"Christianity and the Survival of Creation" Berry

Going into this essay I was kind of skeptical on how it would go out seeing as it was discussing Christianity. But after reading this essay I realized that it was just a sort of bashing towards the religion all together. I myself grew up in the religion, but after having it forced upon me as a child I swayed away from it. I'm not saying I don't believe, the whole church and religion scene is not my type of thing. Berry made alot of good points that I strongly believe with. " The Bible is an inspired book written by human hands; as such it is certainly subject to criticism." (pg 306)I agree with this entirely people say that you can not saying thing about the Bible because it is the word or God. It was written by people so what makes it the word of God? But some people who are totally against the Bible criticizes it and don't realize that you need to the read the book to validly criticize it. Berry makes another interesting point in his essay about how people who call themselves Christians believe that God has created everything and that everything is his when in fact they are the ones that are hurting the wonderful things that God has created. Berry puts it as we are all holy creatures that live amongst other holy creatures, why do we feel the need to hurt the other holy creatures that God has created. "The holiness of life is obscured to modern Christians also by the idea that the only holy place is the built church." (pg. 308), this is so true, today everyone thinks that to worship God you need to go to church. I don't think this is true at all, didn't God create everything so isn't going out and sitting in nature worshiping him because you are amongst his work? Berry makes a good point that all the events that take place in the Bible don't take place in a temple or a church but in fact the most random places, such as fields and towns. Also in the people that all of things miracles and works of God happen to normal ordinary people like shepherds, housewives, and workers, these things never happened to priests and preachers. People seem to think that to be part of God you need to be some that is devoted to God like a preacher, but thats not the case at all. In the Bible people who aren't special like a priest, still had amazing things happen to them. 

After reading this essay Berry made me come to the realization that people who are Christians really don't live by that word of God as much as they say they do. I really found this essay very interesting and I agree with it what Berry described in it.