I must say that while reading this I felt a bit better about the way of life that the Bible encourages. The bible encourages equality, love, fairness, kindness, and even though it may come to an extreme that is way too conservative, most of it should be a guide for everyday life. What I am not exactly pleased to announce is that some of the lines in Mark reminded me of a Nicholas Sparks cheese marathon or just to make it sound a little better, an upgraded Nicholas Sparks novel. This is the one that made me remember The Notebook's "tear-provoking" lines: "For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."(Mark 10:9) "They twain shall be one flesh." How beautiful. And cheesy. But true. Or supposed to be true. Man and woman are one. But it's so contradictory. It's not like they are considered equals, even today, for some things. But things have advanced since the times when we weren't allowed to receive an education or to vote. But now man and woman can love each other as equals. But perhaps it wasn't even meant to be seen in a romantic way, saying that man and woman are one. Maybe I've been reading way too many romantic novels and watching way too many romantic movies, so my girly instinct was to think of this romantically. Maybe in a non-romantic way, it just means that they have to be equal in every single way. If the man gets a cookie, the woman should get a cookie as well. So don't treat the man as if he were greater than the woman because they are one and the same. Ah, but my fifteen-year-old self thinks the Nicholas Sparks version is a lot more entertaining and laughable.
There was this event mentioned in Mark that disturbed me a bit and that is quite often used in exclusive money-making, bad horror movies: exorcism. I'm not even going to google it, the word itself is so scary. But this is what I believe Jesus did to the boy who "hath a dumb spirit", I mean what other spirit could it be? What this boy is described as having is stated in the following quote, "And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us." (9:22) I have to say that I really don't believe there is a bad spirit that needs to be driven away with the power of Jesus, I think that it's just an illness such as schizophrenia or Alzheimer's. This is where I start thinking of all the rest of the things that don't seem too believable in the bible. The water being turned into wine, the opening of the sea, a talking snake, an ark taking in the last survivors of the human race, etc... But it's all a question of faith. I just see these things as symbols rather than facts, taking them seriously would really drive me crazy.
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