Sunday School, and Other Things

Greetings to all who read this.

It’s been a while since my last entry, so I’ll try to fill this with all the thick, juicy information you’ve been craving.

First of all, a bit about blogging in general.  Do you know how hard it is to do this?  It’s frickin’ hard, as the Napoleon Dynamite might say.  First, you have to find the time to write, and then you have to think of things to write about.  This isn’t the same thing as a diary or a journal, where you can just let yourself ramble on about nothing at all, or pour out your innermost thoughts and feelings.  This thing might be read by your wife, kids, friends and relatives and who knows how many perfect strangers and law enforcement personnel, so you’ve got to be careful!  

Next, movies.  Since my last entry I’ve seen Wallace and Gromit.  If you haven’t seen it yet, drop everything and run to the theater now, because it is great. This may be the first time since The Return of the King that I went into the theater with high expectations and left feeling they had all been exceeded by the movie I had just seen.  If you’re a frequent moviegoer like I am, you know what I mean.  I can’t say enough wonderful things about this movie!  It was cracking good!

On to music: I said I’d tell you what I thought about the new Dave Matthews Band album Stand Up.  Well, it’s pretty good.  I don’t think it’s nearly as good as Everyday (and those are the only two Dave Matthews Band albums I’ve heard, by the way).  But what I’m really excited about right now is Switchfoot’s new album Nothing is Sound!  Wow!  I didn’t think they could pull off an album as great as Beautiful Letdown, but they’ve sure come close!  I love it!  I picked it up last week at the Barnes and Noble with some birthday money I got from my sister-in-law Lee Ann Kuruganti, and in gratitude, allow me to plug her website!  Go there now and let’s really drive up her hit counter!  It’s at 2075 right now.  I want to see that thing reach 3000 by tomorrow night!  You have your orders, dear reader! Click that link!

Now to other things.

Since Sunday, I’ve been thinking about Sunday School.  Last Sunday was the first day of the new “Adult Education Class” which is what we old-time churchgoers used to call “Sunday School”.  I love Sunday School.  I’ll be perfectly honest: I’d just as soon skip church and just attend Sunday School.

Last week they handed out a little questionnaire, on which we were supposed to write about things we’d like to talk about in future classes.  Questions we’d like to have answered, and so on.  If you know me very well (and if you’ve read this far, you probably do), you know that I wrote quite a bit.  I have a lot of questions I’d like to have answered.  

Why don’t I just tell you what I wrote?  Maybe some of my dear readers (you are the most intelligent people I know – and in some cases don’t know) have some enlightening comments they’d like to share.

First of all, they had the usual questions which were just put in there to determine if I am “saved” yet or not.  One of them was “If you were to die today and God were to ask you ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’, what would you say?”  I let out an audible laugh at this standard Four Spiritual Laws question.  Oh the memories!  I answered it as follows: “I would tell him he made a promise to me, to never leave me or forsake me, and to save me, and is obligated to let me in!”  Not the standard answer, and sure to raise some eyebrows.  I wonder if they’ll think I’m saved?

Next they wanted us to write about our biggest “Bible question”.  I had to think about that, because I’ve got a lot of ‘em.  I decided to write about the question of biblical contradictions.  My question is not about any specific “contradiction” in scripture.  I know full well that any specific contradiction can be reconciled with a little circuitous reasoning.  The real question is: Why isn’t God clearer about things?  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard preachers contradict each other about what the Bible is supposedly so ”clear” about.  When I was a kid I remember one Bible college professor telling me that it was possible to prove anything from the Bible, and it’s true.  Why isn’t it clearer?  If God wants us to know the truth, why does it appear to be so obfuscated in the Bible?

I’m going to have to dedicate a future blog to my favorite Bible contradiction.  It would take too long to write about it here.  Something to look forward to!

Now back to that Sunday School questionnaire.  The last item was the catch-all “is there anything else you’d like to talk about?”  In that space I wrote the following:

“In the Bible, Jesus us called ‘the savior of the world’. How can he be the savior of the world, if the world is not saved by him?  And if the majority of people will ultimately be lost, in what sense is the world ‘saved’?”

Now my wife is probably afraid that we’re about to be kicked out of the church.  My asking that question (and the particular conclusions I came to) got my family kicked out of the last church we were members of.  But they can’t do that to us at this church, because we’re not members!  Haha!  Got ‘em there!  They can’t deprive us of what we don’t have!

And with that I really must close.  I’ve been writing for over an hour, and it’s time to get to work.  Don’t forget to leave a comment before clicking outta here!  I want to know what you, my dear readers, think!

-Tim