history talk

Martin Luther, a former monk, became one of the greatest reformers. He saw problems with the Catholic Church, such as the sale of indulgences and the buying of church offices. He challenged these practices and believed in the importance of the Bible and forgiveness from God. His goal was to bring about changes in the church through the Reformation. Hello and welcome to a new episode of History Talk. Today we will talk with Martin Luther himself about how he became one of the greatest performers. Hi Martin, how are you? I'm great, how about you? Me too. So let's start with some questions. I already know that you were a monk, but what did you do before that? I was born in Germany in Eisleben on November 10, 1483. My parents made me study law in Erfurt and I graduated in 1505. In the same year I joined the Augustiner Monastery and gave my life to God. Interesting, but could you tell us what actually led to the Reformation? So I just saw a lot of things that were wrong with the Catholic Church and their practices. Could you give us some examples? Okay, for example like the sale of letters of indulgence. These letters were made to forgive your sins for money and I just think that's not what God wants and it has nothing to do with God anymore, because when you get your mistake and you know what you've done wrong, God is going to forgive you. Another aspect is also that you could buy high church offices and you had a lot of power with these offices and most of those people just had a lot of money but had nothing to do with the church and didn't know anything about that and just abused their power. I get these points and let's move on to the next question. What inspired you to challenge the church's practices? So my motivation was my faith and belief in the importance of the Bible and that God is great and you should not fear him like most of the Catholic Church members said. But I also wanted to say that there were some times where I questioned God and kind of started to hate him because I thought he was strict and I had a lot of fear that I will go to hell. But that changed after I read the Bible like for real and kind of understood what God was trying to say because he is great and he will forgive everything. This was probably a very hard time for you. Let's move on. What specific changes did you hope to achieve through the Reformation?