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FluteSound4's picture

My thoughts on Creation and Last week

From the beginning of the book "The Truth About Stories" King claimed that he wasn't writing to be an activist or to make people feel sorry for the Native Americans. However, I think he says that so that he doesn't have the appearance of an activist when in actuality he is trying to make others more aware of the hardships that Native Americans, such as him, had to go through. As we discussed in class last week, King seems to be blaming Christianity for people's actions towards Native Americans. I don't think King has the right to blame the Bible or Christianity. I believe if anyone, King should blame human's interpretation of the Bible. I believe that it is how people interpret something that causes us to act and think the way we do. Interpretations are always changing. Not long ago Christians believed that God was a merciless God who would smite you for your sins. Now however, people believe in the Christian God as an all loving and all merciful God. For hundreds of years people have believed that they had to spread the word of God and convert whoever did not share their views. We traveled to the Americas and Asia and the Pacific not only to colonize, but also to convert. Now there's the start of King's problems and the discrimination against Native Americans. The Bible doesn't tell us to convert everyone to Christianity, it's just people who believe that everyone should be converted to some form of Christianity.

 

Now to actually talking about the creation stories. King uses both Native American creation stories and Biblical references in his book "The Truth About Stories." What I found interesting was the diversity of creation stories the other students posted. They ranged from South American Mayan stories, to Chinese myths, and then to the Book of Genesis. Even if we do not believe these stories, they are still important to different peoples and cultures. The stories range from Biblical/religious stories to Cultural myths. The stories were also all very different by the way they were told. The Mayan story was more of story that one would be told verbally, maybe as a child. Where as the Book of Genesis is something someone would read when they are older and when they understand the language used in it. The story I had posted was somewhere in between cultural and religious. My roots are heavily eastern European (mostly Hungarian) so I decided to connect to my roots by finding some sort of Hungarian myth. When talking to my mom about the myth, we decided that it mixes both Biblical and cultural references of Hungary. The myth talks about the Father and the Son who decided it was time to create the Earth, and so they created man. The myth also brings up the Mother as well. Mothers are very important to Hungarian culture and they are almost all of the time looked up upon and put on a pedestal. So, I thought it was interesting that the myth also tied in a small part about the mother into the story. To tie everything up, I believe that creation stories are very important to humans because even if we don't believe them, they give us a better understanding of ourselves, our culture, or where we came from. Also, I believe that King needs to focus more on people's interpretations of creation stories and the Bible rather than the ideas and lessons from the Bible itself.

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