Religious Beliefs/Values Paper
Graverobber50
Week1RELS1325TheQuestLecture.docxThe Quest
Rev. Paul Hudec, PhD, MAPS, MBA, CKM
This course’s title is Religious Quest and if that is not a familiar concept or phrase expressed by any current or past churches or faith communities, let’s explore some familiar contemporary movie themes that might be helpful for us not only for this course but for our faith journeys as well. One of the important points that I mention to all my classes for this course topic is that there may be more at work here than just course material. Our discussions and topics within the seven content weeks of this course may also be formative, i.e. you may begin an investigation or thought process that may influence you or may cause a change in your life’s outlook. With this being expressed, let’s examine two movie themes: the quest as expressed by Indiana Jones¸ National Treasure and another as expressed by Star Trek. Something for everyone, right?
In the Indiana Jones first and third movies, the excitement of exploring and searching for the Ark of the Covenant as depicted below or the Cup of Christ can be extremely exciting and consuming of our interest, activities, and even hopes and dreams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLZJaAm2hw
We remember these movies as filled will dangers even life threatening dangers and of rewards or treasures beyond all valuation. Both of these movies present a quest or search for physical objects. These objects have some historical or factual character as well as myth … fanciful, beguiling myth. Indiana lifts the Ark of the Covenant out of a darkened stone tomb in an underground chamber and it bursts forth with light, let alone the splendor and terror when it is opened later.
What a find!
Then Indiana embarks on a lifelong quest of his dad, the search for the cup of Christ. The event that Jesus and His disciples had as what Scripture describes as the Last Supper focuses upon the cup or what might be a bowl and certainly not the jewel bedecked, gold chalice that most churches use in the Mass today. Does it give eternal life to anyone who drinks from it?
Choose wisely!
In the first movie of the series, National Treasure, the Freemasons continue what the Knights Templar start and eventually uncover the most massive, priceless collection of treasures from human history by discovering clues that were hidden and of cryptic nature that only a most clever, well-educated, and deeply thoughtful person and his group could ever hope to find. But, does a treasure trove exist or could exist?
Once again, when there’s physical objects of great value waiting to be discovered or thought to exist and waiting to be discovered, the quest is on!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-YMMDloAEM
Now, let’s move to the third and a different type of quest. This series that initially was launched as a TV series in the 1960s lasted for three seasons and was cancelled but only for that first network because what it launched was a following that spanned more than 50 years and numerous movies and other related series. The opening monologue that some of you might know
Space... The final frontier...
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise.
Its continuing mission:
To explore strange new worlds...
To seek out new life; new civilizations...
To boldly go where no one has gone before!
Star Trek could easily been termed a quest, a multifaceted quest not for treasures but actually action that reflects who we are as a species of curious, intelligent, and potentially developing the best that homo sapiens can be together with other beings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6R3MiAv9ac
Most consider this course, RELS1325, to be a required or fundamental course that introduces many ideas and concepts, but I would like you to think of this course as an invitation to explore as many things about humanity as set within a context of hopes, dreams, visions that extend beyond the physical, which is where the greatest philosophers and theologians have presented in their volumes of materials over the centuries.
Archaeology and paleo-anthropology describe early humans as having burial rituals, myths of the afterlife, gods, and many wondrous things, so religion as we have it today is built upon intellectual constructs that are prehistorical and yet are somehow coded into our genes.
Let’s see what we can discover this Term.
