Jesus: Model of Faith, Model of Humanity
1) We have been faced with may chllanges to our Faith, and Jesus is the best model for how to deal with these challenges. Jesus showed us the best way to live our life by living his life with the same challenges, probably even more difficult challenges. He was tempted, mocked, and beaten, but he kept his Faith that this was for the greater glory of God. Jesus discerned what God wanted him to do the same way we can, prayer and reflection. He didn't have conversations with him as we would with our father. This puts Jesus on the same level as us, making his teachings and beliefs easier to follow. The thing that makes Jesus such a great and influential person in history is not that He was the son of God, but that He was the ultimate human being. He reaches out to the people.
2) A) The reasons to believe based on the natural world and on the human person are very interesting. A few I find particualrly convincing like Wiliam Paley's "Watch and the Watchmaker." This argument uses an analogy that if a primitive person that had never seen any technology came upon a watch, even though he has never seen anything like it he'll be able to tell that it serves some purpose and that by the way that it works so well and the pieces mend so well it must have some intelligent creator. This is how we know God exists. We are in a universe that works so well and orderly that some intelligent creator must have made it so(just like with the watch). That creator is God. Another convincing argument is from conscience. It says that if we are here for no purpose and can therefore live by our own rules and do what we please, then why does our conscience bug us sometimes? The answer is that we are not put on this earth for no reason and we o have a set of rules implanted in us by someone that makes our conscience bug us.
B) Reading the Gospel of Luke all the way through was a new experience for me. I had never read a Gospel all the way through before, thinking it would be boring. While it wasn't exciting, it wasn't boring either, but it was interesting. I used to think that most of the things Jesus did were speaking in parables and stop the Pharisee's plots agianst him. I learned that Jesus didn't speak in as many parables as I thought and he healed a lot more people than I thought. I also never realized that Jesus was fairly humble through His whole ministry. He never said outright that He was the son of God or that He was the Messiah. Most importantly, I saw that Jesus mostly preached about Faith, something we've seen in this course that every man needs to have for a good life. Jesus had the Faith to die for his belief that this was best for the people killing him to be saved.
C) I never really saw the importance of the Sermon on the Mount. It really sums up all of his teachings throught out the Gospel. He states the whole point of His ministry as being the fulfillment of the law, not destroying as some thought He was doing. The law which He is to establish is love. Jesus also sets high standards with the Beatitudes, which I used to think were impossible to meet. So I wondered why try and fail? But I think Jesus knows how impossible they are, and that he set them that way as a true test of Faith. Only those who have Faith that the Beatitudes will lead the way to God will try, showing Faith in something greater than them.
3) 
This picture reminds me of the Anthropic Principle, another argument for the existence of God through the natural world.
4) Am I doing what Jesus told His disciples to do? Am I being the salt of the earth and the light for the world?
No, I am to afraid to, but hopefully I will be able to do this soon, I hope that I can overcome my self-consciousness that hinders me from doing this.
5) I should keep the human model of Jesus in my mind and follow in his footsteps in hopes that I will reach the ultimate amount of Faith he had. When I see temptation I should reach for a strong foundation in God as Jesus did in the desert. When I am mocked I should recognize the pettyness of it and ignore it and continue on my way as Jesus did.
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