Blog #6 for HONO1397

 This week in our sleep, science, and sleeplessness class we dove into the realm of theology and faith as well as some topics relating the ideas that are brought out and about from famous book writer C S Lewis through the studious eyes and mind of Dr. Jerry Root. We first got a chance to meet Dr. Root on Tuesday February 1 for our Honors class and to be frank, he amazed me with the way he would talk. I’ve always knew such words existed in the world and such knowledge kept within the minds of individuals but to hear someone make simple sense of these amazing words and make the topics so engaging and attractive to the human ear, I’ve heard it best from none other than Dr. Root himself.

The main topic that I was able to grasp from his talks was the idea of predestination and free will. The idea that God has not only predestined our lives and everything in them including every specific action we take but also the integration of free will which is what God has also given us. It begs the question on whether we really have free will or if God already knew what we would do, when and where as well.

Dr. Root mentioned that if there were an elimination of the consequences of free will then free will would have to be eliminated as well. In order for us to experience the consequences of our actions we have to have free will so that through them we may learn and so that through them we might be able to be guided by God to make better judgement next time around. Dr. Root also mentioned that free will brings out punishment, and that although some events in our life are out of the control of free will and cannot be caused by something we did, such as the death of a loved one which is not caused by our actions but rather caused by the action of evil that lies in the world. God knew that some things would have happened in our life, not because He is evil and wants us to suffer but so that through those events we are able to build our foundation of trust and faith in Him.

Dr. Root discusses the idea of perspectives and how perspectives are everything in our world. Through perspectives we are able to identify and see things that wouldn’t be available if we had a singular view of objects. He gave us an example of an art gallery and how perspective works prominently for every painting. 

The next day Dr. Root was the guest speaker for our chapel service and again mentioned the idea of both free will and perspectives. He revolved the conversation around the topic of good and evil coexisting simultaneously. He talked mostly about how we will experience bad events in our life but that through Christ we are able to trust in Him that better days are not only ahead but that better days will last more than the temporary evil ones. Overall his authority in both the classroom and the auditorium gave me never before seen insight on topics I thought I knew fondly about. Below is a picture we took over the examples he wrote down on the board regarding perspective  and there will also be a link to the chapel service down below as well!



Chapel Service: https://youtu.be/lO_xE65MuXI

Comments

  1. We were blessed to have the impressive Dr. Root on campus for the Willson Lecture Series.

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  2. Dr. Root was very knowledgeable and he carried that knowledge with humbleness which is what caught my attention. The topics he covered, as you talked about Ever, were fond and he described them in such simplistic terms that it can help us explain it to others also.

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