Week Nine -- Comparative Religions

Brenda Lewis was our teacher this past week on "Comparative Religions." It was a lot of review for me because I took philosophy and worldview in high school, but it was a fantastic week nonetheless! Brenda is a YWAMer who lives in Colorado but spends several months in India each year, where she has safe houses for kids who are taken out of human trafficking. Her passion for India was absolutely contagious, and I think most of my school was ready to go with her by the end of the week! ;)

In this picture, we were listing off all kinds of adjectives and aspects of Jesus' character and nature. It didn't take long to fill the white board.

The focus of the week was the importance of knowing what we believe and why we believe it, while also learning what other people believe so we can understand where they are coming from and therefore reach them with the Gospel.

We spent a lot of time looking at and discussing pantheistic worldviews, such as Hinduism and Buddhism (which was born out of Hinduism).

What I think is so interesting in different worldviews, is at some point, they are all inconsistent with what they say they believe. For example, Buddhism says that people have no value. However, it also acknowledges suffering as a problem and wants to eliminate it, but why would that matter if we have no value? Also, I've heard people ask, "If God is real, then why do the innocent suffer?" But if there is no God, what makes them innocent, and who cares if they suffer? Christianity alone says that we are significant and have value!
The list of inconsistencies goes on and on...

The conclusion that we came to is that all people want to know two things:
1. Is God good?
2. Does He love me?

We went on to analyze monotheism, specifically Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
It's interesting to see that other worldviews are also SO motivated by works. In others, you work to be accepted by God. But for Christians, we work for Him because we are accepted! It's out of love.

Some great points from the week are:
-We only believe that which motivates us to action.
-To know what someone believes, look at their life.
-Thoughts-->Choices-->Actions-->Habits-->Character-->Destiny
-Every emotion is the slave of what you think.
-Christianity is the only worldview that will satisfy the belief that we are significant and have value.
-Love is unconditional, but relationship is conditional because it is always reciprocated. 
-Law protects value! This is easy to see simply by asking people, "Why do we have laws?" They would say, "For safety." But to protect what? The answer is obviously people, because people have tremendous value.
-The first 4 commandments protect God's value (love God), and 5-10 protect our value (love others).

Wednesday evening was the start of our 4-day Thanksgiving break. Heather Miller, one of our school staff, invited a bunch of us girls over to her place for the holiday! She is wonderful, and we had a great time cooking all day and feasting later. :)

Heather is the angel in the middle :)

This weekend was also our final weekend to work on our Outreach Project. One of the requirements of this school is to set up a mock outreach, where you budget all your needs and get contacts overseas to set up ministry times for the standard two-month outreach off of a Discipleship Training School. The outreach I set up is to Hong Kong for the majority of the time, with the last two weeks spent in Newcastle, Australia. It was really cool to contact YWAM bases all over the world, ask about the ministries that go on there, and get more of an idea of what it looks like to plan/lead an outreach!

I have less than three weeks here in Denver until graduation day... It's been an incredibly enriching couple of months, and I'm excited for what the next few weeks have in store :) 

Thank you for all your prayers and love!