throughout the Scarlet Letter, characters are constantly attempting to do God’s will, but fail because they try to take God too seriously. Hester is an unfaithful wife, and that is her fault, but ultimately God forgives and we should too. Though it is God’s will to forgive, the characters in Hawthorne’s book are overly ambitious on punishing her. Instead of letting her move on and admit that she was wrong, they have to constantly remind her about what she did.

What the Christian Bible Institute taught me is that Puritans during colonial times took everything very very seriously. Their fear of God and their very strong emotions caused them to act in severe ways towards those who they believed may have sinned or wronged God. They wanted so badly to build a perfect Christian civilization, and that caused them to reject others and isolate themselves, even though it is fulfilling God’s will to be evangelists and to reach out to those that need him. In all, it was fear of God and losing focus of what God’s real and true will is that caused them to build the society that they did.