows if his creature will fall. If God creates a creature that he knows will fall, it seems that it is God’s fault when his creature falls, because he knew and still created the creature. There is a flaw with this reasoning, however, as can be seen in the example of Satan. God made Satan. He gave him only good, and all that he asked in return was gratitude. That is perfectly reasonable. There is something very wrong with someone who will spit in the face of the one who has given them everything. In giving Satan only good, God did everything possible short of taking away Satan’s free will to prevent Satan’s fall. Since God gave Satan every reason not to rebel, Satan is culpable for his fall, not God.

Satan agrees with this reasoning. He dwells in depth on who is to blame as he watches the earth. As he thinks on his past, he vacillates between blaming God and blaming himself for his fall. He reasons, “Whom hast thou then or what to accuse, / But heaven’s free love dealt equally to all? / Be then his love accursed, since love or hate, / To me alike, it deals eternal woe.”[1] In the next line he goes on to say “Nay cursed be thou; since against his thy will / Chose freely what it now so justly rues.”[2] Satan is sorely tempted to blame God for his fall, but then admits that is his own fault. While Satan’s logic is not to be trusted implicitly, he is inclined to clear himself of blame when stretching the truth. The fact that he came to the conclusion that he himself is to blame shows that even Satan has to admit that it is the sinner who is to be blamed, not God.

In the case of Adam and Eve, the question of who is to blame is a bit more complex, because not only are there sinners and God, there is also Satan, the tempter. In the case involving only the sinner and God, it is clearly the sinners fault, as seen above. In a case involving a tempter, however, it is not as obvious.

If God is omnipotent, it seems that he should step in and stop the tempter. This, however, is a faulty idea. God is not responsible for the choices his creatures make, tempted or not. If he is responsible at all, he is responsible to warn his creatures. Nothing more is necessary, and this still seems like a mercy. God does step in and warn Adam and Eve through Raphael[3], so completely absolving himself of guilt in that quarter.

Even if God isn’t culpable for humanities sin, Satan might be to blame for the fall. After all, he deceived and manipulated Eve. Milton, however, combats this idea in this passage:

Man, with strength entire, and free will armed, [was]

Complete to have discovered and repulsed

Whatever wiles of foe or deeming friend.

For still they knew and ought to have still remembered

The high injunction not to taste that fruit,

Whoever tempted; which they not obeying,

Incurred, what could they less, the penalty,

And manifold in sin, deserved to fall.[4]

Adam and Eve knew what they were doing was wrong. They did it anyway. According to Milton, they are to blame. End of story.

This may seem harsh at first glance, but God gave them everything they could have wanted or needed. He was so good to them, and asked only one thing of them. One thing forbidden in the mist of immense bounty. No matter what anyone said to them, they had no right to even think about disobeying God. They had what God had commanded. They had the minds that God had given them, and they should have used them. They didn’t. They were ‘absent minded’, and conveniently forgot everything that they owed him. As Milton said, they “deserved to fall.”[5]



[1] Milton Paradise Lost IV.67-69

[2] Ibid. IV.70-720

[3] Ibid. V.222-245

[4] Ibid. X.9-16

[5] Ibid. X.16

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Amazingly funny

The World According to Student Bloopers

Richard Lederer

St. Paul's School

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/bloopers.html


One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eight grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cul- tivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.

Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in "The Illiad", by Homer. Homer also wrote the "Oddity", in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

In the Olympic Games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athen was democratic because the people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought the Parisians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.

Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Geeks. History call people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March killed him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyrany who would torture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, and the victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.

In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote liter- ature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.

The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Vir- gin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself be- fore her troops, they all shouted "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tries to convince Mac- beth to kill the King by attacking his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miquel Cervantes. He wrote "Donkey Hote". The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote "Paradise Lost." Then his wife dies and he wrote "Paradise Regained."

During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and the was called the Pilgrim's Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by Indians, who came down the hill rolling their was hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porposies on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal to them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their pacels through the post with- out stamps. During the War, Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.

Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented elec- tricity by rubbing cats backwards and declared "a horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

George Washington married Matha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Them the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln write the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also signed the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a sup- posedl insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called "Candy". Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are flaling off the trees.

Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolu- tion, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. Then the Spanish gorrilas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inheret his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear him any children.

The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. He reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick Raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code for telepathy. Louis Pastuer discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturailst who wrote the "Organ of the Species". Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers.

The First World War, cause by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.