Earlier, I was talking with a guy my age who had grown up in the church, but walked away from it for a time. He was trying to 'get back into it'. It is hard to discern someone's level of understanding if you ask them lots of subjective questions like, "What are you learning?", so I asked him if he could tell me the main point of the Bible. At first, he wasn't sure what to say. Then he came up with a brief summary that I hear often. "How to live." Granted, there are a lot of imperatives in Scripture, some of which pertain directly to us. But it is sad that we all have a tendency to view God's word in such a legalistic framework. I'm still convinced that the one thing that really sets Christianity apart from every other belief is the concept of undeserved grace and being made right with God simply by faith and not by works. I've never heard of any other religion that truly maintains that belief. Thankfully, he seemed open to learning more about God, and I hope I (or another Christian) can help him better understand the whole picture.
There are two weeks of school left this semester. Tomorrow in our CLA Methodology class, they will introduce us to the language and culture learning software made by New Tribes. When my parents first started the process of learning and categorizing the culture and language of the tribal people we lived among, they had to use hard copies of everything. I'm hoping that the digital data will facilitate the learning process. We shall see.