2.11.2006

Theological Awareness

Last weekend, I took my students on a Winter Retreat. At the retreat, the main speaker was great. She helped the students grasp how they are ambassadors/representatives of Christ everday in life especially in the way the treat the people around them. Although we talk about these things on a regular basis with our students, this speaker was really good at making it real to students. My students sat around and reflected for a while on what this means for their life. As my students reflected, they also critically assessed a seminar they went to entitled "Are my friends going to Hell?" I was amazed at their theological awareness as they looked at this seminar and saw that it did not line up very well with us being representatives of God's kingdom and how this kingdom exists now versus the seminar speaker's ideas regarding salvation being a primarily future thing. My students did a wonderful job articulating the kingdom of God in the here and now, and how that is the primary emphasis of the gospel message in the Scriptures. They were able to see the fallacy of the fire insurance ideas regarding Heaven and Hell that is so popular in our Christian subculture.