High School Pros and Cons

High school is very different than middle school. Some of these differences are what make it amazing, but others are scary or annoying. So far for me, high school is pretty great. The best the about high school is the freedom. I can go to a pizza place for lunch, so I can get real pizza, instead of slimy, square, school pizza. Also, we use our iPads and phones freely, where in middle school, you'd get in trouble for just having your phone in your pocket. They were very strict about things like that in the middle school, but they are very lenient in high school. But, one of the worst parts of high school is all of the work. On average in middle school, I spent about a half hour on homework every night. But, in high school, I have over an hour's worth of work every night. Although these things are annoying, so far for me, high school is pretty great.

God as a Character

Some people think of god as a big part of their life. Other people think of god as something many people believe in, but they believe is fake. But, it is interesting to look at God as a character in a book rather than a possibly real, all-knowing, powerful being. I always thought of God as a sort of nice, caring, person who calmly made things happen. I never really knew if I believed in god but that didn't matter. Looking at God as a character in a novel made me change my view on God a little. I noticed that God is very physically strong and can get very angry. He made an entire flood destroy all life out of pure anger. God as a character is also not perfect, which is very interesting and can be controversial to people. In the beginning of Exodus, god makes mistakes about the humans. They eat the forbidden fruit, which he didn't want them to do. God is also characterized as a forgiving person, which is not contradicting to what I previously believed. This is shown in the orange and yellow branches of the mind map above. The characterization of god is slightly different to what I previously believed. He is not as calm as I believed. Looking at God as a character really helps to understand how he is shown in the bible. Thinking of him as real makes us biased because we want to believe that he is perfect and does everything right, but looking at him as a character we can see the imperfections. This is very interesting because now I realize that I may be biased to real people in my own life. If these were characters in a book, I would view them differently than I do right now. Of course they would be characterized similar to how I feel, but there would be differences, just like the characterization of god.

Evicted From Paradise

In the story of Genesis, God creates light, darkness, creatures, among many other things. However, one of the most important creations was man. God places the man, named Adam, in the Garden of Eden. God tells Adam that he can eat from any tree he wants except for the big tree that contains all knowledge of good and evil. God later creates Eve to accompany Adam in the Garden. A snake convinces Eve to eat an apple from that tree, and Adam and Eve then realize they are naked and become self conscious. When god finds out they are from the tree, God punishes them. “To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to your children.” “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ ‘cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.’” He also kicks them out of the Garden of Eden. I believe that this all happening was God’s fault. Firstly, God warns only Adam not to eat from the tree. Although it is shown later that Eve does know about the rule, Eve is created after God has already told Adam about the rule. Also, God is clearly tempting Adam and Eve. God says, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you surely die.” He is telling them that this tree has all of the knowledge, but he somehow expects them to not eat from it. That is like putting a cookie in front of a five-year-old kid, telling him not to eat it, and walking away. It becomes more and more tempting, so them eating from this tree can be directly blamed on God himself.

Mesopotamia vs. Greece: The Flood Myth

Many cultures around the world have a story with a similar plot line: A god gets angry at humans, so they send a great flood to try to destroy humanity or living things. Most people immediately think of Noah's Ark when they hear something like this, but the first story of this kind was actually the Epic of Gilgamesh. This was an ancient Mesopotamian story, where the gods get mad at humans for making too much noise, so they try to kill off the human race. They do this by sending a large flood. But, one god warns a man named Utnapishtim that the flood is coming, so he builds a boat to survive. Many other cultures also have flood stories like these. In Greece, Zeus sends a flood to destroy the Bronze age men. A god named Prometheus told his son Deucalion to build a chest so he could survive the flood. This is similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh because one god wanted to destroy humanity, and another god warned someone about how to survive. These people built boats and lived through the flood. In the Greek story, the flood lasts for 9 days and 9 nights, and in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood lasts for 6 days and 6 nights. Chest vs boat, 6 days vs 9 days, these are very minor differences. Because in general, these stories are very similar. The only major difference is that in the Greek story, when the flood ended, he sacrificed to Zeus. The endings are different but the main ideas are the same.

Source:
Crystalinks.com

Welcome to A²!

Hello world! My name is Andrew Antenberg and right now I'm a freshman in high school. The only real reason I made this blog was because my English teacher Mr. Reiff said we had to. Although I'm not making it for myself, I think it is going to be a pretty cool thing to do. For some reason, posting something on the internet seems a lot cooler than just writing in a journal. Also, in the past, when we make video projects, I work really hard on them and end up being proud of the result. So, I'm excited to have them be in a place where they can last forever. I'm excited to keep this blog for the rest of this year and maybe even longer than that.