In the lulling moments of down time, I was very excited about blogging and posting thoughts from my head and heart but as the reality of my doctoral studies crashes in on me, that excitement has waned considerably. I'm sitting at home this morning and my Lukie boy has Malaria or Strep Throat so I have some few moments to put some thoughts down.
The world I live in now is Gospel and Culture and studying the aspects of Jesus in his culture in first century Palestine and the impact of his interaction with women...was he challenging the cultural norms of his day? Was he setting a precedent for modern culture to give honor and value to women, knowing they would be put down and disregarded as second class citizens? Is it their reaction to this oppressiveness that has caused so much radical feminism?
The other world I live in is Bartolome de Las Casas! Now how many of you have ever even heard of his name? He was the Dominican priest that stood against the Behemoth of Spain as they were conquering and simultaneously destroying the cultures of the West Indies, Mexico, Central and South America...one book I was studying verified that during the 16th Century there were 80,000,000 Indians alive during that century but by 1600 there were only 10,000,000 remaining. They weren't all killed by the sword, many died by the European epidemics, thousands did die by the sword and by trained dogs from Spain. This is history that isn't written about in our history books. We have a picture of the gallant Christopher Columbus arriving somewhere in America, which was actually Haiti and bringing his flag and Bible and establishing a new land...He was not as brutal as Cortes or Pizarro but nonetheless, he wanted gold and the heathen to be converted to Catholicism. I'm learning deeper things than I ever imagined...the history we know is so limited...
So that is the world I'm living in right now...here is a thought to ponder..."Standing at the doorway into a new world, they nonetheless share their contemporaries' hopes and fears and seek to lead their people out into what is to come. Their words speak to their contemporaries condition. They may meet with opposition and incomprehension, but they also address their people's hopes and desires. In their preaching and their deeds they seek to transform people's understanding of themselves and their world and prepare them to embrace the world to come. It is in this interaction with traditional, inherited beliefs and practices that they are able to experience extraordinary power over their contemporaries. And it is in this that their power to create new worlds resides." (John E. Riches--The World of Jesus.
