Message In A Bottle

Religion is what guides our decisions and actions, and determines what is right or wrong. Some people take religion lightly, while other, like the religious Christians in Jacobean England, “driven by a passionate belief in the strict purity of their devotion (p.179)”, and went as far as to risking everything for their religion, so that they could express their beliefs freely. England was under a social conflict, in which tolerance for religions others to that of the king was out of sight. Everyone was to follow the same God through the means of the same Bible. It became a kingdom of words, where these and their interpretations where the absolute ideal.

Even presently the religious ones tend to believe word by word of what the bible tells them, and this leads to incorrect interpretations. Priests, who are responsible for transmitting this words to the public, have always taught us that "The words of the bible where the ultimate and encompassing truth itself (p.182)." But we must look beyond the words and struggle to read in between lines to grasp the real message. We could compare the bible to something like a “message in a bottle” in which the bible is the bottle floating through history, waiting for people to open it and go deep into its inner contents, to understand the real message that is kept inside its pages.

People in Jacobean England would do as told, to under the impression that it was all about god and his will. As religious leaders instructed people to “listen to the words of the bible and you will be saved. Nothing else is Necessary (p.175).” The religious community lived under this orders from those who called themselves “Gods elect” and that would interpret and transmit the word of the bible for hours without rest. So huge was this movement that "the king himself was obsessed with words (p.182).” King James Bible was to be the official, and ultimately, the only translation of the bible that should be used in England. This means that it had to be clear enough for everyone to understand, his orders where that “strange and inaccessible words where not to be used (p.194).” To my interpretation, what James wanted was a common sense of good and evil, he sought to instill the same beliefs and to his entire kingdom in a way in which everyone would interpret it similarly. The king wanted “a common idea of what was good: a Christian, orderly commonwealth (p.174).”

Through history leaders have always strived to make their message clear and even through all of their followers. As everything, teachings are subject to the interpretation of the public, who might take it in many different ways. A good leader is one that is able to clarify doubts and one who is able to transmit not only a message, but the same interpretation of such to everyone. By writing the bible in a way in which all was explicit, the room for interpretations was narrowed, but not as close as eliminated. In the modern Christian church we can find contradictions due to the different interpretations of the text, which increase as the interpretations go deeper. The bible is a historical text due to all this which is mentioned previously, and as a historical text, there is no right or wrong way to look at the intentions of the people who enacted this story.