For the first half of out religion CPT, we were divided into 5 group who were given 5 diffrent themes to present as a semiar to the class. The five themes were violence, sexuality, justice, freiendship, and Christ in sacraments. Now, the second half of our CPT, part of it asks us the summerize the seminars in our own words and explain our understanding of it.

1. Violence

As a socilety, we are violent. Watching violent

movies or wrestling has become natural to us which it

shouldn't. In the Bible, we are told to be loving and gentel

but we have forgettent that.

But why are people voilent? We become violent to

find a way out of situation we can't control. When we fight

the first way to scare the other person is to become voilent

and to get our piont across. We also become violent from being forced from competetion. As we become threatened by competetion, we try to become assertive but just become aggresive. We have seen that abuse is power and to become powerful, we also become violent. Jealousy can also drive us towards violence. Again, the second we start to feel thretened by an opponent, we become violent to show power.

Violene is one way of getting the anger out of us but not the most helpful and God driven way. Whenever we act out and show acts of violence, we are tod to sit down and talk. Our parents and teachers have told us, "Let's talk" several times and that's because we need to talk and not become violence as a way to get out thoughts across. Language can we violent too but we need to talk with care and keep Jesus and all He did in mind while we discuss and talk.

2. Intimacy, sexuality, and love

Intimacy is a close bond with another person and is created when we spend time with another person. It's a bond that touches our inner most being both spiritually and phyiscally. SInce we are sexual beings, intimacy is always sexual but doesn't always involve sex.

Sexuality is the force that makes us want ot be with others. It's a force that makes us desire for love, frienship, community and family. This desire is not only

spirtual but also physical. We are male and female. Our

sexuality is physical since it lets us know that we are male

and female and how we should interact with other sexual

beings.

Love makes us caring and humble towards others

wheather we know them or not. There are five kinds of love: Companionship is the love we have for our associates. This love is based on sharing a common goal and interests and is does not involve emotoinal closeness. Second, sexaul love. This love involves passionate love between two people. It's is romantic and sexual love. Family love is love for our family that grows natually with deep attachment and emotion. Friendship love is love for friends It is mutual and supportive. Lastly, charity love is when we wish well for others even if they don't do anything is return or sometimes, don't even deserve it. It's based on favors and gestures. This is the highest form on love since it can given to strangers and even enemies.

3. Justice

Justice is based on distribution to eveyone

without deifining their diffrences. Justice is where

the rich is treated the same as the poor; men

have no advandtage over women; born are not

better than the unborn. It's a priciple that no one

before God is better than anyone else.

Our society doesn't seem to think this way. There are competitions and at the end, the powerful, smart, gidted, and beautiful takes it all whereas the ones with little to no power, education, or practical sense are left on the sidelines.

In the Bible, the golden rule says, "Do to others as you would have them do to you". Jesus urges us to not only think of ourselves and keep others in mind even when you use of money and property. This is the only way to get justice.

4. Friendship

A friendship with anoither person is a different

kind of relationship. Our parents and siblings and

teachers are people we did not get to chose to form

our relationship with but with friends, we choose

thoses friends. Once we have chosen them, we

tend to support and trust them.

When we decide to meet another person face-to-face, it is intimate. The face is a place of honesty. We cannot hide it and are exposed. Being with your freinds face to face create an honest relationship since we get to reveal our inner most thoughts. When we reveal ourselves to another perosn, we trust them to reveal themselves themselves to us as well. The trust between two friends is the glue that keeps them together. It is impossible to do someting for another person and not except anything in return not necessarily from them but from someone along the way.

In the Bible, Jesus says that to be a good friend, we must be self-less and self-giving. He shares the golden-rule which says that we should treat others the ways we want them to treat us. This shows how we should act in friendship; we must treat them the way we wnat them to treat us.

5. Christ in Sacraments

Our life is a mytery; we don not know what

will happen next. All we know that our life was given

by Christ and we must celebrate this through the

sacraments. We celebrate th mytery of life that

God has given to us. Jesus and His dispciples

celebrated during the Last Supper and Jesus

told them, "Do this in the memory of me". Since that time, we took the Echarist in a way to celebrate Jesus and remember Him. Jesus lives in the sacrament of Eucharist along with all the other sacraments as well.

For further information about the Sacraments and their rituals, click here.

MY JOURNEY IN RELIGION CLASS

During this semester, I've learned a lot. Out of the topics discussed above, the topic of violence and frienship can help me explain the journey.

a. Some people would describe me as a violent person since I've heard from

many people, "you're so violent". As a human living in this age and society,

this doesn't bother me much as I except the fact. By reading into the deeper

meaning of being violent, I've relaized that God hasn't made anyone violent

but caring and gentle. I also realized that I'm not a violent since I don't use

agression as a way to intimidate and scare another person or to run from a

conflict. As schoking as this sounds, I do prefer to talk and work my way

out of a conflict rather than pass by it. There have been many sitations in this class where I could've been violent through my actions and words but I had to let go and forgive.

In my class, there are not a lot of people I would consider

my friend. We choose our friends and I havn't chosen a lot of.

Ever since I have been in a social setting, I have not chosen

friends that I trust. Trust is a hard thing to do; trust another

person and trust that they trust you. Friendship is also giving

up for another person but that can also be hard if you don't

fully trust the person. To form friendship, you have to be trusting and trustworthy and I have a bit of trouble trusting another person.

b. Jesus says that to have a sucessful friendship, we

must be treat others the way we want them to treat us

and that's is what friendship it. If we want another person

to trust us, we must trust them too. This is where I find

myself stuggling. I cannot trust another person without

them trusting me first. I must know that I can trust them

and the only way to do that is that I should know they trust me.

Towards violence, Jesus said that we cannot commit an act of violence if we have sinned. When the people brought the woman who commited adultry, Jesus said they can stone her if they haven't commited sin themselves. This shows that we are all sinners and we do not have the right to be violent towards another person.

10 COMMANDMENTS

1. You shall have no other Gods before me.

2. You shall not make idols.

3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5. Honor your father and your mother.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10.You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor's goods.

Commandment 2, 3, 4 and 10 challenge me on dailty

bases. Commandment 2 says not to make an idol of another

worldly object or person but everyone, we alway priotize other

things before God. Comandment 3 says that we must not take

the Lord's name in vain but you will often hear me say,

"Oh God", " Oh my God", "For Chirst's sake", etc. Comandment 3

is the only Comandment that I keep in mind all day and feel

guilty towards. Comandment 4 says to keep the Sabbath day

holy that means go to Church and every Sunday, we always

say we don't have anough time to go to Church and I do feel

difficulty going to Church every Sunday. Comandment 10

says that we should not crave others' belongings but when

you see someone with better anything, it is very hard not to crave it and want it for yourself.

Comandment 6 says we should not murder which is an act of violence. In the Comandments, we are told not to be violent and murder. Comandment 9 says we shouldn't decieve our neighbor which can also be our friend. We must not decieve our friend and Comandment 9 tells us that.

7 VIRTURES AND VICES

Virtures