I had never heard the arguments for or against pacifism or just-war before reading this assignment. I will have to read more about the just-war argument before I decide what I believe because it is not an easy decision. It is debated and debated everywhere and sadly in a fallen world war will be present. In deciding what to believe a person also needs to look really hard at the Old and New Testament. God uses war, it seems, in the Old Testament to bring justice and to punish. Jesus directs Christians towards non-violence and God in the Old Testament does not want His people to go to war but to just trust in Him. I believe if everyone believed in God this would be an easy decision, because a nation that trusts God would never need violence such as shown in the prophets, God will provide. If everyone believed in God there would be no war and I think that this is the best argument for pacifism.

At the very beginning of the speech Strobel says, "The ramifications of poverty touch all aspects of our lives together. We cannot afford to ignore or gloss over these ramifications. Instead, we must raise them and face them honestly." I think people ignore what he says here, that poverty touches all aspects of our lives together. Some people just do little to help and don't think that poverty can touch them or affects them. Strobel is saying that it does touch all aspects of our lives together. People want to help the poor while distancing themselves from them at the same time. I love the quote Strobel liked from Dorothy Day, "She noted that the poor and the homeless had been studied and researched to death, but that all they needed was love." People need to help the poor more out of love than because of the bad statistics. More and more people should love the poor and helped them out of love. Reading this quote, Dorothy Day, and much of the other readings have given me an actual love for the poor that I didn't have before.

Final Project

For the final project I am thinking about looking at how movies portray justice. I could put together a powerpoint on the movies and their views of justice. The only problem with this is that there a lot of movies out there! However, I could just look at movies that have been at the top of the box office charts. I think it would be intertesting to see how popular movies show the viewer what justice is.

There were many quotes from the reading in Isaiah that I liked. From the very beginning of Assyria Shall Fall by a Sword Not of Man, I liked the lines that said, “Assyria with all her might and triumph was but a tool in the hands of God for carrying out His work against sinful nations.” Assyria thought that all of their winning over the lands around them was of their own doing and of their own swords, but it was really God who was involved. It is also said later that it is not a sword of man that will devour Assyria. The Lord will cause Assyria to have to pay attention to Him by devouring Assyria Himself, and not by the sword. I also like the quote that “Assyria’s power was a phantom, ‘but the Lord of hosts, Him you shall regard as holy; let Him be your fear, let him be your dread!”’ It shows God’s power over anything that the Assyrians might have seen as the greatest. God can overcome the phantom power of Assyria because He is holy and He is who needs to be feared. Sennacherib mocked God to try to get Judah to submit to defeat. However, God showed His might by sending a disastrous pestilence throughout the Assyrian camp. The Assyrians highly doubted the might of God. Today we I feel we just see God as the merciful God. We sometimes fail to realize or to mention the might and power that God has.
I also like the verse on page 99.
“You turn things upside down!
Shall the potter be regarded as the clay;
That the thing made should say of its maker:
“He did not make me”;
Or that the thing formed say of him who formed it:
“He has no understanding”?
This verse from Isaiah 29:16 reminds us that God is the Creator. We cannot mold Him to be what we want Him to be. We cannot say that I don’t like this certain part about God, so I will just not believe it. We cannot mold God to fit us.
We also see from this reading that God’s anger does not last forever. He IS a merciful God. Isaiah 30:18 says, “For the Lord is a God of justice, Blessed are all those who wait for Him.” It also says in the reading that “God is more than Lord and Owner; He is Father.” God loves us even when we do wrong and His anger will not last forever.

I like reading Ecclesiastes. It is not an exciting book of the Bible and it basically says that everything in the world is meaningless. However, that is something that I think about sometimes. Without God, most things would be meaningless. We could have all the fun in the world and enjoy our work, but why would it matter if there was no God?

I also like reading Esther. It is a great story about God and the way He helps his people. It is great to see that Esther, even though frightened, still goes into the king's ineer court. I also like what Mordecai says in Esther 4: 14, "Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?" Esther shows us how to trust God and how to help people even if it meant death.

In Genesis 1, we see God creating the world we know today. Genesis 1:1-16 is God creating the world through day four. He speaks each part of the world into exsistence. Genesis 37 is about Joseph. He goes out looking for his brother's who are with the sheep because his dad asked him to go. His brother's don't like Joseph because of dreams that he told eariler in the passage, but he still goes to look for them. I love the story Joseph and how he does great things even though his brothers just intedend to bring harm on him. It shows that God has plans through bad situations, like Joseph later tells his brothers. In Genesis 37:12-17 we just see Joseph out looking for his brothers.