Week One

Well today marks the end of the first week of Lent. Now for those of you who are not familiar with the Bible, there are a lot of sevens in it. In fact, 7 is sort of symbolic of a full set, or a complete set. Thus G-d created the world in 7 days, or a "complete set" of days. Thus the more sevens you get, supposedly the more complete something is. So, coincidentaly, Lent also runs over seven weeks, although it is a bit short. Does this mean Jesus was a few days short of a full set.

So now on to the Letters to the Corinthians. To start with lets talk about Corinth. Corinth was a city in Greece, and at the time of Paul it was a pretty crazy city. It would have lived up to everyones ideas of Togas, Orgies, and general debauchery. There was plenty of wealth in Corinth and it had a temple to the Goddess Aphrodite. Now back in those days these great temples to Aphodite were the home of the priestesses. And these priestesses to the Goddess of love were basically prostitutes. At night they would leave the temple and go down into Corinth to do their duty,(damn was I born in the wrong era).Collecting money for their goddess in return for a little schmoogly boogly. This is probably where much of the money came from in order to build some of the grand greek archetecture we know and love today, but that is just speculation on my part.

So anyway Corinth was that kind of town. So you can basically see why this is the type of town that the early christians wanted to peddle their wares. I mean if you are looking to make a little money on the guilt train, you definatly want it to stop in Corinth. But in Pauls defense we should always remember that these early apostles honestly beleived they were mending G-ds world. And they viewed the life that these people were living as something that should be fixed.

So the early christians establish a base in Corinth and begin to pass along the message of Jesus Christ. Now the funny thing about much of the New Testament is that it only really takes hold when Paul and the gang start to preach to the Gentiles, who were not Jews. Ironically enough, the message of Jesus Christ really doesnt make any sense if you are not a Jew. I will try to draw an analogy here, and no doubt it will make matters worse. Jesus Christ came with the Good News (Gospel). What the good news says in a nut shell is that God is not really this mean hearted war monger that he is made out to be in the old testament. Rather he is more like a loving caring father, who only wants what is best for his children. While there might have been a time when he was harsh with the jews, this was also more like a strict father trying to teach his children their lessons. It also sort of says that Jesus is G-ds way of bringing Adam back "into the fold" after his long time spent out of the Garden of Eden, after the original sin. Sort of like a father and a son reconciling. God the Father, Man the Son.

SO what does this have to do with the Gentiles, nothing really. It would be to them, like watching a neighbor reconciling a feud with there G-d. So then why did Paul choose to preach to the Gentiles. Well for starters the Jews didnt want to believe that Daddy was ok with everything. They were choosing to not listen to the Good News, and basically said, "you dont know what you are talking about." They continued to believe that in order to make daddy happy, everyone should obey the law to the letter and then, and only then will daddy be happy.

To be continued....