On Tuesday, February 5th, I had let my students take a break and I was outside with them as they were discussing random topics. One student began to talk about "The Lord of the Rings" and that somehow segued into talking about Harry Potter. A comment was made about the Christian controversy regarding the book/movie series. I made mention that Christians simply abstain from Harry Potter and the like because of Deuteronomy 18:10-12 and Galatians 5.That led to another student mentioning that the Bible also states that you should not "suffer a witch to live" and that you should cook food over human feces. I explained to the student that those were very interesting claims, but I could not recall anything like that in the Bible! I told him that I would have to look those up and back to him.
I went back into the classroom and did a Google search for the "suffer a witch" verse. I found it...Exodus 22:18. Hmmm, how was I going to explain this one? I was determined to do the research and get an answer back to the student.
After I dismissed class tonight we talked a bit further. I mentioned that these types of questions typically come from Atheists who are simply trying to refute the Bible. He said that he was, in fact, an Atheist and had been for about 11 or 12 years. He said that he had a Catholic background, but "converted" to Atheism because he began to doubt when he could not provide answers to questions some of his friends asked him.
He said that he was really into science and had studied different religions in depth and read a lot. We did a bit of "verbal sparring" (amicably, I might add) for about 20 minutes or so. I asked him if had ever heard of "Way of the Master" and Ray Comfort. He said that he had and had watched the national debate that Ray and Kirk had with the Rational Response Squad. I asked him if he took the "Blasphemy Challenge". He said that he had and even took the pleasure of repeating it for me.
Although our conversation was a bit tense it was very good. What better place to exchange different and diverse points of view than a college campus?
We'll see how it goes on the research!
