In the story, Brother Lemon brought with him a new water-purifier which he boasts for its ability to process the water and provide good purity without any bacteria. This was used by Laurence as a symbol to describe Brother Lemon as “a kind of soul-purifier, sucking in the septic souls and spewing them back one hundred percent pure” (p. 53). Although we are created in the image and likeness of God to render us as human, we are not God in any sense. It is only God that can do anything to the soul. It is going too far to say any human to act as a kind of soul-purifier.
Danso, the African, says that Brother Lemon is a step further than the slavers who “didn’t admit we had souls” (p.74). He describes missionary activity as “a procedure - to tear the soul out of a living body, and throw the inconvenient flesh away like a fruit rind" (p.74). Laurence outlines the idea that slavers do not admit there is souls in slaves. Her anthropology is that body and soul can be separated. This is the Plutonic concept of human with soul having reasoning and rational thinking and the body is treated as inconvenience. Christians understanding is that incarnation is about God becoming flesh, as a human body,
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Brother Lemon is surprised to see a painting of African Christ. "Danso had shown Him with a group of beggars, sore- fouled, their mouths twisted in perpetual leers of pain." (p.76) At this, Brother Lemon speaks in a low voice “Do many – do all of you – see Him like that?” and he left the house. The reason he left is not explained in the story. He may be disturbed by the healthy figure as contrasted to the weak Jesus as commonly shown in the West. The painting exposes Brother Lemon 's own bias and incomplete understanding of Christ and reveals his limited understanding on being
This book starts from a basic backstory, and then piecemeal goes and becomes a very interesting story that you can’t put down. The first part of the book talks about the main character, Kyle Keely. In his school, there was a competition on who would write a better essay about public libraries. Kyle didn’t know about this until the last minute. He quickly wrote his essay on the way to school and turned it in. Kyle was one of the twelve people who won! Since he won, he, along with eleven other children, would get to see the new public library that was made by Mr. Lemoncello and his assistant Dr. Zinchenko. When the winners arrived at the library, they were immediately greeted by Dr. Zinchenko. They were then greeted with their first challenge. After the first challenge was over, they had a new task at
Douglass continues to describe the severity of the manipulation of Christianity. Slave owners use generations of slavery and mental control to convert slaves to the belief God sanctions and supports slavery. They teach that, “ man may properly be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained by God” (Douglass 13). In order to justify their own wrongdoings, slaveowners convert the slaves themselves to Christianity, either by force or gentle coercion over generations. The slaves are therefore under the impression that slavery is a necessary evil. With no other source of information other than their slave owners, and no other supernatural explanation for the horrors they face other than the ones provided by Christianity, generations of slaves cannot escape from under the canopy of Christianity. Christianity molded so deeply to the ideals of slavery that it becomes a postmark of America and a shield of steel for American slave owners. Douglass exposes the blatant misuse of the religion. By using Christianity as a vessel of exploitation, they forever modify the connotations of Christianity to that of tyrannical rule and
... giving in to the devil, which is unacceptable. In The Negro Speaks of Rivers strength is carried on from land to land and generation to generation. The ancestors traveled from Africa and kept their strength, which carried on to future generations. Their strength allowed them to deepen their connection with each other and their surroundings.
...ty to showcase that worth in regards to the African slaves had a meaning outside of the monetary connotation prevalent at that time in history. Equiano implements the construct of Christianity to convict, connect, and instruct his audience about the worth of African slaves outside of the realm of being someone’s property. Equiano argues through the lens of Christianity that the manner in which slavery and the slave trade is occurring stands in direct opposition to Christian morality and to approve one and reject the other is contradictory. In Equiano’s narrative, Christianity is laid as the foundation to the belief that African slaves and their white community are equally valuable and worthy.
Southern slaveowners claimed that they were upholding their Christian duty by engaging in slavery, rescuing slaves from a life of struggle and faithlessness. Douglass dispels this myth by exposing the many flaws of Mr. Covey’s morality, shocking northern Christians with his Christian hypocrisy and faulty character. Douglass introduces Mr. Covey as a “nigger-breaker,” denouncing his ability for human emotion and sympathy(79). Douglass evokes a sense of ethics and judgement in his Northern audience as he questions the authenticity of Mr. Covey’s faith: “I do verily believe that he sometimes deceived himself into the solemn belief that he was a sincere worshipper of the most high God” (82). In pointing out Mr. Covey’s self-deception, Douglass indicates a distinction between true Christianity and false Christianity. Douglass implies that Mr. Covey wasn’t a “sincere worshipper,” proving how slaveowners’ Christianity was not proof of their genuine goodness, but only a hypocritical front they maintained to bolster their complacent brutality. In doing so, Douglass counters the argument of blacks receiving a healthy faith from being enslaved. He a...
The novel Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, provides Americans with a firsthand look into slavery prior to the Civil War. Douglass, born a slave early into the nineteenth century, encounters and survives the task of living as a slave. Within the ninth chapter of his life, an argument arises that claims Southern Christianity differs immensely from its Northern counterpart. A majority of Christians in non-slaveholding states at the time believed that Christian slaveholders were kinder after they converted, Douglass worked to invalidate this claim. In chapter nine, the ingenious use of dispassionate tone and allusion throughout the passages support the claim that a simple conversion to Christianity only gives justification to cruel southern slaveholders.
Slave-owners forced a perverse form of Christianity, one that condoned slavery, upon slaves. According to this false Christianity the enslavement of “black Africans is justified because they are the descendants of Ham, one of Noah's sons; in one Biblical story, Noah cursed Ham's descendants to be slaves” (Tolson 272). Slavery was further validated by the numerous examples of it within the bible. It was reasoned that these examples were confirmation that God condoned slavery. Douglass’s master...
“I thought God might perhaps have permitted this, in order to teach me wisdom and resignation” (Equiano 1004). Regarding this quote, the writer gives impression that religion is the reason that he was disappointed countless times when he tried to obtain his freedom. Such a pious tone of acceptance and not anger seems peculiar for a man who lost the chance at his freedom. Also, Equiano refuses to lay blame to either new or old slave owner and instead considers this a trial for his spirit. The Christian doctrine is another topic he spotlights in his writing when he asks a slave owner who had sold “41,000 negroes” and cut off a man’s legs for attempting to escape (Equiano 1009). “I asked him if the man had died in the operation, how he, as a Christian, could answer for the horrid act, before God. And he told me, answering was a thing of another world; what he thought and did were policy” (Equiano 1009). In this quote, Equiano notes the separation between what he believes the Christine doctrine says and how the white men slavers perceive their actions as something they do not need to alter while they are alive. A reverent plea to this white man could not persuade him that his parting from religious doctrine and claiming the religion was unscrupulous. Religious determination despite the cruel aspects of his life makes
In alignment with what the Bible told them, abolitionist understood that each man represented one of God’s creations and that men were part of God’s plan. If slavery was allowed to exist, then man was interrupting God’s de...
Douglass uses his autobiography to express the distinct separation amongst the true Christians and the white slaveholder Christians during the eighteenth-century American slavery.
The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan recounts the events of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lives of two individuals: Dalia, a Bulgarian jew, and Bashir, a Palestinian muslim. The Lemon Tree is a story of persecution , its consequences, and of human nature. In the 1940s the Nazis began the holocaust, a mass extermination of the jewish people and others that the Nazis deemed as “undesirable”, prompting many Jews to flee and seek refuge. Jewish emigration from countries in eastern Europe was met with anti semitic immigration policies in the west, thus leading to the mass migration of Jews to Palestine. The tensions between the jewish and arab Palestinians eventually evolved into the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Citizens of Palestine were
In addition, in Kierkegaard’s “Practice in Christianity,” we are given the distinction between an imitator (a true Christian)
To better understand this model, we must first examine how bodies have been viewed and affected within the Christian religion framework of our western culture. Christianity has a long tradition of focusing on embodiment. Its basic practices and ideas of incarnation, Christology, the Resurrection, and the Eucharist, even the metaphor of the church being the body of Christ, all involve embodiment in some way (McFague, 1993). Yet, with these embodiment characteristics of Christianity, this religion still devalues nature and women’s bodies. It has set up a patriarchal framework for western culture of devaluing the body, and women. “Western culture and religion have a long, painful history of demeaning the female by identifying her with the body and with nature, while elevating the male by identifying him with reason and spirit” (McFague, 1993). This idea reinforces stereotypes that oppress women and separates the body from the mind and soul. Until we reconcile this disconnect of the body and mind, we cannot fully love all bodies; this leads to the inability to love the “body” of the earth (McFague, 1993). Without this love, we cannot fully appreciate ...
In the story Curt Lemon insisted the dentist pull a perfectly good tooth because I think he thought it would make up for him fainting. He felt if he got a tooth pulled it would look tough and they other guys would forget about him fainting before you got into the dentist. In the morning after having his tooth pulled O’Brien says in the story “There was some pain ,no doubt, but in the morning Curt Lemon was all smiles.” I think he is taking pride in having his tooth pulled. First Curt was too scared to go into the Dentistry field tent but as soon as his name was called he went in. Then he passed out and the other guys had to put him up on the cot to get checked. Then after he woke up he was so embarrassed about passing out that he went back
... each and every one of us; that is, we all obtain some sort of spirit of God within our physical well being. Nevertheless, we embody some aspects of God’s soul, and it is very important to remember and appreciate those aspects that we obtain because our actions, our words and our well beings portray a principle of God, and we do not want to alter that essence negatively. We are God’s masterpieces, he has painted each and every one of us like a special picture, and we obtain different attributes that help define and shape who we are, as well as helping define others, and quite possible, the society in which we live in.