It’s our youngest daughters first year at university, but also her first time away from home for any length of time.

As the year has progressed, study pressure has increased, but also peer pressure to party and drink.
Thankfully, she’s working out these issues by herself.

Typically in the first year, the party goers fail exams spectaculy and dont make it to year two.

She’s very happy and a lot more confident whenever we visit for the day, but doesnt want us to leave and a bit clingy.

She’s quite capable most of the time, but occasionally we get a panic call about an easily fixable problem.

I guess it’s a growing up thing.

Leviticus

This chapter has some more regulations from God in detail (grain, guilt,sin, offering, etc) which should be followed least you get fried like Nadab and Abihu (Leviticus 10)

Numbers

This chapter is about holding several census’es and then organising the twelve tribes of Israel into divisions as they travel away from Egypt

From there, it’s a seemingly endless supply of blood thirsty stories as they travel away from Egypt, wiping out various tribes as they go. This is interpersed with laws about just about everything.

Deuteronomy

More of the same with the death of Moses at the end

Joshua

Yes, you guessed it! Joshua takes over from where Moses left off.

The same theme keeps happening though, the people disregard god, god gets pissed off, something bad happens, and more rules and regulations come out as a result.

Just more blood and guts stories without a happy ending…

Yeah…, I think I’m a bit done for now with trying to read the bible as objectively as I can. I find it to be very negative and oppressive.

The oppressiveness to me is not acceptable, it leads to people doing good things not out of respect for others, but out of fear of the wrath of God, in other words, they end up doing the ‘right’ things for the wrong reasons.

To be fair, all I’ve read so far is from the old testament (pre Jesus), the new testament is a lot more positive from what I’ve heard.

At this point, I was hoping to find answers as to why a lot of religious folk didn’t fall for the covid scamdemic, now I’m left wondering how they are so calm and peaceful, given the horrors of the old testament.

Genesis

This chapter reads in much the same way as you would with your family history. It talks about parents and their children and the major events that shaped their lives. It seems life was a bit ‘rough’ in those days

These include the story of Dinah who was raped at another village, which resulted in the total slaughter of all the men, and the rest of the village been plundered and looted (Genesis 34)

It also includes the story of Joseph who was sold by his jealous brothers into slavery, and ends up in Egypt. Eventually, he ends up in charge of getting Egypt through a seven year famine that he had predicted from analysing the Pharoah’s dreams (Genesis 37)

Another example is the story of Abel, who was killed out of jealosy by Cane when God favoured his brothers offering more than his own.

Many of Joseph’s tribesmen moved to Egypt because of the famine which had spead to their homeland

Exodus

The Pharoah that was fond of Joseph dies, and the new Pharoah views Joseph and his fellow tribe as unwelcome guests who keep multiplying by the day. The Pharoah made them all slaves and oppressed them.

Moses was born, who became their new leader as he had direct contact with the man upstairs.

Eventually, we end up with the ten plagues of Egypt to encourage the Pharoah to let Moses and his people leave

After plagues of blood, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock,boils, hail,locusts, darkness, and firstborn, the Pharoah finally has finally had enough of them, but he changes his mind shortly after they left.

Moses parts the red sea, and leds the tribe out of Egypt, the Pharoah’s troops got wiped out when the red sea resumes it’s natural state.

Moses climbs a mountain to recieve the ten commandments (Exodus 20) (Technically, Moses is the first person to download from the cloud onto a tablet).

Meanwhile, everyone else had decided to worship a golden calf, which left Moses a little bit pissed when he got back.

The rest of this chapter is about setting down law and how to make a a ceremonial ark, table, tabernacle, altar, courtyard etc.

I never thought I would ever see myself reading the bible, because I’m a stand on my own feet sort of guy, and have never seen a need to have God in my life.

What has dramatically changed my attitude is that we lost and gained a lot of friends during covid. It was a very divisive time here in NZ.

With all the covid hysteria been pumped out 24/7 by the media and the government, we and our new found friends held the line and refused to comply with vaccinations/mandates, and all that other dumb stuff. We also had lots of parties together (and still do).

Anyhow, the majority of our new friends are quite religious, and I wonder if this is the reason they saw all the covid hype for what it was (hysterical rubbish).

Perhaps they had an anchor that held them firm, when just about everyone else seemed to have lost their minds. So on that basis, the reading continues….