1. Racial Reconciliation at its core is the process of mending broken racial relations and advocating for equity amongst all racial groups. Reconciliation is a spiritual concept promoted by the life of Jesus on earth and it “goes beyond merely [integrating]” of different racial and ethnic groups. God calls us to reconcile our relationships to the equitable status that existed before the Fall. Finally, lament occurs on both on an individual and corporate scale as racial reconciliation should do as well. While racial reconciliation is the same at its core across the board for ethnic groups, there are nuances amongst different ethnic groups. African Americans promote the importance of “oneness” during reconciliation. Christians …show more content…
Job was a man with everything. He was rich in wealth, family, and land. At face value, Job had it all, and his faith in the Lord was deep. Meanwhile, in Heaven, a debate was taking place. The devil concluded that Job was only a faithful man because he was blessed by the Lord, and if Job has nothing, he would turn his back on God. God gave permission to the Satan for him to take everything from Job in order to test his faith. Eventually, after all of Satan’s destruction, Job was left at the side of the road, ill and without family, wealth, or even shoes on his feet. Upon discovering Job in a ditch by the road, Job’s three friends ponder how Job ended up in this circumstance. They concluded that Job must have done something wrong since that was only the logical reason why all those bad things were happening to Job. When Job confront God about all his misery, the Lord simply responded about where was Job when the universe was created. The question that God proposes heavily implies that there is so much more to God’s rationale of allowing misery to happen than we could ever know. God’s ways and wisdom are much higher than our own. God gifted humanity with free will. It is through our own free will that misery occurs. Suffering occurs on the hands-on other humans who inflicted said suffering. The Hutus murdered the Tutsis not out of a loving action towards God, but out of self-love. They loved their own positions of power and lives so much that they would willingly murder a group that threatens it (even if the threats are not real). Yes, God allowed the genocide of the Tutsis to occur, but not out of zealousness for disaster. God was pained by the death of each and every Tutsi, every single one created in the loving image of God. But if God prevented every single action of sin, would humans really have free will? God loved us so much that he wanted us to willingly love and
...ade to choose him for the spiritual task. Job realized he had to experience loss and suffering in the name of God to pass the test God bestowed upon him. God stated “Who is that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me... Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth” (p.667) God notified Job he was in no position to question the loss he must undertake in order to complete his mission. Job realized the meaning of his life, when he realized the magnitude God went to convince him of his calling. Job forgave himself for his sacrifices, because he realized it was instructed by God.
The Book of Job is one of the three books in the Hebrew bible whose genre is described as wisdom literature.1 Certainly the Book of Job satisfies the literary conventions that qualify a biblical book for such status. 2 Yet Job may be associated with wisdom in a much more literal sense. The Book of Job attempts to deal with a problematic question that confronts suffering humanity: why do bad things happen to good people? The variety and vehemence of commentators' contemporary responses to this chapter of the Bible is testament to the continued relevance of the Book of Job's wisdom thousands of years after it was written. Although the commentators examined herein arrive at differing and sometimes conflicting conclusions after reading the story of "the holy Arab"3, none are left indifferent.
In curing racism and other discriminations, a responsible citizen is required to manifest empathy towards one other and to have a heart of helping each other.
We need to put aside our pasts and try to find the common ground we share in Christ and become reconciled to each other that neither black or white is superior, but we are just the same in God’s eyes and we all bleed in the same color.
Once, race and religion were two traditional structural components of society from the past, but today the two act as social dividers. The disconnection of people of varying beliefs and races as well as the misunderstanding of each other in societies are issues well interpreted in the novels, Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin and The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Both authors would agree that something must be done to bridge the gap in racially segregated society. From a personal perspective, as long as there are people who think they are socially and spiritually different from others, there will always be misunderstanding between people.
These arguments made by Berish and Job boil down to the question the theodicy, “why do good people suffer? Where is God in all this? Where is justice” (Fox 173). Elie Wiesel provides an answer that parallels once again with the book of Job. Embodied in the character of Sam, who claims that suffering is, “all because of our sins” (Wiesel 134). Similarly Jobs friends give a similar answer to the theodicy question by saying, “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same” (Job 4:7). The answer to the theodicy question in t The Trial of God is that suffering occurs because of the sins committed by individuals.
Also, the claim that God is responsible for death and suffering of innocent people also can be argued, because it implies that God has a moral guilt when he takes away lives of his creatures. But there is no moral guilt for God. It is falsely assumed that because the creatures are not allowed to take someone else's life, then is not acceptable to do the same for God. God gives life and only he has the right to take it (Job 1:21), but people do not give life, and they have no right to take it away.
God looks upon mankind with rage, his eyes burning with hatred wondering why he cared such “people.” To God Mankind is nothing but evil created from the pits of hell itself, yet he took a chance and took Mankind into his home. Now there is no reason for God to kick Mankind out of his home and make them go back to hell from which they came from. There is no reason for to shelter and guide mankind anymore. Similar to the kid holding the coin, there is nothing for him to buy here, so he has no point in saving the coin. There is no reason for that coin to be in the kid’s
More focus into the ethnic groups is just another racial grouping on a different perspective. The increased competition for ethnic identity among ethnic groups is posing as a rediscovery of racial groups, in which ethnic groups are termed as majority or minority groups. However, the shift to ethnic group has shaped some characteristics of individuals that were previously coined in social differentiation according to race. One of the noticeable individual features that have been shaped is the aspect of mutual and collective interests, in which every member strives to protect common interests of the group e.g. human rights. I believe that racial and ethnic groups are things that will continue to exist from our past historical experiences. We can together wipe out the problem of discrimination and injustices based on ethnicity and racial differences, if we all strive towards cherishing social consciousness for one another as a one human race and freeing ourselves from the trappings of our racial and ethnic
Job was a man of the purest faith. When the world shunned God, Job's faith never declined. Job was a wealthy, handsome man with a beautiful wife and a vast amount of property. At some point in time, Satan made a bet with God that if Job situation was changed, his faith would quickly falter. On this note, God took Job's wealth, his property, his family, and his wife. When times were at their worst, God gave Job pus welts on Job's face, taking his looks. Job's faith, however, did not falter, instead it becamestronger. Job passed the test. God then healed Job, gave him more land, greater wealth , and a better wife. Job was baffled, he wondered the purpose behind his fall and rise. When he asked God this, God replied: "...Because I'm God." That was answer enough.
He wants to find a way to justify God’s actions, but he cannot understand why there are evil people who “harm the childless woman, / and do no good to the widow,” only to be rewarded with long, successful lives (Job 24:21). Job’s friends, say that God distributes outcomes to each person as his or her actions deserve. As a result of this belief, they insist that Job has committed some wrongdoing to merit his punishment. God himself declines to present a rational explanation for the unfair distribution of blessings and curses. He still suggests that people should not discuss divine justice since God’s power is so great that humans cannot possibly justify his
The question of why bad things happen to good people has perplexed and angered humans throughout history. The most common remedy to ease the confusion is to discover the inflicter of the undeserved suffering and direct the anger at them: the horror felt about the Holocaust can be re-directed in the short term by transforming Adolf Hitler into Lucifer and vilifying him, and, in the long term, can be used as a healing device when it is turned into education to assure that such an atrocity is never repeated. What, however, can be done with the distasteful emotions felt about the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Surely the citizens of those two cities did not themselves directly provoke the government of the United States to deserve the horror of a nuclear attack. Can it be doubted that their sufferings were undeserved and should cause deep sorrow, regret, and anger? Yet for the citizens of the United States to confront these emotions they must also confront the failings of their own government. A similar problem is found in two works of literature, Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound and the book of Job found in the Tanakh. In each of these works a good man is seen to be suffering at the hand of his god; Prometheus is chained to a rock by Zeus who then sends an eagle to daily eat Prometheus' liver while Job is made destitute and brought to endure physical pain through an agreement between God~ and Satan. To examine the travails of these two men is to discover two vastly different concepts of the relationship between god and man.
Racial reconciliation for me started with taking ownership of the sins of the white race both curently and in past generations. Prayer was a large part of this before I could enter activisim. I had to sit and lement before the lord because it is important to stay in space with god for him to work in us. A scripture that informed my concern with this was Nehemiah 9 The People of Israel Confess Their Sin. I also began to ask my multiethnic brother and sisters what their stories are and validate their feelings when they would share about an injustuce they face/faced. Attending the black lives matter event to stand in solidarity with my black brothers and sisters, working in a social justice acting troupe with a multiethnic group, and attending
You treat others with love, kindness and respect in order to have unity, not many other places or events can boast that this type of interaction amongst individuals can be achieved. At EDC everyone is treated as equals, no one group feels that they are better than another group for any reason. Unfortunately, in other aspects of our society there is an emphasis on seeing the differences in one another, which divides people instead of bringing them closer to help achieve a multicultural world. The unfortunate way that our world is, as described by Paul Gilroy, it seems we are now condemned to work upon ourselves in conformity with the iron laws of mechanical culture just to hold our imperiled and perennially unstable identities together. In that setting, racial difference and racial hierarchy can be made to appear with seeming spontaneity as a stabilizing force.
Yet, why take away everything for no real purpose? It seems that man serves God only for entertainment. God had no real reason to punish and take away everything from Job, rather he did it purely to satisfy a curiosity that Satan raised in him. The Book of Job also points out that God does not really need anything from us since he is almighty and all creating. Then there is the question that asks why bad things happen to good people. This is also not really answered in the book. Instead, it seems to lead you to the idea that God works in strange and mysterious ways that should not be questioned. When Job’s three friends try to explain that Job must have done something wrong to have been punished, God later disproves that by saying that the three friends were wrong. God also condemns them for believing Job could do such a thing, further elaborating that Job is good and there was no reason for bad things to happen to him, and cementing the idea that God is capricious. It can further be proved that God is fickle by what he did to Job’s children. God is supposed to be good and not desire suffering nor want to perpetuate evil. On that note, why kill ten children? These kids may have sinned, but Job would ask for their forgiveness with offerings every day. They are just children and to sacrifice their lives for the sake of appeasing Satan does not eradicate evil, it perpetuates it. The death of a human being can not be seen as an act of good, regardless of the power that does