Walking A Fine Line

I am a very devout and conservative religious person.  I think Calvin and Edwards had it right, and I wish I could be more like the Puritans were.  As a literature teacher, I often get to teach literature that has a religious connotation.  Friday I taught "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by John Edwards.  This is pretty great stuff in my opinion, but I have to be careful that I don't go too far and lose my job.  I have to be constantly on guard that I say things like,"They believed." or "That is the Christian philosophy." instead of saying, "I believe." or saying that anything is truth when it comes to religious beliefs and theology. It is a fine line.

I love that I am able to share the gospel under the guise of teaching literature.  I mean, it is in the literature book, so no one can complain about teaching a sermon from a Puritan minister. I may not be able to say it is truth, but the message still gets put out there, and for a lot of these kids, it is the only time they hear it.

This year I had a girl say that she thought Edwards was crazy for thinking about people going to hell, and that she thought he had it totally wrong.  This really disturbed me for two reasons: 1. her family says they are Christians because they attend the (fairly liberal) Methodist church once or twice a year, and 2. she is the superintendent's daughter (so I have to be even more careful with what I say). I really thought about how to respond to that; I wanted her and the rest of the class to see that you can't say someone is crazy for trying to save someone from hell if that person TRULY believes the other person is going to hell...regardless if you think hell exists or not.

This video was my solution...