英语流利说Level8Unit2Part3：GospelofDoubt
Cay Gerald: The gospel of doubt | TED Talk
Video 1: Gospel of Doubt
There we were, souls and bodies packed into a Texas church on the last night of our lives.
Packed into a room just like this, but with creaky wooden pews draped in worn-down red fabric, with an organ to my left and a choir at my back and a baptism pool built into the wall behind them.
A room like this, nonetheless.
With the same great feelings of suspen, the same deep hopes for salvation, the same sweat in the palms and the same people in the back not paying attention.
This was December 31,1999, the night of the Second Coming of Christ, and the end of the world as I knew it.
I had turned 12 that year and had reached the age of accountability.
return as soon as I had to be accountable
how unfair it was that Jesus would return
accountable for And once
once I stopped
stopped complaining about how
figured I had better get my hou in order very quickly.
all that I had done, I figured
So I went to church as often as I could. I listened for silence as anxiously as one might listen for noi, trying to be sure that the Lord hadn't pulled a fast one on me and deci走投无路造句
ded to come back early.
And just in ca he did, I built a backup plan, by reading the "Left Behind" books that were all the rage at the time.
And I found in their pages that if I was not taken in the rapture at midnight, 汤汤水水
I had another shot.
All I had to do was avoid taking the mark of the beast, fight off demons, plagues and the Antichrist himlf.
It would be hard --but I knew I could do it.
Why was December 31,1999 significant to Gerald? He thought Jesus would return on this date.
Why does Gerald u humor in his prentation ? to engage the audience
How does Gerald describe the life behind the books? They were very popular at the time.
By reaching the age of accountability, Gerald had to start taking the responsibility for his behavior.
When he reach the age of accountability, he had to take the responsibility for all he had done.
Video 2: Gospel of Doubt
But乡村生活的诗
planning time was over now. It was 11:50 pm.
We had 10 minutes left, and my pastor called us out of the pews and down to the altar becau he wanted to be praying when midnight struck.
So every faction of the congregation took its place.
The choir stayed in the choir stand, the deacons and their wives -- or the Baptist Bourgeoisie as I like to call them --took the first position in front of the altar.
You e, in America, even the Second Coming of Christ has a VIP ction.
And right behind the Baptist Bourgeoisie were the elderly --
the men and women who young backs had been bent under hot suns in the cotton fields of East Texas,
and who skin emed to be burnt a crealess noble brown, just like the clay of East Texas,
and who hopes and dreams for what life might become outside of East Texas had sometimes been bent and broken even further than their backs.
Yes, the men and women were the stars of the show for me.
They had waited their whole lives for this moment,
just as their medieval predecessors had longed for the end of the world,
and just as my grandmother waited for the Oprah Winfrey Show to come on Channel 8 every day at 4 o'clock.
becau I knew
knew for sure that my grandmother was going
snuck right in behind her, becau
And as
as she made
made her way to the altar, I snuck
to heaven.
And I thought that if I held on to her hand during this prayer, I might go right on with her.
So I held on and I clod my eyes to listen, to wait.
And the prayers got louder.
And the shouts of respon to the call of the prayer went up higher even still.
And the organ rolled on in to add the dirge. And the heat came on to add to the sweat.
And my hand gripped firmer, so I wouldn't be the one left in the field.
My eyes clenched tighter so I wouldn't e the wheat being parated from the chaff.
And then a voice rang out above us: "Amen."
What does Gerald suggest by in America even the Second Coming of Christ has a VIP ction? American society is obsd with class and social status.
Gerald believed that if he held onto his grandmother's hand as she prayed he would go to heaven.
It was over.
I looked at the clock.
It w关于学习的名人名言
as after midnight.
who savior had not come,
I looked at the elder believers who
proud to show any signs of disappointment,
who were too proud
doubting now.
who had believed too much and for too long to start doubting
behalf.
But I was upt on their behalf
along with them.
They had been duped, hoodwinked, bamboozled, and I had 柳宗元世称
gone right along
I had prayed their prayers, I had yielded not to temptation as best I could.
I had dipped my head not once, but twice in that snot-inducing baptism pool.
I had believed.
Now what?
I got home just in time to turn on the television and watch Peter Jennings announce the new millennium as it rolled in around the world.
It struck me that it would have been strange anyway, for Jesus to come back again and again bad on the different time zones.
And this made me feel even more ridiculous -- hurt, really.
But there on that night, I did not stop believing.
I just believed a new thing: that it was possible not to believe.
It was possible the answers I had were wrong, that the questions themlves were wrong.
And now, where there was once a mountain of certitude, there was, running right down to its foundati
on, a spring of doubt, a spring that promid rivers.
I can trace the whole drama of my life back to that night in that church when my savior did not come for me;
when the thing I believed most certainly turned out to be, if not a lie, then not quite the truth.
prepared for Y2K in a very different way,
And even though most of you prepared
same thing that I have done since
since the dawn of convinced that you are here becau some part of you has done the same
I'm convinced
this new century,
stayed away and my Lord refud
refud to come.
since my mother left and my father stayed
And I held out my hand, reaching for something to believe in.
Why did Gerald tell his church story at the beginning of the talk? to show the first time his beliefs changed
What would have been strange if Jesus had actually come back? He would have had to come back veral times.
I looked at the elder believers who were too proud to show any signs of disappointment.
Video 3: Gospel of Doubt
I held on when I arrived at Yale at 18, with the faith that my journey from Oak Cliff, Texas was a chance to leave behind all the challenges I had known, the broken dreams and broken bodies I had en.
But when I found mylf back home one winter break, with my face planted in the floor, my hands tied behind my back and a burglar's gun presd to my head, I knew that even the best education couldn't save me.
I held on when I showed up at Lehman Brothers as an intern in 2008.
So hopeful that I called home to inform my family that we'd never be poor again.
But as I witnesd this temple of finance come crashing down before my eyes, I knew that even the best job couldn't save me.
I held on when I showed up in Washington DC as a young staffer,
who had heard a voice call out from Illinois, saying, "It's been a long time coming, but in this election, change has come to America."
But as the Congress ground to a halt and the country ripped at the ams and hope and change began to feel like a cruel joke, I knew that even the political cond coming could not save me.
I had knelt faithfully at the altar of the American Dream, praying to the gods of my time of success, and money, and power.
over and over again, midnight struck, and I opened my eyes to e that all of the gods were dead.
But over and over again, midnight struck, and I opened my eyes to e that all of the gods were dead.
And from that graveyard, I began the arch once more, not becau I was brave, but becau I knew that I would either believe or I would die.
What do Gerald to experience in college at his job and working for the government reinforce? the prevalence of doubt in his life
What does Gerald mean by the golds日记50个字
were dead? He couldn't find meaning in education, success, or power.
By going to college, he thought he would be able to escape from his problems.
So I took a p陌生的反义词
ilgrimage to yet another mecca, Harvard Business School --
this time, knowing that I could not simply accept the salvation that it claimed to offer.
No, I knew there'd be more work to do.
The work began in the dark corner of a crowded party, in the late night of an early, mirable Cambridge winter,
when three friends and I asked a question that young folks arching for something real have asked for a very long time: "What if we took a road trip?"
We didn't know where'd we go or how we'd get there, but we knew we had to do it.
Becau all our lives we yearned, as Jack Kerouac wrote, to "sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere," and go find out what everybody was doing all over the country.
So even though there were other voices who said that the risk was too great and the proof too thin, we went on anyhow.
We went on 8,000 miles across America in the summer of 2013, through the cow pastures of Montana, through the desolation of Detroit, through the swamps of New Orleans,
where we found and worked with men and women who were building small business that made purpo their bottom line. And having been trained at the West Point of capital小孩积食了怎么办
ism, this struck us as a revolutionary idea.
And this idea spread, growing into a nonprofit called MBAs Across America, a movement that landed me here on this stage today.
It spread becau we found a great hunger in our generation for purpo, for meaning.
It spread becau we found countless entrepreneurs in the nooks and crannies of America who were creating jobs and changing lives and who needed a little help.
But if I'm being honest, it also spread becau I fought to spread it.
There was no length to which I would not go to preach this gospel, to get more people to believe that we could bind the wounds of a broken country, one social business at a time.
But it was this journey of evangelism that led me to the rather different gospel that I've come to share with you today.
Why did the organization spread? It focud on purpo.
As a result of Gerald's road trip he found an idea he could believe in.
Video 4: Gospel of Doubt
It began one evening almost a year ago at the Muum of Natural History in New York City, at a gala for alumni of Harvard Business School.
Under a full-size replic悲戚
a of a whale, I sat with the titans of our time as they celebrated their peers and their good deeds. There was pride in a room where net worth and asts under management surpasd half a trillion dollars.
We looked over all that we had made, and it was good.
But it just so happened, two days later, I had to travel up the road to Harlem, where I found mylf sitting in an urban farm that had once been a vacant lot, listening to a man named Tony tell me of the kids that showed up there every day.
All of them lived below the poverty line.
Many of them carried all of their belongings in a backpack to avoid losing them in a homeless shelter.
Some of them came to Tony's program, called Harlem Grown, to get the only meal they had each day.
Tony told me that he started
pension, after 20 years as a cab driver.
started Harlem Grown with money from his pension
struggled for resources.
despite success, the program struggled
He told me that he didn't
didn't give himlf a salary
salary, becau, despite
