Let's see if I can answer your questions. Remember, this is pure speculation since the Bible doesn't tell us one way or the other on this.
It's likely that all the animals were in some sort of hibernation mode. They obviously showed up to board the ark on God's command, and the Bible says that God (or an angel, I can't remember at the moment) closed the door of the ark and sealed it, so there were some very obvious miracles happening. It seems pretty reasonable to assume that God made sure that the animals didn't kill each other (or the humans) while they were trapped in a boat. They might have entered individual cages to keep everything seperate that ate meat too. God commanded Noah to bring extra animals of the species that people could eat, but He didn't make similar provisions for the animals, so I'm going to go with the idea that they simply didn't need to. This also answers how termites were able to be there - like other animals, they simply waited out the Flood.
Salty or fresh water? Well, let me give you a bigger picture answer for this one. Young Earth Creationist believe that our current Earth isn't the same as the one from before Noah's ark. Different in serious ways that science has no way of proving (because science has to start with the assumption that what we have no is the way it has always been). For example, the Bible states that it had never rained before the Flood - apparently there was 'water from the ground' (lots of springs? Mist? Dew? I have no idea). God changed the water-cycle of our planet at the time of the Flood so that now rain is a completely natural phenomena. So natural that we can't figure out how it would work differently.
We also would assume that the Flood brought about other huge, catestrophic changes - things that are still being felt today (such as earthquakes, volcanos, hurricanes, etc.). These are events that would not have ever existed in a 'perfect world' like the Garden of Eden, but were likely started when God re-shaped the Earth during the Flood. The geography of Earth was re-formed (probably causing the land-masses to split apart into the continents we know today). All sorts of consequences! Evolutionists see a lof the same geological events that YE Creationists do, but Evolutionists claim that they took a long time to reach the point that they are today (like the idea that it took millions of years for the American continents to split off from Europe and Asia and create the Atlantic Ocean) whereas YE Creationists would say that it happened quickly. Same event, just a different time-line.
So we have some things that were 'natural' events (like dividing continents) and others that were 'miraculous' events (like creating a water cycle). Okay, let's look at a couple of other things that the Bible says. First, in the New Earth, we know that the animals will return to their Eden-habits of eating only plants, not other animals. The Bible says that the Lion will eat straw like an ox, that a wolf will lay down beside a sheep, that a person can stick their hand in the nest of an asp and not get hurt. So at some point, either when humans first sinned, or while God was doing other major changes to the Earth during the Flood, God re-formed animals, making some of them carnivores. This gives precedence to the idea that God has changed the nature of animals at least once already. On top of this, in Revelation, the Bible says that along with 'no more pain, no more sorrow, no more darkness', there is also 'no more sea'. That's kind of a random thing to have 'no more of', isn't it? Well, there's two possible reasons for this - one is that the ocean has historically been a source of fear and danger for humans. It's only recently that people have found ways to safely travel across the ocean, after all! So a New Earth without a sea would have been a very positive thing for most of the history of humanity. But there's a second possibility for this and it goes back to the idea of salty vs. fresh water. Salt water is posionous to humans and most animals. So it seems possible that all the bodies of water will become fresh water in the New Earth. This would mean that there wouldn't be 'seas', but in a different way. If this is true, than it is possible that originally all waters were fresh waters until the Flood, at which point, like making carniverious animals, God changed the fish and mammals in those bodies of water to be able to handle the situation.
So my answer to 'Fresh or salty' during the Flood was...both, sort of. God had a direct hand in forming the Earth once the Flood was over and I think he made sure that the fish (and other aquadic life) ended up in the proper locations and with the proper biological equipment to handle the situation once it was all over.
Okay, since we've been talking about the Flood, let me point out what 'lesson for us today' exists in this story. What spiritual truth is a person supposed to learn from the story of Noah and the ark?
The lessons are: God takes care of His people. He always provides a way of escape for those who trust Him. But that way of escape may not always be fun.
It wasn't fun for Noah (imagine spending a hundred years building a boat on dry land when no one has ever seen rain before. How much do you think the people around Noah laughed at him? I'm betting a whole lot! But he dodgedly persisted and his faith was rewarded. He was saved. And his family with him. The ark was probably not much fun either (smelly, dark, and in constant motion), which is probably a metaphor for life in general, but he made it out to the other side to reach 'the promised land'.
Okay, well, I'll have you either read the story in Genesis of Noah's ark (Genesis), or, if you read this recently (which I kind of think you did), read this instead: It doesn't have anything to do with the discussion at hand, except to point out how God will always be there for us - and nothing can stop that fact.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
Legalism and Judgement
I wanted to mention the balance (which most people, myself included) have a hard time with regarding the pull between being too harsh vs. too lenient with sin. Since we just talked about homosexuality, this is a good example of where this might be applied. God sees (and Christians are called to see) the sin of homosexuality as 'abhorrent' and unacceptable. However, we are never to assume that such a practice is unforgivable or that the people doing such sin are somehow less worthy of love and acceptance (by God and by us) than any other human. Practicing homosexuality is no better or worse than bitterness or greed or pride or any other sin you can name. None of us are perfect and we are not God and should never place ourselves in the position to look down on anyone else's struggles.
This is a tough line to walk because we (Christians) should never be afraid to stand up and say 'This is wrong.', even when the world around us hates to hear that. Again, homosexuality is a perfect example of how the world doesn't want to hear Christians speak. If I tell a gay man that he is sinning, I open myself up to be prosecuted for a 'hate crime'. Saying that sin is sin shouldn't be wrong, but it is hard to not make it sound as if I find the person doing the sin as worth extra hatred. The groups that spew vile expressions of hatred towards the gay people are just as wrong as those who are being gay.
Legalism is the idea of following the letter of the law so close that you miss the heart behind it. Non-Christians often love the 'do not judge' verse of the Bible specifically because they think that the verse allows them to tell us that we can't point out when a person is sinning, when in fact the verse is warning people that when they do point out sin, they have to be very, very careful that they are neither being hypocrites nor legalistic. Christians are in fact encouraged to point out sin in the world around us, but we have to be sure that our own lives are up to the same level of scrutiny (and if a person thinks they are perfect in this regard, they are probably succumbing to the sin of pride!).
This is a tough line to walk because we (Christians) should never be afraid to stand up and say 'This is wrong.', even when the world around us hates to hear that. Again, homosexuality is a perfect example of how the world doesn't want to hear Christians speak. If I tell a gay man that he is sinning, I open myself up to be prosecuted for a 'hate crime'. Saying that sin is sin shouldn't be wrong, but it is hard to not make it sound as if I find the person doing the sin as worth extra hatred. The groups that spew vile expressions of hatred towards the gay people are just as wrong as those who are being gay.
Legalism is the idea of following the letter of the law so close that you miss the heart behind it. Non-Christians often love the 'do not judge' verse of the Bible specifically because they think that the verse allows them to tell us that we can't point out when a person is sinning, when in fact the verse is warning people that when they do point out sin, they have to be very, very careful that they are neither being hypocrites nor legalistic. Christians are in fact encouraged to point out sin in the world around us, but we have to be sure that our own lives are up to the same level of scrutiny (and if a person thinks they are perfect in this regard, they are probably succumbing to the sin of pride!).
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Bad Morals
Let me start to answer the question about being gay with a broader description of any sin, then focus in on that one in particular.
First, let me mention that there is a balance in Christianity between 'good deeds' and 'being saved by God's grace alone'. I mentioned earlier that having trust in Jesus' sacrifice is all you need to get to Heaven, but how does a person trust in that? It's not just empty words and not just a warm fuzzy feeling inside, it is faith. Faith, as I defined earlier, is an action, not just an emotion or intellectual agreement or empty words. If a person actually has faith in Jesus, they will act like they do. With the help of the Holy Spirit, a Christian will attempt to abstain from sinful behavior and will do other good things. I want to make this clear because the Bible is full of 'do this' and 'don't do that'. For the most part, these commands are dealing with the moral principles (I'll tell you about the exceptions some other time). As I'd written before, God sets up the fundamental principles of morals deep within our hearts or every person should know them, but that's not the most reliable method of getting people to do the right thing. The Bible is God's way of being very clear on exactly what He expects of His people and how we ought to go about it.
God set morals up within people, but there are multiple things that can go wrong with that. The most common problem is a 'seared conscious', which is what happens when someone is exposed to something nasty often enough. It's kind of like calluses on your fingers. You grow hardened skin in areas that you rub frequently and as the skin toughens, it loses sensitivity. When a person is exposed to sin frequently enough, whether through their own choice or the choices of someone else, they end to become numb to the experience. This is why some people are horrified by the level of violence in movies and games. A person who is 'used to' that kind of thing doesn't see anything wrong with it, but for someone who isn't used to it, it can be shocking how strong the gore is. Or how some people have no problem with swear words - they hear or use them so often that they don't even register it any more, but someone who isn't used to that kind of language hears it right away and it makes them uncomfortable. It's the same idea with sin. A person may start out making excuses to themselves about how their particular sin is okay, but if they keep on doing it and refusing to listen to their conscious or God's whispered rebuke, after a while, they can't hear either and it becomes easier and easier to slip deeper into worse sin. A good example might be drugs. I don't think too many people start out on the really hard-core major drugs. They start with perhaps smoking and alcohol, then some of the 'lighter' drugs and then... you get the idea.
In addition to a seared consciousness, people can also dispute things that are...well...silly. Like drinking caffeine. Some people argue that, because it isn't really healthy to drink caffeine, it is violating God's command to 'treat our bodies as a temple of God'. Now, I'll freely admit to being on the side of things that disagrees with this idea, but I do see why those who believe it feel the way they do. The Bible gives humans a whole lot of leeway when it comes to a huge range of things. There are lots of grey areas - lots of room for people to have different opinions. That's one of the reasons that there are so many different types of Christian churches out there. One group finds something and is convinced they are right, but another group of people disagree. They still both believe the same basic fundamental truths, but in a minor area, they have a disagreement. So one church group may think that very loud and active singing is okay and another thinks it should be quiet and meditative, and neither group is non-Christian because of that.
So, while there is a lot of room for disputing things that the Bible doesn't specifically address, some areas are totally clear. An example of this would be homosexuality. Your assignment today is to read Romans 1, which is probably the best chapter for this idea. Let me also write out the Old Testament verses for this:
"If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination." (Leviticus 20:13).
"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you." (Leviticus 18:22-24).
As you can see, there's not exactly a whole lot of wiggle room in these verses. God pretty much says 'No!' and for a Christian, that's pretty much that. Why would anyone dispute that? Well, there are several reasons - the strongest being that the people who are arguing about it are the ones wanting to practice this sin! If people are not Christian, then they don't care what the Bible has to say about a subject either.
There are two main arguments that people use to support 'gay-rights', one of which is: People have been shown to be genetically predisposed to being gay. The argument then goes, if a person is born that way, then it isn't their 'fault' and thus we shouldn't condemn them for it any more than we should condemn a man for having different color skin. It equates gays with other minorities, which is a smart move since that's still a hot topic in this country and swings a large segment of the population into their camp. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that humans can be predisposed to all sorts of things, but that ultimately it it still a CHOICE. For example, in my family, I probably am genetically at risk of being an alcoholic. I have several family members that were (before they died from it). But would that be a good excuse if I became one myself? No it wouldn't because it would still be my choice to drink. Lots of people are genetically predisposed to be obese, but no one claims that they are FORCED to be that way. The genetic predisposition increases the likelihood of a person going a certain route, but only if they choose to make the steps down that path. The same thing with being gay. A person may have a genetic tendency to go that direction, but it is still a choice and as such, not the same thing as being born with dark skin.
The second argument is the one you brought up which was 'but they love each other'. The problem with that is that it tries to side-step the whole choice issue by bringing up an emotional argument. If a person says 'well, I love my thirteen-year old daughter and she's old enough to know what she wants', is that a valid reason for accepting incest? (Yuck) Or what about a person who 'loves' their dog? (again, yuck). Are either of these people forced to act on their emotions? No, they still have a choice. Or, to put it perhaps in a different way, by saying that emotions are more important than anything else, you could then argue that anyone who is angry has a legitamate right to kill whoever they are angry with. Anger and hate are just as real as love, so why don't they get to express their feelings through actions? It's because we know that sometimes people feel things that they should not express and should actively work to oppress.
So the over-riding issues with homosexuality is that the 'pro-gay' people are doing their best to side-step the fact that such a life-style is a choice - one which they very much want everyone else to agree with so they can justify their sinful actions. The vast majority of people who agree with this stance probably haven't thought through what this actually means and don't care what the Bible has to say about the issue. God call it sin and tell us not to do it.
Whew, long post on this one! Hopefully this helped. Feel free to ask for clarification if it didn't.
First, let me mention that there is a balance in Christianity between 'good deeds' and 'being saved by God's grace alone'. I mentioned earlier that having trust in Jesus' sacrifice is all you need to get to Heaven, but how does a person trust in that? It's not just empty words and not just a warm fuzzy feeling inside, it is faith. Faith, as I defined earlier, is an action, not just an emotion or intellectual agreement or empty words. If a person actually has faith in Jesus, they will act like they do. With the help of the Holy Spirit, a Christian will attempt to abstain from sinful behavior and will do other good things. I want to make this clear because the Bible is full of 'do this' and 'don't do that'. For the most part, these commands are dealing with the moral principles (I'll tell you about the exceptions some other time). As I'd written before, God sets up the fundamental principles of morals deep within our hearts or every person should know them, but that's not the most reliable method of getting people to do the right thing. The Bible is God's way of being very clear on exactly what He expects of His people and how we ought to go about it.
God set morals up within people, but there are multiple things that can go wrong with that. The most common problem is a 'seared conscious', which is what happens when someone is exposed to something nasty often enough. It's kind of like calluses on your fingers. You grow hardened skin in areas that you rub frequently and as the skin toughens, it loses sensitivity. When a person is exposed to sin frequently enough, whether through their own choice or the choices of someone else, they end to become numb to the experience. This is why some people are horrified by the level of violence in movies and games. A person who is 'used to' that kind of thing doesn't see anything wrong with it, but for someone who isn't used to it, it can be shocking how strong the gore is. Or how some people have no problem with swear words - they hear or use them so often that they don't even register it any more, but someone who isn't used to that kind of language hears it right away and it makes them uncomfortable. It's the same idea with sin. A person may start out making excuses to themselves about how their particular sin is okay, but if they keep on doing it and refusing to listen to their conscious or God's whispered rebuke, after a while, they can't hear either and it becomes easier and easier to slip deeper into worse sin. A good example might be drugs. I don't think too many people start out on the really hard-core major drugs. They start with perhaps smoking and alcohol, then some of the 'lighter' drugs and then... you get the idea.
In addition to a seared consciousness, people can also dispute things that are...well...silly. Like drinking caffeine. Some people argue that, because it isn't really healthy to drink caffeine, it is violating God's command to 'treat our bodies as a temple of God'. Now, I'll freely admit to being on the side of things that disagrees with this idea, but I do see why those who believe it feel the way they do. The Bible gives humans a whole lot of leeway when it comes to a huge range of things. There are lots of grey areas - lots of room for people to have different opinions. That's one of the reasons that there are so many different types of Christian churches out there. One group finds something and is convinced they are right, but another group of people disagree. They still both believe the same basic fundamental truths, but in a minor area, they have a disagreement. So one church group may think that very loud and active singing is okay and another thinks it should be quiet and meditative, and neither group is non-Christian because of that.
So, while there is a lot of room for disputing things that the Bible doesn't specifically address, some areas are totally clear. An example of this would be homosexuality. Your assignment today is to read Romans 1, which is probably the best chapter for this idea. Let me also write out the Old Testament verses for this:
"If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination." (Leviticus 20:13).
"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you." (Leviticus 18:22-24).
As you can see, there's not exactly a whole lot of wiggle room in these verses. God pretty much says 'No!' and for a Christian, that's pretty much that. Why would anyone dispute that? Well, there are several reasons - the strongest being that the people who are arguing about it are the ones wanting to practice this sin! If people are not Christian, then they don't care what the Bible has to say about a subject either.
There are two main arguments that people use to support 'gay-rights', one of which is: People have been shown to be genetically predisposed to being gay. The argument then goes, if a person is born that way, then it isn't their 'fault' and thus we shouldn't condemn them for it any more than we should condemn a man for having different color skin. It equates gays with other minorities, which is a smart move since that's still a hot topic in this country and swings a large segment of the population into their camp. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that humans can be predisposed to all sorts of things, but that ultimately it it still a CHOICE. For example, in my family, I probably am genetically at risk of being an alcoholic. I have several family members that were (before they died from it). But would that be a good excuse if I became one myself? No it wouldn't because it would still be my choice to drink. Lots of people are genetically predisposed to be obese, but no one claims that they are FORCED to be that way. The genetic predisposition increases the likelihood of a person going a certain route, but only if they choose to make the steps down that path. The same thing with being gay. A person may have a genetic tendency to go that direction, but it is still a choice and as such, not the same thing as being born with dark skin.
The second argument is the one you brought up which was 'but they love each other'. The problem with that is that it tries to side-step the whole choice issue by bringing up an emotional argument. If a person says 'well, I love my thirteen-year old daughter and she's old enough to know what she wants', is that a valid reason for accepting incest? (Yuck) Or what about a person who 'loves' their dog? (again, yuck). Are either of these people forced to act on their emotions? No, they still have a choice. Or, to put it perhaps in a different way, by saying that emotions are more important than anything else, you could then argue that anyone who is angry has a legitamate right to kill whoever they are angry with. Anger and hate are just as real as love, so why don't they get to express their feelings through actions? It's because we know that sometimes people feel things that they should not express and should actively work to oppress.
So the over-riding issues with homosexuality is that the 'pro-gay' people are doing their best to side-step the fact that such a life-style is a choice - one which they very much want everyone else to agree with so they can justify their sinful actions. The vast majority of people who agree with this stance probably haven't thought through what this actually means and don't care what the Bible has to say about the issue. God call it sin and tell us not to do it.
Whew, long post on this one! Hopefully this helped. Feel free to ask for clarification if it didn't.
Monday, July 1, 2013
What is the likelihood that the Bible has copying errors?
Okay, so, you haven't asked this, but I thought I'd bring it up anyway. Since you haven't asked a new question, I figured it wouldn't hurt to talk about one of the many things atheists bring up as an excuse for why they don't trust the Bible.
The argument goes: Everyone knows that copies of copies of copies become degraded from the original. And humans are prone to errors. Anyone who's ever had to copy down a piece of text knows that even when a person is being careful, typos can slip in (or even deliberate errors, if the copyist has a motive to change the message). A person playing 'Telephone', whispering a message along through a string of people is another example of how you can start with one thing, then end up with something completely different. The argument then goes on to say that even if the Bible was originally true, what's to say that what we have now is anywhere close to the same thing that was originally written?
The argument goes: Everyone knows that copies of copies of copies become degraded from the original. And humans are prone to errors. Anyone who's ever had to copy down a piece of text knows that even when a person is being careful, typos can slip in (or even deliberate errors, if the copyist has a motive to change the message). A person playing 'Telephone', whispering a message along through a string of people is another example of how you can start with one thing, then end up with something completely different. The argument then goes on to say that even if the Bible was originally true, what's to say that what we have now is anywhere close to the same thing that was originally written?
Tuesday
Assignment for day 7
Okay, today's assignment is going to be an application question. Here's a scenario and I'd like you to answer some questions about it. The purpose of this is to help me evaluate whether you understand what I've been trying to say for the last week.
So, let's say there was an older woman who died. She'd been a Sunday School teacher at church for most of her life. She successfully raised three great kids. She had a gambling problem her whole life and never quite managed to beat it. She died in debt, but was otherwise happy and considered a very nice woman by friends and neighbors, although she was estranged from her ex-husband. Based on this short biography, did she go to Heaven or not? Why or why not?
Okay, today's assignment is going to be an application question. Here's a scenario and I'd like you to answer some questions about it. The purpose of this is to help me evaluate whether you understand what I've been trying to say for the last week.
So, let's say there was an older woman who died. She'd been a Sunday School teacher at church for most of her life. She successfully raised three great kids. She had a gambling problem her whole life and never quite managed to beat it. She died in debt, but was otherwise happy and considered a very nice woman by friends and neighbors, although she was estranged from her ex-husband. Based on this short biography, did she go to Heaven or not? Why or why not?
Thursday, June 20, 2013
What does God Look Like?
What does God look like? What do angels and demons look like?
Since these questions deal with spiritual beings, I lumped them together.
First, God is a spirit. This is different from a ghost and so isn't really what you probably think of when you think of a 'spirit'. Most people probably imagine something like an invisible, incorporeal (non-physical) being, but one that is otherwise fairly similar to something in the known world. Like a translucent human. That's not a very accurate image of God though, so I kind of don't like it, but it may be as close as we can get to having a metal picture of God. We tend to think in visual images and it is difficult to think outside those boxes. God is not defined by a physical body or anything else that our human eyes can see. He doesn't have five fingers and toes - He doesn't have a physical body. Everything physical was made by Him, but He's beyond that. So 'what does He look like' is not exactly easy to answer.
There were some people who encountered God in the Bible and from their description, it might be like looking at lightning. Or like being on the surface of the sun where the very air is so filled with light and heat that you'd be burned to a crisp just by being close. Because of this, when God and people interact in the Bible, it is almost always with God taking on the form of something else. Like He spoke to Moses from fire and talked to Abraham through dreams. The people who found themselves in God's 'physical' presence were often there 'in the spirit' (so not in their physical body, somehow) and usually acted as if they were pretty sure they were about to die. The descriptions of such encounters vary, but there is usually a whole lot of blinding light.
Angels and demons are likewise not confined to a physical form like we are. They can almost be thought of as shape-shifters. The Bible says that sometimes people encounter angels and think they are regular people. And it says that demons 'disguise themselves as angels of light' (so, in the unlikely event that you ever saw an angel, be very, very doubtful that it is an angel and not a demon before you trust it!) The Bible several times admonishes the people not to trust 'spirits' and to test anything that claims to be from God (which is done by evaluating its words and actions very, very carefully). Anyway, we don't know exactly what they naturally look like, but when there were encounters with angels in the Bible, people were usually either fooled into thinking they were normal people or they were absolutely terrified by the glowing figures. And there were no cute fluffy wings to be found anywhere.
So, getting back to God, the answer to you question is that God is pretty much indescribable.
In fact, one of the 10 commandments (the ultimate law from God) was that the people never try to make a image of Him to worship. He probably made that rule because people tend to start worshiping the statue/painting/whatever itself rather than who it was supposed to represent and because nothing they'd create could be even close to accurate.
Now I get down to the exception to this. As I'd mentioned in a previous post, Christianity teaches that God took on human form in the person of Jesus. And if that's true, then God CAN be physically described by describing what Jesus looked like. Sadly, the Bible doesn't give us a detailed list of 'he was this tall and had this color of eyes, etc.'. In fact, the only real description of Jesus in the Bible comes from a prophecy of Him from the Old Testament that says 'There was nothing about his appearance to make him attractive'. So, we can be pretty sure Jesus wasn't a super-model. Beyond that, we can also have a few pretty good guesses. He was Jewish and lived in Israel, so he probably had dark hair, dark eyes, and bronze-ish skin tones. He was a carpenter by trade, so was also likely in good physical shape since that was a labor-intensive job. So all the lovely paintings of Jesus out there? Usually of him being blue-eyed and very pale skinned? Complete baloney.
But, as long as you realize that our mental pictures of God and Jesus are wrong, it doesn't hurt much to have some sort of vague image in mind when you think of Him.
The Bible reading assignment today is to read Ezekiel 1. Normally I won't assign two different passages to look up, but since there is a second really good one, I'm going to also add to this and have you look up Revelation 1:9-18. When you read this, expect to have a whole lot of trouble trying to visualize what Ezekiel is trying to describe. Most of the chapter deals with some sort of creature/angel/spiritual being and only at the end do we get something about God, but the point is that when you read this, it is confusing and you get the impression that the writer was really having a hard time trying to tell us what he saw. There are a lot of 'it was like' phrases because he probably couldn't find the right words for it. In the end, you sort of conclude that it is nearly impossible to describe what they actually saw!
Since these questions deal with spiritual beings, I lumped them together.
First, God is a spirit. This is different from a ghost and so isn't really what you probably think of when you think of a 'spirit'. Most people probably imagine something like an invisible, incorporeal (non-physical) being, but one that is otherwise fairly similar to something in the known world. Like a translucent human. That's not a very accurate image of God though, so I kind of don't like it, but it may be as close as we can get to having a metal picture of God. We tend to think in visual images and it is difficult to think outside those boxes. God is not defined by a physical body or anything else that our human eyes can see. He doesn't have five fingers and toes - He doesn't have a physical body. Everything physical was made by Him, but He's beyond that. So 'what does He look like' is not exactly easy to answer.
There were some people who encountered God in the Bible and from their description, it might be like looking at lightning. Or like being on the surface of the sun where the very air is so filled with light and heat that you'd be burned to a crisp just by being close. Because of this, when God and people interact in the Bible, it is almost always with God taking on the form of something else. Like He spoke to Moses from fire and talked to Abraham through dreams. The people who found themselves in God's 'physical' presence were often there 'in the spirit' (so not in their physical body, somehow) and usually acted as if they were pretty sure they were about to die. The descriptions of such encounters vary, but there is usually a whole lot of blinding light.
Angels and demons are likewise not confined to a physical form like we are. They can almost be thought of as shape-shifters. The Bible says that sometimes people encounter angels and think they are regular people. And it says that demons 'disguise themselves as angels of light' (so, in the unlikely event that you ever saw an angel, be very, very doubtful that it is an angel and not a demon before you trust it!) The Bible several times admonishes the people not to trust 'spirits' and to test anything that claims to be from God (which is done by evaluating its words and actions very, very carefully). Anyway, we don't know exactly what they naturally look like, but when there were encounters with angels in the Bible, people were usually either fooled into thinking they were normal people or they were absolutely terrified by the glowing figures. And there were no cute fluffy wings to be found anywhere.
So, getting back to God, the answer to you question is that God is pretty much indescribable.
In fact, one of the 10 commandments (the ultimate law from God) was that the people never try to make a image of Him to worship. He probably made that rule because people tend to start worshiping the statue/painting/whatever itself rather than who it was supposed to represent and because nothing they'd create could be even close to accurate.
Now I get down to the exception to this. As I'd mentioned in a previous post, Christianity teaches that God took on human form in the person of Jesus. And if that's true, then God CAN be physically described by describing what Jesus looked like. Sadly, the Bible doesn't give us a detailed list of 'he was this tall and had this color of eyes, etc.'. In fact, the only real description of Jesus in the Bible comes from a prophecy of Him from the Old Testament that says 'There was nothing about his appearance to make him attractive'. So, we can be pretty sure Jesus wasn't a super-model. Beyond that, we can also have a few pretty good guesses. He was Jewish and lived in Israel, so he probably had dark hair, dark eyes, and bronze-ish skin tones. He was a carpenter by trade, so was also likely in good physical shape since that was a labor-intensive job. So all the lovely paintings of Jesus out there? Usually of him being blue-eyed and very pale skinned? Complete baloney.
But, as long as you realize that our mental pictures of God and Jesus are wrong, it doesn't hurt much to have some sort of vague image in mind when you think of Him.
The Bible reading assignment today is to read Ezekiel 1. Normally I won't assign two different passages to look up, but since there is a second really good one, I'm going to also add to this and have you look up Revelation 1:9-18. When you read this, expect to have a whole lot of trouble trying to visualize what Ezekiel is trying to describe. Most of the chapter deals with some sort of creature/angel/spiritual being and only at the end do we get something about God, but the point is that when you read this, it is confusing and you get the impression that the writer was really having a hard time trying to tell us what he saw. There are a lot of 'it was like' phrases because he probably couldn't find the right words for it. In the end, you sort of conclude that it is nearly impossible to describe what they actually saw!
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Is all Religion Man-made?
Are all 'religions' man made?
That's actually a difficult question to answer since it depends so much on both what you are actually asking and what you define things as. Short answer: both 'yes' and 'no'. (That's totally unhelpful, isn't it?) I guess I'll start with clarifying some definitions.
First, I need to define what I think you are asking. You could be asking (1) Are the rituals and ceremonies used today to honor God 'man-made' (2) Is there any evidence that there is a spiritual reality? (3) How can a person believe that Christianity is different from, say, the myths of the Greek gods?
If I define 'religion' as a set of rituals or ceremonies that reflect man-kind's efforts to reach up to God, then I would say that pretty much everything you think of as religion is man-made. People have created sets of procedures (like the order of a church service) which they've found assists them in somehow honoring God or knowing Him, but these things aren't required by God. Take prayer as an example. The Bible says we should do it and it tells us not to do it in a 'showy fashion' (don't pray so that you can be told what a great person you are by other people). Although we have multiple examples of people talking to God in the Bible, there are no other commandments about it. God doesn't require eyes closed, hands folded, kneeling on the floor or head bowed. None of the 'ceremony' of prayer is necessary. However, many people find closing the eyes helps them focus and not be distracted by other things, so that's become the traditional way to do it. Traditions happen because they work!
Religion, in this sense, has come about because of people wanting to express their love to God or their fear of God or otherwise want some way to show Him honor in some way. When someone finds something that works, other people do the same thing (sometimes finding it works for them too...and sometimes not). That's why we have the church services set up the way we do. Someone found that it worked, a bunch of other people agreed and ta-da!
BUT this isn't true for everything. First, I freely admit that I am biased in this. If I didn't deep-down honestly trust that Christianity was more than just a fairy-tale, I wouldn't be a Christian. In fact, my story of becoming a Christian was due to researching and discovering the uncomfortable fact that I found it took more faith to believe that it wasn't true than faith to believe that it was! This is one of those things that sets Christianity apart, in my opinion, from other belief systems. You can dig down into its history, its philosophy, its logic, and find a very sold foundation that holds up to scrutiny.
I'm digressing - I don't think your question was about Christianity in particular, so I'll skip that for now.
We've dealt with the ritualized parts of 'religion'. That is the 'yes' part of the answer I gave you. Now we'll move onto the 'no' part - and this will be tricky. In fact, tricky might not even cover it, this is going to be down right complicated, but I can't think of how to simplify it, so I'm sorry for that. This gets into serious philosophy.
Alright, if I take your question and re-phrase it, what this seems to actually be asking is whether or not there are 'truths' about reality which reach beyond pure science or not. The question asks whether some spiritual reality exists or not independent of whether anyone believes it or not. Another way to ask this would be to ask if moral truths are real or not. If religion is completely man-made, then morality (right and wrong) is also completely made up - it is arbitrary. If religion is completely man-made, then absolutely nothing about life can ever be meaningful, have impact. Justice does not exist, neither does the idea of fairness or goodness or even love.
Why do I say this? Because if God does not exist, then there is nothing that can say if something is good or not. Without a 'higher authority' to set a standard, then the concept of right and wrong is just a preference and an opinion. Take murder, since it is an easy one to grasp. Is it wrong to kill your baby sister? I would hope that your first thought would be that yes, it is wrong. Why do you think that? Is is just because the people around you are telling you that it is wrong? Okay, let's eliminate that. Let's say that your teachers at school tell you that she's a distraction at home so you should get rid of her. Dan and Angela also let you know that it would be okay with them and there would be no consequences if you killed her. You can do so and get away with it. Is it now okay to kill her? Again, you'll probably say that no, it's not suddenly okay. Why? Why should it be a 'truth' that killing you little sister is wrong when there would be no bad consequences for doing so? From an evolutionary stance, it could probably improve your odds of being successful (your parents would spend less of their time and attention and resources on someone else!). But this isn't a preference where you prefer not to kill her in the same way that you prefer to eat chocolate over broccoli - you know it is wrong just because deep down you know it and whether you could get away with it or even benefit from it doesn't change that fact.
Why? Why is this true?
This is a problem for a strictly evolutionary idea of humans. Scientists have posed all sorts of ideas of why we have morals, why we think certain things are wrong. Everything from weird pack-mentality to instincts, but no one has ever been able to point to anything 'physical' for this. There is no 'do not murder' gene or a 'this is fair' chemical combination. From a strictly evolutionary view, the only thing 'good' is that which furthers an individual's chances of passing its genes on to another generation. And that's it. From that standpoint, rape should be the highest good! So why isn't it? The only answer scientists can seem to come up with is "We are this way, therefore, we must have evolved this way, therefore it must be evolutionarily favored." Sounds like flawed reasoning to me.
Humans all have an inate sense of what is right. None of us completely live up to that standard, but we all know it exists. Where does that standard come from?
If you include back in the idea of God, then the problem is solved. We have morality because God is moral. He declares that certain things are good and right and that standard is there whether a person believes in it or not, or whether a person acts like it is there or not. Murder then is wrong even if a person kills another person, no matter what excuse they have for it or whether anyone else on the planet thinks it is wrong or not. (We could discuss 'special circumstances' for this, if you wish in a separate topic - for now, just look at the big picture).
The problem with this whole thing comes down to the fact that these ideas are not nice, neat, tidy 'facts' like Gravity. How do you measure justice? People have been trying to do that for centuries! It's why we have law enforcement and courts and such. I cannot 'prove' with a tidy scientific formula that justice is a 'real' concept, but we both know it is still real.
You can stand up and say that spiritual and moral 'truths' exist separate from whatever any human has to say about them and, as such, are definitely NOT man-made (because if they were man-made, then we could re-define what is right and wrong whenever we wanted). So, in this sense, the answer to your question is 'no', not all religions are man-made because in Christianity, the foundational 'truths' about reality are simply declarations that, like gravity, are true whether a person believes in them or not.
Okay, I'm not sure I wrote this out in a fashion that is very clear, but I'll try to summarize. First, the 'ritualized' parts of religions are mostly man-made (but not necessarily bad things). The non-ritualized ideas behind religion - that there is truth in reality that originates outside of human opinion- is not man-made, because, like science, it holds up to investigation, even if, unlike science, it his hard to measure and put in nice little boxes.
Did that even get close to answering what you were asking?
That's actually a difficult question to answer since it depends so much on both what you are actually asking and what you define things as. Short answer: both 'yes' and 'no'. (That's totally unhelpful, isn't it?) I guess I'll start with clarifying some definitions.
First, I need to define what I think you are asking. You could be asking (1) Are the rituals and ceremonies used today to honor God 'man-made' (2) Is there any evidence that there is a spiritual reality? (3) How can a person believe that Christianity is different from, say, the myths of the Greek gods?
If I define 'religion' as a set of rituals or ceremonies that reflect man-kind's efforts to reach up to God, then I would say that pretty much everything you think of as religion is man-made. People have created sets of procedures (like the order of a church service) which they've found assists them in somehow honoring God or knowing Him, but these things aren't required by God. Take prayer as an example. The Bible says we should do it and it tells us not to do it in a 'showy fashion' (don't pray so that you can be told what a great person you are by other people). Although we have multiple examples of people talking to God in the Bible, there are no other commandments about it. God doesn't require eyes closed, hands folded, kneeling on the floor or head bowed. None of the 'ceremony' of prayer is necessary. However, many people find closing the eyes helps them focus and not be distracted by other things, so that's become the traditional way to do it. Traditions happen because they work!
Religion, in this sense, has come about because of people wanting to express their love to God or their fear of God or otherwise want some way to show Him honor in some way. When someone finds something that works, other people do the same thing (sometimes finding it works for them too...and sometimes not). That's why we have the church services set up the way we do. Someone found that it worked, a bunch of other people agreed and ta-da!
BUT this isn't true for everything. First, I freely admit that I am biased in this. If I didn't deep-down honestly trust that Christianity was more than just a fairy-tale, I wouldn't be a Christian. In fact, my story of becoming a Christian was due to researching and discovering the uncomfortable fact that I found it took more faith to believe that it wasn't true than faith to believe that it was! This is one of those things that sets Christianity apart, in my opinion, from other belief systems. You can dig down into its history, its philosophy, its logic, and find a very sold foundation that holds up to scrutiny.
I'm digressing - I don't think your question was about Christianity in particular, so I'll skip that for now.
We've dealt with the ritualized parts of 'religion'. That is the 'yes' part of the answer I gave you. Now we'll move onto the 'no' part - and this will be tricky. In fact, tricky might not even cover it, this is going to be down right complicated, but I can't think of how to simplify it, so I'm sorry for that. This gets into serious philosophy.
Alright, if I take your question and re-phrase it, what this seems to actually be asking is whether or not there are 'truths' about reality which reach beyond pure science or not. The question asks whether some spiritual reality exists or not independent of whether anyone believes it or not. Another way to ask this would be to ask if moral truths are real or not. If religion is completely man-made, then morality (right and wrong) is also completely made up - it is arbitrary. If religion is completely man-made, then absolutely nothing about life can ever be meaningful, have impact. Justice does not exist, neither does the idea of fairness or goodness or even love.
Why do I say this? Because if God does not exist, then there is nothing that can say if something is good or not. Without a 'higher authority' to set a standard, then the concept of right and wrong is just a preference and an opinion. Take murder, since it is an easy one to grasp. Is it wrong to kill your baby sister? I would hope that your first thought would be that yes, it is wrong. Why do you think that? Is is just because the people around you are telling you that it is wrong? Okay, let's eliminate that. Let's say that your teachers at school tell you that she's a distraction at home so you should get rid of her. Dan and Angela also let you know that it would be okay with them and there would be no consequences if you killed her. You can do so and get away with it. Is it now okay to kill her? Again, you'll probably say that no, it's not suddenly okay. Why? Why should it be a 'truth' that killing you little sister is wrong when there would be no bad consequences for doing so? From an evolutionary stance, it could probably improve your odds of being successful (your parents would spend less of their time and attention and resources on someone else!). But this isn't a preference where you prefer not to kill her in the same way that you prefer to eat chocolate over broccoli - you know it is wrong just because deep down you know it and whether you could get away with it or even benefit from it doesn't change that fact.
Why? Why is this true?
This is a problem for a strictly evolutionary idea of humans. Scientists have posed all sorts of ideas of why we have morals, why we think certain things are wrong. Everything from weird pack-mentality to instincts, but no one has ever been able to point to anything 'physical' for this. There is no 'do not murder' gene or a 'this is fair' chemical combination. From a strictly evolutionary view, the only thing 'good' is that which furthers an individual's chances of passing its genes on to another generation. And that's it. From that standpoint, rape should be the highest good! So why isn't it? The only answer scientists can seem to come up with is "We are this way, therefore, we must have evolved this way, therefore it must be evolutionarily favored." Sounds like flawed reasoning to me.
Humans all have an inate sense of what is right. None of us completely live up to that standard, but we all know it exists. Where does that standard come from?
If you include back in the idea of God, then the problem is solved. We have morality because God is moral. He declares that certain things are good and right and that standard is there whether a person believes in it or not, or whether a person acts like it is there or not. Murder then is wrong even if a person kills another person, no matter what excuse they have for it or whether anyone else on the planet thinks it is wrong or not. (We could discuss 'special circumstances' for this, if you wish in a separate topic - for now, just look at the big picture).
The problem with this whole thing comes down to the fact that these ideas are not nice, neat, tidy 'facts' like Gravity. How do you measure justice? People have been trying to do that for centuries! It's why we have law enforcement and courts and such. I cannot 'prove' with a tidy scientific formula that justice is a 'real' concept, but we both know it is still real.
You can stand up and say that spiritual and moral 'truths' exist separate from whatever any human has to say about them and, as such, are definitely NOT man-made (because if they were man-made, then we could re-define what is right and wrong whenever we wanted). So, in this sense, the answer to your question is 'no', not all religions are man-made because in Christianity, the foundational 'truths' about reality are simply declarations that, like gravity, are true whether a person believes in them or not.
Okay, I'm not sure I wrote this out in a fashion that is very clear, but I'll try to summarize. First, the 'ritualized' parts of religions are mostly man-made (but not necessarily bad things). The non-ritualized ideas behind religion - that there is truth in reality that originates outside of human opinion- is not man-made, because, like science, it holds up to investigation, even if, unlike science, it his hard to measure and put in nice little boxes.
Did that even get close to answering what you were asking?
Sunday, June 9, 2013
7th commandment
Do not steal.
What does this mean?
What is the Biblical response to stealing?
Lev. 6:1-5, Ex. 22:1-4
What else might fall under this category? Kidnapping?
What about this:
Malachi 3:8-12
What about 'grey areas' such as downloading bootleg videos? What other 'grey areas' exist?
What about gossip and slander? They can rob a man of their reputation.
What does this mean?
What is the Biblical response to stealing?
Lev. 6:1-5, Ex. 22:1-4
What else might fall under this category? Kidnapping?
What about this:
Malachi 3:8-12
What about 'grey areas' such as downloading bootleg videos? What other 'grey areas' exist?
What about gossip and slander? They can rob a man of their reputation.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Intro for Peyton
Peyton,
Greetings! :-) I have never done something like this so am feeling this will be an awkward introduction post, but I suppose that's okay. We'll see how this 'religion exploration class' idea works as we go along.
So, I guess I should start out with a sort of vague idea of how I see this working and what I'd expect from you. Okay, so, we'll start with your questions (which Angela sent to me), going through them one at a time. I intend to post the answer to one of them (and they'll be pretty wordy answers since I'll try to answer them in a complete fashion - the length of this e-mail will give you some idea of how I can ramble on and on...), then we'll discuss it in a question/answer format (to make sure it is thoroughly answered) before moving on to the next question. I would expect that as we go you'll come up with further questions that, instead of being answered in the discussion, will merit waiting to be answered as a full topic by itself. To organize ourselves, I think the Titles of our separate posts ought to be consistant. So for example, the first question I'll answer (to be posted next Monday) will be 'If the Universe is so vast, why should we think God would notice or care about humans?'. I'll set the Title of the Post as something like this:
Q1: Size of Universe
And when you respond (whether it is a question or comment), please put something like:
Q1 - (whatever else you want to put in here).
This way we can sort of figure out what we're talking about when we have multiple topics going and keep the threads of conversation connected easier. If it turns out that things are very straighforward and we don't need to do anything like this to keep it straight, then we can drop this format, but for now, let's try it.
In addition to the discussion, I'm going to ask you to do some Bible reading. The reason for this is that when thinking over the idea for this class, I came to two realizations - first: it's going to be a whole lot more work for me than for you to run this discussion. A single question from you may take me a few hours worth of research and typing to answer properly. I don't mind that, but think it's only fair to balance that out by requiring you to do a bit of 'research' on your own. The Bible reading I'll assign will be short (like at maximum a couple of pages), so it shouldn't be too much of a hardship for you to do this. My second reason for assigning this will be found in the logic behind the idea that you don't know what you don't know. In other words, you won't have any idea whether you agree with what Christianity teaches unless you know what it teaches! Since I have no idea what you might have been taught before, I'm going to assume that it isn't much of anything (except maybe a few basic 'fable-style' Bible stories). Because I don't expect you've read the Bible before, I would expect it to be confusing and spawn more questions. That's a good thing and the final reason for assigning reading. It'll open up the chance for further discussion.
Now onto schedule. I'll post on, Monday, June 24th, the answer to the first question in our discussion. You are then expected to get on Tumblr on Monday and read what I've written (and give it some thought LOL). At the end of the post, I'll attach a small 'assigned reading' (and maybe some explanation about the reading, if I think you may need it). My suggestion to you is to read both what I've written and the Bible passage with a pen and notebook at hand and jot down anything that occurs to you as you read. Is something confusing or weird or illogical or otherwise makes you wonder? Make a note of it.
On Tuesday, you will be expected to respond. It doesn't have to be long (there's no word limit), but I do expect it to be honest and thoughtful. Also, since this is a school-thing, I'll request that you attempt to use proper grammar (no chat-speak abbreviations). I'm not exactly going to be grading you on your English, so this doesn't have to be perfect, just keep in mind that an effort towards good communication skills would be wise practice.
On Wed. I'll write back, answering questions (depending on how many questions you have, and how much explanation is needed will determine how this plays out. If you have a lot of questions that need long responses, I may not get to everything, but if you have few questions and they can be answered easily, I may move on to posting another one of your initial questions). Whether you have absolutely no questions after reading everything (which seems unlikely to happen, honestly), or many questions, feel free to take the opportunity to ask about something unrelated to the reading or topic, if you want. I do want this to be a chance for you to figure out what YOU want to know. If you are curious about why some people seemed upset at Jesus for healing a guy on a certain day, feel free to ask, but if you would prefer me to answer a question about why we should believe Jesus healed anyone at all, then make sure to make that clear! It's very possible that the answer to something may itself need questions answered before it becomes a reasonable explanation and that's totally fine.
So, to continue with the schedule, we'll do a back-and-forth thing every other day. All posts must be up on Tumblr by noon on the respective days. On Fridays, whether it is your turn to post something or mine, I'll have an additional 'Think about it' assignment. I haven't decided exactly how this will work, but it'll probably be something where I ask a "What do you think about..." and will expect a fairly lengthy (several paragraphs, minimum) response. This will both exercise your brain and give me some feedback as to where you are at with this whole thing. Your response to this 'Think about it' will be due by noon the following Friday (so you'll have a week to write something up, so there won't be an excuse not to put a bit of time into it).
So, to summerize the guidelines:
1. Read the blog or post daily (alternating whether reading or posting).
2. There will be a weekly 'Think about it' question, answer due the next week.
3. Use proper grammar, spelling, etc.
4. All posts should be up on Tumblr by noon on the correct day.
As an example of how this might work, let me give you a bit of information that you may or may not already know about the Bible (I'm going to give you this example as if you'd asked the question: 'What is the Bible?')
My answer would be: The Bible is a collection of 66 books by various authors which people have recognized as helpful for knowing God and building a relationship with Him. The books are NOT chronological and they can be very different from each other. For example, the book of 'Leviticus' is a manual for the Jewish priests on how they were to live and conduct worship, etc. Unless you are interested in reading about what clothes they were to wear and how to sacrifice a sheep, that's not something I highly recommend a person read for fun. The book of 'Psalms', on the other hand, is a collection of Jewish poetry and hymms. The book of 'Romans' is actually a letter, written by a follower of Jesus to a group of Christians living in Rome dealing with how a person who claims to be a Christian ought to live. So, as you can see, there's a huge diversity of topics. For a Christian, the Bible is believed to be 'divinely inspired' (which means that while men wrote it, God had a hand in directing what they wrote so God made sure that what is written is accurate). It is not necessary to believe such a thing when reading it, since it can also be quite easily read as nothing more than a set of historical documents.
Okay, so the above was a brief answer to the question raised, but I would hope that if you read that paragraph, you'd have come up with a bunch of questions. To further this example, here are some ideas of what you might have come up with (I'd be curious to know if you thought of any of these and/or want answers to any of them...)
1. If the Bible isn't in Chronological order, what order (if any) is it in?
2. Why did the Jewish priests sacrifice animals?? Do they still do that?
3. What does Christianity have to do with Jewish beliefs?
4. What makes a Christian think that the Bible is 'divinely inspired'?
5. Why should anyone think that the books of the Bible are historically accurate? I mean, copies of copies of copies could be full of errors...
6. Since you don't recommend reading Leviticus, what do you recommend reading?
And thus the discussion would continue.
The topics of religion and what Christianity teaches are huge and the consequences of what you end up deciding about the whole thing can seriously effect your life, one way or the other, so although I have no way of forcing you to put any effort or thought into this, I do urge you to choose to do so. Personally, I love this topic and have done a whole lot of research into the foundations for Christian beliefs and have found them to be solid. Christianity does NOT require blind faith. You are encouraged to seek answers to questions within this topic. It is a belief system that rests on logic and holds up to inspection, I've found (unlike any other religion I've looked at). Perhaps you'll find this too during the course of this discussion. In any case, you should always know WHY you believe what you believe, no matter what that belief is.
Okay, I'm done with this mammoth post. Whew. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to either e-mail me back or to include them on your first Tumblr post.
Talk to you later!
Greetings! :-) I have never done something like this so am feeling this will be an awkward introduction post, but I suppose that's okay. We'll see how this 'religion exploration class' idea works as we go along.
So, I guess I should start out with a sort of vague idea of how I see this working and what I'd expect from you. Okay, so, we'll start with your questions (which Angela sent to me), going through them one at a time. I intend to post the answer to one of them (and they'll be pretty wordy answers since I'll try to answer them in a complete fashion - the length of this e-mail will give you some idea of how I can ramble on and on...), then we'll discuss it in a question/answer format (to make sure it is thoroughly answered) before moving on to the next question. I would expect that as we go you'll come up with further questions that, instead of being answered in the discussion, will merit waiting to be answered as a full topic by itself. To organize ourselves, I think the Titles of our separate posts ought to be consistant. So for example, the first question I'll answer (to be posted next Monday) will be 'If the Universe is so vast, why should we think God would notice or care about humans?'. I'll set the Title of the Post as something like this:
Q1: Size of Universe
And when you respond (whether it is a question or comment), please put something like:
Q1 - (whatever else you want to put in here).
This way we can sort of figure out what we're talking about when we have multiple topics going and keep the threads of conversation connected easier. If it turns out that things are very straighforward and we don't need to do anything like this to keep it straight, then we can drop this format, but for now, let's try it.
In addition to the discussion, I'm going to ask you to do some Bible reading. The reason for this is that when thinking over the idea for this class, I came to two realizations - first: it's going to be a whole lot more work for me than for you to run this discussion. A single question from you may take me a few hours worth of research and typing to answer properly. I don't mind that, but think it's only fair to balance that out by requiring you to do a bit of 'research' on your own. The Bible reading I'll assign will be short (like at maximum a couple of pages), so it shouldn't be too much of a hardship for you to do this. My second reason for assigning this will be found in the logic behind the idea that you don't know what you don't know. In other words, you won't have any idea whether you agree with what Christianity teaches unless you know what it teaches! Since I have no idea what you might have been taught before, I'm going to assume that it isn't much of anything (except maybe a few basic 'fable-style' Bible stories). Because I don't expect you've read the Bible before, I would expect it to be confusing and spawn more questions. That's a good thing and the final reason for assigning reading. It'll open up the chance for further discussion.
Now onto schedule. I'll post on, Monday, June 24th, the answer to the first question in our discussion. You are then expected to get on Tumblr on Monday and read what I've written (and give it some thought LOL). At the end of the post, I'll attach a small 'assigned reading' (and maybe some explanation about the reading, if I think you may need it). My suggestion to you is to read both what I've written and the Bible passage with a pen and notebook at hand and jot down anything that occurs to you as you read. Is something confusing or weird or illogical or otherwise makes you wonder? Make a note of it.
On Tuesday, you will be expected to respond. It doesn't have to be long (there's no word limit), but I do expect it to be honest and thoughtful. Also, since this is a school-thing, I'll request that you attempt to use proper grammar (no chat-speak abbreviations). I'm not exactly going to be grading you on your English, so this doesn't have to be perfect, just keep in mind that an effort towards good communication skills would be wise practice.
On Wed. I'll write back, answering questions (depending on how many questions you have, and how much explanation is needed will determine how this plays out. If you have a lot of questions that need long responses, I may not get to everything, but if you have few questions and they can be answered easily, I may move on to posting another one of your initial questions). Whether you have absolutely no questions after reading everything (which seems unlikely to happen, honestly), or many questions, feel free to take the opportunity to ask about something unrelated to the reading or topic, if you want. I do want this to be a chance for you to figure out what YOU want to know. If you are curious about why some people seemed upset at Jesus for healing a guy on a certain day, feel free to ask, but if you would prefer me to answer a question about why we should believe Jesus healed anyone at all, then make sure to make that clear! It's very possible that the answer to something may itself need questions answered before it becomes a reasonable explanation and that's totally fine.
So, to continue with the schedule, we'll do a back-and-forth thing every other day. All posts must be up on Tumblr by noon on the respective days. On Fridays, whether it is your turn to post something or mine, I'll have an additional 'Think about it' assignment. I haven't decided exactly how this will work, but it'll probably be something where I ask a "What do you think about..." and will expect a fairly lengthy (several paragraphs, minimum) response. This will both exercise your brain and give me some feedback as to where you are at with this whole thing. Your response to this 'Think about it' will be due by noon the following Friday (so you'll have a week to write something up, so there won't be an excuse not to put a bit of time into it).
So, to summerize the guidelines:
1. Read the blog or post daily (alternating whether reading or posting).
2. There will be a weekly 'Think about it' question, answer due the next week.
3. Use proper grammar, spelling, etc.
4. All posts should be up on Tumblr by noon on the correct day.
As an example of how this might work, let me give you a bit of information that you may or may not already know about the Bible (I'm going to give you this example as if you'd asked the question: 'What is the Bible?')
My answer would be: The Bible is a collection of 66 books by various authors which people have recognized as helpful for knowing God and building a relationship with Him. The books are NOT chronological and they can be very different from each other. For example, the book of 'Leviticus' is a manual for the Jewish priests on how they were to live and conduct worship, etc. Unless you are interested in reading about what clothes they were to wear and how to sacrifice a sheep, that's not something I highly recommend a person read for fun. The book of 'Psalms', on the other hand, is a collection of Jewish poetry and hymms. The book of 'Romans' is actually a letter, written by a follower of Jesus to a group of Christians living in Rome dealing with how a person who claims to be a Christian ought to live. So, as you can see, there's a huge diversity of topics. For a Christian, the Bible is believed to be 'divinely inspired' (which means that while men wrote it, God had a hand in directing what they wrote so God made sure that what is written is accurate). It is not necessary to believe such a thing when reading it, since it can also be quite easily read as nothing more than a set of historical documents.
Okay, so the above was a brief answer to the question raised, but I would hope that if you read that paragraph, you'd have come up with a bunch of questions. To further this example, here are some ideas of what you might have come up with (I'd be curious to know if you thought of any of these and/or want answers to any of them...)
1. If the Bible isn't in Chronological order, what order (if any) is it in?
2. Why did the Jewish priests sacrifice animals?? Do they still do that?
3. What does Christianity have to do with Jewish beliefs?
4. What makes a Christian think that the Bible is 'divinely inspired'?
5. Why should anyone think that the books of the Bible are historically accurate? I mean, copies of copies of copies could be full of errors...
6. Since you don't recommend reading Leviticus, what do you recommend reading?
And thus the discussion would continue.
The topics of religion and what Christianity teaches are huge and the consequences of what you end up deciding about the whole thing can seriously effect your life, one way or the other, so although I have no way of forcing you to put any effort or thought into this, I do urge you to choose to do so. Personally, I love this topic and have done a whole lot of research into the foundations for Christian beliefs and have found them to be solid. Christianity does NOT require blind faith. You are encouraged to seek answers to questions within this topic. It is a belief system that rests on logic and holds up to inspection, I've found (unlike any other religion I've looked at). Perhaps you'll find this too during the course of this discussion. In any case, you should always know WHY you believe what you believe, no matter what that belief is.
Okay, I'm done with this mammoth post. Whew. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to either e-mail me back or to include them on your first Tumblr post.
Talk to you later!
Monday, June 3, 2013
Why should God care?
Considering the vastness of the universe, why should God care about humans in general or me in particular?
First, I'd like to point out how there is a false assumption in this statement. You've equated size with importance and significance, which in reality have nothing to do with each other.
Is Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system more significant than Earth simply because it is larger? Considering how unique Earth seems to be, I'd say that it is not. Or, is a chunk of common rock sitting on the ocean floor more important than a human baby, just because it is bigger? Again, I'd say this is not true. Certainly, something can be both larger and more significant than another thing at the same time, but there is no direct connection between size and significance. Humans take up a very tiny amount of space in the vast reaches of the universe, but that does not necessarily mean that we are insignificant and unimportant. Size is irrelevant.
But that still doesn't answer the question of why we might assume God cares about humanity in general or individuals in particular. The short answer - He cares because He chooses to care.
But there's also a longer answer, and that answer to that lies in understand who God is - what His character is like. Let me give you some character traits of God and demonstrate how that's relevant to us.
First, God is creative and all-powerful. Which means that isn't limited in creating this Universe in nice, simple, small areas. Science is amazing! The detail in a cell, the balance of an ecosystem, the majestic movement of objects in space and all expressions of amazing creativity. For the Christian, we can look at the universe around us and see God's fingerprints and be honestly awed. He's told us (through the Bible) that we can see the characteristics of God in the creation - and this is one of the reasons that the universe is so amazingly huge! If our little planet had been placed just about anywhere else in our galaxy, we wouldn't be able to see so much of the universe (either because of cosmic dust, which our galaxy is coated in, or through the crowding of nearby stars, etc. We're perfectly placed to be able to see beyond our solar system and just that fact alone is incredible). God can (and apparently did) choose to create a universe that expresses an unbelievable depth of capability for creating variety and opportunities - for exploration and discovery. This universe was made huge and detailed and discoverable for our benefit.
Next, God is all-knowing (or omniscient). Which means He knows everything about everything. He knows what every atom in the universe is doing at this moment and what it will do in every future moment. He has the capacity to pay full attention to everything at once. Which means He can know what's happening on Alpha Centuri or in the Horsehead Nebula or in your schoolroom and doing so is neither difficult nor dividing his attention. So He has the ability to pay attention to us humans individually and, if God wanted, He could have a million other things going on in other parts of the universe and it wouldn't make his attention towards us any less. So assuming that I have his undivided attention is simply an extension of understanding how powerful God actually is.
But that would simply imply that we're as interesting to God as, say, the moon. A unique chunk of rock, to be sure, but just another collection of atoms. However, God is more than just all-knowing and all-powerful. He is also loving.
He is loving. He didn't have to create a universe that was filled with so much to explore and discover, but He did because He loves us and wanted to give us the best home imaginable. This point also circles around to the question of why God should care about us. He cares because one of the characteristics of God is love. He created us because He wished to love us and be loved in return. That was the whole purpose of making humanity. You want to know why you are here? Why you are alive? That's the answer.Because God chose to love you and wants to be loved in return.
So the answer to the question of why we should assume God would care about me or anyone else is because it is both God's nature and His choice to do so. To think otherwise would diminish who He is. To reverse that idea, if we assume that the universe is too huge for God to notice us, then that is saying that we don't think He is actually all-knowing. To think that the universe is too complex to be divinely created (which seems a bit backwards, but some people think that way), is to think that God is less than all-powerful. To think He'd create a thinking, feeling, relational people (humanity) and then not care about us implies that He is not loving - and if God does not love us, then honestly, all Christianity is empty and your life is completely pointless. We can explore that idea a bit more, if you'd like, but it kind of wanders off topic, so I'll end here.
Did that seem to answer your question, or do you still feel a bit unsatisfied with this idea?
First, I'd like to point out how there is a false assumption in this statement. You've equated size with importance and significance, which in reality have nothing to do with each other.
Is Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system more significant than Earth simply because it is larger? Considering how unique Earth seems to be, I'd say that it is not. Or, is a chunk of common rock sitting on the ocean floor more important than a human baby, just because it is bigger? Again, I'd say this is not true. Certainly, something can be both larger and more significant than another thing at the same time, but there is no direct connection between size and significance. Humans take up a very tiny amount of space in the vast reaches of the universe, but that does not necessarily mean that we are insignificant and unimportant. Size is irrelevant.
But that still doesn't answer the question of why we might assume God cares about humanity in general or individuals in particular. The short answer - He cares because He chooses to care.
But there's also a longer answer, and that answer to that lies in understand who God is - what His character is like. Let me give you some character traits of God and demonstrate how that's relevant to us.
First, God is creative and all-powerful. Which means that isn't limited in creating this Universe in nice, simple, small areas. Science is amazing! The detail in a cell, the balance of an ecosystem, the majestic movement of objects in space and all expressions of amazing creativity. For the Christian, we can look at the universe around us and see God's fingerprints and be honestly awed. He's told us (through the Bible) that we can see the characteristics of God in the creation - and this is one of the reasons that the universe is so amazingly huge! If our little planet had been placed just about anywhere else in our galaxy, we wouldn't be able to see so much of the universe (either because of cosmic dust, which our galaxy is coated in, or through the crowding of nearby stars, etc. We're perfectly placed to be able to see beyond our solar system and just that fact alone is incredible). God can (and apparently did) choose to create a universe that expresses an unbelievable depth of capability for creating variety and opportunities - for exploration and discovery. This universe was made huge and detailed and discoverable for our benefit.
Next, God is all-knowing (or omniscient). Which means He knows everything about everything. He knows what every atom in the universe is doing at this moment and what it will do in every future moment. He has the capacity to pay full attention to everything at once. Which means He can know what's happening on Alpha Centuri or in the Horsehead Nebula or in your schoolroom and doing so is neither difficult nor dividing his attention. So He has the ability to pay attention to us humans individually and, if God wanted, He could have a million other things going on in other parts of the universe and it wouldn't make his attention towards us any less. So assuming that I have his undivided attention is simply an extension of understanding how powerful God actually is.
But that would simply imply that we're as interesting to God as, say, the moon. A unique chunk of rock, to be sure, but just another collection of atoms. However, God is more than just all-knowing and all-powerful. He is also loving.
He is loving. He didn't have to create a universe that was filled with so much to explore and discover, but He did because He loves us and wanted to give us the best home imaginable. This point also circles around to the question of why God should care about us. He cares because one of the characteristics of God is love. He created us because He wished to love us and be loved in return. That was the whole purpose of making humanity. You want to know why you are here? Why you are alive? That's the answer.Because God chose to love you and wants to be loved in return.
So the answer to the question of why we should assume God would care about me or anyone else is because it is both God's nature and His choice to do so. To think otherwise would diminish who He is. To reverse that idea, if we assume that the universe is too huge for God to notice us, then that is saying that we don't think He is actually all-knowing. To think that the universe is too complex to be divinely created (which seems a bit backwards, but some people think that way), is to think that God is less than all-powerful. To think He'd create a thinking, feeling, relational people (humanity) and then not care about us implies that He is not loving - and if God does not love us, then honestly, all Christianity is empty and your life is completely pointless. We can explore that idea a bit more, if you'd like, but it kind of wanders off topic, so I'll end here.
Did that seem to answer your question, or do you still feel a bit unsatisfied with this idea?
Heaven or Hell?
How does God determine who goes to Heaven or Hell?
This question is actually the central point of Christianity. It also defines what separates Christianity from other belief systems. Let me start out by saying that in the vast majority of religions, the answer to this question would be that "a person is good enough". Meaning that a person had done enough good things to outweigh the bad things.
Perhaps it would surprise you to know that this is NOT what Christianity teaches though. Christians do not make it to Heaven by doing good or refraining from doing evil. I'll get to what this means in a minute. First, from a logical point of view, the above system of good deeds, which most religions claim a person needs to do is very abstract. How can a person know if they've managed to reach the unknown line of 'good enough'? What measure could a person use to decide if, say, weeding the garden for your parents without complaining could cancel out throwing a temper tantrum? What 'payment' would God consider worth canceling out the debt of cheating on a test? What would happen if a person thought they were doing okay, but had forgotten how they had thought unkind things towards another person and thus didn't do something to make up for it? The idea of 'Good Works' getting a person into Heaven would mean that you'd never be sure if you had made the cut or not. I don't think it is a bad thing to attempt to do more good than bad in your lifetime, but as a means of assuring that you're on God's "Good List", it's a rather poor idea.
So what does Christianity teach? Well, for that, I'll have to lay out some background teaching. First, Christianity believes that humans are inherently evil. (In 'doctrine terms', this is called a 'sin-nature') Meaning that we were born with a nature that will do bad things without having to learn such actions. A child is a good example of this. A parent doesn't teach a child to be selfish or to throw tantrums or to lie, but every child will do all of those things 'naturally'. We have to learn to be mindful of others, to be patient, to be truthful even when it is inconvenient. So, from God's perspective, we kind of start out life with a bit of a handicap. We start out with a weight on the negative side of things. I'll come back to this thought.
Now God, on the other hand, is morally perfect. He does not ever do anything evil nor would He be tempted to ever do so. Heaven is His home. And just like you would never walk up to a stranger who'd been rolling in dog crap and who was glaring at you in hatred and invite him home for the evening, God is the same way. The bad things we do (called sin), are basically spiritual 'dog crap' which we've coated ourselves with. And unfortunately for us, we can't get clean on our own. The good things we do are the 'expected behavior', not things that clean us up. It is IMPOSSIBLE for us to make up for the bad things we do. Crawling over broken glass all the way to Canada wouldn't make up for a single thing, no matter how awful a punishment it was. That's because at the beginning, God warned people that the punishment for any sin is death and separation from God (Hell). So at this point in the story, what you have is that everyone is going to die and go to Hell. It is humanity's default destination.
Which means that we have a problem. We are born with a sin nature and we do sinful things and nothing we can do can fix that situation. But God knew this and He chose to love us. Love means that you do your best to bring the highest good to the other person, even at a cost to yourself. So, since we were stuck, God provided a way to escape the situation.
First, he clothed himself in human form "taking on the likeness of man" - that would be Jesus. Then Jesus lived and taught as a man for about 33 years, giving us both an example and showing us what God is like and what He intended us to be like. You've probably heard of the 'virgin birth' before. Jesus was conceived by God, not by natural means, which side-stepped the whole 'sin-nature' problem. He then lived without ever doing anything bad throughout his life, and thus didn't rack up any debt that would have to be paid with death and Hell. Then, at age 33, he allowed himself to be killed. As I just mentioned, he didn't earn death, and that's the main point. It was like an accounting book - God took my life, all the sin-debt I have accumulated during my life-time and credited it to Jesus and then took Jesus' perfect life and credited it to me. We exchanged places in God's eyes. So my penalty of death and seperation from God is paid for (God, who is completely fair in his justice can't forgive a sin-debt without there being payment somehow, but he can forgive ME because He paid my debt himself). The death of Jesus was so valuable an exchange in God's eyes, His death isn't just payment for a single person, but payment enough to cover every single person who has ever lived.
Which means that anyone and everyone can get to Heaven. But not everyone makes it. And this is the final piece of this question. From what I just outlined, the 'ticket to Heaven' is freely available to everyone - no good deeds required. But the catch is that a person has to be willing to accept the trade of Jesus' death instead of ours. A person has to acknowledge before God that they deserve the punishment (in other words, they have to be truthful with God and fess-up to the idea that they've done bad things), then trust that Jesus' death was enough to pay for those bad things. That's it. A person does this and they've got a ticket to Heaven.
It seems so very easy (to the point of ridiculousness, almost), but it is intentionally done this way so that even the least intelligent person can understand and do what is required. But, despite the ease of the access to Heaven, many people still stumble over the idea. You notice first of all, I haven't mentioned that a person who believes in Jesus' death 'saving us' from Hell ever needs to do anything. No church attendance required, no feeding the orphans, no giving of money, nothing. That's because none of the 'good things' you can think of are required to become a Christian and get to Heaven. Don't think that this means that a Christian just goes on doing whatever they want however. Once a person becomes a Christian, God won't leave that person alone! A person who get's Jesus' perfect life on their divine accounting book is changed in that transaction. It's subtle, but in a genuine exchange, God transforms a person's heart and the person has a stronger desire to then please God and do what is good and right. This is where the good works finally come into play. It becomes more natural and desirable for a Christian to do good things - the good works are actually evidence of the changed heart. It's not an absolute definition (people who do good aren't necessarily Christians), but it is a very strong indicator (if a person claims to be a Christian, but doesn't live out the principles of love and goodness, then they are probably lying or self-deceived).
So now you know, if you ever want to go to Heaven, that's how it is done. You simply talk to God, then trust that He took care of your sin-debt. With that in mind, what questions do you have about what I've written?
This question is actually the central point of Christianity. It also defines what separates Christianity from other belief systems. Let me start out by saying that in the vast majority of religions, the answer to this question would be that "a person is good enough". Meaning that a person had done enough good things to outweigh the bad things.
Perhaps it would surprise you to know that this is NOT what Christianity teaches though. Christians do not make it to Heaven by doing good or refraining from doing evil. I'll get to what this means in a minute. First, from a logical point of view, the above system of good deeds, which most religions claim a person needs to do is very abstract. How can a person know if they've managed to reach the unknown line of 'good enough'? What measure could a person use to decide if, say, weeding the garden for your parents without complaining could cancel out throwing a temper tantrum? What 'payment' would God consider worth canceling out the debt of cheating on a test? What would happen if a person thought they were doing okay, but had forgotten how they had thought unkind things towards another person and thus didn't do something to make up for it? The idea of 'Good Works' getting a person into Heaven would mean that you'd never be sure if you had made the cut or not. I don't think it is a bad thing to attempt to do more good than bad in your lifetime, but as a means of assuring that you're on God's "Good List", it's a rather poor idea.
So what does Christianity teach? Well, for that, I'll have to lay out some background teaching. First, Christianity believes that humans are inherently evil. (In 'doctrine terms', this is called a 'sin-nature') Meaning that we were born with a nature that will do bad things without having to learn such actions. A child is a good example of this. A parent doesn't teach a child to be selfish or to throw tantrums or to lie, but every child will do all of those things 'naturally'. We have to learn to be mindful of others, to be patient, to be truthful even when it is inconvenient. So, from God's perspective, we kind of start out life with a bit of a handicap. We start out with a weight on the negative side of things. I'll come back to this thought.
Now God, on the other hand, is morally perfect. He does not ever do anything evil nor would He be tempted to ever do so. Heaven is His home. And just like you would never walk up to a stranger who'd been rolling in dog crap and who was glaring at you in hatred and invite him home for the evening, God is the same way. The bad things we do (called sin), are basically spiritual 'dog crap' which we've coated ourselves with. And unfortunately for us, we can't get clean on our own. The good things we do are the 'expected behavior', not things that clean us up. It is IMPOSSIBLE for us to make up for the bad things we do. Crawling over broken glass all the way to Canada wouldn't make up for a single thing, no matter how awful a punishment it was. That's because at the beginning, God warned people that the punishment for any sin is death and separation from God (Hell). So at this point in the story, what you have is that everyone is going to die and go to Hell. It is humanity's default destination.
Which means that we have a problem. We are born with a sin nature and we do sinful things and nothing we can do can fix that situation. But God knew this and He chose to love us. Love means that you do your best to bring the highest good to the other person, even at a cost to yourself. So, since we were stuck, God provided a way to escape the situation.
First, he clothed himself in human form "taking on the likeness of man" - that would be Jesus. Then Jesus lived and taught as a man for about 33 years, giving us both an example and showing us what God is like and what He intended us to be like. You've probably heard of the 'virgin birth' before. Jesus was conceived by God, not by natural means, which side-stepped the whole 'sin-nature' problem. He then lived without ever doing anything bad throughout his life, and thus didn't rack up any debt that would have to be paid with death and Hell. Then, at age 33, he allowed himself to be killed. As I just mentioned, he didn't earn death, and that's the main point. It was like an accounting book - God took my life, all the sin-debt I have accumulated during my life-time and credited it to Jesus and then took Jesus' perfect life and credited it to me. We exchanged places in God's eyes. So my penalty of death and seperation from God is paid for (God, who is completely fair in his justice can't forgive a sin-debt without there being payment somehow, but he can forgive ME because He paid my debt himself). The death of Jesus was so valuable an exchange in God's eyes, His death isn't just payment for a single person, but payment enough to cover every single person who has ever lived.
Which means that anyone and everyone can get to Heaven. But not everyone makes it. And this is the final piece of this question. From what I just outlined, the 'ticket to Heaven' is freely available to everyone - no good deeds required. But the catch is that a person has to be willing to accept the trade of Jesus' death instead of ours. A person has to acknowledge before God that they deserve the punishment (in other words, they have to be truthful with God and fess-up to the idea that they've done bad things), then trust that Jesus' death was enough to pay for those bad things. That's it. A person does this and they've got a ticket to Heaven.
It seems so very easy (to the point of ridiculousness, almost), but it is intentionally done this way so that even the least intelligent person can understand and do what is required. But, despite the ease of the access to Heaven, many people still stumble over the idea. You notice first of all, I haven't mentioned that a person who believes in Jesus' death 'saving us' from Hell ever needs to do anything. No church attendance required, no feeding the orphans, no giving of money, nothing. That's because none of the 'good things' you can think of are required to become a Christian and get to Heaven. Don't think that this means that a Christian just goes on doing whatever they want however. Once a person becomes a Christian, God won't leave that person alone! A person who get's Jesus' perfect life on their divine accounting book is changed in that transaction. It's subtle, but in a genuine exchange, God transforms a person's heart and the person has a stronger desire to then please God and do what is good and right. This is where the good works finally come into play. It becomes more natural and desirable for a Christian to do good things - the good works are actually evidence of the changed heart. It's not an absolute definition (people who do good aren't necessarily Christians), but it is a very strong indicator (if a person claims to be a Christian, but doesn't live out the principles of love and goodness, then they are probably lying or self-deceived).
So now you know, if you ever want to go to Heaven, that's how it is done. You simply talk to God, then trust that He took care of your sin-debt. With that in mind, what questions do you have about what I've written?
Sunday, June 2, 2013
6th Commandment
'Thou shall not commit adultery.'
Discuss this in the context of 'adultery' first. What are the consequences of adultery in the Bible? (answer, execution).
What about divorce? Mark 10:1-12
What about sex before marriage?
Hebrews 13:4 says, "Marriage should be honored by everyone, and husband and wife should keep their marriage pure. God will judge as guilty those who take part in sexual sins."
What about homosexuality? What, if anything, should be done in the legal sense regarding this issue?
Lev. 18:22
1 Corinthians 6:18-20 encourages us to "Run away from sexual sin. Every
other sin people do is outside their bodies, but those who sin sexually sin against their own bodies. You should know that your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit who is in you. You have received the Holy Spirit from God. So you do not belong to yourselves, because you were bought by God for a price. So honor God with your bodies."
What about porn?
Matthew 5:27-30
Discuss this in the context of 'adultery' first. What are the consequences of adultery in the Bible? (answer, execution).
What about divorce? Mark 10:1-12
What about sex before marriage?
Hebrews 13:4 says, "Marriage should be honored by everyone, and husband and wife should keep their marriage pure. God will judge as guilty those who take part in sexual sins."
What about homosexuality? What, if anything, should be done in the legal sense regarding this issue?
Lev. 18:22
1 Corinthians 6:18-20 encourages us to "Run away from sexual sin. Every
other sin people do is outside their bodies, but those who sin sexually sin against their own bodies. You should know that your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit who is in you. You have received the Holy Spirit from God. So you do not belong to yourselves, because you were bought by God for a price. So honor God with your bodies."
What about porn?
Matthew 5:27-30
Saturday, June 1, 2013
5th Commandment
Do not murder.
Why is this commandment given? Gen. 9:6 We discussed that the first commandments revolve around man's relationship with God, and the last ones around man's relationship with man, well this commandment actually is both.
What does this commandment mean?
What about abortion? Embryonic stem cell research?
Direct and intentional killing of an innocent human is the oldest and 'worst' sin.
What about Capital Punishment? 2 Sam 1:16 – in the Old Testament, when capital punishment was carried out, the blood guilt is not on the hands executors, but on the one killed.
What about self-defence? Ex. 22:2-3
What about suicide? (Taking this further, what about misuse of the body such as using tobacco or not eating right?)
What about warfare? In the old Testament, there are multiple instances where God commands armies to kill, does that still apply today? The Hebrew word used in the commandment is never used in the context of war.
'Vengence is mine, says the Lord'
The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.
The NT does not explicitly say one way or the other, but does seem to implicitly support the idea of soldiers. For example, when soldiers came to John the Baptist, he did not ask them to repent of their profession, but admonished them to be content with their pay. (Luke 3)
- The reasons for going to war are defensive.
- "The damage inflicted by the aggressor ... must be lasting, grave, and certain."
- It is a last resort taken only after all other means of putting an end to the "grave damage" have been ineffective.
- The ultimate aim is peace and there is a serious chance of success.
- No graver evils are produced that overshadow the evil to be eliminated. This forbids the use of arms to eliminate whole cities and areas with their inhabitants.
- Respect and care is required for non-combatants, wounded soldiers and prisoners. Soldiers are required to disobey commands to commit genocide and ones that violate universal principles.
What did Jesus say about this commandment?
'Anger in the heart'
Is there ever a justification for getting angry then?
Yes – Jesus overturned the tables in the temple.
According to Martin Luther, by reversing this commandment into a positive statement, we must do whatever we can to prevent the death of others, including helping the sick and preventing dangerous situations.
Note: Scandal is classified under this commandment.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Art Links:
Realistic Disney Heroines:
http://twistedsifter.com/2012/03/real-life-female-disney-characters/
Hyper-realistic paintings with ballpoint pens:
http://twistedsifter.com/2012/09/hyperrealistic-portraits-using-ballpoint-pens-vianaarts-samuel-silva/
Amazing Sandcastles
http://pinterest.com/clayoung/amazing-sandcastles/
Just a collection of fun art!
Realistic Disney Heroines:
http://twistedsifter.com/2012/03/real-life-female-disney-characters/
Hyper-realistic paintings with ballpoint pens:
http://twistedsifter.com/2012/09/hyperrealistic-portraits-using-ballpoint-pens-vianaarts-samuel-silva/
Amazing Sandcastles
http://pinterest.com/clayoung/amazing-sandcastles/
Just a collection of fun art!
Amazing Art 1
I found this picture at 'Picture of the Day'
DIE FOR THE MONEY Artwork by SCOTT CAMPBELL
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Fifth Commandment
'Honor your Father and Mother'
What does this mean? How does a person honor their parents?
Respect
Gratitude
Obedience
Support
How does a person do each of these things?
For how long is a person supposed to 'honor' their parent? While living with them? For life?
In Ephesians 5:21-6:9 we see a bit of New Testament teaching on the family unit. Focusing on the child/parent relationship, what are the responsibilities of each?
Why is this important to God? The relationship between a parent and child is a small mirror of the relationship between God and His children.
The family unit is also the most basic and important social group in any society. Looking at our society, what do you think of the family structure and situation? What do you think might improve things?
Read Matthew 12:46-50. What does this mean?
What do you think of the promise attached to this commandment?
What does this mean? How does a person honor their parents?
Respect
Gratitude
Obedience
Support
How does a person do each of these things?
For how long is a person supposed to 'honor' their parent? While living with them? For life?
In Ephesians 5:21-6:9 we see a bit of New Testament teaching on the family unit. Focusing on the child/parent relationship, what are the responsibilities of each?
Why is this important to God? The relationship between a parent and child is a small mirror of the relationship between God and His children.
The family unit is also the most basic and important social group in any society. Looking at our society, what do you think of the family structure and situation? What do you think might improve things?
Read Matthew 12:46-50. What does this mean?
What do you think of the promise attached to this commandment?
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Continueing the Bible Study on the Ten Commandments:
The 3rd Commandment is: Do not take God's name in vain.
What does 'in vain' mean? What is God's name? Why do you think this commandment is put on this list?
What was the Old Testament penalty for blasphemy? Answer: death by stoning.
Did Jesus address this commandment in any way? Answer: the Lord's Prayer (Hallowed be Thy Name)
How can we keep this commandment?
The 4rd Commandment is: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
What are the reasons given in Duet. and Exodus for this commandment?
Why do we celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday? What do you think of the argument about celebrating it on Saturday instead?
An interesting bit of trivia - China tried to implement a 10-day work week, but failed. Every society revolves around a 7-day week.
What did Jesus teach about the Sabbath day of rest? Read Mark 2:27
We tend to, in this modern day, treat this commandment as the least important. What do you think of this statement? What do you think God thinks of how we use our 'day of rest'?
How can we keep this commandment? How can we improve in this?
The 5rd Commandment is: Honor your Father and Mother
What does this mean? What encompasses 'honor'? (respect, gratitude, obedience, etc.)
Why do you think God felt it was important enough to put in this list?
This is the only commandment with a promised reward attached. Why?
How did Jesus expand on this commandment? Who did He saw were his Mother, Brothers, family? (Matt. 12:46-50)
How can we keep this commandment?
The 3rd Commandment is: Do not take God's name in vain.
What does 'in vain' mean? What is God's name? Why do you think this commandment is put on this list?
What was the Old Testament penalty for blasphemy? Answer: death by stoning.
Did Jesus address this commandment in any way? Answer: the Lord's Prayer (Hallowed be Thy Name)
How can we keep this commandment?
The 4rd Commandment is: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
What are the reasons given in Duet. and Exodus for this commandment?
Why do we celebrate the Sabbath on Sunday? What do you think of the argument about celebrating it on Saturday instead?
An interesting bit of trivia - China tried to implement a 10-day work week, but failed. Every society revolves around a 7-day week.
What did Jesus teach about the Sabbath day of rest? Read Mark 2:27
We tend to, in this modern day, treat this commandment as the least important. What do you think of this statement? What do you think God thinks of how we use our 'day of rest'?
How can we keep this commandment? How can we improve in this?
The 5rd Commandment is: Honor your Father and Mother
What does this mean? What encompasses 'honor'? (respect, gratitude, obedience, etc.)
Why do you think God felt it was important enough to put in this list?
This is the only commandment with a promised reward attached. Why?
How did Jesus expand on this commandment? Who did He saw were his Mother, Brothers, family? (Matt. 12:46-50)
How can we keep this commandment?
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Ten Commandments Study Part 1
If you had to describe to a non-believer what the Ten Commandments were, how would you do so?
Can you list out all 10?
Start with Reading the Entire 10 Commandments section of Exodus chapter 20 & Deut. 5
And God spoke all these words:
Can you list out all 10?
Start with Reading the Entire 10 Commandments section of Exodus chapter 20 & Deut. 5
And God spoke all these words:
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Interesting Factoid: In Jewish Tradition, all ten Commandments were written on both of the two stone tablets - as if a copy for each party of the covenant.
Another interesting note is that these commandments start with our relationship with God, then move onto our relationship with others. Why do you think that is? Answer: Our relationship with God is both most important and only with a correct relationship there can we have correct relationships with others.
Another interesting note is that these commandments start with our relationship with God, then move onto our relationship with others. Why do you think that is? Answer: Our relationship with God is both most important and only with a correct relationship there can we have correct relationships with others.
Then talk about each Commandment.
What does it mean obey 'You shall have no other gods before Me'?
All sin "serves some other god, obeys another commander: the world or the flesh or the devil
What about superstition? Such as Palm reading, horoscopes, astrology, etc.
Although not Catholic, I do appreciate a great deal of their theological work and this is there interpretation of the above:
The Catechism attributes these actions to a "desire for power over time, history, and in the last analysis, other human beings as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers." All of which are sinful actions.
Did Jesus ever reference this Commandment specifically? See the Greatest Commandment "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength." Matthew 22:37.
How can we live out this commandment today?
Moving on to the 2nd Commandment:
What is a 'graven image'? Would any 'picture' qualify?
I would interpret this to be defined as images that are meant to contain God. As if He (or a lesser 'god') were able to live in such a thing. Or that a image is to define Him (like a painting becoming the definition of God's appearance).
What Biblical examples of carved images seem to have been acceptable? The Temple was decorated in pomegranates. The ark has cherubim on it. And later Solomon created a 'sea' on the backs of oxen. So animals and vegetables, and even angelic beings, when not worshiped, seem to be acceptable.
The Eastern Orthodox churches (and some other denominations) use Icons throughout the church and during church services. What do you think of those?
According to a priest I spoke to, such art is to act in the same way as a modern power-point presentation - it just focuses the worshiper's attention to a specific idea or concept. It is not meant to be an object of worship in and of itself.
How can we live out this commandment today?
The Catechism attributes these actions to a "desire for power over time, history, and in the last analysis, other human beings as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers." All of which are sinful actions.
Did Jesus ever reference this Commandment specifically? See the Greatest Commandment "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength." Matthew 22:37.
How can we live out this commandment today?
Moving on to the 2nd Commandment:
What is a 'graven image'? Would any 'picture' qualify?
I would interpret this to be defined as images that are meant to contain God. As if He (or a lesser 'god') were able to live in such a thing. Or that a image is to define Him (like a painting becoming the definition of God's appearance).
What Biblical examples of carved images seem to have been acceptable? The Temple was decorated in pomegranates. The ark has cherubim on it. And later Solomon created a 'sea' on the backs of oxen. So animals and vegetables, and even angelic beings, when not worshiped, seem to be acceptable.
The Eastern Orthodox churches (and some other denominations) use Icons throughout the church and during church services. What do you think of those?
According to a priest I spoke to, such art is to act in the same way as a modern power-point presentation - it just focuses the worshiper's attention to a specific idea or concept. It is not meant to be an object of worship in and of itself.
How can we live out this commandment today?
...To be continued...
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Bible Study on Practical Prayer
After reading a book by Andy Stanley titled 'Deep and Wide', I decided to write my next Sunday School lesson around something less theoretical and more practical. Specifically, prayer. I'd like to do a short lesson on prayer, put up a verse on the white board, then actually practice what we preach and spend quite time talking to God.
I'll start with reviewing the basics - what is prayer? (Answer, talking with God)
Then ask how often people practice this? Note that probably none of us do it enough, so, while guilt can be motivating to move forward, it should not hold us down with shame.
1 Thessalonians 5:17 pray without ceasing
Then I'll ask about what happens when you pray? Describe what you talk to God about.
I'll start with reviewing the basics - what is prayer? (Answer, talking with God)
Then ask how often people practice this? Note that probably none of us do it enough, so, while guilt can be motivating to move forward, it should not hold us down with shame.
1 Thessalonians 5:17 pray without ceasing
Then I'll ask about what happens when you pray? Describe what you talk to God about.
Psalm 95:2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
Monday, March 18, 2013
Christmas Movies!
Doing the Charlie Brown Christmas made me think of other Christmas movies. I think I collected all the best Christmas movies and placed them somewhere on my Huge List of Movies Every Child Should See. It was surprising how large a percentage of the appropriate-for-a-five-year-old movies were Christmas ones.
The top rated one, How the Grinch stole Christmas, is an all-time favorite for me. There are some strange people who like the Jim Carey version, but I'm too large a fan of the traditional cartoon to care for that movie.
Rudolph and Santa Claus is Comin' to Town are great claymation films. Frosty the Snowman is a brilliant story too! And all of these have good morals in each of their stories.
I included Yes Virginia on the movie list, another Christmas film, but it's not really a classic in the same way that all the rest of these are. I'm sort of ambivalent about whether it should even be on that 'must see' list, in fact. It's cute, to be sure, and certainly appropriate for a very young audience, but it doesn't strike me as something that, if you didn't see it, you'd be missing out on much. Also the message is one about how Santa is real - that your belief in that is important. That's not something I will be encouraging our children to believe, so it seems a bit counter-productive. to include.
For an older audience, I have Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, Muppet's Christmas Carol, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Christmas Story, and Scrooged.
None of these, however, talk about the real meaning behind Christmas. It is a celebration of Jesus' brith and, sadly, there are not many hints of that in any of these films. With that in mind, I don't think we'll watch any of these on Christmas day. I intend to focus more on the idea of it being Jesus' birthday, including a birthday cake and discussion about Jesus' life and His continuing work in us. We'll see how this all plays out.
Anyway, the story behind It's a Wonderful Life is quite fascinating. It only really became a hit because it was a flop in its initial release. It was pretty much given to the networks to play for free every year, so that's what they did. In this case, familiarity didn't breed contempt, but delight in the eyes of the public. They grew to love it, so it became a classic in the end. Another interesting tidbit is that the watchdog groups overseeing movies of that time decreed that all villains meet their just ends, but in this movie, the 'evil banker' slips through without any consequence to his mean character. The film makers managed to sneak that past the censors somehow...
I can't say I'm a huge fan of the muppets, but A Muppet Christmas Carol is genuinely fun! It's probably my favorite version of the Charles Dickens classic. Another version, starting Jim Carey (that's the second time he's been mentioned here, isn't it?) is probably truer to the book, but it isn't as heart-warming or sweet.
Nightmare Before Christmas is weird. I could just leave it at that, because that statement seems to summarize the movie fairly well. That and creepy. All of Tim Burton's stuff is weird and creepy, really. But, despite the disturbing atmosphere, the story is actually pretty good and it is so darn original that I can't help but be impressed with it despite myself. In the end though, this may be more of a Halloween movie than a Christmas one.
The second black-and-white film on the list, Miracle on 34th Street is a film I've only seen a few times and so don't know it well enough to say too much about it. It was a cute movie though, one that I think would make for an enjoyable Christmas-time treat.
The movie about the BB-gun! I'm rather bemused by how many people absolutely love this movie. I must be missing the greatness here because I rather dislike it. I don't know why. The Christmas Story is culturally relevant (and I think my husband likes it), so we'll watch it.
The second version of Dicken's classic, Scrooged, is the last of the Christmas movies on my list...at least I think it is. Perhaps there will be more added later. I'm sure Hollywood is not done making movies on that popular holiday. In fact, there are a slew of other movies out there that other people would probably be appalled that I've left off my lists. Like Elf or The Santa Clause. Most of those movies are pretty stupid comedies though which I strongly detest, so they didn't make my movie list.
And Now I'm finished rambling.
The top rated one, How the Grinch stole Christmas, is an all-time favorite for me. There are some strange people who like the Jim Carey version, but I'm too large a fan of the traditional cartoon to care for that movie.
Rudolph and Santa Claus is Comin' to Town are great claymation films. Frosty the Snowman is a brilliant story too! And all of these have good morals in each of their stories.
I included Yes Virginia on the movie list, another Christmas film, but it's not really a classic in the same way that all the rest of these are. I'm sort of ambivalent about whether it should even be on that 'must see' list, in fact. It's cute, to be sure, and certainly appropriate for a very young audience, but it doesn't strike me as something that, if you didn't see it, you'd be missing out on much. Also the message is one about how Santa is real - that your belief in that is important. That's not something I will be encouraging our children to believe, so it seems a bit counter-productive. to include.
For an older audience, I have Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, Muppet's Christmas Carol, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Christmas Story, and Scrooged.
None of these, however, talk about the real meaning behind Christmas. It is a celebration of Jesus' brith and, sadly, there are not many hints of that in any of these films. With that in mind, I don't think we'll watch any of these on Christmas day. I intend to focus more on the idea of it being Jesus' birthday, including a birthday cake and discussion about Jesus' life and His continuing work in us. We'll see how this all plays out.
Anyway, the story behind It's a Wonderful Life is quite fascinating. It only really became a hit because it was a flop in its initial release. It was pretty much given to the networks to play for free every year, so that's what they did. In this case, familiarity didn't breed contempt, but delight in the eyes of the public. They grew to love it, so it became a classic in the end. Another interesting tidbit is that the watchdog groups overseeing movies of that time decreed that all villains meet their just ends, but in this movie, the 'evil banker' slips through without any consequence to his mean character. The film makers managed to sneak that past the censors somehow...
I can't say I'm a huge fan of the muppets, but A Muppet Christmas Carol is genuinely fun! It's probably my favorite version of the Charles Dickens classic. Another version, starting Jim Carey (that's the second time he's been mentioned here, isn't it?) is probably truer to the book, but it isn't as heart-warming or sweet.
Nightmare Before Christmas is weird. I could just leave it at that, because that statement seems to summarize the movie fairly well. That and creepy. All of Tim Burton's stuff is weird and creepy, really. But, despite the disturbing atmosphere, the story is actually pretty good and it is so darn original that I can't help but be impressed with it despite myself. In the end though, this may be more of a Halloween movie than a Christmas one.
The second black-and-white film on the list, Miracle on 34th Street is a film I've only seen a few times and so don't know it well enough to say too much about it. It was a cute movie though, one that I think would make for an enjoyable Christmas-time treat.
The movie about the BB-gun! I'm rather bemused by how many people absolutely love this movie. I must be missing the greatness here because I rather dislike it. I don't know why. The Christmas Story is culturally relevant (and I think my husband likes it), so we'll watch it.
The second version of Dicken's classic, Scrooged, is the last of the Christmas movies on my list...at least I think it is. Perhaps there will be more added later. I'm sure Hollywood is not done making movies on that popular holiday. In fact, there are a slew of other movies out there that other people would probably be appalled that I've left off my lists. Like Elf or The Santa Clause. Most of those movies are pretty stupid comedies though which I strongly detest, so they didn't make my movie list.
And Now I'm finished rambling.
Movie Time
Although I intend to have a weekly movie night, it's too soon to be sure how that will end up playing out, exactly. If it were entirely up to me, I would choose never-before-seen (by my children) films, we'd all watch the movie as a family, then discuss it.
But it won't just be up to me. My husband should have some input (I'm thinking of having him pick the movie every other week) and my kids will no doubt want to have their own input. And what about re-watching movies? Some of the best choices deserve to be seen more than once - how will those fit into the schedule? I've thought of adding a second time slot, this time with whatever the children pick.
I've also thought of giving them 'points', earned during the week for doing chores or finishing school work which could be spent on 'digital time' (movies, TV show episodes, gaming, whatever). So each day a child has the potential to earn enough points to watch a single half-an-hour episode show per day, or could save up the points and watch a full-length movie at the end of the week. In this way, the child has an opportunity to both exercise his/her choices, and also practice the concepts of spending and saving a resource.
Honestly, the above concept seems to be the best compromise between not letting the kids go overboard with too much time in front of the TV or computer and not letting them experience the shows and movies that 'everyone else' gets to see. A firmly limited amount of time that's earned might be used more wisely than if a child is given a vague boundary around how much time is acceptable. Granted, at this point I don't have kids, so the theory may be easier than actually living this out. We'll just have to wait and see.
But it won't just be up to me. My husband should have some input (I'm thinking of having him pick the movie every other week) and my kids will no doubt want to have their own input. And what about re-watching movies? Some of the best choices deserve to be seen more than once - how will those fit into the schedule? I've thought of adding a second time slot, this time with whatever the children pick.
I've also thought of giving them 'points', earned during the week for doing chores or finishing school work which could be spent on 'digital time' (movies, TV show episodes, gaming, whatever). So each day a child has the potential to earn enough points to watch a single half-an-hour episode show per day, or could save up the points and watch a full-length movie at the end of the week. In this way, the child has an opportunity to both exercise his/her choices, and also practice the concepts of spending and saving a resource.
Honestly, the above concept seems to be the best compromise between not letting the kids go overboard with too much time in front of the TV or computer and not letting them experience the shows and movies that 'everyone else' gets to see. A firmly limited amount of time that's earned might be used more wisely than if a child is given a vague boundary around how much time is acceptable. Granted, at this point I don't have kids, so the theory may be easier than actually living this out. We'll just have to wait and see.
College Entrance Essay Questions
I spotted some difficult essay topics and wanted to remember them (for the distant future) when my kids may need to practice writing these types of responses before they are required.
Personally, I think some of the weirder questions look a whole lot more fun than the standard questions. But that's probably the point. In any case, when High School rolls around for my kids, I'll probably assign them a few of these questions to get them thinking about how to write something about themselves without being too egotistical or bland.
- Name a time you faced or witness discrimination and how you overcame it
- What do you consider to be the single most important societal problem? Why?
- Pick a controversial problem on college campuses and suggest a solution.
- What do you see as the greatest threat to the environment today?
- Describe how you have demonstrated leadership ability both in and out of school.
- Discuss a special attribute or accomplishment that sets you apart.
- Describe your most meaningful achievements and how they relate to your future goals.
- Pick an experience from your own life and explain how it has influenced your development.
- Who in your life has been your biggest influence and why?
- How has your family background affected the way you see the world?
- How has your education contributed to who you are today?
- Briefly describe your long- and short-term goals.
- Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
- Why do you want to get a college education?
- Choose a person or persons you admire and explain why.
- Choose a book or books and that have affected you deeply and explain why.
- Describe a time when you grew as a person
- How do you feel about Wednesday?
- What outrages you?
- Write a haiku, limerick, or short poem that best represents you
- Are we alone?
- What is college for?
- Please describe a daily routine or tradition of yours that may seem ordinary to others but holds special meaning for you. Why is this practice significant to you?
- Make a bold prediction about something in the year 2020 that no one else has made a bold prediction about.
- How did you get caught? (Or not caught, as the case may be.)
- You have just completed your 300-page autobiography. Please submit Page 217
Personally, I think some of the weirder questions look a whole lot more fun than the standard questions. But that's probably the point. In any case, when High School rolls around for my kids, I'll probably assign them a few of these questions to get them thinking about how to write something about themselves without being too egotistical or bland.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Teaching Budgeting
I think teaching how to manage a budget is one of the most neglected areas - whether a person attends public school or is taught in the home. Which, sadly, explains a whole lot about our society.
Well, in our home, we follow pretty closely to Dave Ramsey's 'Financial Peace University' school of thought. We do a budget before we see a penny of income, then try to stick to that during the month, reducing each fund (food/gas/water bill/etc.) as we use them. Not only do we have a great idea of where we are financially at any point during the month, but we know when (if) we can buy anything extra without going into debt.
Since I feel that we have an excellent handle on our own budget, we will probably teach by example, in many respects. We'll start out when our kids first start earning an allowance by giving them three jars or envelopes - one for saving, one for tithing, one for 'play'. I honestly have no idea how the concept of saving and tithing will go for a young child, but I have some ideas of how to counteract problems if we encounter them. Seeing videos of the poor around the world and how our tithe money can help them is one method. Doing a Bible study on giving/generosity/tithing is another.
For saving, it might be easier to have a goal. This would be a good opportunity to see if there's anything they really want that's expensive and frivolous enough that my hubby and I have chosen not to get them. It could be anything from a game-system to a trip to Disneyland. We'll just have to see what it is that might motivate them. Seeing the money add up and the goal get closer will, I hope, inspire them to save for less immediate goals later.
When they are a bit older, we'll have them help create our monthly budget, balance the checkbook, pay bills, and all the other monthly tasks that go with being financially responsible adults.
Before they are old enough to go out and get a 'real' job, we'll have some formal teaching on why we do things the way we do. We'll probably actually go through the Financial Peace University as a family, plus do an in-depth study on what the Bible says about money and stewardship.
So I think that's the overall plan.
Well, in our home, we follow pretty closely to Dave Ramsey's 'Financial Peace University' school of thought. We do a budget before we see a penny of income, then try to stick to that during the month, reducing each fund (food/gas/water bill/etc.) as we use them. Not only do we have a great idea of where we are financially at any point during the month, but we know when (if) we can buy anything extra without going into debt.
Since I feel that we have an excellent handle on our own budget, we will probably teach by example, in many respects. We'll start out when our kids first start earning an allowance by giving them three jars or envelopes - one for saving, one for tithing, one for 'play'. I honestly have no idea how the concept of saving and tithing will go for a young child, but I have some ideas of how to counteract problems if we encounter them. Seeing videos of the poor around the world and how our tithe money can help them is one method. Doing a Bible study on giving/generosity/tithing is another.
For saving, it might be easier to have a goal. This would be a good opportunity to see if there's anything they really want that's expensive and frivolous enough that my hubby and I have chosen not to get them. It could be anything from a game-system to a trip to Disneyland. We'll just have to see what it is that might motivate them. Seeing the money add up and the goal get closer will, I hope, inspire them to save for less immediate goals later.
When they are a bit older, we'll have them help create our monthly budget, balance the checkbook, pay bills, and all the other monthly tasks that go with being financially responsible adults.
Before they are old enough to go out and get a 'real' job, we'll have some formal teaching on why we do things the way we do. We'll probably actually go through the Financial Peace University as a family, plus do an in-depth study on what the Bible says about money and stewardship.
So I think that's the overall plan.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Diverse writting mediums
I think it's safe to say that everyone is familiar with writing on paper, but for a child, especially a young child, it can make an otherwise dull and tedious task of practicing things like spelling words more enjoyable by writing with more creative tools.
No matter the child's age, for a change of pace, doing something different like copying spelling words onto the sidewalk using chalk can make for a fun change. So this post is a list of ideas for different mediums to use for creating words.
Just to be complete, I'll start with 'the usual suspects':
Crayons
Pens
Pencils
Digital (typing)
Still using things (like pens) that are more common, but perhaps in ways bit outside the norm:
Highlighters
Write everything in 'bubble letters' - outlined block letters like this:
_______
|__ __|
| |
|__|
Write using the non-dominate hand
Write the entire list or sentence with the eyes closed (longer passages, espeically with multiple lines
of text can garner the most amusement with this one)
Write everything vertically rather than horizontally
Paint on scrap cardboard
Try to write with two pens - either holding one in each hand and moving them together, or holding
both pens together to form one double line.
Use stencils
Materials farther outside the box:
Use alphabet noodles/cereal
Shape letters with toothpicks or broken spaghetti noodle segments
Write in shaving foam or whipped cream spread out on cookie sheets
Write in dirt or sand with finger or stick outside
Use pebbles to form words
Write using streams of toilet paper to form words
Give kids digital cameras to take pictures of letters around town and have them crop the photos and
paste them together (can be literally pasted together if you print it all out, but I recommend
keepting this all in the digital world and 'paste' into something like MS WORD.
Cut out letters from a newspaper or magazine to combine into words
Use their bodies to 'spell' out words (also can work as a P.E. activity if they try to go fast through
forming words!)
String or Yarn
Chalk
Play-doh
foggy mirror/window
Food such as raisins or M&Ms
I'm sure there are many, many more ways to get creative with this. Of course, the whole point of spelling lists are to encourage your children to learn the words, so I don't recommend doing so much of this that a child loses sight of that, but as an occasional creative outlet to bolster lagging enthusiasm, it might be a lot of fun coming up with new and innovative ways to form the words.
No matter the child's age, for a change of pace, doing something different like copying spelling words onto the sidewalk using chalk can make for a fun change. So this post is a list of ideas for different mediums to use for creating words.
Just to be complete, I'll start with 'the usual suspects':
Crayons
Pens
Pencils
Digital (typing)
Still using things (like pens) that are more common, but perhaps in ways bit outside the norm:
Highlighters
Write everything in 'bubble letters' - outlined block letters like this:
_______
|__ __|
| |
|__|
Write using the non-dominate hand
Write the entire list or sentence with the eyes closed (longer passages, espeically with multiple lines
of text can garner the most amusement with this one)
Write everything vertically rather than horizontally
Paint on scrap cardboard
Try to write with two pens - either holding one in each hand and moving them together, or holding
both pens together to form one double line.
Use stencils
Materials farther outside the box:
Use alphabet noodles/cereal
Shape letters with toothpicks or broken spaghetti noodle segments
Write in shaving foam or whipped cream spread out on cookie sheets
Write in dirt or sand with finger or stick outside
Use pebbles to form words
Write using streams of toilet paper to form words
Give kids digital cameras to take pictures of letters around town and have them crop the photos and
paste them together (can be literally pasted together if you print it all out, but I recommend
keepting this all in the digital world and 'paste' into something like MS WORD.
Cut out letters from a newspaper or magazine to combine into words
Use their bodies to 'spell' out words (also can work as a P.E. activity if they try to go fast through
forming words!)
String or Yarn
Chalk
Play-doh
foggy mirror/window
Food such as raisins or M&Ms
I'm sure there are many, many more ways to get creative with this. Of course, the whole point of spelling lists are to encourage your children to learn the words, so I don't recommend doing so much of this that a child loses sight of that, but as an occasional creative outlet to bolster lagging enthusiasm, it might be a lot of fun coming up with new and innovative ways to form the words.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Heavenly Rewards
Non-Crown Heavenly Rewards:
We'll have already done a Bible study on Judgement and receiving Crowns, so for this Bible study, we'll look at what the Bible says about rewards that aren't 'Crowns'. I think we'll start with a review of the concept that all actions are subject to judgement, whether good or bad.
“But I, the LORD, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.” Jeremiah 17:10
Then look at the fact that the judgement results in rewards:
If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Corn 3:12-15)
Questions: What kinds of things might result in gems? What about wood or hay? Do you think that the gold, silver or gems is symbolic?
After this, I'll ask what kinds of things we receive as rewards. Hopefully people will remember the previous week's lesson and name 'Crowns' as one of the possibilities.
I'll use the following verse to talk about 'material rewards'. Since we'll have physical bodies and live in a physical New Earth (a concept we've spent a lot of time on already using the book 'Heaven'), it would follow that there will be physical "stuff" there too.
“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” Matthew 6:19-21 (NLT)
I think this could generate a fairly healthy discussion about what kind of "stuff" might exist. Things that make sense would be things like musical instruments,writing implements, and art supplies, but other 'non-spiritual stuff' could include things like baseballs, hairbrushes, model trains, microscopes, and just about anything that's not a direct result of the Fall (and probably a whole lot of stuff we can't imagine yet). The idea is to spark the imagination with the discussion and want to place 'treasure' in Heaven. The verse speaks of physical items and we can't exactly do a one-to-one exchange (like shipping our favorite DVD up to Heaven), so then the discussion would move on to how we can actually live out this concept. How would a person deposit treasure in Heaven as we are commanded to do?
In addition to "stuff" the Bible also talks about other kinds of rewards. Examples would be in the parables that speak of various faithful service rewarded with authority or responsibility. (Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:12-27). Who will we have authority over?
Also, we will receive words of praise ("Well done, good and faithful servant").
Then we'll review the idea that not everyone gets the same thing on Heaven. We won't all be equal.
“So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.” Matthew 6:19 (NLT) - Note, reading farther, to verse 24, the contrast is not with committed and nominal Christians, but believers and unbelievers. A man cannot have both God as God and Money as god. However, this is not strictly speaking of tithing as the Pharasis strictly tithed, but it was not evidence of their salvation.
“But many who seem to be important now will be the least important then, and those who are considered least here will be the greatest then.” Matthew 19:30 (NLT)
The parable in Matt 20:1-16 seems to imply that everyone is granted the same thing, however commentators have concluded, based on other verses of the Bible (examples listed above) that the apparent equality either refers to admission into Heaven via grace, or that people are not just given rewards based on their actual service, but on their opportunities and resources (Note that the final group had been standing around all day, but given no chance to work). The Widow with her two mites is a prime example of this principle.
I think we'll end with discussing whether it's good or bad to be focused on rewards at all. Is it okay to do a 'good work' if you are doing it with an eye towards the reward? (My conclusion would be that it's perfectly fine. God told us of these various rewards to motivate us, after all. And we have no way to quantify exactly what we earn with each 'good thing' we do, so we are not tempted to think we're 'earning' more than we deserve.)
We'll have already done a Bible study on Judgement and receiving Crowns, so for this Bible study, we'll look at what the Bible says about rewards that aren't 'Crowns'. I think we'll start with a review of the concept that all actions are subject to judgement, whether good or bad.
“But I, the LORD, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.” Jeremiah 17:10
Then look at the fact that the judgement results in rewards:
If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Corn 3:12-15)
Questions: What kinds of things might result in gems? What about wood or hay? Do you think that the gold, silver or gems is symbolic?
After this, I'll ask what kinds of things we receive as rewards. Hopefully people will remember the previous week's lesson and name 'Crowns' as one of the possibilities.
I'll use the following verse to talk about 'material rewards'. Since we'll have physical bodies and live in a physical New Earth (a concept we've spent a lot of time on already using the book 'Heaven'), it would follow that there will be physical "stuff" there too.
“Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” Matthew 6:19-21 (NLT)
I think this could generate a fairly healthy discussion about what kind of "stuff" might exist. Things that make sense would be things like musical instruments,writing implements, and art supplies, but other 'non-spiritual stuff' could include things like baseballs, hairbrushes, model trains, microscopes, and just about anything that's not a direct result of the Fall (and probably a whole lot of stuff we can't imagine yet). The idea is to spark the imagination with the discussion and want to place 'treasure' in Heaven. The verse speaks of physical items and we can't exactly do a one-to-one exchange (like shipping our favorite DVD up to Heaven), so then the discussion would move on to how we can actually live out this concept. How would a person deposit treasure in Heaven as we are commanded to do?
In addition to "stuff" the Bible also talks about other kinds of rewards. Examples would be in the parables that speak of various faithful service rewarded with authority or responsibility. (Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:12-27). Who will we have authority over?
Also, we will receive words of praise ("Well done, good and faithful servant").
Then we'll review the idea that not everyone gets the same thing on Heaven. We won't all be equal.
“So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.” Matthew 6:19 (NLT) - Note, reading farther, to verse 24, the contrast is not with committed and nominal Christians, but believers and unbelievers. A man cannot have both God as God and Money as god. However, this is not strictly speaking of tithing as the Pharasis strictly tithed, but it was not evidence of their salvation.
“But many who seem to be important now will be the least important then, and those who are considered least here will be the greatest then.” Matthew 19:30 (NLT)
The parable in Matt 20:1-16 seems to imply that everyone is granted the same thing, however commentators have concluded, based on other verses of the Bible (examples listed above) that the apparent equality either refers to admission into Heaven via grace, or that people are not just given rewards based on their actual service, but on their opportunities and resources (Note that the final group had been standing around all day, but given no chance to work). The Widow with her two mites is a prime example of this principle.
I think we'll end with discussing whether it's good or bad to be focused on rewards at all. Is it okay to do a 'good work' if you are doing it with an eye towards the reward? (My conclusion would be that it's perfectly fine. God told us of these various rewards to motivate us, after all. And we have no way to quantify exactly what we earn with each 'good thing' we do, so we are not tempted to think we're 'earning' more than we deserve.)
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Copy Work ideas for Children
I have been creating lists of ideas for copy-work. For anyone reading this who doesn't know what copy-work is, it's just the act of giving a child a list of words or a phrase of some sort for them to practice handwriting/spelling/memorization. For younger kids, like Kindergarten age, the process would involve me, the teacher, writing down a short one-line something and then the child re-writing that a few times. It could be copied once or twice if the goal is to practice forming letters, but using the same list/sentence multiple times per week would certainly aid in memorization.
The older child could be giving a longer section and may move from copy-work to either memorization or spelling or both. For example, during a single week, for an older child using dictation to improve spelling and grammar might involve presenting him/her with a copy of a poem on Monday to copy out and the child works on remembering how to spell each word and the punctuation through the week. Then the parent, on Friday, reads the poem slowly aloud while the child re-creates it. This emphasizes the spelling and grammar, but instead of writing, the child could focus on memorization and speech skills by ending the week reciting it instead. Either method is a nice learning tool!
Anyway, I was searching out some ideas for copy-work for younger children and came across several ideas and thought it would be make sense to collect the scattered thoughts here.
Kindergarten/1st/2nd grades:
I think I'll post again on this topic, only giving specific examples of quotes and poetry and proverbs and such. I'm in the middle of organizing what I believe I'll attempt to do each week for the first few years, so we'll see how that goes. In the meantime, I'm still gathering an overabundance of the above material.
The older child could be giving a longer section and may move from copy-work to either memorization or spelling or both. For example, during a single week, for an older child using dictation to improve spelling and grammar might involve presenting him/her with a copy of a poem on Monday to copy out and the child works on remembering how to spell each word and the punctuation through the week. Then the parent, on Friday, reads the poem slowly aloud while the child re-creates it. This emphasizes the spelling and grammar, but instead of writing, the child could focus on memorization and speech skills by ending the week reciting it instead. Either method is a nice learning tool!
Anyway, I was searching out some ideas for copy-work for younger children and came across several ideas and thought it would be make sense to collect the scattered thoughts here.
Kindergarten/1st/2nd grades:
- Address/phone number
- Short proverbs (such as "No man is an island" or "The early bird gets the worm")
- Scripture - at this age I'd either start with small 'pieces' of verses (like "All have sinned" rather than the full verse) or do a larger section in multiple steps.
- Quotes - like proverbs, these can be very short. The difference between them is that these short sayings are not as universally known and have an original speaker attached. They can be quite humorous, silly, or profound.
- Lists of important 'groups':
- Colors of the rainbow
- Month of the year
- Days of the week
- Planets
- Continents
- Books of the Bible
- etc.
- Rules (socially acceptable actions or behaviors you wish your child to remember. For example, "Say 'please' when asking for something" or "Do not talk with your mouth full")
- Facts: Any 'everyone knows this' type of fact. For example, "There are 24 hours in a day.", "The Earth travels around the sun.", "Plants need sunlight to grow". These often fall under the category of science-knowledge. In fact, finding simply sentences out of a child's science text books might be a great source for these sentences.
- Spelling words. You can use both lists of words, or the words incorporated into sentences. The child can even help create the sentences!
- Poems - Nursery rhymes, songs, and poetry are great to memorize, but I put this last on the list because these are often fairly lengthy and may work better as verbal memory work than written copy-work.
- Limericks are perfect for this age. The often silly humor is very appealing. Just be sure to create your own list since many limericks can be pretty risque.
- Geography - start memorizing countries, states and capitols
- Presidents/Kings/Pharaohs/Dynasties
- Quotes - you can get longer, more complicated quotes and really ruminate over the meanings. For example, "Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither." - C. S. Lewis. Although a younger child could copy out the words, it takes an older child to think about the meaning behind this.
- Poetry (other than limericks) - There are so many great poems out there. Try 'Fog' by Carl Sandburg as a very short introduction or something like 'For whom the Bell tolls' for something longer.
- Scripture - Memorizing the Bible is, in my opinion, one of the best things a parent can do for their children.
- More Science facts - there is a nearly limitless number of 'things to know' in the world, so this is a limitless category. Try doing some of the laws like "An object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force."
- Grammar rules. (i.e. An adverb is...)
- Spelling words. As before, you can do either lists of words or place the words into sentences. Here might be a good place to practice that complicated grammar you may also be studying (for example, make sentences that use quotes or prepositions).
- Scripture - always more of the Bible! At this point fairly large chunks can be memorized/dictated at a time.
- Poetry - fairly lengthy poetry such as sections of Shakespeare, can now be attempted.
- Quotes - again, profound quotes that inspire thought are abundant!
- Speeches - Famous speeches, such as the Gettysburg Address or the 'I have a Dream' speech.
- Systems of the Body (i.e. names of the bones), Periodic Table, and other science facts.
- Pretty much anything from the previous age bracket, only these ages allow for both longer segments of everything and more complex ideas.
- Sections of classic literary work or dramas.
I think I'll post again on this topic, only giving specific examples of quotes and poetry and proverbs and such. I'm in the middle of organizing what I believe I'll attempt to do each week for the first few years, so we'll see how that goes. In the meantime, I'm still gathering an overabundance of the above material.
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