Somewhat Different

I started the Gospel of Luke. It seems to be quite different in the beginning compared to the gospel of Mark. The story starts out with John, the Baptizer, being born by an old couple, with the help of God. Unlike the Gospel according to Mark, it explains the birth of Jesus. Then, I noticed how similar the birth of Jesus was to that of John. They were both born through the power of God, and they both taught the righteous way to heaven.

Besides that, both gospels seem to be similar, just that the gospel of Luke tells us more stories of Jesus' miracles. One of them involved a centurion's young servant being cured from a far distance for believing that it will, in fact, happen. Jesus said:

"I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." (Gospel of Luke 7:9) and the servant's sickness went away.

So yeah, cool.

Rich = Bad or Good?

I've noticed something: I seem to be questioning myself about something every time I read a story from The Bible. I just finished reading the gospel of Mark. It's sort of a short story about Jesus's adult life and when he resurrected. It was fun to read but I started wondering in my thoughts when Jesus said:

"Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." (Mark 10:21)

This means that we have to sell whatever we have and give to the poor to be good people. I guess it makes sense since it makes others happy and that's a good thing. So, I guess I agree. But, Jesus said something else right afterward:

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Mark 10:25)

This is telling us that it's harder to go to heaven the richer we are, therefore we have to give our wealth to others to be good people. After I thought for a while, this didn't really make much sense. You're supposedly doing something good when you are giving your wealth to others. But, the people that receive the wealth obviously become richer. And, the richer you are, the harder it would be to go to heaven. So, wouldn't you actually be doing something bad when you give your wealth to someone else since you're technically blocking his chances to be a good person and making it harder for him/her to go to heaven? I don't know. Maybe I thought too much about something fairly simple.

Anyways, just like the usual, I end up with more questions than answers. Maybe I'm just trying to think too much and complicating my life. Whatever, I'm done with the gospel. This one was actually pretty interesting for me since it talked about Jesus and the miracles he did. I hope I get to read more from The Bible later on, hopefully without so many questions in my head.

Bread of the Great

Compared to other stories that I have read in the Bible, I think I'm actually enjoying Mark's gospel. It's not that the gospel is very exciting and fun, but I just find it interesting. I'm not exactly sure why, though. Maybe it's because the story talks about Jesus and his doings.

Anyways, I read a few more chapters of the gospel, and it was pretty much about more of Jesus's incredible miracles. He stopped a storm, walked on water, and even revive a little girl from the dead. I, of course, wasn't surprised since it's Jesus I'm talking about here. But, what did catch my attention was the part when Jesus asks this question:

"'How many loaves have ye?' And they said, Seven." (Mark 8:5)

It's just a bit odd. If Jesus has the power to satisfy the hunger of a bunch of people with any amount of food (just like he did in chapter six with five loaves of bread), then why does he need to know how many loaves of bread there are? Why does he bother asking if he can somehow divide the bread with his divine powers to fill up the bellies of any population? I mean, he still would have fed everyone even if he had one loaf of bread, instead of seven. Maybe he did that on purpose to somehow teach others something he wanted to, but I'm not quite sure. But whatever, I was just wondering.

So, I guess I should keep on reading the gospel since I'm only halfway through. As I said before, the gospel is not that exciting but sort of interesting to read. I hope it keeps on like this.

Starting to Question the Great

I recently started reading a few of the first chapters of the gospel of Mark. It's obviously very different compared to the Tao Te Ching since it's an actual story (although Jesus teaches other people throughout the story like the Tao). The gospel begins with Jesus already grown up and narrates the story of him. In the gospel, he, of course, does all these different kinds of miracles and does things that are supposedly impossible. I wasn't really surprised about anything since it was a bit obvious that Jesus had the power to make miracles happen. But, this sentence made me realize something:

"And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" (mark 4:41)

Why does Jesus have so much power? Well, I mean because he's Jesus, but isn't it a bit unfair? Isn't Jesus supposed to treat everyone equally? Then, why does he have the right to have these divine powers that others do not? These questions just suddenly popped up in my mind while I was reading.

Oh well, I only read the first part of the gospels, so I would obviously have many questions. I guess I should keep on reading and maybe these questions might be answered.

A Balanced World

Finally, this is the end of Tao. The rest of the book wasn't that different compared to the beginning. It just had a bit of confusing riddles, but that's pretty much it.

The most important word for this book, I'd say, is balance. The Tao says that everything should be kept in balance. I do agree with this. Too much "bad" would lead the Earth into a world of evil. But, an excess of "good" will eventually lead our world with no good because there always has to be a "bad" to notice the existence of "good".

So, everything has to have an opposite to be kept in balance. And, we are not only talking about the Earth but the whole universe. Everything relies on some sort of balance. Let's look at Saturn for example. The planet, Saturn, is well known for its famous floating ring around it. The ring actually consists of many little rocks and pebbles orbiting around the planet. The reason why Saturn moves the way it does and the reason why the rocks orbit around it is because of the attraction between the rocks and the planet due to gravity. If they are not next to each other the way they are, Saturn would move differently and the small rocks would be scattered all around space. So, I think this represents a sort of balance.



Anyways, I thought the book was interesting. It was very fun to read in the beginning and later it got a bit boring. But overall, I enjoyed reading it.

Perfection

I came to a conclusion: Tao Te Ching is very repetitive. Everything seems to be talking about and giving examples of two opposites that balance each other. It sometimes felt like as if I was reading the same thing over and over again, but this part caught a bit of my attention:

"Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.
The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it." (Tao Te Ching 29:1)

I like this part since it's telling us that the world is perfect the way it is and that it's better to leave it intact. It's not telling us that we can't change the world: It's telling us that we shouldn't. But, that's not the only reason why I like this quote. I like it even more because I sort of realized something while reading it. I realized that the book wasn't teaching the readers what to do to have a good balance in the world (since balance is said to be a good thing in the book). Instead, I noticed that the book actually tells us that the world is already balanced and perfect the way it is and that we shouldn't do anything to change it. So, the book wasn't actually meant to teach people what to do, but rather to teach people what not to do.

Anyways, even though I thought that the book was interesting, I wouldn't entirely agree with it since I don't think that everything in the world is perfectly balanced the way it is.

Forget for Good

The teachings of Tao go on. They all seem to point out the fact that everything in the world is balanced and good the way it is. Almost everything is written in some sort of riddle which makes it a bit harder to understand. But, this part in particular confused me a lot:

"When the great Tao is forgotten,
Kindness and morality arise." (Tao Te Ching 18:1)

It's not that I don't understand what the quote is saying. I just don't know why it's said. Here, the axiom is saying that Tao should be forgotten to obtain kindness and morality, and since kindness and morality are good things, this axiom is telling us that the Tao should be forgotten to obtain something good. I thought that the teachings were supposed to be telling us to follow the way of the Tao, not to forget it. So, this part was kind of confusing and it left me wondering what message the text was trying to give us.

So, that's how it is. I like the teachings until now since the book is divided into very short pieces of texts. A new chapter (or whatever the numbers stand for) starts every time when it's about to get boring