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!