Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Christian Thinking

Over on School of Thought, Unschooler has a post on Christian thinking sparked by a post that shows up in this week's COH. She's braver then I am for actually reading the post. I've found that homeschooling posts made by women of a certain christian bent tend to, quite literally, turn my stomach.

Despite that, my beef is with Unschooler (it's ON girl!! :)) who went on to say,
My heart sinks even as I read it several hours later. Retrain their hearts? WTF? The Christian belief system is truly flawed.


Now I am not going to question the fact that the christian mom displayed a certain christian belief system. Some christians like to deny it but the bible, as much as I cherish it, is a library of all kinds of different writings and some of them are simply ugly and stupid. We should always trust that there will be people who pick out those bits or use one reference to a quiver or rod or a snakebite to justify their actions or control others, even (or perhaps especially) if the others are their children.

But they represent a christian belief system, not THE christian belief system. Jacque (the christian mom from the original post) would likely find her chrsitian values questioned and challenged if she presented them in a group that included members of the UU, Quaker, Evangelical Lutheran or UCC churches. I know I'd like to sit down with the dear and discuss childcare.

In a wider scope, what is THE Christian belief system? After 2000 years we have thousands of christian denominations and groups and the differences between them are sometimes startling. I don't think the question should ask what it is. I think it should ask if there even is one.


But what about Jacque? I think Unschooler came close to the truth when she said,
I proclaim we pen a theme song for this kind of fanatical thinking.


Fanatical christian thinking. Works for me.

2 comments:

nada said...

Dawn,

You are correct. I shouldn't crap all over the *entire* Christian community. I have several readers that are religious in some aspect and don't remotely resemble fanatics. The majority of bloggers that I happen upon are out of their minds and the word fanatical only comes close to explaining how nuts they are when it comes to their faith.

Personally, I don't believe one thing in the Bible nor do I respect it as any sort of serious historical document. It's a book.

With that said, I am tickled pink to come across any blogger that has the balls to stand up to me or any other person that may disagree with their views. Just be prepared to bring a good argument.

Diversity is what makes the world interesting. Had I not read the crazy postings of the COH, I may have come away with the same old links to Math curriculum.

:)

Dawn said...

I know what you mean by the majority of bloggers. I find it really hard to read most of the christian ones and engage other christian homeschoolers on message boards because they're so often creationists and/or are quoting scripture or invoking Jesus in every second sentence. Or they the freaking teddy bear angel graphics in their sigs and on their blogs.

And none of them can take a tasteless dead Jesus joke. I mean, come on!

I was a wimp though. I took a glance at this week's COH and ran. Didn't have your fortitude. :)