The Theologian's Table

     So, I read through and studied the Gospel of Mark for the first time and I'd like to clarify something. In my entry about Matthew in regards as to the themes of what each book covered I was a little mistaken on the theme of Mark of Jesus being a teacher. While that's not far off It conveys more of a sense of Jesus in action through miracles to display His divinity. Mark has a faster pace than the rest of the gospels and is the shortest of the four. His target audience were Roman Christians and they, who unlike Matthews audience, used a more common language. Another thing I learned is that Mark was not one of the 12 original disciples, but rather a possible friend of Jesus(Mark 14:51), he also joined the apostle Paul on his first missionary trip. The Gospel of Mark is pretty great and one of the reasons, as I mentioned above, is because of the target audience. Not to downplay their education level, the text is written how a popular novel would read, but Mark fulf...

    What is faith? What is this concept that the media mostly gets wrong, or Christians sometimes get confused or at least confused? Heck, even some pastors get it wrong. Is there a clear definition for it in the Christian life?      Recently, I woke up in the morning, and the first thing that popped into my head was The Goonies. It wasn't a slow process but a thought that sprung me awake like a lightning bolt to my consciousness: THE GOONIES! It occurred to me that Christians could probably learn a thing, or seven, from the classic 80's flick, especially about faith. So, I will relate this film to our walk in faith and make some arguments about what faith really is and means. Once again, like in my recent posts, I ask you to keep an open mind and open heart to what is going to be said in this entry. The Goonies? Da fudge is that?      Hopefully, everyone has seen or at least heard of the Goonies, but in case you've been living under a ro...

http://mbsdailydrawing.blogspot.com/       As some of you may know I decided about a year ago that I  wanted to go to school so I could become a pastor. One of the requirements is to have read the Bible completely at least once. Admittedly I have not done that, so over the past year I have skipped around to different books in the Bible and read them. For my 31st birthday my wife got me a life applications study Bible and with it I decided to study the New Testament books in order. I have since devoured the book of Matthew and would like to share a taste of what I have learned. I'd like to ask you to please keep an open mind and an open heart to what I have to say, thank you. Common Misconceptions      When some people think of the four Gospels they are confused on why there needs to be 4 different books about the same events. In reality they portray Jesus using different themes such as Matthew trying to prove that Jesus is King/Messiah to th...

During our lives there are numerous times we call out to God with a prayer. Some do it out of a jest, most others do it out of earnestness especially when they are going through a difficulty they cannot overcome with out him. They pray for guidance and they pray for answers. Most followers of Christ know that God doesn't answer in the time we would like him to, but that His answers always have perfect timing whether we'd like to admit it, or not. Then we see the benefits of waiting, "But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint." Isaiah 40:31 Occasionally there are impatient people that don't like to wait for God's answer and they make a decision out of frustration, which can cause unfortunate consequences. It is my belief that most Christians are guilty of this, heck I've done it myself more times than I care to count. We are h...

    Otto Román, a Guatemalan archaeologist, excavating the cache of  polishe d  axes that were found in 2009. This ritual deposit  marked the beginning of occupation at Ceibal around 1,000 B.C .      Most of us have seen the movies of the swash-buckling archaeologist Indiana Jones. It offers up a romantic version of what digging up or hunting down ancient artifacts is like. This past semester in my "Principles of Archaeology" class I learned that portrayal is highly inaccurate, but to be fair, those films are a big reason why I want to study Archaeology.      When the average person thinks of Archaeology they may think of digging up skeletons, artifacts, or restoring ancient ruins. They may also think that it is a way to see how bye-gone cultures and societies worked, and to a large extent that's part of it. We might not realize how Archaeology is so important for world today though, and how it has helped our current civiliza...

A handful of ancient civilizations built pyramid style structures. You know what that means right? Aliens! That's right, tall white beings from the stars told the smaller brown humans how to build them...err...wait, I just realized how that sounded. The basis for Aliens helping our ancestors was an interesting thing at one time, however now it has evolved into something stupid and borderline racist. Anthropology and Archaeology are ever changing an evolving fields because new finds open up new possibilities we didn't consider before. Mostly it has to do with how we are realizing humans were more developed than we thought and were extremely quick learners, after all, only the strongest survive. Pyramids in Egypt The first pyramids were carved from bedrock and were tiered, not like the smooth looking pyramids you might think of. The shape of the pyramind is said to represent sunbeams coming down from the heavens which they believed how you got into the afterlife in their so...

For a while now the mainstream public has been under the assumption people of another culture maybe biologically different than themselves. Some of us remain unaware of the history of how biology and the discovery of different cultures became intertwined. This is helped along by published health studies conducted by the government and health insurance companies that focus specifically on race. Often times we hear on the news that the African American community is more likely to get hyper-tension or diabetes. While the cases of hyper tension have climbed in that community, the actual reasons behind it are being over shadowed by race. First, let's look at the history of how this came to be. Early European scholars wanted to classify humans into subspecies/races based on morphology (appearance) and geographical locations (Haviland et al, 134). A man named Carolus Linnaeus classified Europeans as "White", Africans as "black", American Indians as "red", and...