This year the College of Science had something called "Invite Your Advisor To Lunch" and lunch was provided for free to the student and advisor. One of my students, a very nice young man named Darren, asked me if I would like to go. I was very excited and honored that he would take the time and put forth the effort to ask.
Darren has a 3.96 GPA which is the highest GPA in the College of Science this year. The Chair of the CS department told me that Darren is the brightest student he's ever seen at Cal Poly Pomona. Darren has been doing research, writing papers, and doing lots of other impressive things and still manages to be very calm and unstressed. He's a really interesting person.
We went to lunch that day, and before he ate he told me that he was going to take a moment to pray. "Pray?" I thought. Wow, how long has it been since I've prayed? I have to admit I might be hard pressed to find a time within the last year.
At this point I must admit that I have begun to wonder exactly what I believe. I currently believe in God, but I wonder if I would still believe if I really searched for answers. So I think I had decided not to think about it because I don't see any benefit to the possibility that I might convince myself that there is no God.
I've found that I often don't agree with Christians - not about Jesus, how to be saved and things like that, but about what makes someone a bad person and about how we should treat others when they are acting in a way that could be interpreted as unChristian-like behavior. When I see some of the things that people do in the name of Christianity, I don't want to be associated with it. I begin to feel ashamed to think that someone would look at me as a Christian and think that I believe the same things that these other people do.
But getting back to the story, after Darren finished praying I asked him a question. I said "What makes you believe in God?". I asked because I thought that if someone who is intelligent and thoughtful has come up with an answer, maybe that would help me to understand my feelings a little more.
He gave me a short run down on why he believed, including a bit of info on scientific evidence and offered to let me borrow a book which he thought might be useful. He brought me a book and CD yesterday and I'm hoping to have time to look at it this weekend. The book is titled "The Case for Easter". I'm looking forward to reading it, because I'd like to have more information. I'll have to see if I find any answers to my questions.
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3 comments:
yeah.
Very cool. I went to a hear a great speaker two weeks ago that talked about how the church can really screw things up and we have to keep looking at Jesus and follow his example. Jesus really is a wonderful example of how we should live. I guess the "What would Jesus do?" saying really is a good thing if you really understand where he was coming from. Sometimes I can't believe how badly humans mess things up. I don't want people looking at me as an example of a how God wants us to act. I am just as messed up as the next person. I want to tell people to use Jesus as an example. If the book is good let me know. Maybe I will read it.
Yeah, I agree with Wendy. I'm learning to dislike all kinds of stereotypes. Here in the South, there are some people that make me not want to be white. And there are teachers that make me want to erase that title. It's hard, and I wish there were an easy answer.
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