And The Word Said….
And The Word Said….
by Janice Chrysler
In a world where everything from the gadgets we use in our daily life to the ideas about life itself seem to change and evolve each day, we may find it difficult to even keep up with the vocabulary that comes from all these changes. Have you ever been talking to someone and they mention a new item on the market and you find you are standing there with the deer in the headlights look on your face? Have you then realized what it would be like if someone from a remote tribe or from the distant past came into this time and space, what they would feel like? Things are changing so quickly all over the world that it is near impossible to keep up while we go through our daily routines. Language is evolving to take in the new technology and accepted speech of today. It can almost make you dizzy!
No doubt, these same things have gone on for centuries, as people traveled, discovered new places, people and language. New ideas were merged with the old and often this is how a new belief system began. Throughout the various religions, we can see where a common thread has been woven with perhaps the names of the participants and locations changed to accommodate the group of people it was being applied to.
For example, in almost all known religions there is a creation story, flood, and the birth in some form of a god or messiah. Most often there is an outline of obligations or rituals to be performed and a belief on the afterlife. Is it important to discover which if any is true to the word or should we be focusing on the message behind the story?
In the Middle East, it was common for parables to be used in order to portray a story. It was understood it was a story being told and the listener was to find the message within the story. If we were to take apart these parables in an attempt to discover where they took place, if they happened and if they were historically correct, we would lose sight of why they were being told in the first place.
