1000 American High School Students Learn About Caste Discrimination and the Dalits, par Aloys Evina - JOURNAL CHRETIEN

1000 American High School Students Learn About Caste Discrimination and the Dalits, par Aloys Evina - JOURNAL CHRETIEN:

"In American public high schools, the caste system in India is briefly studied and given only cursory attention. However, in Highland Ranch, Colorado, over 1000 high school students at ThunderRidge High School (TRHS) attended a Dalit Awareness Day Assembly where speakers from the Dalit Freedom Network (DFN) gave a detailed report on the horrors of modern day apartheid. The 1st annual Dalit Awareness Day was instrumented by Elle Sweeney, a senior at ThunderRidge, as her Senior Project. Elle, 18 years old, came up with the idea after visiting India with her mother, a physician, in 2002. They had traveled to Orissa to put on a medical camp sponsored by the Operation Mobilization India. There she first noticed the inequalities that were part of the Indian culture and it remained ingrained in her memories. Her mother has gone back every year since then and her father is one of the founding board members and current Director of Operations of the US-based Dalit Freedom Network. When it came time to come up with an idea for her required senior project at ThunderRidge High School, it was a not hard for her to decide."

My wife, Marnie, went to India in February this year with Dalit Freedom Network. We are so excited to read about the opportunity that DFN had to share with a whole high school student body because 1 person decided to make it happen! Great job Elle!

Once again this reminds me of the priesthood of believers. What's that? It's the New Testaments way of saying that everyone who follows Jesus is to be doing ministry. Not just pastors. Everyone. Not just missionaries. Everyone. Not just.....Everyone!

Weird things in Genesis

Genesis is a strange book. Most Christians have read the opening chapters so many times (usually as they start over the attempt to read the Bible completely through) that they are very familiar with the content and fail to read slowly and think about the strangeness of it all. Genesis 3, the account of "The Fall" is particularly strange.

Let me point out a few things that I am mulling over in this chapter:

• Crafty serpent: what does it mean that "the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals"? The definition of crafty is to be "skilled in or marked by underhandedness, deviousness, or deception." Would God create a creature that is inately crafty?
• Speaking serpent: I've never heard a snake speak...hiss, but not talk to me or anyone. I think I'd be a little shocked if a snake spoke to me. Eve doesn't seem surprised at all. Does this mean that snakes could speak before the fall? Or does it mean that Eve had never encountered a serpent before this? Adam, who is with her, has seen a serpent before (God brought all the animals to Adam to name them) and he doesn't seem shocked either. Did serpents have vocal cords? Could they speak? Or is something else at work here?
• What did Eve think it meant to die? We must assume that nothing has ever died in God's new creation. What is her understanding of this threat of punishment?
• Adam was with her: much has been made of this. Some authors have said that men inherently abdicate their leadership role in the family, society, and the church. This is based off this passage in Genesis 3. But if men inherently do this then God did not make man perfect or good initially. Man was prone to sin even before the fall. It would seem we were doomed to fail. Where do we get the idea that Adam is the leader anyway?
  
• Adam was instructed by God not to eat from the tree. We have to imply that Adam needed to instruct Eve and any other humans not to eat from the tree as well. It seems that this implication implies that Adam is the leader. But another option for Eve and others learning about God's command is that God would let others know. Why wouldn't he? He desires relationships with them as well and before the fall wouldn't every human enjoy uninterrupted friendship with God? Wouldn't it make sense that this self-revealing God would reveal himself and his will to Eve as well? Either way, we know from what Eve says to the serpent that she has been instructed.
• If Adam did abdicate his leadership role, then sin actually entered the world through this action rather then through the action of eating the forbidden fruit. But clearly God said that they couldn't eat from the fruit of the tree. Is this the only thing they could do that would be considered sin? Are there other behaviors that they could do that would be sinful? For instance, what if Adam decides to become a meat eater and kills a chicken. Would this behavior be sin?

Well that's just a few of my questions. One thing I believe we can take away from this is that it is difficult to build doctrine on narratives. We must remember that it is a story and it is not seeking to answer all of our questions.

Dylan Hochevar

Did you see the write-up on Dylan Hochevar in the Denver Post yesterday? It's a great article on a great kid! Here's a short quote from it:

This season, the 6-foot-4 right-hander has produced a 5-1 record, allowed only three earned runs (0.58 ERA) and consistently thrown in the 84- to 87-mph range. He was hitting 88 to 89 mph in his last outing. His repertoire includes two- and four-seam fastballs, a curveball and slider, while he toys with a sinker.

Dylan didn't pitch last night, but the Eagles beat Burlington and will play again at 12:30pm today in Holyoke. Go Eagles!

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Culture of generosity

I love listening to sermons. Perhaps you have seen me at the WRAC in the early morning listening to my iPod shuffle. Maybe you thought I was listening to praise and worship music (middle-of-the-road of course, because that's what pastors listen to, right?). Nope. I'm listening to sermons.

Today I listened to a great sermon by Jeff Manion from Ada Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI. The sermon series I am listening to by Jeff is called Culture of Generosity. It is a great sermon concerning the tithe.

If you listen to the sermon, don't be too surprised to hear some of these ideas sometime at First Christian at a later date.

Read the Bible in 90 days

May 1, I started one of my favorite activities...reading the Bible completely through in 90 days. You can learn more about this practice here.

I recommend that you get a translation of the Bible that you are not very familiar with and start reading at the beginning. Using a new translation will cause you to really read the text. The Bible will also feel new and fresh as you read in a translation new to you.

To read the entire Bible in 90 days you need to average about 15 pages a day depending on the size of print. For this go 'round, I am reading the TNIV which is a translation that has been criticized by some. Dr. Mark Roberts has a nice write up on the issues surrounding the TNIV controversy and Bible translation in general.

I don't really take a side in the argument. I use lots of translations and there are flaws with all of them. A perfect translation does not exist.

So are you ready? Are you ready to dive into the scriptures everyday for about 45 minutes for the next 90 days? If so, grab your Bible and join the conversation!