Biblical Crowning Moments of Awesome

[Nate]

How many of the "crowning moment of awesome" entries in TV tropes (not referring to the Bible page) are based on violence of some sort? I'd wager over half... Probably over 3/4.

I don't think TV Tropes is a Christian website that focuses on their faith and how it relates to things.

There's nothing to be ashamed of when you find something in the Bible awesome that involves violence.

I didn't say there was and I admitted that the bear one is pretty cool. I'm just saying I think that a lot of these things being listed aren't awesome, they're cruel and mean-spirited and just flat-out murder. That's why I listed the God killing the first-born of Egypt thing as sarcasm.

The last two are awesome because Jesus is GOOD and yet he did things many people would be uncomfortable with any maybe even view as WRONG. They weren't wrong, though.

See I agree with this one because Jesus was the ultimate in being awesome and He didn't do a single violent thing aside from the money-changers in the temple thing. Just throwing that out there.

[Fish and Chips]

While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." 60Then he fell on his knees and cried out, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he fell asleep.

Couple reasons for this.

1. Prior to this scene, Stephan delivered the veritable theological smackdown to the local religious leaders, whose apparent option one recourse was to kill him, instead of trying to go toe to toe with him in the ring of honor, and by that I mean theological discourse. Reasoning. When their only response is to try and silence you, you're probably doing something right.

2. Stoning is actually a pretty brutal way to die. Beaten and bruised before you die of a mixture of exhaustion and structural damage. And yet, with his dying breath, Stephan forgives them. These people are murdering him, messily, for absolutely no justified reason, and his response is to forgive them. That's actually pretty hardcore if you think about it.

3. The Bible is usually pretty blunt about when people die, yet here (in this translation anyway) it just says he went to sleep.

Stephan was the man.

[Strafe]

The last two are awesome because Jesus is GOOD and yet he did things many people would be uncomfortable with any maybe even view as WRONG. They weren't wrong, though.

Yeah that's especially awesome, considering the irony that the whole idea of right and wrong is God's doing. Any sense of human order, right, wrong and in between, can only come from God. Anything lesser is mortal, finite, and dies. Funny then, that they would be able to approach Jesus like that and say he was doing something wrong. In other words, they became their own God in doing that. (The edifying in the thought that against God we are always in the wrong. Planning to read Either/Or, haven't read it yet. I'm reading the sickness unto death at the moment. I like what Kierkegaard has to say.)

[uc pseudonym]

The final speeches of the book of Job, particularly in the ending lines. Despite being the oldest book in the Bible, the arguments in Job still feel remarkably modern. You will still find people today repeating the same things that Job's friends say at length.

Not exactly bear-summoning, but awesome in the older use of the word.

After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has."

This is the original plot twist, so to speak. Not only has Job really been fairly bitter and condemning toward God, he was just on the receiving end of a lengthy rebuke. Yet at the end of the day, the message is that all the justifications and arguments used by the friends are speaking wrongly about God.

[Lynna]

hmmm...people have already mentioned these, but I tottaly love the part when the Dankey speaks. It was just purely awsome and then when God has compasion on the ninivites. I love that story. hmm...I've always really liked the one in the new testement about the adulterus woman. It shows how merciful God can be. I've also wondered alot at what it was that Jesus wrote in the sand. Some say he was writing down all the sins that the people looking on had commited, to say that no one is without sin.

[Nate]

Yeah that's especially awesome, considering the irony that the whole idea of right and wrong is God's doing.

Um. I don't see how that's irony.

Funny then, that they would be able to approach Jesus like that and say he was doing something wrong. In other words, they became their own God in doing that.

Oooh, the things I could say in response to that that would turn this thread into a giant theological flame war! I won't, though. It would be against the rules. BUT STILL.

[Yamamaya]

Mathew 16:5
"WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?"

Now we know where Kamina got that line from.

Job is also a truly awesome book. Unfortunatley some versions of the Bible really change the meanings of some of the texts in Job.