In
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards creates via great
imagery the wrath of God upon sinners. Which image, metaphor, simile,
personification, etc., did you find to be most effective in conveying Edwards'
message? Explain how it made you feel and how you think the members of the
congregation must have felt hearing this. (The deadline to post a response to
this blog is midnight, Saturday, September 15, 2012.)
3 comments:
I find the simile that says "Your wicked ness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downward with great weight and pressure toward hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your health constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock..." This made me feel that if we live in sin, God gets upset with us and may let the devil come in to put you in your place. The congregation might have felt that if they didn't change soon, God wouldn't hold them up. He would let the devil have his way on them. I think they wanted to change their ways for the good after hearing this.
I think the metaphor that says ,"The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood" is the most effective. It shows that the mere pleasure of God keeps the arrow from killing you even though you deserve it for sinning. It scared me and the congregation was probably scared too so they changed their evil ways.
I found the metaphor where he describes hell as a "wide gaping mouth open" extremely effective because of the way it portreyed an image of damnation as this hungry beast ready to swallow up a sinner. Members of the congragation would have been overcome by fear of having angered God, as He would be the only way they could be saved from the "beast".
C.A. 1st Block
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