What to believe?

(February 1)

Josiah is accounted as a good king, however, he is killed early on during his reign. The Babylonians then began to rise in power and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Because of this, the promises that God made to David and to Jerusalem were questioned.
According to the pre-exilic passages, Josiah lived and was killed. No description or reasoning was given as to why he died. He was considered a good king who followed God. Now according to the post-exilic passages, it states that God is still upset with Manasseh, who took away Hezekiah's reforms. The texts here appears to explain and fix the promises made from God that appears to be broken.
In addition, we discussed the difficulty in what to do when a person's beliefs contradict their experience. The people of Jerusalem who believed in God were promised this land as well as other vows, but their experience in the destruction of the Temple and the exile illustrates that the promise was not carried out. This displays cognitive dissonance, which is defined as having two contradictory beliefs.
In order to fix this problem, people began to rationalize what had happened. They began saying that the Temple was a place for God's name; therefore his name will be there forever, not necessarily the building itself.
This lecture was somewhat depressing because it addressed the issue of how to deal with something that you believe in when reality proves opposite. This is also the end of the midterm material!