For a few select years, this semi-humble parent took time out to homeschool two of her three children. It was no intended disrespect of any of the excellent educators in our community, nor was our family any less involved; we love our local schools and will always support them. This was simply a choice that for two of our three kids, for those few, specifically selected years, a more targeted one-on-one educational approach would be fruitful. Socialization was never an issue (… and no, with all due respect to my homeschool family friends, I never wore a denim skirt nor some sort of bun in my hair).
One of the educational units we most enjoyed during those years was the study of world religion; it was fascinating! While some have opted for religion being on the short list of things people don’t talk about, I felt it was wise and appropriate for my children to understand the interworking of each major faith…
… what is the origin?
… who was the founder?
… are people encouraged to worship God or worship man?
… what is the primary doctrine?
… what are the primary behavioral components?
… where has the information come from?
… how do we know if it’s true?
… what parts are hard? … and if so, why? … because they don’t make sense or because of any stubbornness or unwillingness on my part to understand and attempt to comply?
… how through the centuries, has its prophecy proven true?
… what seems based merely on human thinking?
Such is a fascinating study. And while I believe that true religion must fully affect a person’s head, heart, and feet (meaning it needs to make sense, spur us on to love other people well, and then put our feet into motion/service), that study gave us excellent head knowledge.
For example, did you know that the Jehovah Witnesses teach that only 144,000 people will go to heaven? (… someone might want to review those odds with their 3.5 million members…)
… or that Scientology, founded by L. Ron Hubbard, teaches that 75 million years ago, an evil leader called Xenu decided to eliminate the excess population from a galactic confederacy, tricking billions of people and then exporting them to Earth? (… note that Hubbard was a career science fiction writer… shocking…).
All that to say that it is an entirely false statement to say that all religions are equally good, true, and right. That is simply untrue.
One of the aspects, no less, that fascinated my boys and I, as we took advantage of the opportunity to learn together some dozen years ago, was that as we studied the world’s religions, only one teaches about a central figure who died and came back to life. The bodies of all other founders and leaders of the world’s religions remain dead and decaying in a tomb somewhere.
Let me not be callous nor disrespectful. Such is not my intent.
My intent is simply to share that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the one aspect of Christianity my boys and I could never shake. We could never quit thinking about how it’s the one aspect that differentiates Christ from the leaders of all other faiths and ideologies.
I am not saying that all parts of Christianity are easy for me; they’re not. But on Easter Sunday, the day the world remembers that radical, unparalleled-by-any resurrection, I must pause. I pause asking myself what I believe and why… where am I right? … where am I wrong? … and for me, where has my own stubbornness and unwillingness gotten in the way?
I think of the resurrection this day.
Respectfully… always…
AR