ze semester is over. finals are over. essays are over. after the three i wrote today.
i didn’t like my ethic’s teacher. the first day i decided he was a snob who had to teach us because we showed up for class. He knew his stuff, but i didn’t and wouldn’t like him. ever. and i didn’t. for awhile.
When i was applying for the trip to Greece (which i didn’t get), he introduced me to the head guy as his “best ethics student this semester.” i think after that i cracked. i cracked all the way down the middle. then he stopped me in the halls and commented about my essay. then he asked me after class what i was doing with my life.
i did good in all of my classes. i did well in human services because it was an easy class. i did well in educational psychology because there were only four of us in the class. i did well in humanities because i wanted to learn it. but i did well in ethics because i wanted to show the professor i could. i came to class prepared. because he would call on people randomly. on me, randomly. yep…and at the end of class today, he gave me a poem called “Paper, Scissors, Stone” and told me to stop by and tell him how i do in life sometime. because i “D*** well had better do great things.”
And so throughout the semester i learned things about this snob of a professor…how he was widowed. how he went to Yale. how he wore a different tie every day because he wanted it to be part of the learning experience. and…i want to be a teacher like that some day. in the end, what meant the most to me was that he really believed in me. not because i was a missionary or a good girl, but intellectually. as we shook hands and i thanked him for the semester, we said good-bye as equals, and he was rooting me on.
bits from my ethics paper, studying other belief systems:
This has led me to the history of religion. The human experience of it. Obviously filtered through my own perception and experience, I am looking for more than science or theory of belief—but for impressions. Memories. Lives lived. The actions those ideals led to. And I am keeping the scope narrow. I haven’t even finished with my own religion—how could I imagine that anything less than a lifetime spent living in someone else’s shoes could really help me understand all of what their religion really is?
In reality, my project will never be over. Because one experience with another culture or religion isn’t enough. Say I go to a Buddhist temple and meet a very grumpy Buddhist…will I think all Buddhists are grumpy? Probably. Same goes if I met a really personable Buddhist—are all Buddhists now personable? How do you really get a true evaluation? I am not sure, but I am ready to begin.
I will start with me, since honestly speaking, that is where I must begin. I grew up in a Christian home. It took me quite a few years to realize that not everyone believed the same as me. To me, the idea of not believing in God sounded as ridiculous as not eating dinner—it wasn’t reasonable and you just didn’t want to do it. Now, I understand different arguments to prove God exists or doesn’t exist, and I believe that it is ultimately a choice you make to believe or not. I have made that choice.
For a long time, it (God and religion) was just something that went along with growing up in the home I did, but somewhere in my later teens, something happened to me. I think it is a personal journey for each person. But during this time, God became real to me. Huge—even arrogant sounding words—I know! But I can’t put it any other way. Before, God and the Bible were simply moral codes to me. A set of rules that I felt happy when I followed, and I felt guilty when I didn’t. They didn’t make me a good person—a moral person yes, but not a good person.
But in knowing God, that changed. Whereas before it rattled me to have anyone question God or the Bible, now I can listen, and even enjoy the argument. Because bottom line is, I know God exists, because I’ve felt His presence, talked with Him: you could call it being friends (a rather irreverent term that puts it so nicely). Things change when you KNOW a person. A relationship makes all the difference.
To me, God is not an ethical debate—He is my heavenly Father and friend. The Bible is not just my moral code; it is a letter from a friend containing things I need to know to get by. Because I have found that I, by myself, making my own moral code doesn’t cut it. Not in the least. I know that I need something more than my opinion, something outside of me. And that is God and His Word for me. I have chosen that, and I am in for the long haul.
(and then 15 pages of indepth study on homosexuality, Masons, Baha’i, Judaism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam)
You could call my project a desire to know more, but also of a desire to know what I believe. I have looked at the beliefs of many others—strangers, friends, and family—and at myself. I have found things I agree with and things I disagree with. I have asked myself why I feel that way about it, and sometimes I have answers and sometimes I don’t. I have asked what I am supposed to DO about what I know, and sometimes I have answers and sometimes I don’t.
Sometimes, I think I only want to know what is right and what I believe so I can go out and start yelling it. I can be sure of it. So I can protest and do something and dare them to say I am wrong. Instead, what I am finding is the center of religion and belief and of myself is my relationship with God. And what flows from that relationship is love to all people. Those with the same beliefs and those with different beliefs. Especially for those with different beliefs. And that is what I needed to know.
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