Reflections

The presentation that stuck with me the most was Cameron's.  It stuck with me because my experience with the class was the opposite of his.  I distrust the church, and I was eager to come to class and learn about the Bible in a non-ideological way.  But I did not come to class with an open mind.  I came hoping to find tangible proof through my own reading of the Bible that all religion was bullshit.  Indeed, I came believing that the Bible was nothing more than a bunch of bullshit.  I came thinking I would find something to gloat about to all those blind sheep who think they know the Bible without having read it; and I came just as blind and bound up in ideology as those whom I condescended.  If Cameron has enough sand to stand in front of the class room and say what he did, that he realized he was being close minded, then I ought to have enough sand to at least admit to myself that I have been close minded as well.  The Bible is not what I thought it was, and I have no other way to say what I just said because I still don't know what the Bible is.  So that is what I know now that I didn't know before, and I really don't know how to articulate why it's important.  It is like the Book of Kells.  Though I did not know the the book in the movie was specifically the Four Gospels, I knew it had to be the New Testament.  What I got out of the movie is exactly what Dr. Sexson got out of it:  "It does not matter so much what the book says, only that the book is beautiful. Yes?"(Dr. Sexson's words from class)  I feel that the writing which I have produced in this class is sub par to work I have done in the past, but the writing is not what was most important to me for this class.  For me, the most important aspect of this class was comprehension of the material, and I don't mean for the purposes of doing well on tests.  I mean actually understanding what is being read, which is subtly different from understanding what has been written.