Hey

Thinking students are stimulating

Welcome Alex, David, Shannon, Morgan and Marta. Today’s class was very thoughtful, honest and stimulating. We started our class with a smash poem called Foxhole Manifesto: http://www.campfire.net.au/node/145

This helped us explore and articulate what we believe about God.

Beliefs in God

• God is someone you can ask for help but it is wrong not to thank him when does, otherwise we are just using him.

• God is real but not active in our society because we are on the right path, we have everything we need; health, technology, friends, comfort.

• God is real but as to what he/she is like more exploring needs to be done.

• God isn’t real, the universe is adequately explained scientifically ie the Big Bang.

• God is a concept that people use to get them through hard times.

• God is big, he can do anything, and he wrote the world a letter to reveal himself, that letter is the Bible. God is a person whom you can have a relationship. The purpose of the universe is to give God glory just by its amazingness, its existence. God’s rescue plan also gives him glory.

Aliens vs Chance

Aliens: Bit more friendly

Alien: Not so friendly

I was asked whether I believe in life on other planets. The implication being that the universe is so big that mathematically there must be life elsewhere even though that might be such a small possibility. But I don’t believe in Chance, my Big God chose to make life on earth only and no matter what the maths say if there is no chance then there is no chance.

God at his desk

God is inactive

God is a Radio receiver

Welcome

Welcome Dani and Ana

Godfellas

We watched an episode of Futurama where Bender becomes God. When he helps people he causes disaster or they become too dependant. When he doesn’t help they lose hope and blow each other up. Bender is taught that as God you have to help in such a way that people aren’t sure you have helped so that they don’t become too dependant but don’t lose hope either.

Drawings of God

God is a Wizard

Students were asked to draw their idea of God or what they didn’t believe about God. Some students drew ears, eyes, hands, hearts to represent that they believed in a God who saw, heard, helped and cared.

Atheist Hope

Dr Who, the Joker and Dalek

Rose

We like Howl's Moving Castle

An oxymoron is two words put together that contradict each other, like army intelligence, Microsoft Works, deliberately random. Atheist Hope could be argued is an axymoron particularly if you watch the file “hope” (http://www.campfire.net.au/node/201). Essentially hope is something that you generate even though there is no hope, it is only pure emotion. We agreed that this was more depressing that the second film

Starting Over

This is about a boy who is ignored, uncared for and unloved by his parents (http://www.campfire.net.au/node/184). He has no hope and yet he made the movie, giving credit and thanks to Jesus Christ. So this boy who had no hope was found by hope in the person of Jesus Christ who turned his life around so that the could tell his story. Hope can exist outside of yourself.

Drawing

We drew while we talked. Here are few of our drawings.

Final Class

Buddha

Thanks go to Alex, David, Shannon, Morgan and Marta for making our time together interesting, deep, stimulating and respectful.

Quiz

Today we did a quiz on different religion in the world. The main idea behind the quiz was to give the students enough information to answer this question: Are the different religions the same, ie do they worship the same god?

God the Mountain

One way that people describe the different religions being the same is with an illustration. If God was a mountain the different religions are trying to climb the mountain to get to the top. Their perception of God is going to be different to someone on the other side of the mountain.

Same or different?

Mecca

The problem with this idea is that a Buddhist would deny the existence of the mountain. A Hindu would say “I am the mountain” a Muslim would say there is only one way up the mountain and a Christian would refuse to climb the mountain because they believe they can’t and that God comes down the mountain.

The answer

The different religions are different, they are not the same and they don’t worship the same god.

Why young people are so sensitive

A student asked me why young people take things so personally. This sparked a philosophical discussion. Not only do we have a generational gap between parent and child but now we have a philosophical gap. We have moved from being a Modernist society to being Post Modern. The values of modernism are essentially that we will succeed through the use of our reason and science. We will make this a better world through hard work and commitment. People had jobs all their lives and this was an important part of their identity. Having a home and family was very valuable. But after two world wars and the dropping of two atomic bombs the younger generation became disillusioned with modernism. All that hard work and commitment didn’t pay off.