I'm currently taking a course entitled "Potraits of Jesus." Today my T.A. proposed the question: Who is Jesus to you? About 15 out of 20 people in the tutorial responded "I am Christian and Jesus is my Saviour." I didn't know what to think when I heard that phrase articulated over and over again. I guess I was shocked; after all I was in an academia university setting.
"Jesus is my Saviour".....really?! If Jesus is your so-called "Saviour", then I would expect you to come up with a more personal response about who he is to you, instead of regurgiitating the words of your fellow classmates, who in turn plagiarized their pastors' weekly sermons.
Tutorial will be interesting.
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Ah, that's awesome, but in the uncomfortable, funny way. I wonder if your course will uncover some less than comforting content for your "faithful" classmates. From the religious studies courses that Alex has taken, it seems to me that they tend to pursue truth through rational analysis and in doing so, they tend to illuminate inconsistencies and the vast fallibility of modern religion.
In the course that I am taking, we will be looking at the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and examining the "literary relationships" among the three Jesus stories.
I don't know if the 15 out of 20 people in the class understand 'yet' what the class is really about, that its not like "Reglious Studies" in high school. Most of them are science majors or business majors. I was one out of 3 people in humanities.
This guy in my class proposed the question, "Isn't it problematic to look at the literary differences in the 3 gospels and try and compare them, when the translation of the bible from Greek is not accurate?" (This question was proposed by another English major in my class). In which a (religious girl) responds, "Why was the Bible written in Greek?"
You've got to be kidding me right? Why was it written in Greek? Because that's the language that people spoke when the Bible was put down into words by Matthew/Mark/Luke/John. Did she really think it was written in English?!?!
I guess thinking of Jesus as "English speaking" and "White" allows them to relate to Jesus on a more deeper level and deem him as their "Saviour"...whatever that means...I would actually really like to know what "Saviour" means to all these individuals.
Haha, that reminds me of a quote by a Texan minister of educations with regards to the language(s) being taught in classrooms:
"If english was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for us."
Fantastic.
haha that's exactly what I thought of when that girl made that comment!
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