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Dec. 28th, 2005 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickYesterday's news: Yield curve inverts. CNN Money has the story here.
Also, I played The Bible Game last night. It contains distressingly tiny amounts of actual Bible knowledge and is mostly composed of non-Bible challenge activities. The challenges are video-game-ish and I suck at them (example challenge: Outline blocks on Tower of Babel to make them crumble, kind of a tetris effect.) compared to the computer generated characters. The game show format is remarkable for the sole singular feature I found amusing as (forgive me) hell: The Wrath of God. Think Whammy in Wheel of Fortune, only you get a rain of frogs, a swarm of locusts, masses of flies, and so forth. Playing the game show (called "Do Unto Others") is like being a pharoah, almost. You see a lot of The Wrath of God in this game, to the point where I just started to laugh at the rains of frogs. I mean, they're totally random and there's nothing you can do about them. You didn't deserve them. I can understand dying in DDR if I fuck up enough. I can understand dying in, say, Quake II if I fail to account for the snipers. I can understand getting eaten by the ghosts in Pacman. However, my mental concept of video games does not allow for random fucking rains of frogs. It doesn't make narrative sense. Anyway, given the frequency with which this game employs The Wrath of God, it was clearly designed by someone who'd read his Jonathan Edwards.
Also, I played The Bible Game last night. It contains distressingly tiny amounts of actual Bible knowledge and is mostly composed of non-Bible challenge activities. The challenges are video-game-ish and I suck at them (example challenge: Outline blocks on Tower of Babel to make them crumble, kind of a tetris effect.) compared to the computer generated characters. The game show format is remarkable for the sole singular feature I found amusing as (forgive me) hell: The Wrath of God. Think Whammy in Wheel of Fortune, only you get a rain of frogs, a swarm of locusts, masses of flies, and so forth. Playing the game show (called "Do Unto Others") is like being a pharoah, almost. You see a lot of The Wrath of God in this game, to the point where I just started to laugh at the rains of frogs. I mean, they're totally random and there's nothing you can do about them. You didn't deserve them. I can understand dying in DDR if I fuck up enough. I can understand dying in, say, Quake II if I fail to account for the snipers. I can understand getting eaten by the ghosts in Pacman. However, my mental concept of video games does not allow for random fucking rains of frogs. It doesn't make narrative sense. Anyway, given the frequency with which this game employs The Wrath of God, it was clearly designed by someone who'd read his Jonathan Edwards.
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Re: There. Are. Four. Lights! --J.L. Picard (fictitious)
Date: 2005-12-29 06:42 am (UTC)And again, since I don't understand God, it makes it that much harder to describe him. My understanding is that the original spirit, what became the Holy Spirit, was female in the original versions of the old testament. Until I learn those languages, I won't know for sure, and even then can't. Nobody can. There are no vowels. So open to misinterpretation.
In any case...the old testament is description of something in terms that the people then would understand. It might not hold meaning for a lot of people today. On the other hand, I've read some fairly wretched translations. so I prefer to read as close to an accurate translation as I can to get some idea of what the history of my system of belief is. Not everyone feels the need to do this.
Which is why the Bibles my church hands out to 3rd graders translates "Eunuchs" as "Government Officials".
Re: There. Are. Four. Lights! --J.L. Picard (fictitious)
Date: 2005-12-29 01:15 pm (UTC)The problem with the Bible, both testaments, is that they are very culturally conditioned--written by and for people in those times, places, and cultures (more than one of them) and with underpinnings, overt and subtle, that we can't really hope to get.
One of the reasons I am a committed Jew is that being Jewish you're allowed to argue with God, to disagree with the tradition, to argue (politely) with other Jews. It's kind of in the "rules" of being Jewish that as long as you continue to be a Jew you can disagree with the faith as much as you want. :)