¶ … God, and the Word was God. So reads the first verse of the book of John, just two in a handful of bible verses I was made to memorize and recite before I was able to read. These verses and the ones preceding and following them were read to me nightly -- and often in the mornings as well -- by my mother, grandmother and grandfather in our home in the small Southern Baptist community of Perry, Georgia. In addition to the bible, I was read bible stories in books with colorful illustrations meant to engage children. The illustrations helped me to associate meaning with the words on the page, while the words themselves struck me as just another way of painting a picture. When I was asked to recite the verses or stories read to me, remembering the picture the words described often helped me to remember the requested words; or, if there had been no picture provided to illustrate the words, I began to construct my own internal pictures to help me remember the words. In any case, the descriptive power of words was impressed upon me at an early age, as was the respect of words as a primary means of communication. While the verses and stories had a certain formality to them I later came to recognize as English grammar, the everyday speech in my house was far from formal. Though all three of my caretakers were avid readers and adequate writers, only one -- my grandfather -- was college educated. Add to this the fact of our location in the South, were slang words and phrases are often used as linguistic shortcuts to expressing one's meaning, and the result was proverbial smorgasbord of "aints," "fiddle-faddles," "do-hickeys" and "bullhonkies." Imagine my surprise when I entered kindergarten and learned that "aint" was not actually a word, that my teacher had no idea what a "do-hickey" was, and that "fiddle-faddle"...
Later termed "Ebonics," these children had words and ways of saying them that intrigued, confused, and often delighted me. Not only were words and phrases like "sup," "brurva," "dis," "axe" and "sku me" unfamiliar to me, they were often said loudly and with dramatic hand gestures or facial expressions. Not that this was necessarily true of all my African-American peers; there were a few students of color who seemed as baffled by this strange language as I was. Nonetheless, the fact that there was a significant divide in language and its uses was apparent to me long before I began to question the reasons for the divide.
God in Genesis The nature and character of God, as found in the Bible and in human consciousness, is a widely disputed and contested field of debate. The reason for this is the very nature of God as ephemeral and unknowable. Human beings can surmise ideas from God from religious texts and their own experience. However, no human being can claim to know the true nature of God. This fact seems
God of the Old Testament displays many human images, many human emotions. Even though we are after all created in His image it still shocks one to read of an angry God or a vengeful God. God seems to play favorites often. We must keep in mind that the Bible was written by man. Man wrote of God in the only manner he could - in human terms. Moses wrote the
God and Creation Has the concept of God well and truly woven itself into the very psyche of the average American citizen? What exactly does the average American think about God? As a matter of fact, each and every American must take some time to sit back and think deeply about these issues, and also pay close attention to the power and influence of God in the history of America. Perhaps
Nietzsche pressed humanity to realize that God is an invention of human creativity, and that we can no longer accept the idea of a divine being outside of ourselves. This was the center of his anthropocentric ideas. Feuerbach and Marx both held beliefs that agreed with Nietzsche (Jeff 19). Marx even referred to religion as the opium of the people. Kant's ideas of reason come back to haunt him
However, prayer is not simply a reflection of a request made of God; it also demonstrates the depth of someone's desire to attain a goal. Atheists fall to their needs and beg God when confronted with a dying child or other major catastrophe. Those prayers do not necessarily reflect a newfound belief in God, but the level of desperation and desire that the person is experiencing. Therefore, prayer reflects
Berry's theory of the power runs the risk of exchanging imagination with reality, as the following quotation suggests. "I don't see that scientists would suffer the loss of any skin from their noses by acknowledging the validity of the power of imaginative truths…(26)." The danger in this quotation and in Berry's thoughts on this subject lies in the oxymoron of "imaginative truths." There is nothing wrong with imagining things;
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