This week let’s take a dip into psychology as we finish our discussion of the one God of the Bible. Specifically, let’s examine Christianity and explore how the stories of the Christian God have helped people change themselves and others in sometimes meaningful and positive ways. At the heart of the Christian religion is the story of how God takes a human body, born from Mother Mary (pp. 93-95). The incarnate God, now known as Jesus, helps awaken people to a better world beyond their narrow imaginations (pp. 95-97). The Christian hope is that if a relationship with the one God is created or repaired, “nothing will be impossible” (p. 96), and eventually, “we will all be changed” (p. 97). This seems to be a recurring theme in many of the stories of gods and humans that we’ve covered so far: the human longing to change something about the way we’re currently living and become better people. It is what St. Teresa of Avila called “a loving pain” (p. 98). In the Christian story, Jesus personifies this transformation when his body appears to die on the cross but then returns to life, resurrected. This story of miraculously finding life in the most horrible circumstances is told every year on Easter Sunday. Watch Rev. Barber’s Easter sermon this past April (start at the 45 min. mark where he focuses on the resurrection). Barber says, “The resurrection says yes to our liberation” (45.35). As Martin Luther King and many other before him did, Barber links social justice with the theme of resurrection. Specifically, he says, “The resurrection mobilizes the righteous to refuse to ever accept what the evil of this world declares” (45.45). What does this mean? How does “the resurrection force new questions” (48.30). What are the questions? What does Barber mean by resurrection power? For Lev Tolstoy, “good and evil interchanged” when he engaged with the story of Jesus’ resurrection (p.99). How does Barber think our own ideas of right and wrong can change? What does it mean to “make others’ conditions our own,” as John Winthrop wrote upon arriving in America (p. 102)? Describe a time when your own thinking of right and wrong changed. Watch our short video on American poet Maya Angelou describing her relationship with her mother. At the outset, she notes that ego holds and love liberates. What does she mean? What Christian themes do you notice? Finally, take a look at Van Gogh’s iconic “Starry Night.” Why do you think the painting “resonates with so many people,” Christians and non-Christians alike? As always, be specific.