Religion and Film 2018

The tremendum is a very interesting concept in religion that was addressed in the "Idea of the Holy" and it has always been something that I found intriguing. The tremendum is something I wanted to blog about because I have wondered why we are told to have no fear because God is with us and perfect love casts out fear however we are also told to fear the Lord. Obviously, these two ideas appear to be very contradicting. After thinking about the two ideas, I think that maybe we are only supposed to fear the Lord and nothing else. However, I do not really understand fully why we are supposed to fear the Lord. It seems somewhat reasonable as to why we are told to fear the Lord because through reading scripture we know his power and we have seen what he can do so we know to not challenge God. However, even with knowing this does that necessarily mean we fear Him? Also, fear usually drives a person away from something so would fear not cause us to run from God? Suppose we do not ru...

When reading the excerpt from “The Sacred and the Profane,” Mircea Eliade made striking points that resonated with my thoughts and my own experiences. He explains that man becomes aware of the sacred only when it manifests itself as something different from the profane. A question that I have about this is does the sacred manifest itself to everyone and if not, what determines whether it does or not? And if it does not manifest to everyone, why is that? What makes a person worthy of having the sacred manifest itself to them? Eliade notes that oftentimes the sacred is manifested through hierophany, which occurs in ordinary objects or everyday instances. When this happens, we often experience this through mysterious acts that we may not understand. For the bystander, they also may not understand what is going on. Eliade discusses this in the excerpt when he explains that the modern person is uneasy about this before he experiences the manifestation of the sacred. He finds it har...

I know that I already included this topic in my Partial Credit Essay but I couldn't stop thinking about it so... here I am. The idea of Eros vs. Agape love as proposed by Robert Jewett in the assigned excerpt really struck my heart. I always knew that humans sometimes tended to love without meaning or purpose but to have someone tell me there were actual words and theories behind it really sparked my interest. Essentially, Jewett explained that "eros" love is selfish or, "seductive love, driven by the desire to achieve pleasure by controlling others," whereas "agape" love is genuine and seeked out with a pure heart or, "genuine caring love" as Jewett wrote. He goes on to draw the conclusion that as humans and more specifically followers of Christ, we should be living lives with agape love. That is, a love that was motivated by the spirit of Christ and following the way he lived and loved. I guess that probably went without having to be ex...

Welcome to the Religion in Film blog for 2018. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry (Just as I have done with this post). Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections which relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments.   Any questions the student has when reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog.   Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or in informal conversations.   Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class.   These applications make great reflections.  ...